I find my way out of the Black Hole I was stuck in, and Anny completes her third race to date

Well howdy everyone.  It really has been a while this time, but I didn't forget you one bit I promise.  I could try to spin you some yarn about being stuck in a black hole and only just finding my way out, but the truth is that I was on holiday in Spain and Portugal with Anny and I do have to apologise for not updating this blog in the last 2 weeks.

First of all we attended a wedding in Madrid, which turned out to be a lot of fun and then we headed all along the Argarve coastline by car, stopping at various places along the way.  It was nice and relaxing, and the weather was more like summer than autumn, but I also made sure to keep up with the training that Jeff had entered into my online coaching plan.  Between the training, the travelling and needing some rest though, I didn't really get that much time for blogging I am afraid.

After getting back from Portugal we stopped off again in Madrid for a few days.  Whilst we were there Anny did a 10km race around her barrio (neighbourhood).  The race took place last Sunday.  If you were following the news you will know that Spain recently had an unprecedented amount of rainfall, especially in the South.  Well Madrid was not immune and it also rained there, without letup, for several days in a row.  Anny was very lucky though it seems, as Sunday was a gloriously sunny day with barely a cloud in sight.

The race started at 9am sharp, and there were around 800 people on the start line.  Anny started somewhere in the middle of them.  I advised her not to start at the front and end up going off too fast and not to start at the back and have to fight her way through the crowd for the first few minutes.

She was hoping for a time under 1 hour and as my watch started to show 55 minutes my anticipation grew and everyone who was wearing a pink shirt on the horizon I thought might be her.  Then shortly afterwards I saw her familiar big smile and she upped her pace from there all the way to the finish line.  Considering how tired some of the runners around her looked, she looked as fresh as a daisy and I am sure she is capable of shaving several minutes off her time just by pushing herself harder, without any additional training.

Her final time was 56 minutes 34 seconds according to my Garmin.  She was really happy with that and so were her family and I.  She is actually following a half marathon training plan at the moment, so she is almost ready to do a half marathon.  If she could do that under 2 hours that really would be fantastic.  Some of my colleagues are also beginner runners, and they recently ran a half marathon around the Greifensee in just over 2 hours.  It seems the world, well the world around me at least, is running crazy at the moment.

Quality vs. Quantity

As I mentioned in my previous post, my own training has often favoured quantity over quality.  I felt like the more I ran the better runner I would become, provided I did not become injured or burnt out through overtraining.  This got me down to a predicted marathon time of 3 hours 4 minutes (using the lactate test method), so it can't have been too bad, but I spent a lot of my free time running and often struggled to recover between workouts.

At the end of my first week of coaching under Jeff Grant, I can see that he is focussing much more on quality, at least at this early stage in my training plan.  Last week I only ran 45km, but each session was a quality workout and there were no "junk miles".

I trained 6 days last week.  I ran on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday and did strength training on Monday (CrossFit foundation course), Thursday (CrossFit) and Friday (Pilates).  Saturday was my only rest day.  So the program is pretty intense.  As each session was fairly short though, I was able to recover rather quickly.

Monday started out with a 3km time trail, a benchmark test that will be repeated in 6 weeks time to see whether there has been some improvement.  I did that on a gravel path next to UBS completed it in 12 minutes and 3 seconds.  Later that evening I travelled to Richterswil to do the CrossFit foundation course with Jeff.  Whilst the bulk of the 2.5 hours was spent listening to instruction on proper lifting form, we also did some actual lifts and floor exercises, so it qualifies as a workout in itself.

Tuesday was the killer fartlek intervals run, that I mentioned in my last post.  51 minutes of running, incorporating 2 long intervals (5 to 7 mins), 2 medium intervals (3 to 5 mins), 4 short intervals (20 sec to 3 mins), 2 high skipping intervals and 2 short sprint bursts (5 to 20 secs).  It has been a long time since I worked that hard in a single session.

Wednesday evening was Jeff's regular running class at Saalsporthalle.  We repeated the mental training with colours exercise, and ran barefoot laps on the sawdust Finnenbahn.  I focussed on good running form, and challenged myself on each lap, but I did not overdo it as I have done on previous Finnenbahn sessions.

Thursday evening after work I attended my first CrossFit lesson with CrossFit Zurich in Glattbrugg.  The gym is conveniently situated 1 minutes walk away from where I work.  One part of the gym is devoted to CrossFit and the rest is used for martial arts training.  The building itself is a large shack, and it feels like back to basics Rocky Balboa style training, especially with all those people sparring and pad training around you.  It is pretty cool I have to say.

We started by warming up on the Concept 2 with a 500m row, followed by some windmill stretches, medicine ball cleans, bent over rows and plank holds.  Then we moved onto the WOD or workout of the day.  This involved doing 6 sets of 3 bent over power rows with a weighted barbell, followed by 3 rounds for time of: 800m run, 20 overhead squats with a weighted barbell.  I found that the overhead squats really challenged the mobility of my shoulders, and they should actually help to open them up over time.  The majority of people in the class were heavily muscled.  There were only 2 of us in the class that looked like runners, and this showed in the 800m runs.  The instructor himself though was a good example of the fact that you can be incredibly strong yet lean.

