2011 was full of ups and downs in terms of running. I had a solid winter of base building behind me, and I was in pretty good shape when I started my visit in New York in the beginning of March. At that point I really needed just some race sharpening, and it was easy to smash my previous PBs: I ran a 1:25:15 half marathon at 13.1 New York, just 15sec shy of my season’s target, and only eight days later I recorded my current 10k PB of 37:41 at the Scotland Run, taking care of my season’s target of sub 38min.

The rest of the summer was spent mostly on getting to marathon shape for Helsinki City Marathon in August, and ultimately Amsterdam Marathon in October, but I seemed to have lost my speed as I just couldn’t improve on the the half marathon and 10k times that I did in April. My confidence was low, and my training suffered from constant travelling and flu viruses. Still, I surprised myself by running 3:02:31 in Amsterdam, well below my target of 3:10h for the season. My total running mileage was also well above target (2000 miles), being 2316 miles for 2011.

I didn’t really have a chance to improve my 5k PB (18:46), even though I’ve recorded at least three faster 5k times since then in 10k races and in training. There just weren’t any fast 5k races at an appropriate time. 5k is a low priority for me anyway though.

UNC-Chapel Hill track

After Amsterdam I was keen to get back into base building and get some good mileage in, but I suffered from illness and some persistent niggles brought on by the intensive marathon, so I didn’t get nearly as many miles in as I was hoping. 2012 started with some more intense travelling and yet another flu virus, but in the last two weeks of January I have finally gotten back into proper training, and it looks as if I’ve somehow managed to find some speed in my legs too. The climate in North Carolina, where I’ve been since the beginning of 2012, is ideal for running — I can run in shorts in the middle of the winter! The University also has a nice track where I’ve been doing some speed work. Well, it will be put to test very soon, as I’m running Kappa Delta Shamrock ‘n’ Run 5K right here in Chapel Hill in just a week’s time. I’ve also signed up to my first ever 10-miler, the Tar Heel 10-miler, which is in April, also in Chapel Hill.

Right now I’m feeling great, and looking forward to clocking ~60-70 mile weeks with some quality speed work thrown in. I’m also biking up to 50 miles per week (commuting to town), and doing 2-3 gym sessions per week. I haven’t been swimming here yet, but I’d hope to be able to fit in a weekly swimming session too if I can. I just hope that I can stay healthy — I have a tendency to push my training a bit too far when I’m feeling good…

I’m doing a lot of trail running at the moment, since the best places to run near where I live are all trails (I hope to post some photos of those trails soon). I love it, but I’m concerned that my legs will forget how it feels to run long distances on asphalt. I do think that the trails are great for strengthening leg muscles though, and I suspect that the sudden increase in speed that I’ve encountered is largely due to the trails.

I’ve finally updated my running goals for 2012, but let me state them here for everyone to see as well:

5km: <17:30min
10km: <36min
Half Marathon: <80min
Marathon: <2:55:00
Mileage: 2500+ miles, or 4023+ km

The marathon is my priority, and I’ve already signed up for the fast Berlin marathon in the end of September. I hope to do a marathon around May or June as well though, just to see how I’m doing. The 10k and the half marathon targets look a bit tough to me at the moment, but if I can keep training at the level I’m doing now, then I’m optimistic. Really I’d be more than happy if I can just do a sub 3h marathon this year though, everything else is extra!

Race date: 20.8.2011
Official Finishing Time: 3:14:45 chip time, 3:15:22 gun time (PB)
Official Position: 141/4344 (finishers), which puts me in the fastest 3.25% (68/1562 in the men’s open group)
Race number: 2283

My second marathon, and the second time at HCM as well. A year ago I struggled through this marathon in 3:40:08 in very hot&humid conditions, 20min slower than my target. So this time I had a score to settle. However, since I’m also running the much faster Amsterdam Marathon in October, the main purpose of this race for me was to get an idea about my marathon fitness, and more specifically whether I’ll have a chance to sneak under 3h in Amsterdam.

Conditions were better than last year but not ideal by any means: sunny, about 21 degrees Celcius, with some rather strong headwinds.

