Early start of the swimming season

As you might know, I would like to try my first triathlon next season. Actually it's a deal with Jitka and Martina, so I am doing my first triathlon next season is better wording. But now I am training for my first marathon in NYC on November 6 which is in a month and a week and is freaking me out. I would be freaking out if everything went normal, but now I cannot run :( My left calf is hurting. After including cycling in my training in August because of the right ankle, now it's the left calf and here comes the "swim" from the swim-bike-run triade. 

The Left Calf

As I mentioned in my Travel Running post, my calf (left this time) has been sore for few days and kicked me again from my training regimen :( I knew running the race in Vienna on it wasn't ideal but did not seem that bad. Add the hard workout two days after and here we go (that was last Tuesday). The Coach told me to take one or two days off if I don't feel recovered. Last Wednesday's plan were two easy 5 milers (8 km) - morning and evening. I suffered a bit to get myself on a move in the morning, but it went fine afterwards. Same for the dreadmill in Munich (or at its suburbs). Next morning - not that good any more ;( . 

Yes, I look ALMOST as professional when I swim :D

So I took Thursday and Friday off, did some bike rides on Saturday and Sunday together with strength training. Extremely easy jog on Monday, just 2.5 miles almost at walking speed. Good think - did not get worse. 1 km of swim yesterday evening. And a very hard circuit strength training with The Coach today. Apart from the training, I am adding lot of recovery gels, salty feet baths, saunas etc. I am virtually doing anything that could help together with lots of praying. As I love you, my dearest readers, so much, I am sorry for not posting that much. Hope you can understand now, I don't like sharing upset moods. But now the sunshine is here and I am definitely feeling some slight improvement. Please pray with me!

The fact that the NYC marathon is coming in little over a month does not help to ease my thoughts, but I try to stay positive and motivated. I have been training since May, so I hope these efforts will pay off. As you might already know, I am running the NYC marathon for the Team Hole in the Wall, please check out my fundraising page and help me help the kids!

Travel Running Ups & Downs

I am aware of the silence since my last post (Women's Run Wien race recap), it was due my first business travel since several months. Great opportunity to recap about the ups and downs of exercising (and not only about exercising) while traveling. Apart from being away, this time it is my left calf that is giving me trouble and therefore I am kind of upset about running. I should be logging the longest runs as the NYC marathon is approaching (check out my Team Hole in the Wall page) and instead I am cross training and resting the calf :(

Unexpected Turnout in Vienna (Race Recap)

It's smile of joy not crazy weird grimasse

Reebok Women's Run Wien race recap, finally! I know I promised it yesterday, but there were so many photos to go through thanks to Jitka and the training at 6:30 am, I did not manage to get the blog post and some sleep at the same time. Sleep was more important, but the most important are you, my great readers! Once I managed the photos, here comes the recap of great, awesome girls only event. Beautiful day, beautiful people, lots of pink, lots of fun! I hope you can see it from the photos.  

And here come ... the HILLS

OK, OK, I knew this was gonna come. In basically any training plan you can find there are always tempo runs, speed work, long and slow runs and of course some hill repeats. When I met at 6:30 am with The Coach today, it was still quite dark before dawn and still raining a bit. (Honestly, my first thought when I woke up was: why the hell do I want to run the marathon??? I want to sleep right now and not go out running in the crazy rain, but then ... the race is in less than two months and I knew The Coach was gonna be there). Arriving to the meeting point, I had already almost 2 miles (3 km) under my belt, since I am carless for few weeks and had to get there somehow.

The Coach was pretty happy with my performance at the Reebok Women's Run Wien (race recap coming later today). But it seemed little too good to be true when he announced that we were only doing 4x 500 m repeats, damn fast (2:05 each = 4:10 min/km = 6:42 min/mile) but only four of them. Yep, too good to be true. I even squeezed myself to do the last 500 m at 1:59 min (3:58 min/km = 6:23 min/mile). And there we went to the lower part of the park. "Can you see those steps, and this steep hill here?" ... "Yep, Coach?" ... "Only four times and you are done." Yes, I was done.  I am glad for my mindset that The Coach knows what he is doing and I just go and follow his orders (unless he seems totally unreasonable). Four time up the stairs plus hill and you are done ment, you are done with running and ready for some strength training.

That was just a quick note to share the marathon training news :) Women's Run Wien photos and race recap coming later today! And please, please help me help the kids, check out my fundraising page. It's official, I am running NYC marathon 2011 to support the Team Hole in the Wall!

Reebok Women's Run Wien - preview

Just a sneak preview of really cool Saturday happening race in Wien. Put together by Leona, together with Martina, Jitka and few other amazing and brave running queens from the Czech Republic we enjoyed being part of the race. Most of the Czech crew competed in the 5 km race and represented greatly with little flags on the cheeks or shoulders. As it was more happening than tough race I found myself surprisingly among the top 10 in the 8 km race. I am so excited!!! Tough work pays off. Race recap and photos will follow tomorrow!

Nike Run Prague 2011 PHOTOS

All the photos from the Nike Run Prague 2011 10k race follow in the post:

2009 outrun ... 2011 becoming my best running year!

Being running stats freak I almost forgot to share the great news! With this Monday's run, I have overpassed total mileage of 2009 that had been my best running year concerning mileage so far. Let's see how the mileage will be at the end of 2011. To be fair towards 2009, I only started in May, so basically it is eight months so the mileage is more or less same as the past eight months of 2011 :) Recap of all my three official running years in Nike+ screen shots follows. How it all began?

Wordless Wednesday - Perfect Recovery Plan

Delicious nutritious food & running magazine
... perfect for recovery after today's hard workout!

Summary of August Training

With all the pre-race nerves and after Nike Run Prague excitement, I almost forgot to recap how the training for my first marathon went in August. The beginning of the month was dark as I had problems with ligament in my right ankle and had to take it easy to recover. But I tried to make the best out of it from the first moments (OK, first I wanted to cry, but from the second moment :) ). I also did some shopping for my first running skirt and cute CEP compression socks. Keep on reading for details of my training.

Nike Run Prague 2011 extremely hot PR!

First year of the Nike Run Prague seemed to be extremely successful up until 35 people having to be taken care of by ambulances and transported to hospitals due to extremely warm weather. 10 km is way easier than half-marathon and Nike did great job with PR having to close the sign ups before the official date with almost seven thousand people signed in. According to athletic rules, you don't have to have refreshments on the 10 km course, but yet this was more of happening than professional athletic competition. This is all I am gonna say about this topic since there are many other websites full of it and I am just so overwhelmed, happy and excited about how my race went, that I don't want to spent any more dark thoughts about this race. Warning: I am super excited with the race, so this post is gonna be long. Get a cup of tea/coffee and set yourself up in comfortable position :)

Science Behind the Running (Lactate Threshold etc.)

You probably noticed that recently I have been including some geeky looking graphs for my runs and/or bike rides. If you want to get your geeky looking graphs, check out the Training Peaks platform, even the free version gives some nice insights and analysis. But back to topic. It was Ondra who inspired this post when commenting on them. I wanted to post them in July when I got my lactate threshold tested. I totally forgot that using those graphs is like saying B without stating A beforehand. So what is all this science behind the running? I am not a scientist, but I will try to explain what I found out according to my research and share some hopefully useful links and information.