Category: Sport

Winter running

When the going gets tough... ...the tough go running in icebugs

I've done a few 10k runs and some 1k repeats indoors on the treadmill at the gym, but for the long-slow-distance type of runs it's really much nicer to go outside. These shoes with spikes (Icebug ATTLA) provide added grip on harder snow and ice surfaces, although they are pretty slippery on an indoor stone floor. They are warm and waterproof although towards the end of today's 14k it felt a bit like running in rubber boots (there is a trade-off between waterproof and breathability I guess).

Running in loose snow is a bit  like running in loose sand on the beach. You spend a lot of effort and go almost nowhere! Today's pace was a minute or more slower per km than usual.

It's not unusual for us to have this much snow, but it is maybe a month or more earlier than normal.

Tuesday 50km bike ride

Despite aviation strikes both in Finland and in Spain I am back home and can move all the GPS-data onto the laptop (remember to pack the ANT usb-stick next time!). I've added pictures of the GPS traces for the Sunday (half)marathon, Wednesday sailing trip, and Thursday bike ride to posts below. Here's some biking from Tuesday:

2010nov30_tisdag_cykling_50km

Starting from Puerto del Carmen it is a flat ride along the coast past the airport to Arrecife. From Arrecife to Costa Teguise we couldn't find a nice bike path but were forced out onto busy roads with cars. Through an industrial area with the harbor and a ghost-ship. Some light lunch in Costa Teguise before heading uphill. There's a really steep climb at 25km on the elevation curve which is just after the golf-course in the upper right corner of the picture, heading up towards Tahiche. From there we took an unpaved road towards San Bartolome and another quick stop before rolling downhill to the coast again.

Lanzarote (half) marathon

The plan was to run at a nice and even 5:40/km pace to finish in 4 hours, but after feeling OKish for the first two laps out of four, suddenly I felt overheated and dehydrated and stepped off after 22km.
The pace on laps 1 and 2 was exactly as planned, 27:30 for the first 5k (5:30/km), 28:25 for 5-10km (5:41/km), 28:10 for the third 5k from 10 to 15k (5:38/km) and 28:53 for 15-20k (5:47/km). I was on track to run that four hour marathon, but somehow in the warm and windy weather wasn't getting enough water, energy or, something else. Oh well, there's always next year...

1000 km

The running log shows 1005 km this weekend!

I've run actively this year from week 13, which means 34 weeks of running/jogging so far. Or an average of 29.56km per week. Weeks 15, 19, and 37 were the low points with only 5-6 km completed (week 37 I had a fever). Week 29 (55k total) is one of the most active with a 24k long run(in central park, IIRC) in the beginning of the week, some short runs in the middle, and the Jakob half-marathon on the weekend.

At 30km/week the total should land on roughly 1200 km for this year.

There's some peer pressure on signing up for the Finlandia langlauf in February... we'll see if that happens or not.