28km

Clear skies, not a cloud, sun shining bright and warm, not a breath of wind, 20℃. Ideal conditions for a run? Nope, not if you've always trained in much cooler conditions and you have to run for 28km. 
Add also the fact that yesterday I spent pretty much the whole day walking up and down the Floriade (world's biggest horticultural expo, held in the Netherlands once every decade) and you get the picture of how hard this run was. 
The alarm went off at 7:01am, when I was deeeeeeep asleep, I almost immediately put my feet on the floor but it took a while before I could actually stand and leave the bed. About one hour later I was ready to go with my capri's and one of my new bright orange shirts, a must considering that today we celebrate Her Majesty's birthday here. Everybody wears orange, goes out in the streets and gets drunk... I followed two thirds of the tradition so that's ok. Belt on: two bottles of electrolyte, 4 gels, cell phone, tissues, house keys... was I missing something? Oh yes, the iPod! Anything else? Hmmm... ooops! The Garmin! I went to get it and immediately upon switching it on I found out it had low batteries, so I had to plug it in and wait. Umpf.
In the meantime the sun came out in all its glory and I changed to my shorts, which was the only good thing that resulted from this delay. Oh and I was able to say good morning to the whole family :-)


I eventually left the house at 9am, and immediately realized how hard it was going to be. I could already feel my knees from the beginning and started to doubt: if I feel like this now, how am I going to run a whole marathon? It was a good lesson though, because I realized we can't go walking around doing the tourists in Stockholm on the day before the marathon, we need to find an alternative. 
The heat wasn't helping either, I called my husband to ask him to hand me another bottle of electrolyte at the end of my first lap (10km) and so we had a cute aid station simulation with the whole family. But it was hard, boy was it hard. At 14km I felt discouraged at the thought of being only half way, but still I kept on running. 
I was even attacked multiple times by flocks of black insects about half an inch big, I went through them with my mouth sealed shut and waving my arms like mad... and I was not the only one having that problem. 
My husband and kids found me once more around the 20K mark, and I asked to go fetch some more fluids so they didn't stay with me. There was also a dramatic moment when the last (and much looked forward to) gel didn't open properly and wouldn't let a single drop out... but I somehow managed to squeeze it open. Shortly after that the Garmin beeped to signal again low batteries, but at that point I was in a well known area so I more or less knew how much longer I had to run and it didn't bother me that much. The Garmin though, like me, kept on going hanging by a thread until the end. 
I drank two full bottles in the last 4km, I was dragging myself one step at a time and my pace went down to a ridiculous 8:51min/km in the last kilometer, but I did it.  


Lessons learnt:

1. The Nike new t-shirt is too tight, I prefer the Saucony (the one in the picture here).
2. Do not walk all day before a long run, or even worse before the marathon.
3. Bring as many gels as my belt allows.
4. These Maxim gels bounce in the belt compartments, but the bouncing is the least annoying solution (as compared to carrying them in my hands or stuffing them under the belt instead of in the compartments, I tried all that today).
5. Two bottles are not enough even with the drink gels, must organize family aid stations for my last long run. During the marathon I will take a cup at every station.

33 days to go and I finished today's run in 3:33:21, I'll take that as a good sign.

New trails and new gels

The 5km jog on Wednesday has turned out to be uneventful the last few weeks, but not this week. I had an appointment to change the car tyres (we were still driving on winter tyres) and the idea was to go for those 5km instead of just waiting there for 45 minutes. The original plan was to go 2.5km down the road and back again, but already after 600m I was so bored that I jumped on the occasion of a bike trail into the woods. I had never been there, it was much "hillier" than the woods in our immediate surroundings, which is good for my training. And then there was this nice sandy slope...

You can't really tell from the picture, but it was about a 40° incline and deep sand for most of it. It was short, less than 50m I would say, but hard! I think it's a good place to do some repeat hill work, I will definitely go back there. I need to prepare for this monster bridge

+30m elevation in 1km (and the equally challenging descent), which will be crossed twice along the Stockholm Marathon course, at 8km and at 32km. And the rest of the course is also continuously going up and down so I really need some kind of hill work. 

