TREES

Today I bought four trees. Silverbirches. Four meters high. I bought them over the Internet. Now I need to sort out the logistics of getting them from Herk-de-Stad into our garden.

And my running? I've come to a near-complete standstill.

WHAT NEXT

It's time to pick up football again. My fiftieth is on a Saturday, and I would like to play a match on that day (though it will be in February, and Belgian climate being what it is games may well be cancelled). So I went training on Wednesday. It was only moderately successful, as my back and upper leg started hurting and I had to leave the pitch before we were done. Still, it was good to smell the grass again.

I don't want my running to go to waste, but am also not motivated to continue training for many hours almost daily. So I am going to focus now on trying to bring down my personal best on the 10 kilometers, from the 50:06 that I have now to something nearer 45 minutes. This will still require several training runs per week. But they'll be shorter and much more varied.

And after February I'll start building up towards a good 20k of Brussels, on the last Sunday in May. Would like to finish this time in under 1:48.

So no marathon for me in Spring 2009. A pity to some extent, as I was already getting a bit enthusiastic for running in either Rome or Barcelona, my two favorite European cities after Amsterdam. But the training regime is too heavy, and there's much work to do on our house and garden.

The 10k first, then. There's one in three weeks from now in Evere, which is close to where we live. I'll take inspiration from this schedule for preparation. The first training is on Tuesday. Until then, I'm taking it easy.

THE NIGHT AFTER THE DAY BEFORE

"I ran a marathon," I spoke to the guy sitting opposite me on the train home from work. He didn't look up from his magazine, a publication about vintage cars that from the pace of his page-turning he was not reading beyond the caption with the photos. "Hm," was all he could muster. "It was my first. I finished it. I did it." He looked up briefly, then turned to the magazine again. "I'm not into that stuff," he said. I let him be.

The conversation never happened. I made it up while sitting on the train. The guy was there, as was the magazine. But I never spoke. I only thought the conversation. Why? Because, I guess, ultimately running and completing an effort like this one is a very personal experience. To the point of being lonely. Not transferable, not shareable. Mine, only mine.

Here is a feeble attempt anyway: it was great and it was hell. The atmosphere in Amsterdam was superb, the facilities excellent, the organisation impeccable (and the hospitality of Wilfred and Saskia before and after made it even better). I ran the first 10k without checking my watch, on feeling only, and found later that I was on schedule for an end time of 4 hours flat. Continued at that pace for another 10, enjoying the ambiance tremendously, feeling very, very good. 

But at around 18k, just before crossing the bridge over the Amstel river in Ouderkerk, my left ankle started hurting. The pain increased gradually. From 22k onward I had to walk bits in between running. A bit later my left shoulder started hurting too. That was expected (I had the same problem during the longer trainings already), but it added to my woe. And then, fatigue hit me as well.

My recollection of the bit between 25k and 35k is not a happy one. Eventually, I ended up walking more than I ran, and feeling increasingly frustrated. I knew one thing for sure: I was going to finish the darn thing. But other than that, I kept adjusting the projected end time in the wrong direction. I can still do 4h15, I thought. Then, later, if I push on 4h30 will still be possible. Then I drifted to 4h40.

Does it matter? The answer, of course, is No. What matters is that I finished. I completed a marathon! I made good on the promise to myself to finish a marathon before turning 50! I need to change the title of my blog! All of that matters more than the pain, the stiffness, the hangover of being disappointed with my 4h 32m 49s. I mean, how many people can say they've done this?

The last bit was quite emotional. I needed to call upon all my powers for the final kilometers. In an effort to take my mind away from the agony, I thought about other people who had done great things. Soon, my father came to mind, and particularly how he had endured horrible pain during the final stages of his illness but never complained. There, then, coming out of the Vondelpark and turning into the direction of the Olympic Stadium, I missed him more than I had done in a long time. I got close to crying, so close that I had to stop running again as I could not breathe properly. He would have enjoyed being there and seeing me finish so so much...

