My next Ultra Trail

http://www.alandalus-ut.com (230 km, 5 days, 35-45 degrees, lots of climbs and no shadow)

I'm currently training under the guidance of one of the best ultra trail runners in the world. Mentally we are very similar and I'm a little sad that I didn't start running earlier but that is life ;) It is not often that I meet someone who I trust without any hesitation.

The training so far has been hard but great and I'm sure it will become even harder. Running full throttle in the dark with a dim head light on a slippery wet forest trail by a lake is a very revitalizing feeling.

This is my only target. For now all other races have been cancelled for the next 6 months.

I've had a set back though. My right knee is constantly sore. I've hurt it 3 times (1 running, 1 sleeping and 1 at work) the last 1.5 month and now it tells me that it needs a break. Sadly this comes at a time where I'm totally hype about running but as my mentor said "If it hurts STOP and call me right a way!"

I'll do what ever it takes .. even taking a break.

Interval training - Just lost my virginity

I've never really tried interval training. Speed has never been a priority for me other than I've constantly improved it little by little simply by running 'normally'. Another thing is that I've found it extremely complex actually I still do but yesterday I decided to read up on the subject and give it a go.

SO many variables and people saying different things. I'm the binary type that likes stuff that are black or white, I'm not really fund of fuzzy gray stuff. These are the steps as I've understood them (loebesiden.dk):

Step 1 (option 1) - Find the zones in your heart rate reserve. My resting heart rate is 37 bpm and my max is 185 bpm. Which converts into these zones:

Step 1 (option 2) - Find your VDOT value and let that be your guide finding the correct pace for the training you want to do. For this I've used my 5 k @ 23:22 as a source for the VDOT:

Step 2 - Decide what you want to do with your training. Do you want to go for VO2max training or AT training.

Step 3 - How far do you want to run / how many repetitions do you want to make. Here you also need to take into consideration that you shouldn't be running more that 8% of your weekly distance as part of VO2max training.

Step 4 - Estimate how long your resting repetitions should be. It needs to be long enough for your heart rate to drop to 60% of your heart rate reserve. As a guideline the length of your resting repetitions should be between 50-90% of your working repetitions.

Step 5 (optional) - Program your GPS watch to aid you with the training. My Garmin 310XT didn't have the heart rate zone based interval training option that I had hoped for but instead let me choose between distance or time based repetitions.

A little confused? I know I was.

Anyway, I decided to aim for 4 repetitions of 4 minutes running at a pace of 4:33 with 3 minutes resting between each repetition.

So today I dressed up and went for a fairly flat path around a local lake. First some warming up and then hitting the 'lap' button to start the repetitions. The path was more crowded that I'd thought it would be and I had to evade both other runners but also 'normal' people out for a Sunday walk. I quickly realized though that the 4:33 pace wasn't fast enough for the zone 5 training I had hopped for so I ignored the pace limit and focused on keeping a pace that keep to borderline to zone 5 instead. The Garmin 310XT have a display field specifically for this so it was easy to monitor. I welcomed the first resting repetition but realized that I wasn't sure if I was meant to stop, walk or just slow down. I decided for some slow running and just reached the 60% limit when it was time to start running fast again. A few repetitions later I was done.

The result for my first interval training

Next time I'll add one more repetition and aim for a slightly higher heart rate but overall it went smoothly and I had no problems of any kind with the arm, knee or anything else for that matter.

I LOVE running! :D

It's been three weeks since the accident and today was my first chance to REALLY run again! The sling is history and the arm is nearly back to normal! Today's track was the same 7 km track as last which is a city course involving some traffic and a lot of pavements. I was eager as a little child the night before Christmas to get back in the running game! Plus I really wanted some redemption ;)

Just as last I ran with a colleague of mine who is a fair bit slower than me so the first 6.5 km wasn't that speedy but the joy of using the arm again and being able to focus on technique and feeling that you really ran was great! The real climax though was the final 500 meter sprint! The last 500 meters are run on a badly lit, narrow and very bumpy pavement with large trees on one side and houses on the other. It was there I tripped 3 weeks ago and fractured the elbow joint but I really really really felt that I had to redo the sprint and prove that I could do it without falling \o/ :)

With 500 meters to go I went all in and running even faster than last time keeping my focus on the pavement in front of me. I had to evade a bike cycle at one point but I kept the pace well below 4:00. Man what a feeling! Being in 'the zone' feeling like a hawk diving on a prey cutting through the dark as a beam of light feeling that no energy is going to waist but feeling nothing but perfection reaching the finish without being even close to falling .. man I LOVE running! I'm back :)

Progress

I've had a little treadmill action since my half a marathon a week ago (see Failure) but nothing more. Looking forward to get out there again. My right knee has been a little sore and I would like to test it soon to seen if it is OK

The arm is hurting less and less. Funny how a small fracture can totally make your arm unusable. I still can't straighten it all the way out but its getting there I can feel it :)

I've signed up for a little local marathon on the 26th December. If my knee is okay it will hopefully become my 8th marathon.

