Today’s a special day. Eliud Kipchoge has tried again to run the marathon distance in under two hours — and succeeded in 1:59:40. Crazy and very impressing stuff. I got an invitation to watch the attempt together with other runners at the Nationale Nederlanden DE Café in Rotterdam — free and breakfast included. It was great seeing history in the making and I really like Runner’s World and Nationale Nederlanden organized this for us runners.
After the attempt, Dutch Olympic athlete Bram Som provided a clinic with exercises and, of course, attempt to reach Kipchoge speeds. It was educational and great fun. After the clinic, I did a long run back to my house, with a little detour to reach 22K.
As I said above, the clinic was a lot fun run. It’s nice to run together with people you don’t know and meet new runners. The long run was okay, but I felt a bit ill already, so I’ve seen better runs.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava (clinic)/ Garmin or Strava (long run).
The workout consists of two times 2500m at an incline of 8%, but last time I did that, I felt 8% was way too steep. It didn’t feel natural, nor good, so I changed it to 5%, which, for someone living in the Netherlands, is still a relatively high incline. In between the 2500 meters at inline, the recovery was also 2500 meters, at the same pace, but with only 1% of incline. The goal of the workout is to engage the upper legs in hill work, while maintaining steady pace and cadence.
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
Afterwards
I find running on a treadmill harder than running outside, even at low speeds. The workout went fine, an the two times 2500m at 5% were comfortably hard.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava.
It’s core/cross-training day again — an hour of circuit training at the gym at work. Not much else to say, except that I enjoyed it, and did a lot of rope jumping again.
Today, I will do a ‘climax run’ with the athletics club.
The workout
A climax run is a run in which the intervals mostly become shorter as the workout progresses, but also more intense. In this particular workout, I ran 4, 3, 2, 1K at 85%, 95%, 100% and 110% of my 15K pace.
Afterwards
I still felt tired from the yasso’s and the long run, but the workout itself went well. Apart from one 1K in the third interval where I lost track of pacing a bit, I was able to keep the pace steady. This was a nice, pretty hard workout.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava.
A long run, which I had to squash in between work and having dinner with friends. Schedule was tight, got tighter by not delayed and cancelled trains.
The workout
An 18K long run in heart rate zone 2, pace around 5:00/8:00. As I was really late already, I decided to make it 17K and have five minutes to shower before running of to dinner.
Photo by Marc Kleen on Unsplash
Afterwards
I felt rushed, because I was late already and this does not enhance the pleasure of a long run. Anyway, the running was okay, although I could definitely feel my legs were still tired from the yasso’s. But hey, an easy run is meant to be easy on the legs as well, so staying in zone 2 did work here. Besides that, it was just a long run.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava.
Yesterday was a recovery day — although I did a bit of cross-training on my indoor bike (an hour of 8 minute heart-rate zone 3 efforts). Today it’s Yasso time!
The workout
Today the schedule tells me it’s time for Yasso’s. A yasso (see Runner’s World) is a 800m run which you run in the time of your marathon, in terms of minutes and seconds. For instance, a runner aiming at a marathon in 3 hours and 30 minutes should run a yasso in 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Recovery is the same time as the yasso.
Of course you can clock these times, which is especially easy on a track (which is, after all, 400m), I find it handy to use kilometer or mile pace, which spans 1000 or 1609 meters. You can calculate this yasso pace at the calculators page.
Today I’m doing 8 yasso’s, each in 2:50 (pace around 3:30/5:38).
Afterwards
The first yasso (or any interval for that matter) usually sucks, as it did this time. I think it has to do with finding the right pace. The rest went well, a bit too fast, but it felt good. Sometimes I do yasso’s on the track, but not this time, which meant finding a stretch of road without traffic lights.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
A yasso workout always feels like hard work, which it should, of course, but it’s a quality workout which I really like doing.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava.
Today, a second tune-up race, although this one was a bit short for a distance runner like me. In Rotterdam, the Maastunnel has been in renovation for two years and today was the new opening, with all kinds of festivities and, as the organization calls it, the unofficial National Championship Mile — the Maastunnel Mile.
The race
As the name suggests, this race was a mile long, a bit longer than the tunnel itself. As it is a tunnel, we started downhill and ended uphill. Not ideal, but a lot of fun. Check out the race at Hopasports.
Coming out of the tunnel, near the end of the Mile. Thanks to Percy van As for the picture.
Afterwards
It was a lot of fun. There were nice people and the overal atmosphere was very Rotterdam-like, just friendly and no-nonsense.
After a warming-up of about two kilometers, I had to wait for my starting wave. There were three waves, going from slower to fastest. As I had to wait for the last wave, I got really cold, but one of my team mates was in the second wave and gave me his plastic bag to hold me warm. Nice! I set my goal to a tempo of 3:10/5:10, so the same pace I tried out yesterday during the 3*800m workout. My goal finish time was 5:10 for the mile.
The running was good — no aches, no being out of breath, just going fast and trying to hold the pace. Going uphill at the end actually felt better than I had anticipated and as I could do and end sprint, I probably could have gone a bit faster, but this felt good and finishing in 5:08 aiming at 5:10 felt great.
After the race, I ran back home (about 8K) in an easy pace. It was a good day.
Race data and results
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava. The official results can be found on this Hopasports page.
The results. My official finishing time was 5:08, but you can see how accurate Stryd was — given that the 20 meters extra could well have been caused by my late button pressing.
PS It was nice having Stryd for this race. Being in a tunnel means no GPS, but Stryd appears to be very accurate in pace and distance, which helped pacing a lot.
Yesterday was a recovery day, which actually felt pretty good. Today, I’m doing a short speed workout with my eyes on a crazy short race tomorrow. (More on that later.)
The workout
Warming-up of 2K (after the usual dynamic stretches), then 3*800m at roughly 3:10/5:06 with 400m of active recovery in between. To finish the workout, a 2K cooling down.
Afterwards
Running at the desired pace was pretty hard, but it should be. As the road was wet, corners were a bit tricky, but next to that, the workout felt good and effective.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava.
Okay, today I did strength training, and the plan was to do an easy 10K the day after, but I ended up doing a workout on the track the same day. There was a workout on the program of my athletics club and I thought it would be nice to join. Fun? Yes. Smart. Don’t know.
The workout
The workout was a combination of laps on the track, form drills and some games, like jumping on the sound of a whistle, collecting pawns from the midfield, and running laps, throwing a die and getting sweets for the number you threw.
Photo by Jonathan J. Castellon on Unsplash
Afterwards
Although the weather really sucked, the training was fun. I cannot help but feel that it wasn’t a really focused workout (as in ‘building endurance’ or ‘improving speed’) and I don’t know what to think of that. On the one hand, I like knowing what the goal of a workout is. On the other, most workouts are pretty serious and goal-directed, so having a more fun and loose workout could lower the tension a bit.
Workout data
If you want to see the workout, check it out on Garmin or on Strava.
The workout consisted of eight stations this time, interspersed with cardio, which I filled mostly by jumping rope. I got some good feedback on weightlifting form, so I’m quite happy.