I ran into the Stadium (ah, the relief!) and across the finish line. A bit further I leant over a fence to catch my breath. A woman, finishing just after me, did the same thing. After a minute or so, I heard her sobbing and when I was ready to walk again and collect my medal, I tapped her on the shoulder and walked passed her. She looked up, but in the wrong direction. I'm sure, though, that she understood what I meant to say. "You have done it! You have every reason to be very, very proud of yourself!"

 

TWO MORE DAYS, OR NOT EVEN...

Last night I started my carb-loading programme (pasta with mushrooms). At work today, the lunch menu was pasta too: tagliatelle with a rather unidentifiable sauce. Finished off with a banana.

Tomorrow I will stretch my legs for half an hour in a gentle jog, after which the girls and I go to Wilfred's place for more pasta and a good glass of red wine.

Then, on Sunday I may have a last pasta bit for breakfast before heading to Amsterdam.

The weather should be nice: sunny, about 14 degrees Celsius, a moderate breeze. Lovely for the time of year and especially pleasant for the spectators. Also, Amsterdam looks even more gorgeous than usual when the sun is out. The Vondelpark will be heaven.

The marathon starts at 10:30, so I should be there no later than 9:00 for collecting my race number, changing into my gear, and just generally walk around nervously and getting all pumped up.

Then it's go. I hope to get into The Zone quickly enough. The rest is silence. Until it starts hurting like hell, but by that time is should have done the first 30 kilometers at least, and be close enough to the finish to struggle my way home.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

SHORT

This week I did not manage to complete any of my trainings. I fell short of my target three times in a row. Not by much, but enough to be ever so slightly discouraging.

Dress rehearsals are like that, or so I remember from doing high school drama. A good final rehearsal meant a bad opening performance, and vice versa. Can I trick my brain into thinking it's the same with my final trainings?

No more long runs to go before M-day, in a week from now. On Tuesday (early morn, considering my work schedule) I do 40 minutes. Then on Thursday 3 tempo runs of 5 minutes only, preceded and followed by 15 minutes at a leasurely pace. And on Saturday a 30 minutes jog, to prevent pre-match stiffness.

Here's my other worry: my shoes are pretty well worn to bits. It's too late to start running with a new pair, so I have no option but to use my current shoes for the marathon...

But maybe I'm just getting nervous. Receiving the confirmation letter in the mail a couple of days ago, with a poster-size map of the marathon track, certainly made it all very real...

Ready or not: Amsterdam, here I come!

STRONGER, LONGER, FASTER

The last rehearsal for the marathon went pretty well, though it was not much fun. The night before the 3pm start of the jogging in Dilbeek, I was still on a beach in northern Denmark drinking red wine with colleagues around a bonfire. Had to get up indecently early to make it in time to the airport. Slept on the plane and was home by 11:andabit thanks to Chui Hsia and Sanna who came to pick me up.

It was raining. In fact, in Dilbeek it was pouring so hard that the sheet with my number (what's the english term for that? chest number?) ripped from the safety pins less than a minute after the start. The rain never stopped and I felt increasingly sorry for the officials, volunteers who stand around for hours just pointing the runners in the right direction. The circuit - three rounds of 7 kilometers - included some nasty climbing and several kilometers of mud paths.

But I finished, and I finished well. In the first round, several runners overtook me at a speed marginally higher than mine. Three or four of them I kept in sight, only to find in the second round that I was approaching then, overtaking them in turn. Pretty soon, I was at the head of a group of five or six who were trying to keep up with me. Strange, I never ran in such a position before.

I completed the race in three rounds of 37 minutes each: very consistent. My final time, of 1:51 at some seconds, meant I ran at a pace of 5 minutes 19 seconds per kilometer. I'm real pleased with that. It means that in Amsterdam I should consider joining the pacemakers that aim for finishing in four hours flat, and trying to stick with them at least until kilometer 30.

That's less than two weeks away...

PROGRESS, PROGRESS...

