17.8.2013 43.02 km

Distance Duration Avg. Pace Avg. Speed
43.02 km 4:30:24 h:m:s 6:17 min/km 9.55 km/h

Couple last marathon and half marathon have been a small success for me. There is no success without failures, and this latest marathon was a failure. Not a total failure but a failure anyway.

All the way to 25 kilometers wen’t by my plan, but then a pain spike hit my hip and I lost my pace. I tried to change my step but it didn’t help and I couldn’t keep up the pace. The pain took the victory after 33 kilometers and I had to stop running. Rest 10 kilometers I walked – and crossed the finish line walking. What a dissapointment!

It would have been most annoying if the run would have been a failure because of lack of training. But no, I was feeling great. What was the cause of the pain? I’m not quite sure yet. It felt in the hip, knee and sole of the left foot. I count as a possible reason or reasons uneven cobblestone roads (maybe a bad step), steep up and down hills (without enough hip stretching) or my recently descoverd new running style (which I used). Or my running shoes: I really like Adidas AdiZero and it’s a great running shoe for good speed, but I have also noted that after 20 kilometers they are getting a bit hard for my feet even when concentrating to strike the ground from heel to toe.

Now the leg feels ok and I’m sure the next run will be fine.

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29.7.2013 35.08 km

Distance Duration Avg. Pace Avg. Speed
35.08 km 3:08:11 h:m:s 5:22 min/km 11.18 km/h

This is interesting. Before the run I felt a bit hungry and tired, but after the start I felt quite good after all. And I thought that I haven’t run a really long run for a while, so I thought that I would now run one. I had only a small bottle of water with me, so I thought that I really have to concentrate to run efficiently, and so I did. The whole run I focused my mind to five things:

  1. To focus my gaze ahead.
  2. To keep my shoulders down and relaxed.
  3. This was the key thing: to work with the hip to ease the work of my legs.
  4. To relax leg muscles on every step just before a next strike. This was possible because working with hip.
  5. To strike the ground from heel to toe.

All I can say is that focusing on these five things enabled me to run an easy 35 kilometers and really enjoy the run!

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22.7.2013 15.70 km

Distance Duration Avg. Pace Avg. Speed
15.70 km 1:30:19 h:m:s 5:45 min/km 10.43 km/h

I didn’t sleep enough last night and I thought it would have a negative effect for today’s run. But it didn’t. And I have noticed that other times too: Random length of a sleep doesn’t really have that much effect for a running experience. Well, that’s my impression.

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19.7.2013 21.12 km

Distance Duration Avg. Pace Avg. Speed
21.12 km 1:46:50 h:m:s 5:04 min/km 11.84 km/h

Well, this is interesting. I forgot to stretch yesterday and I thought today’s run would be a slightly unwieldy. Au contraire! This was absolutely the best run for a while. It was so, so easy to run and keep a good pace. I just run and run and I could have keep going. Although I don’t know if “unstreching” has anything to do with that.

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