Tom’s first Tri

As I told you guys earlier, I had signed up for a charity run which was scheduled for last Sunday. My employer promised to sponsor every lap of 800m I would run with 20 Swiss Francs and donate it to Kispex and thereby support very sick children. I signed up for the run right after [...]

You gotta love Nike for organizing event like these. Not only that they gave away free running T-Shirts to registered users (well, to those who were quick! BTW, I was one of those lucky guys), they also manage to gather millions of people to run for a good cause. No surprise for you guys, I [...]

Yesterday I finished my first 10k run in weeks. It wasn’t one of my best runs since I’ve started working out regularly, in fact it was one of my slowest runs ever.
But I’m going to tell you something: I really don’t care. I’m happy that I finally succeeded in running the 10k again, even when [...]

Same procedure as every week
Summary: This week’s long bike run lasted 70 minutes and was boring as hell. It’s about time that I start hitting the road with my bike otherwise I’ll risk falling asleep while working out

Winter’s returning No, I’m not kidding. It started to snow right in the moment I was finishing today’s workout. Honest, the weather is quite annoying these days as it requires runners to forecast weather conditions during their workouts or they sweat like a dog or freeze their butts off.
Anyway, I was dressed properly and [...]

What a great run I haven’t enjoyed any other run as much as this one for quite a long time. But before I praise myself, my outstanding recovery and my self-confidence I should acknowledge the source of this fortunate development ⎯ credit where credit is due My heart rate monitor is doing a [...]

As mentioned earlier I modified my training plan and the intensity of my workouts focusing now on building a strong aerobic base from which I believe I’ll benefit in the long run (and hopefully also at the sprint tri race in late June this year). Regarding the half-marathon road race in 48 days I think the main benefit will be being able to run and finish it instead of being pumped 5k in the race (which was the case in my previous running sessions).

…This is even more difficult if one has run a long time without observing his/her HR and is sure to have found the perfect pace until realizing that he/she is wrong and has been running way too fast, thus performing in the anaerobic zone causing lactid acid entering the bloodstream which results in fatigue, increase risk of suffering from illness and injuries or even burned-out syndrom some weeks later.

We’re talking about an interval of 15 seconds, which I’d call a pretty steady pace, especially when taking a closer look at kilometers 7-9 when I was running almost like a robot programmed at a 4′30” pace.

…When running today I felt that I was running out of energy much quicker than in previous workouts and this is exactly what bothers me when thinking about my 19k long run which is scheduled on Sunday.

…As you folks can see I’m focusing on the running part at the moment, swimming and cycling serves as cross-training and I’m only doing these workouts to prevent me from falling behind in these disciplines.

I had a very hard time during today’s run and since I returned home from my workout I’ve been asking myself whether or not this session is to be categorized as a setback or just an awful performance with absolutely no valuable information on my progress of my training.

…Maybe it’s a phantom ache and it was just the imagination of a runner who has seen better days than this one and the runner was desperate to find an explanation for his poor performance (I’m talking about myself !).
…The Nike lightweight gloves and the hat were, no doubt, too much and maybe also a reason for me running out of energy that soon as I was sweating like a dog in the middle of a hot summer day.

In addition to the 10k run which I threw in yesterday because of the very nice weather I also had to do the workout on the bike trainer. As I hadn’t planned to go out or meet friends I scheduled the cycling session to take place in the evening, starting at 7:40 PM and lasting [...]