In spite of what I wrote in my previous post, I ran well over three hours on Sunday. I woke up pain-free, and feeling all fueled up thanks to Chui Hsia's magic pasta. Fell just short of the planned 33k (three times my regular 11k loop), but at 32k in 192 minutes there was little to complain about bar maybe the feeling of total and utter death towards the end.

Then on Tuesday, I followed colleague Fabienne (who does triathlons) over the office running circuit. Much to my surprise I completed the 6.5k in 29 minutes only, with an average speed of about 14k per hour. It's the pace one needs for finishing a marathon in three hours.

The rest of the working week was not very good for running. But I picked it up again on Friday (6.5) and Saturday (11, with Chui Hsia cycling along). And then, this morning I completed the 33k in 195 minutes, still feeling like I had something left. I guess I'm getting close to where I should be in three weeks from now.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD

Four weeks of training left before I start my marathon in Amsterdam, and the news is mixed. I am not confident at all that I will be ready in time, but I know I have made great progress.

Running three hours non-stop meant a major milestone, two weeks ago. It coincided with a family outing festival called De Gordel, for which occasion many streets had been shut for motorised traffic, and a 25 kilometers cycling route, set up for the day, passed right in front of our house. I ran that route and then some, adding up to around 30 kilometers. It was terribly long, boring at times, and hell for the last twenty minutes, but I did not stop. I guess that's the essential preparation for a marathon.

Last week I joined an 8 kilometers race in Molenbeek, close to our old house, where a djembe band cheered up the participants and spectators at the finish line in spite of the rain. The race consisted of three loops, meaning I passed the band four times. I finished with an average speed of 4:55 per kilometer, faster than any race I had done before. Another milestone.

But it's not all good news. Today was supposed to bring the longest session of my training, a 200 minutes run. But a fierce pain in my left lower back keeps me grounded. I rubbed it with tiger balm last night and it feels slightly better but still is incapacitating. With more long runs scheduled for the coming weekends, I have now decided to skip this one. Instead, next week's 180 minutes will be turned into the 200 of today. Hopefully this decision will help ease the pressure on  my body enough to keep going again.

It is a serious setback though. The coming two weeks should be the most intense in my carefully constructed training regime, and starting them with a back pain and cancelation of a key effort is not encouraging.

We shall see. I will try a short run again tomorrow (35 minutes, or 6 kilometers) and then take it from there.

NOT BAD, NOT BAD AT ALL

Halfway into my second week of my twelve-weeks intensive marathon training, things are going pretty well. Last week saw one hick-up: on Thursday my legs would not move at all and the 90 minutes I was supposed to run shrank into a 24-minutes warming-up. But then, I'd just began a course of anti-inflammatory medicine (suspected bursitis in my left shoulder, a bit painful if I run more than an hour). So maybe that explained my yoghurt-filled legs.

I'm doing a total of over 50 kilometers weekly. The big challenge is to find enough variation in terms of where I run. The 11k loop that I've been doing for a while has become so familiar that I expect to be surprised if I find a specific branch from a specific tree has snatched off. There's also the area towards the airport - which accidentally leads me to a village with the gorgeous name of Erps-Kwerps - which is much flatter than if I head the other way and therefore more suitable for longer distances. But that gets boring after a while, too.

Apart from seeking variation, there are three main challnges:
1. Finding time: I am already resorting to getting up at 5:30 (AM, yes) once a week. Football practice has fallen by the roadside completely.
2. Staying motivated: As the demands of the training schedule go up, I will at times have difficulty getting up too, abandoning a comfy seat, putting on them shoes. The coming three weeks should be fine, with the Olympics on telly. Because sports is a bit like yawning: if you see someone do it you start feeling the urge, too. (Well... I do.)
3. Not overtrain: I am, after all, at an age at which in other cultures I would be a respected village elder and have a broad selection of grandchildren. True, in my mind's eye I'm still in my late twenties. But equally true, my body has different ideas. So if I push it too much I may well find myself untrainable for a week or so.