Thursday was another early morning run, I was out at 6:40am for my fast 12km. My husband signed up for the Eindhoven Marathon and he's a fan of GU Gels, so we bought a big box of Lemon Sublime flavour with the intention of sharing it if I liked it. I took one with me on this run because I didn't want to try it during the 28km, and I'm glad I did. I just can't stand the thick texture of these gels, I can foresee myself puking if I should try to gulp one down 30km into the marathon... drink gels it is for me. I couldn't get the one I had already tried a while ago (Dextro Energy Liquid Gel), so I ordered a nice supply of Maxim Gel Drink hoping the taste isn't horrible. Sponsoring works: Maxim is one of the sponsors of the Stockholm Marathon, they will offer Maxim Electrolyte drink along the course and Maxim Energy Bars at one aid station and this is one of the reasons for my preference, the others being availability and price. 

This weekend I will be busy with the celebrations for my daughter's 4th birthday, so I will move the long run to Monday, which is a holiday here. Just two more long runs before the marathon: 28km and 32km... 

More bone cracking, an early morning run and a race

Looking back at it, this has been a week full of things to talk about!


Monday, the day after my 24km run, I had another session of bone cracking which left me sore and with a bruised back. Ouch. 


Wednesday, 5km jog, nothing to report.


I was supposed to run 8km on Thursday but I had to move it to Friday and I also had to go out very early in the morning in order to be back by the time my husband had to go to work. It was very nice to be out so early, and watch the sun come up.

When I got home I found out that my daughter (who had had a fever the previous day) was now full of tiny red spots, later identified as chickenpox by the doctor. I thought this would automatically rule out the 10K race today, but luckily she reacted well and has only been suffering from the itching, so we all went to the race. I had no idea how many people would participate, I was expecting about a thousand runners but it turned out to be a much smaller event. There were various distances (2,5km, 5km, 10km, 15km, plus 500m and 1000m for kids), and the participants in the 10K were only 199. The speaker was very excited to see in the list "some very exotic names" he wouldn't dare to pronounce... and he was most likely talking about me. 

The weather was crazy, just like it's been for the past two weeks. One moment the sun is out and it's nice and warm (though still talking about just 9℃), then the sun goes into hiding behind the clouds with the wind blowing hard and you wish you had a winter coat on. You can imagine how unhappy all of us runners were when all lined up and ready to start we heard that we still had to wait another full 5 minutes... there was a general moan of disapproval.

My plan was to just enjoy the race, start easy, see what happened and maybe try to break the hour but without forcing it anyway. 

The course was full of ups and downs on muddy hills, we've had very strong wind for most of the time and even some heavy rain... not the ideal conditions I would say! It was clear from the beginning that breaking the hour was going to be difficult, so I completely put that aside and I just focused on enjoying the race and trying to stay strong, in which I succeeded. 

Just before it poured

We were cutting the hills back and forth, so the winding lines of runners created a nice effect with their coloured t-shirts as little bright spots in the green and brown countryside. 

This picture only gives a faint idea of what it was like (and you must see it full size even for that), as there are only very few runners in just one line. I was out for the race after all, not for a photoshoot! I have to say though that I am getting better at snapping pictures while just slowing down to a jog :-)


Around the 6km mark I decided to speed up a bit and I progressively increased my pace all the way up to the finish line, which I crossed in 1:00:39 (Garmin time). All in all I am very satisfied with this result, I was able to tackle the hills, navigate through the mud and face the wind without being knocked out. My picture may even end up on the event's website because I noticed a photographer and waved at him with a smile, and he followed me snapping away for a couple of meters. I couldn't help but keep smiling also in the final 500m, which were lined up with cheering spectators and a very loud band. If this was so nice, what will it be like to run the final 400m of a marathon in an Olympic stadium in front of thousands of people?

24km

Yesterday evening my knees were killing me and I was dreading the moment when I would have to come down the stairs this morning. To my surprise, it was not as bad as I had feared. In fact it was even slightly better than yesterday so I think I can safely say that I survived my 24km run without injuries! 
Now... back to yesterday. I managed to get out of bed when the alarm went off at 7am even though the night had been the roughest in a long time: both kids sleepless and a feverish feeling in my throat, which all together meant very little sleep. This was breakfast, together with a cup of coffee:

It was again cold and overcast, and forecast to stay so for the whole morning so no new t-shirt... long sleeves and gloves once more. I had a difficult run since the beginning, probably because of the lack of sleep (I was desperate for energy) and for sure because of the strong wind, but my mind was in a good state. For the first time I was talking out loud to myself during the last 3-4 kilometers, I really needed somebody to cheer me on and as there was no crowd around me... I did it myself. Luckily this won't be a problem in Stockholm!
I had a moment of rejoice at 21.1km, and the final 2km were the fastest of all. 


