Training Log Archive: W

And I did go for a skate ski! And it was slow as molasses. I suppose I should have expected that, since its warm and slushy. I went as far as I could towards Ladun Maija until the "pine needle:snow ratio" got a little too lopsided and I decided to turn around. There's still probably quite a few days of skiing remaining, especially if it stays kind of cool and cloudy.

One mitigating factor, though, could be the 10mm of rain that's expected tomorrow. That could put a "damp"-er on the proceedings. ZING!

Booked my flights to the UK for Saturday! Hopefully can hit some local event in some awful awful forest in the Midlands on Sunday!

C • . 7

I had a "team building evening", so was quite short on time to do any exercise at all, but still managed to squeeze in a short run. I was feeling my legs from the long run yesterday. But, although this run felt slow, it was actually a little bit faster than normal. Cool!

And... then we went bowling. Naturally, I won. This seems like important information to log.

I can't seem to make my Garmin sync with anything anymore! This is getting kind of annoying.

Anyway, went for a longer run. There was a 10k race I could have done, but I felt my legs could only really handle one race in a weekend, instead it was a light cruise in my cushiest shoes, which was probably a good choice. My legs actually felt quite a bit happier about this run than the week before, so that's a nice sign. I also just quickly jogged over and checked out the state of the ski trails, and they are still in acceptable condition. Might have to give a ski a try before it keeps metling, that could be real nice!

Oh dear, just too much logging to catch up on, an entire training camp, for one. So, I'm going to work backwards. Since it turned out I was going down to Lahti on Friday night anyway, I looked for a race to do in the neighbourhood, and there was one! In downtown Helsinki! A few quick e-mails, and, shazam, they let me register late! First sprint of the season, my fitness feels like garbage after a pretty lousy winter, so I didn't expect to much of myself there.

But, I figured I would accept my lack of fitness and focus on having a strong process, planning way ahead, keeping my head up, etc. etc. 100% focus the whole time.

Well, the focus wasn't 100% all the time, but my bad shape + what I think was pretty darn good focus gave me a 7th place finish, 45 seconds behind the winner. I'd call that a solid result considering, but really needs to be closer if I want to get on the podium in the fall. I don't imagine they're all in awesome shape either, but, still.

What could I have improved on? Well, on the way to the start triangle and, by extension, number 1, I immediately noticed how there was a long leg from 1-2, so I actually was pretty slow to number 1 because I spent so much time looking at number 2. It wasn't so much running slow, rather, I was zig-zagging and not fully aware of where I was going because I was thinking so much about where I was going to be going. I'm trying to plan a lot, but that was probably excessive.

The other dumb thing was on 16, where I had settled on a route choice, what I think was the best route choice, and then at the last minute, I turned and chose a different one, because the person I was catching (he started TWO minutes ahead of me), went a different way, and I guess... I thought he was right? I don't know. I had a sudden total loss of confidence. Can't quite understand why. I'm better than that!

Its probably going to be my only sprint in a while since I miss the HuippuLiiga one coming up in a few weeks because I'll be in the UK, so I'm glad I got to race that. Now to become a better runner again!

I wasn't really sure what I would do for training today. I thought about doing some intensity of some kind, but wasn't sure what. Then I ran into Samppa and Toni in Tiilia and they said they were going to do a mildly boring sprint the S-JKL put on over the weekend. Perfect! Intensity! A little bit of a sprinting!

I say a little bit because it was really not the most intense sprinting in the world. Lutakko is a pretty darn boring area by now, because there's a bit apartment complex that has to be totally out-of-bounds. But, with some super easy long legs, we were able to really stretch out the pace a bit, and it felt really nice to run fast, even though it wasn't as fast as I would like. Turned out to be a long workout too, since I ran there and home again, plus around 4 x 5-7 minutes of fairly high intensity intervals. Good stuff! Spring is finally springing and it was definitely a sunshine and lollipops kind of day.

Legs are still quite grumpy from the training camp. In particular, my right achilles got slaughtered by my icebugs over the camp. They're great shoes, comfortable underfoot, stiff, flexible, light, etc, but man, that hell cup is just brutal sometimes. Worse in the acceleritas. I still bought another pair when the opportunity came up, because I clearly value performance more than my feet.