NOT PRETTY

The last three races were all very hard. In Bruges I took three minutes longer than last year. In Gent, I took more than an hour for 10 kilometers. And the Brussels 20k was disastrous, with a time more than 10 minutes over last year's.

Explanations? All three were run on very hot days, and as it stayed cold for a long time this year I was not really prepared for that. But the main thing is that I have trained less long distances than last year.

So here's the drill for the coming two months: run 30-40 minutes twice a week, over one hour once every week, and build up to two-and-a-half hour runs in the weekends, alternated with races every three-four weeks. Then, from the last week of July onward, I will have tom rigidly follow a twelve-weeks preparation course for the marathon.

I have the ambition, I have the schedules. Now I need the determination and stamina.

GAME ON

Tomorrow is the Bruges 15k. I'll be running it for the fourth time, I think. Last year I finished in 1h16, a really good time for me. Would like to better it this year, but I doubt I will.

I have this race scoring system, to establish how well I have done in a particular race. It works like this. I take the time of the race winner, multiply it by tow, take off my time, divide what is left by the winner's time, and multiply this by 100. With this system, my score in the Tervuren 16k was 35. In a formula:

(2w-m) / w x 10

with w being the winner's time and m being mine. Theoretically, this formula gives me a score of 100 is I finish in the same time as the winner (meaning, if I am the winner). It also gives me a zero score if I take twice as long as the winner, and a negative score if I take even longer.

Let's see if I can beat that 35 tomorrow...

GOOD PROGRESS

The day after my previous post, I ran my 11k hilly training loop in under one hour and took over three minutes off my previous best time on that track. That was seriously encouraging, especially as it came only two days after attempting to run 14k.

Training continued at a slightly lower rate than normal, as Sanna and I were driving from relative to relative and friend to friend in Holland, on our own Thelma and Louise road trip. I did get to go for a jog with Sebas though, in Deventer where he lives.

On Sunday, I went to Tervuren hoping to run the 9k race there, advertised on some websites as the altenative distance to their 16k. Once there, I found that the choice was between 6.7 and 16k, and even though I was not trained yet for the longer distance I registered for it, feeling that a run under 7k was not worth the trouble.

My target for the upcoming 20k of Brussels translates into a pace of 11k/h, or 5:30 per kilometer. The Tervuren race was through hilly forests (indeed, there was not a kilometer that was more or less flat), so I did not think that pace was feasible yet. Therefore, my thinking was, in an ideal world I would finish this race in 1h28 (target pace), but I will settle for a time under 1h36 (6 minutes per kilometer).

The first kilometer, slightly uphill, I did in 5:10. Too fast, I had to slow down. But I felt great so I decided to stay around 5:30 for a while, allowing the kilometer times to ondulate with the landscape. They stayed between 5:10 and 5:40, and I passed the 11k mark in exactly one hour. The rest of the race I managed to keep my pace, and I finished in an unexpectedly fast time: 1:27:07.

That is seriously good news for the Brussels 20k. But I'll have to keep training hard, especially at getting through the point where my body will switch from burning sugars to burning fats, a point that typically comes after an hour and a half and which reveals itself as hitting a brick wall.

So, for today I have drawn a 18k track on Google maps. If I manage to keep running all the way, however slowly, I'll be well on my way for achieving my pre-summer goals. They are: the Bruges 15k in under 1:20 (in two weeks) and the grand Brussels 20k in under 1:50 (in five weeks).

PEEK-A-BOO

I'm back. And running.

After one failed and one aborted attempt, I'm getting desperate to complete a marathon. Promised myself I would do so before turning 50, which is less than a year away now.

I've signed up for Amsterdam again (19 October). This time I have running mates. Sebas registered, so has one of his colleagues, and I'm working on Luc. Nothing like creating a bit of peer pressure for pushing me through the hard bits.

But my first target is the Brussels 20k, on May 25th. I'm hoping to finish in under 1:50. Sebas is joining for that one, too.

I'm currently doing about 30k per week. Not enough, but if I look at my schedule for the near future it's not going to change significantly any time soon...