HCM 2011: Around the 11k mark (Photo courtesy of Johannes Hidén)

Organization
The course was slightly different from what it was a year ago, the main difference being a finish at the Olympic Stadium. All the steep hills on the route and about 2km of cobble stones were still there though — I’d rather have gotten rid of those. Still, the stadium finish was kind of nice, even if there were hardly any spectators there (plenty along the route though). In general, the organization of the race was ok, and I was especially pleased to take advantage of the possibility to have my own drinks delivered to some of the aid stations (four .5 litre bottles), as I find it difficult to get enough liquid in with the paper cups that are on offer otherwise. Another positive note is the free post-race recovery massage by Wieruhierojat, which was also available last year. It’s just a quick 5min rub, but it works wonders on cramping legs! The medal is also quite nice, as it was last year. One last thing worth mentioning is that nowhere else except here in Helsinki could I expect to get such great support from my friends along the route; it helps immensely just to see familiar faces, not to mention actually getting cheered on, thanks for showing up! It’s also nice to have a few photos from the race without having to pay the ridiculous prices for the official ones.

On the negative side, the starting pens, or should I say pen, since everyone starts from the same area, still don’t work: I was just behind the 3:00h marker, yet I was surrounded by elderly ladies who would probably finish closer to 5 hours. It’s rather irritating, but fortunately HCM is such a small marathon that this only causes problems on the first few kilometres. In fact I managed to get within my target pace already on the second one. Other negative points are the lack of proper gear storage, and the silliness of the arrangements when you finish, as first you get the medal, then a banana, then some crisps, then some yogurt drink… I don’t understand why they don’t give you one plastic bag with everything. Oh well, these are quite small things, but it is an expensive race (I think I paid 75 euros) and this was already the 31st event, so you’d expect everything to go smoothly.

Performance
I set my target time for HCM as 3:10h and the target pace was 4:30min/km, or just below that. In the end I was 5min short, but I did beat last year’s time by over 25min. I wasn’t entirely confident about my ability to manage the target time given the fact that my training for the last two months has been sporadic at best, mostly due to travelling. Still, I knew that I should be able to get very close at least. Well, it’s a tough course. I started strong and did quite well until about 30km, but after that I slowed down inevitably. I did keep running all the way though, and even my slowest lap was just above 5min at 5:06. My splits (from Garmin; some inaccuracy due to the lack of fractions) were as follows:

5k 22:00
10k 21:58 (10k in 43:58)
15k 22:03
20k 22:10 (20k in 1:28:49)
25k 22:12
30k 22:38 (30k in 2:13:39)
35k 23:45
40k 25:02 (40k in 3:02:26)
Total: 42.66k in 3:14:54

HCM 2011: I noticed the photographer at this point! Photo courtesy of Johannes Hidén.

As you can see, at 30k I was still within target pace and I had been going at a very steady pace, running the first half in about 1:34h, even though there were a few laps that were perhaps a bit fast (my fastest being 4:10min/km). I felt very good until 15k or so, even though the first windy bit was just before that and I wasted a lot of energy to keep up my target pace there. Around the 16k mark I had the first sign of trouble in the form of a stitch, and I got another one later around the 25k mark. I ran through both of them though and fortunately they settled. More worrying were the cramps that I started having after 30k: both of my calves indicated that they were not happy at all about this sort of silly activity. I was afraid that they’d lock up completely at some point, but I kept running… I’m wondering whether my choice of footwear is to blame, at least partly, as I made the risky decision to race in my old pair of Adidas Adizero Tempo racing shoes. I love the shoes, but I’ve never worn them for anything longer than a half marathon, so I wasn’t sure whether the lack of cushioning would be a problem. Otherwise they felt pretty good and I really had to keep myself from running faster on the first half.

My stomach held up well during the race and it seems that I managed to get just about enough liquids in (helped by my own bottles), but I was only able to eat four of my twelve Clif Shot Bloks, I really didn’t fancy them on the second half of the race even though I could’ve surely used the energy and the salt. It’s also possible that the stitches and/or the leg cramps were caused by a lack of salt/nutrition, but I wouldn’t say that I had any major problems since I was able to keep running all the way.

Analysis
All in all I can’t be too unhappy with my performance. I think that the hills and other rough bits on this course combined with the wind cost me much more than the 5min which would’ve gotten me within my target time. I wasn’t the only one to suffer from the wind; even though there was a joint effort to share the workload in the windy bits by covering behind each other and changing the leader every now and then, it was very difficult to avoid wasting energy. Several times I found myself about 20-30m behind the next runner or group of runners after overtaking someone, so I had to dig deep and push a little bit extra to reach them just in order to get at least a tiny bit of cover from the wind. I think that this made a huge difference in the end, and I can only hope that Amsterdam will be less windy!