Failure

Yesterday I attempted to run the 'Gløgg og Æbleskriver' marathon. My arm is still swollen from the elbow fracture and even though I can use it more and more it is still very weak and hurts when used. BUT I had decided to run this race back when November started and I felt that I had a chance to make it through. The marathon is arranged by Mogens Pedersen a Danish Marathon icon and is my favorite marathon to run.

I had to run with my arm in a sling tied close to my body. I could probably have run without the sling for a few km's, but I knew that my arm was far to weak for running without it for the full marathon distance. I hadn't run since last weeks accident so I wasn't sure how my overall condition was. I knew that my knee had hurt a little but I hoped that it wasn't more than the impact of the fall that had made them a little tender.

As I stood there fully suited and my right arm totally immobilized I did feel quite out of place. A few of my fellow runners came up to me and asked what had happened and asked me if I could run like that. I told them my story and that I would run as far as it felt OK.

The race started.

Within a few hundred meter I knew that it was going to be a hard one. Running with only one arm loose felt totally wrong and I had to use a lot of energy to compensate. Normally the first 10-15 km just feels like a warm up but yesterday I had to battle even the early km's. My legs as such didn't feel bad but the muscles I had to use to compensate for the 'lost' arm made their present evident.

Photo: Jens Buhl Christensen

After 13 km's I had to make a road side stop. I had taped one of my toes before the race to prevent blisters. The tape had the side effect of working like a sandpaper on its neighbor toe causing a big ruptured blister on that one instead. The pain was to annoying so the tape had to go and instead was moved to cover the ruptured blister. I used no more than a few minutes on the procedure but it was hard to get started again. A few km's later it was time for a water post again. I had a cup of energy mix and a cup of cola and headed on. The next km felt like an eternity and I knew that going 42.2 km wasn't going to happen. Hitting the wall at 16 km is far to early for a marathon race. I felt like turning around and just walk back to the water post but decided that I really needed to run at least the half marathon distance before quitting. 

Photo: Ove Kvist

The last km's before the water post felt better but my speed had dropped to a point where I knew that even if I made it all the way through it would have to include some amount of walking and that didn't feel right. Everybody can walk a marathon. I hadn't walked at all at that point and I really didn't wanted to either. Plus I totally didn't wanted to go relive my Copenhagen marathon!!

I quitted the race at the water post after ~21.2 km headed for the shower and had me some gløgg and æbleskiver which I totally didn't feel I deserved.

I really really struggled with the decision to quit and I still do. Part of me know it was the right thing to do but part of me also think that is was cowardly to quit a race not crawling. 

Fractured elbow joint :(

Yesterday was Wednesday and that means running with my colleagues. My legs felt great even after the Sunday marathon and I had a lot of surplus energy. So while the others ran on the pavement I took every chance I could get to run on every bumpy surface I could find, around trees, over boulders and through leaves and alike. What a great run that was! The group pace had been a little slower than I liked so when a colleague said lets speed up the last 500 meters I accelerated and kept running faster and faster on the pavement getting closer and closer to our finish. The pavement was dark and badly lit but I didn't think anything of it I only thought of getting to the finish as fast as possible. My guess is that I was running at about 20 km/t when a tilted tile surprised me ... big time!

Seconds earlier I had had my eyes focused on the finish like a cheetah hunting its prey but suddenly my focus shifted to the pavement wanting to make out with me. I managed to take 2 or 3 steps before finally diving into a somersault. Right away I knew what had happened. Placing my right hand on the pavement I had felt a strong energy wave moving up my arm and into the elbow joint. Shit .. Shit shit shit. I got up and ran the last 100 meters. The group asked me what had happened but I was thinking more of getting a bleeding injury in my hand cleansed and tested my arm for broken bones. The cleansing part was quick and painful using alcohol from a bathroom dispenser. Then checking my arm .. hand and fingers were ok but when I tried to push the wall I felt a sharp pain just below my elbow. Shit! I have broken several bones in my lifetime so I knew what that meant. Something in my right arm had broken.

A few minutes later my arm started immobilizing and by then all doubt left me. I headed for the local hospital :/

The Copenhagen emergency rooms have a rumor for letting you wait for hours and hours but within 5 minutes I was being looked on by a nurse and 5 minutes after that I was heading for the x-ray room. All in all it took about 20 minutes before a doctor gave me my verdict. I had a fractured elbow joint. My first question was "Can I run with that in 10 days?". The doctor looked at me surprised and said "No!". That was not the answer I was hoping for. I told him about my 21 days 3 marathons plan and that I had already run 2 of them and was only missing the last one in about 10 days.. He left the room gave it some thought returned and said "in 10 days you can run your marathon!" The nurse stared at him and objected but the doctor said stuff like "he is obviously in great shape" which I confirmed eagerly ;)

I was given a set of instructions: "keep your arm in fixed angle of 90 degrees" "If you fall you have only one option .. go left" "keep your arm close to your body and keep it still" ...

When I later informed my wife it went something like this "Hi dear, I've broken my elbow but the doctor said I can still run my marathon in 10 days!" .. Needless to say she wasn't as cheerful about THAT fact as I was ;)

Will I run? I don't know. The arm still hurts and is swollen. I'll test a short run next week before making the final decision. If it doesn't hurt I'll run. If not ... hmm

Never focus so much on the goal that you loose your sense of the road.