Friday lunchtime was hill training.  After an initial warmup I was meant to do 5 times 3 minutes of uphill running, with 2 minutes rest in between each interval.  I tried my best to find the steepest longest hill in the Opfikon forest, but unfortunately there was no hill quite long enough.  The best hill I found was only 1 minute 30 long.  Nevertheless I did my 5 repeats on that hill, then did one extra repeat on another hill nearby.  Friday night I had my Pilates class.

Saturday was a well needed rest day, and I felt like I had earned it.  My shins were slightly sore, not really full blown shin splints, but not that comfortable either and the right Achilles was ever so slightly tender.  My body needed a chance to repair.

I woke up on Sunday feeling fine again, and did the planned 2 hour long run.  Jeff wanted it to be as much trail as possible, so I chose to run at the bottom of the Uetliberg.  Every 15 minutes I had to run one minute hard (just over tempo pace) and I also had to run the last 5 minutes really hard as though I was pushing for a good time at the end of a race.  Running the last part of a long run hard seems to be a commonly used training technique nowadays, teaching your body to recruit extra muscle fibres when it is already in a pre fatigued state.

I found some nice new paths on the Uetliberg, and without realising it I covered 404 vertical metres.  Some of the running was on nicely prepared gravel paths and Finnenbahn, and other parts were on rocky, muddy trails.  It was a good mix of terrain.

The plan continues today, with 10 x 30 second intervals, which I will do at lunchtime.  I will keep you posted on my progress.  So far so good though, and I am starting to feel stronger and quicker on my feet already.

Jeff kicks off my 3 month coaching program with a killer fartlek intervals run

As of yesterday (Monday 3rd September), I am being coached by Jeff Grant of Hillseeker Fitness.  He is going to help me to try to achieve my aim of completing a marathon in under 3 hours.  Up till now, other than the Wednesday night coached running sessions, I have been coming up with my own training plans.  It has worked pretty well (I did manage to complete the Marathon des Sables after all, and did my first and only marathon to date in under 3 hours 30), but my plans sometimes lack direction and focus.  Probably they are not optimised too, favouring quantity over quality.

On top of this, I am entering into an unknown domain - the world of speed endurance running.  At present I am primarily a pure endurance athlete.  I can easily run a marathon and in fact much further than a marathon.  Earlier this year I would run anything up to 70km (with an 8kg backpack) and be back on my feet a couple of days later.  I can also (when needed) run fast for very short periods, but what I cannot really do at the moment is to run fast for extended periods of time.  This is what we mean by the term "speed endurance", and speed endurance is what is required in order to break the 3 hour marathon barrier.  4 minutes 16 seconds per km is a fairly quick pace after all, and this is the pace you need on average to go under 3 hours.

Jeff set me as my first running workout a fartlek intervals run of between 48 and 52 minutes, including the following items:

2x long intervals
2x medium intervals
4x short intervals
2x high skipping intervals
2x short sprint bursts

Criteria:
long = 5-7min
medium = 3-5min
short = 20sec - 3min
sprint burst = 5-20 sec
high skipping: choice distance, but be careful with your Achilles

I was considering to take Negrita with me on the run, but as she doesn't like intervals very much, I decided she was better off at home.  She is much more of a steady pace running dog.  So all alone I hit the streets of Zurich armed only with my tight fitting Adidas tracksuit (more motivation to keep my weight down).

I started with the long intervals as I am used to those most.  Then one by one I ticked the other items off the list.  It was an extremely tough workout, and I barely managed to complete it in the allotted time, and still allow myself sufficient recovery time to get my breath back between each interval.  My total workout time was a shade over 51 minutes, and the last items I completed were the high skipping intervals, as those I was saving for a more deserted part of the city, which ended up being the residential backstreets of Wipkingen.

The sprint intervals were fun, but boy did I get some strange looks sprinting at full speed along Langstrasse.  For those not from Zurich, Langstrasse is where you find all the titty bars and less desirable characters (although plenty of normal people go there too), so a person sprinting along the street at full speed (and I do mean at full speed) may make some people wonder if that person is running away from someone or from the police.

I was also doing one of my fast short intervals close to a roadworks, and realised that I needed to change direction quickly due to an obstruction across the pavement.  I barely made the corner and almost landed in a 1 to 2 metre deep hole.  That would have been a quick end to my sub 3 hour plans.

As I arrived back at the house after 51 minutes, I was completely and utterly exhausted.  I cannot recall the last time I worked that hard in a session.  Even pinwheel is easier than that, as in pinwheel (where the intervals are always the same distance) you get into a kind of rhythm.  On today's run however, one minute you are sprinting and the next you are jogging and the next you are tempo running and the next you are skipping and so on.

Right now, one hour after finishing, I feel really energised.  Let's see how much I am aching tomorrow though.  Tomorrow is the usual Wednesday night running session with Jeff at Saalsporthalle, and then on Thursday I am doing my first Crossfit lesson with Crossfit Zurich, having completed the foundation course with Jeff yesterday evening in Richterswil.  I was already aching a little before I started the fartlek interval run from doing all the major lifts and Crossfit moves yesterday with Jeff.

The hot bath is calling now folks, so I bid you all a good evening and may the force be with you.