My average heart rate was 168bpm, which is quite high but within acceptable limits (and lower than last year). Average pace was 4:34min/km in the end, so at least 4sec/km slower than target pace.

The men’s race was dominated by three Kenyan runners, the winner was Pius Ondoro with a time of 2:23:24. That’s not a very fast time: it is telling that the same guy ran 2:14:23 in Stockholm earlier this year, and that was only enough for the second place. So if the HCM course and conditions cost about 9min for the elite runners, it should be reasonable to expect that I could manage to run even 10min faster in ideal conditions. That still leaves me well short of sub 3h of course, but it would be enough to qualify for the 2013 Boston marathon (sub 3:05), which would be more than enough for me. Having said that, Leena Puotiniemi, who won the women’s race at HCM with an excellent time of 2:38:05, was actually over 3min slower in Stockholm! In any case, my target for the marathon this year is sub 3:10h, and I’m very confident that I can manage that in Amsterdam — sub 3h can wait until next year.

Official results here.
Garmin data here.

Race date: 14.8.2010
Official Finishing Time: 3:40:08 chip time, 3:40:47 gun time
Official Position: 515/6467
Race number: 2792

Last Saturday I ran my first marathon, the Helsinki City Marathon. My confidence was quite low as my training in July was inadequate due to travelling and brief illness. In addition the weather in Helsinki was rather hot & humid, apparently the temperature was around 27 degrees when I finished just before 7pm. Despite all this, I decided to set off at a rather optimistic pace (4:44min/km), aiming for a finishing time near 3:20h or so. It went a bit wrong. I managed to keep the pace up to the half marathon point, which I reached in 1:41:05 chip time, but by 27km my pace had dropped dramatically and I started to struggle. A key factor here was the fact that I didn’t get much liquid in during the first half — I tried to have a drink while running, but the cups you get from the drink stations aren’t really ideal for drinking & running. I really needed to get more liquid in, so I started to walk past the drinks stations, which cost me a lot of time. It worked though: I started to feel a little better by 37km and actually managed a half decent pace for a while. In fact, after the marathon my legs felt better than after many of my long runs, so they certainly could’ve taken a faster pace. All in all the race was a bit of a learning experience: you just shouldn’t set off too fast on a marathon.

At 7km, when everything was still ok... Thanks to my mum for the photo.

The organisation of the race in general was acceptable, but there were some major and several minor problems. The storage facilities were a joke, the start was insanely crowded (no starting pens) and people were jumping over the fences to even get there, and the finishing area had inadequate resources and was badly organised. I didn’t suffer from these things very severely, expect perhaps the overcrowded start, but it all left a bit of a bad taste about the event. Fortunately I had some great support along the way, with friends and relatives at strategic points and a couple of surprises as well. A special thanks to everyone who showed up!

I had been under the impression that the Helsinki marathon is a fairly flat and easy course, although I knew it had a few hills; the total height gain was 364m. As it turned out, it was not quite as easy as I had thought. The course passes some long bridges, which are not ideal for running, and there are a few rather steep hills as well, I think I had to walk at least one of them. For some reason the route is designed in such a way that it takes in a section of a cobbled street in the centre of Helsinki — I hope I don’t have to run on that type of surface any time soon! Other than that the route is quite nice and scenic, although there is some repetition.

Here is some more data, my official chip times and positions at different stages of the race:

10km 47:36 / 444
HM 1:41:05 / 380
30km 2:28:20 / 417

My best position was thus around the half marathon point and at 30km I was still at 3:30h pace, but I lost another 100 places in the last 12km! Disappointing, especially given that I’ve ran 38km in 3:08h in training, and I felt that I could’ve easily done the marathon in 3:30h then. Well, I could’ve probably done it now as well had I started at a slower pace. Still, I probably took everything out of the machine as my average heart rate was 170bpm and peaked at 190bpm. It’s interesting to note that for that 38km in training (in cool weather) my average heart rate was only 157bpm! So the weather really had an effect on the toughness of this race. Anyway, there’s plenty more data on my Garmin Connect page if anyone is interested. The Garmin recorded the course as 42.61km and the time as 3:40:45 (I started it with the gun).

So, that’s it, been there and ran that. Some people say that they have a lack of motivation after a marathon; running seems pointless after that target has been reached. Well, I think I want to shave off quite a bit from that marathon time before I feel that I’ve actually even done it properly, so plenty of goals to reach yet! My next proper race is the Middlesbrough 10k on September 5, and after that I’m running the Great North Run in Newcastle on September 19.