No complaints from my joints nor from my muscles while I was running. 
There are many theories and many different programs when it comes to marathon training, but everybody seems to agree on a few things about recovery from long runs:

1. keep walking for 10 minutes after the finish line
2. drink
3. eat something soon (a banana and/or easy to digest carbs, like a recovery bar)
4. do not get a massage for at least 2-3 hours (so why all the massage tents at marathons?)
5. take a cold bath, or pour cold water on your legs
6. don't sit or lie down for the rest of the day, as tempting as it may be
7. have a good night's sleep

I did all of these (I unfortunately had no choice on #4 and had #7 courtesy of my kids), at some point in the afternoon I also went biking for 15 minutes because I really felt the need to keep my knees in movement. They got progressively stiffer (particularly the right one) as time went by, and I was really afraid I would not be able to get out of bed this morning but here I am, feeling sore but better than yesterday! This afternoon I have the check up and second session of bone-cracking with the doctor, with this level of soreness if there's anything potentially wrong with my right knee he will surely be able to detect it.  


I can't believe I only have two more long runs (28km and 32km) before tapering down!


10K race next Sunday, still have to decide what to do. 

Bad run, new shirt

So good was the 12K run last week, so bad it was this week. So bad that in fact it deserves a blog entry of its own. 
It started going wrong already before I even laced up my shoes, as I had completely forgotten about my intent of running early in the morning and so I had to go once more with my son in the stroller. It was getting late so I skipped my warm up core strengthening exercises and I also didn't bring my drink, thinking that I could live without drinking for 12km on an overcast and cold day. 
While I was preparing the stroller in the garden, my son ran off to the slide and proceeded to wipe it dry from all the raindrops with his butt, which meant that I had to go back inside and change all of his clothes. To add to the bad start he even fought being strapped in the stroller, which hardly ever happens. Were these all messages from the universe telling me to forget about running that day? 
Already after the first steps I was regretting not doing the exercises, and from km 4 on I was badly missing my drink. The fact that I kept repeating to myself "this is a bad run, this is a bad run" didn't help either. It seemed as if all parts of my body were taking it in turns to send me disapproving messages: left shin, right knee, right hip, lower back, neck... only my hands were warm and happy in the gloves I had not forgotten to wear. Still, I kept on running. 
One thing I have learnt about listening to your body is that it's like with babies: you need to be able to distinguish between simple whining and real crying. Yesterday the early whining was about to turn into real crying by the end of the second lap, so I stopped fighting against an inevitable positive split and decided to just jog for the last mile.
Things didn't stop going wrong though. My son had just fallen asleep when we got home and was really not happy about being awoken and taken out of the stroller, which resulted in a temper tantrum like only toddlers can have (luckily he's a quiet boy and it didn't last long).
And you think that's it? Nope. The icing on the cake... was the chewing gum under my shoe. 


Only good news is that everything seems to be fine today, just fatigue even after the PT session yesterday afternoon. And with my new t-shirt (and one more on the way) I am ready for Sunday's 24km, I hope the weather will be kind enough for me to wear it!

Orange!

Nothing to report about the 5K jog on Wednesday. 

Exploring the woods

Looks like winter doesn't really want to give in to spring yet. This week has been quite cold, with minimum temperatures again below freezing. As a result, I arrived home today after my 12km run with a very, very, very cold right hand... for some reason we refuse to acknowledge the cold in April when it has already been warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirts, so I had gone out with capri's and t-shirt when in fact it would have been appropriate to wear long pants, long sleeves and even gloves.


Going back to the beginning of the week... nothing to report about the 5km jog alone on Wednesday, while on Thursday the 12km fast with my son in the stroller was interesting. First of all I realized that now I prefer to run alone so starting next week I will try to run early in the morning, before my husband leaves for work. As for the workout itself, I started slow and increased my speed in the second half, achieving a spectacular negative split and even my PB on the 10K, if we consider the last 10km (1:02:03, I'm a slow runner). Maybe I could aim at breaking the hour barrier in the 10K race on the 22nd, since recovery after this run was not a problem at all. And how much time is the combination "stroller + one kid" worth? The thing is... I am confident I have it in my legs to run a 10K in less than one hour, but at this moment it is not my primary goal and I don't want this to interfere with my marathon training. I still have time to decide what to do for this upcoming race, exactly two weeks. 


