Speeding Up My Legs

The Boston Marathon experience had one huge impact on my attitude towards running and training for future marathons. I want to train hard, I want to do my absolute best and I will devote everything to be strong. You can't cheat on endurance sports training! But what was the outcome of my attitude? We started to build up my mileage slowly with my fastest steady state runs at 8 min/mile (5 min/km) and other runs slower. Last week I finally crossed the 100 km per week (62+ miles) imaginary line of achievement! Yay! I have been also working on loosing weight and becoming stronger.

Getting under your "optimal body weight" or at least that is what I call easy with the amount of running I am doing. You know, I can eat almost anything and have 58 kg (128 lb), but getting below is really hard. And being the gourmet I am, it has been a huge battle that still doesn't have a clear winner :) So after building up my mileage, last week The Coach started with some speedwork - 400 m reps. I have to clarify that I am not doing these on track and there is a turnaround in the middle of the distance, so on a flat 400 I might be a little faster... Last week I managed to do 6 sets and I felt like dying in each of them. Check out the Garmin stats here:

I felt pretty good going for my training session on Tuesday and I was pretty correctly guessing that it won't be as "easy" as 6 reps this time. So 8x 400 m it was with a longer rest in the middle. It was quite muddy, so I was permitted to be little slower this time - around 1:35. I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to go through my session almost perfect like "in the books". I started pretty slow, because sometimes I tend to go really fast in the first rep, than I have all the lactate flooding my body and I am screwed for the second half of the training. I was slowly adding more gaz for each new rep, but I was only doing "all out" effort for the last two and I managed to keep on speeding up through all the session. Very happy with myself, have to admit! The only "cloud" on the sky is that The Coach told me that it will only mean something when I am able to do like 16 of these 400 m reps in one session. WOOPS! Can't imagine that right now, but I also couldn't imagine running a marathon ... running sub 45 min 10 km etc. So I keep on dreaming and keep on doing my best and striving for my best self :)

So this is a great app for iOS (iPhone and iPad) also Android and you can also find the videos on YouTube. I really do love this one - it only takes like 10 mins (12 mins for the Level 2) and it gives you great ab workout. The most important thing: if you keep up with the schedule, you will soon see the results!!! The Coach saw them without me telling him I changed anything in my routine... I am starting week 2 on Level 2 and I am not able to finish the workout in the scheduled time, but I can see some progress :)

Double Achievement of The Week: Winning a Race & over 100 km Week

Wow, some crazy weekend behind me this time :o) Saturday craziness: wake up at 4:30 to leave for a work event in Brno at 6 am. The event went great, Brno was the only no rain city all the Saturday? We were lucky. Got home at 8:30 pm and on my treadmill by 9 pm to get in my 10 miler. God, I didn't feel like running, trust me :) But there was the Diamond League live broadcast from Eugene. I would need such entertainment for each of my treadmill workouts - it is so motivating!!! Congratulations to our Zuzana Hejnová for having a blast at 400 m hurdles again winning her second Diamond League meet and holding the seasonal best!!! Long story short: I went to bed at 1 am after being awake fro 20+ hours. When I woke up on Sunday, I was feeling nothing like racing, more like exhausted.

I wasn't being that good on my nutrition in the second half of the week as the greatest guy in the world (= my Dad) had his birthday and we went out ... and my body went crazy upset with the wine :( I guess all this clean eating and discipline works, but then I cannot enjoy the lovely great wines. Or I have to limit the intake more :D Minimalist approach everywhere! So back to the weekend - I was craving some good fuel, so I gave a try to my first ever "mugcake" - not doing in a mug, but anyway. I got inspired with this recipe, basically: almond flour, coconut meat, powdered unsweetened cocoa, egg, heavy cream, bit of coconut oil, dark chocolate chips. You can add sweetener of your choice, I do not crave sweets that much, so I went without it. Yay, that was yummy. And I went straight back to bed to relax bit more.

Leona's race was starting at 3:30 pm with the registration ending at 3 pm, so after just chilling it was time to go and rock'n'roll:

Even though it was raining most of the day, it miraculously stopped for the duration of the race. It was girls only 5 km and 8 km race, pink themed, ran on a loop little longer than 1 mile (so the 8 km was more like 8.5 km finally). I didn't want to go out all crazy, so I just chillaxed around 4th place, settling in the 3rd after the first loop. I wasn't running on max, there was an "invisible hill" in each round and than the same down, I didn't want to push myself crazy and go all out. Made smart decision: wait for the third round to see if the two girls ahead of me are going to the finish of the 5 km or will continue for the 8 km. They went for the 5 km, so clever was my decision not to go all out :) So it was me and the remaining 3 km with the great encouragement of all the beautiful ladies on the "circuit". I managed to create an imaginary chaser for the last round, so I pushed little more. Turns out that I was almost 4 minutes ahead of the girl that came in second :D You can check the Garmin activity here, pretty happy with the race as I ran in from full volume training. We'll see how I do in the České Budějovice half marathon next Staurday!!!

Very cool to see Martina in the third place!!!

First win in a really long time, so excited!!!

I did a little pre-race warm up and 1 mile cool down, but was still missing little over mile to have 100 km under my belt for this week. So I took my five fingers and switched on the treadmill. Watching the crazy news with all the floods around our country :( Sending my thoughts to all those influenced and touched by the huge power of water.

Excited to see my mileage over 100 km / week - should stay in these numbers for pretty long now :)

So how was your weekend??? Races? Long runs? Wet runs? :D