Not for me

Today I ran Rudersdal Social Marathon. It had 3 groups you could choose to run in a 4 hour and 4.5 hour and lastly a 5 hour group. I had chosen to run with the 5 hour group. It was described as a hard marathon and the race director wrote to the participants that they should pick a group that ran 30 minutes slow than their normal marathon pace. You had to run with a water belt or water cell since you were expected to bring your own supplies with you with the exception of 2 water refills here you could fill your bottles and get a cup of cola (love cola) and perhaps some wine gummy.

I don't have a water belt that is usable so I brought my Salomon s-lab 5 backpack filled with 3 gels, my Iphone, 2 pre measured boxes of energy mixture, some chocolate and of course some energy drink in the water cell.

Left the house at 7:30 AM arrived just before 9:00 AM. The race director had asked people to come a little early (the race started at 10:00 AM) so that we could join in the celebration of a Danish marathon icon who would be running his 500'th marathon today. He and his daughter who also run a lot are 2 well known and respected members of the danish marathon runners society. I think they have run close to 200 marathons together. I'm really impressed :) We also had a 100'th marathon runner today but it kinda stood in the shadow of the 500'th celebration.

My bag felt heavy as I lifted it from the ground but once on it wasn't that bad. I've been hungry for this race all week so when we finally started running I was ecstatic :) I knew that my group was meant to keep an average pace of 7:06 min/km but we set out quite a bit faster than that. The couple of km's was averaged with 6:08 min/km and the pace remained in that neighborhood. I heard a few people questioning the pace but the race director (who also was a pace maker) said that we were supposed to run a little fast until the first water refill (16 km in) and since my legs felt great I didn't think any of it.

Photo: Tor Rønnov. You don't get better company!

On the way to the water refill we passed some beautiful landscape, lakes in fog and so on. We also got mingled with a MTB race on a very narrow path which the bikers didn't really seem to appreciate :) Proves to me that running makes you less stressful than biking :)

We arrived at the water refill at the same time as the 4.5 hour group who had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I started looking for a refill bottle and only just got around to add the mix and water to my water cell when the group took of again to my surprise. At that point our average pace was 6:34 including the water break. Hmm .. I kinda concluded that I didn't share the 5 hour target with the pace makers. Keeping this pace we would only hit the 5 hours mark if people started getting problems later on and that was plain stupid in my book. I would have preferred that we had targeted an more even split.

In the kilometers to follow the group started breaking up. The front part still maintained a fast pace but 2 of the 3 pace makers was in the back picking up the people who couldn't keep that pace. I was starting to wonder what to do. Should I keep the fast pace or should I slow down to the pace that I'd planned and accepted for my 3 marathons in 21 days plan? My biggest concern was that the route was poorly marked and I was pretty sure that I would get lost without a pace maker. The only pace maker I could see was the fast one right in front of me so I decided to match his pace as long as possible. I did speak up about my view of the set pace to one of the others who seemed to be a semi official. His counter argument was that if people couldn't keep up with this pace they could just slow down and get picked up by one of the other pace makers in the rear. Not really what I thought running in a 5 hour group was meant to be about...

When running marathons my biggest problem is the kilometers between 22 - 30. After 30 km my second stage engine steps in and I'm running on endorphin, body fat and will power. For that to happen I need to be in the zone though. Today that didn't happen :( I had only just reached the zone and had run in it for a few km's when we reached the last water refill. I tried to be as quick as possible refilling my water cell but before I was ready to start running again the last pace maker insight had already left. Shit! I had only 10 km's left but I felt lost and alone. The signs marking the route was only 10 by 10 cm and was really really easy to miss. Luckily I managed to team up with another runner who had run out of energy. He had run the race 3 years earlier and had some idea of the route but only vague. We weren't a perfect match though. When he was running he liked to run a lot faster than I did but he often needed to take breaks so we were always in reach of each other. Let me point out that by now I welcomed the breaks and happily walked with him. The constant looking out for missed signs meant that focusing on being in the zone was impossible and every negative feeling in my body flooded my brain instead.

We got lost 2 times one of then only a km from the finishing line. Hadn't I had my Iphone and a map application on me we would have run in the direct opposite direction of the finishing line for some time! That little detour added enough minutes to our total time to make us just pass the 5 hour mark but only just. Had we had a pace marker to guide us we would have had NO problem reaching the finishing line in time or even faster.

My mood wasn't the best in the minutes afterwards but getting something to drink and eat and getting out of the wet clothes greatly improved it :) There was a reception for the 500'th marathon runner and I sat down and enjoyed the atmosphere of like minded people. Ahh :)

I DID have a great time with some great people today. I DID have some interesting talks .. especially with one of the pace makers. The only let down today was MY idea of running in a 5 hour group was different than that of the pace makers. Since this was MY first social marathon I will conclude that it was MY expectations that was wrong. On the other hand I will also conclude that social marathons is not for me.