Today I had a comfortable 12km in my plan and for the first time I decided to just go wandering in the woods without a planned route, after all I always end up taking a wrong turn so it's not really worth it! It was a lot of fun, I had a general idea of where I wanted to go and I just kept zig-zagging across the forest, with this beautiful view

very early in the run, a couple of dead-ends, many unknown paths and lots of sand between my toes. At some point I even ended up in an open field with a few horses... This was my route in the forest:

A bit more than half of the 12km were on paths and trails in the forest, I have to get there and back and even though it's relatively close it still eats up a big chunk of the distance. Next time that I have a short run on Sunday I will go with the car to another part of this forest and I will run it all on paths and trails. This will have to wait until May though, because I have 24km planned for next Sunday, the 10K race on the 22nd and 28km on the 29th. I'm busy!

22469

Lots of info released today about the Stockholm Marathon! 

I will be (as predictable, having no previous marathon records) in the last of the 6 starting pens, which is good because it will help me start slow. Not that I plan on passing many people anyway...

There will be refreshment stations about every 3km, which means I really don't need to bring any drink myself. I was considering bringing one bottle in my belt just in case, but with water and energy drinks every 3km it really is unnecessary. 

They will also have "energy stations":

• 21km: Pickled gherkins from Brinks (who/what Brinks is and why on earth would anyone want to eat pickles during a marathon, I don't know).

Got cravings?

• 28km: Maxim energy bars - interesting, but I don't think I'll want to try anything new during the marathon. Maybe I should buy some of these bars and try them while I still can.

• 32km: vegetable stock - again... why?

• 36km: a cola soft drink - caffeine, anyone?

• 39km: Dextro Energy dextrose - now this is good! I hope they will still have some by the time I get there.

• 17km, 27km and 37km: good old bananas.

Runners must be in their pens at the latest 15 minutes before the start. Those are going to be 15 VERY stressful minutes.

Top runners will start 10 minutes earlier. I need to re-do the calculations, but I think this means that they will pass me around the end of my first lap, close to the finish for them. Nice!

Every runner gets a sponge that can be used during the race "to refresh yourself at the sponge stations". By dipping it in a barrel in which thousands of runners before me have dipped theirs? No, thanks.

Every runner will receive their registration card by mail in late April, it's good they are not mailing them out at the last moment but I still would have preferred to pick it up myself.

And there's a lot more, but this is the most important stuff.

Half marathon!

There are many milestones in long distance running: the first 10 miles, the first race, the first bloody sock, the first black toenail... and on and on. I have already crossed out the first race 5 years ago when I did not consider myself a runner at all, I recently crossed out the first time I ran 10 miles and the first bloody sock, and I will happily pass on the first black toenail if possible. Today, I can cross out an important milestone: my first half marathon. Ok, it was not a race so I should say that it was the first time I ran the distance of a half marathon, but you will all agree that it would sound too cumbersome... right?
I had a 20km run in my program, and as I had already announced I would do, I added two walking stretches as warm up and cool down so that I could reach the distance. In fact I ended up covering more than 21.1km because again I took a wrong turn. Two actually. I wonder why I even bother planning these runs in the woods if I always end up taking wrong turns!

The Stockholm Marathon course consists of two laps around the city center: the first 16.6km and the second 25.6km. To get used to this I have decided to do the same for all of my upcoming runs above 10 miles: a first lap of about 40% of the total distance and a longer second lap to complete the distance, which is incidentally why it would be nice to be able to map each run and follow the plan. I also decided to follow my doctor's advice and include longer stretches in the woods, as a substitute for hill training (I live in the Netherlands, you know?).

Last night the temperature dropped below freezing again so when I went out this morning it was not warm enough to wear shorts, but the day turned out to be a very nice one and there were only plane wakes in the sky...

A different perspective on asparagi fields

I drank some isotonic drink every 5km, except at 10km when I drank a new liquid energy gel. I liked it! You don't need to drink water with it as it's much more fluid than the standard energy gel, and it also had a nice taste so I think I don't need to experiment further: I've found my energy source for during the marathon. Maybe after this one I will try something new, but with just two months (and one day) to go I want to establish my long run routine and get used to it.

I felt great during the whole run, and the beginning of the second lap was made easy by my whole family meeting me there to cheer me on, all three of them on my bike. They couldn't follow me in the woods but they also found me in other places along the course, it was very nice.

The last two kilometers were the fastest of all and the average pace was faster than the recommended pace in my plan. I was a bit afraid the recommended race pace could be too fast (20 seconds faster than long distance training pace), but now I'm confident I can do it. Confidence is a good thing :-)