Running to Think

As some of you know, I set my next race to May 17, Trail de la Lesse. A 50 km trail run nearby Liege in Belgium. One more time to "feel the hill", pumping lactate around the blood stream. One more time to feel alive.

Believe it or not, Christmas is over. And with Christmas also candies, chocolate (a bit less for those who already abuse sugar on a daily basis), cakes, sugar, fat, pasta, fish, meat, panettone, bread, cakes and cakes and cakes.
Every year I prepare myself for the toughest period of the year, that they refer to as Xmas. I even strategically try to lose weight around November to get below my regular threshold by December and be "normal" by January. It never works.
How can it work with a mother like mine, Italian from the South, who already thinks that I am sick just because I am fit.
Holidays are nice, cakes are awesome. But we are runners, aren't we? We need to crash our legs on the road and how could that be with a belly always full and hours and hours spent to digest?
The best way to stay fit in such conditions is of course to control yourself at the table, which, I know, can be extremely hard to accomplish. In the common case of failing in such an attempt, I found that some more cardio is always the best solution to save what can be saved. Slow-pace long-distance running allows one to burn fat slowly and steadily and should be done every day for the whole period of our dangerously unhealthy holidays. That is the price to pay for some slices of that cake we really cannot say no to.
I survived my holiday with 1 kg more on my weight. Not bad, considering how much fun I had at the table. My trick was in one word, cardio.
Do not draw any conclusion right after your holiday. Everybody is different and metabolism varies as well, as side effects of eating and the number of days after which you actually realise of your, well, new condition.  In order to assess the damage that you inflicted to your own body after so much food, you should wait one full week and keep your fingers crossed. Easy gainers are usually those who fall into depression when they end up on the scale. Caroline is one of them. Do not panic though. Easy gaining usually means easy losing. Moreover that extra weight that really annoys you could be water kept by your body due to salts and sugars, not just fat. Again: cardio is the answer.

What does cardio mean?

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Monday: 1h slow pace run + stretching
Tuesday: 45' slow pace run + stretching + 5 times sprints at 90% max on 100 mt + stretching
Wednesday: rest
Thursday:  1h slow pace run + 5 series of 20 crunches for abs. + stretching
Friday: 45' slow pace run + 15' faster
Saturday: 45' slow pace run + stretching + 5 times sprints at 90% max on 100 mt + stretching
Sunday: 1h slow pace run

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After this week of recovery, you not only should get back to your usual weight but also get ready to start your regular running schedule (with interval trainings and the like) or to your daily physical activity.

Happy 2015!

This summary will be short, for the reasons that will be clear in a minute.

21/04/2014
rest


22/04/2014

14/04/2014
rest

15/04/2014
I decided to spend some time into the forest. When I am in Leuven I miss Sart Tilman, and the other way around. Long story short, 13 km in the forest. But at a moderate pace of 4':30" per km.

16/04/2014
rest

17/04/2014
14 km again in Leuven. Decided to add some spicy hills of 300 mt at about 12% elevation. I couldn't do more than 6. Bad idea?

18/04/2014
Woke up with a sense of dissatisfaction. I was thinking of those hills of yesterday and to the reason for which I collapsed at the 6th. Went out for some more drills and went back home after climbing that 300 mt hill of yesterday 11 times, for a total daily milage of 18 km.

19/04/2014
Planned for an easy run of 15 km. Caroline decided to join. Caroline's father couldn't resist. Wanna know how this ended? 15 km with the guys and 13 with myself.
28 km was really not in the plan.

20/04/2014
7 km and stretching and rest. Damn week.



Total milage: 80 km 

Total milage 85km 

A boring week with total mileage of 75 km.


19/03/2014
After a fast recovery from the trip back from Spain, I finally met my hills in Liege Sart Tilman. They gave me a painful welcome though: half marathon on steep irregular terrain. A tumble on the ground started something that I still feel: pain between the left rhomboid and the spine.

20/03/2014
Easy pace 12 km run, even though in Sart Tilman nothing is really easy.


22/03/2014
Really not in the mood to go out. The pain of the rhomboid is killing me. Finished 10 miles on the treadmill. Quite boring.

23/03/2014
Rhomboid slightly less painful. I cannot appreciate any running session with this.
18 km with intervals on 400 mt.

Pain pain pain, and there is only one week before the Eco Trail Paris 80 km...

Nothing special happened in week 11. Just feeling closer to race day and slightly more stressed.
Weekly total mileage: 85 km.

11/03/2014
A very easy run in the morning. 10 km on the usual dusty road near El Goloso, Madrid.
At 6pm I realised that the fridge was quite empty and needed to go shopping. Thing is that the house where I was living is 4 km out of town. I turned the hydration pack into something that could carry some vegetables and rice. Evening run of  8 km.

13/03/2014
Things usually get serious on thursday. Interval training on the distance of 2 km, 5 times with minimal rest. Exhausting.

14/03/2014
Easy pace 10 km run. Preparing for sunday.

15/03/2014
Interval training on the distance of 400mt with a total mileage of 17 km at average pace of 4':30" per km.

16/03/2014
Last run to El Pardo. It needed to be fast. But the previous training sessions kicked in since the beginning. Not bad though: 25km on the hills of El Pardo, below 2h

Another week of trail running around Madrid; another week of 120 km and 9400 kcal burned to convince myself that I am ready for the 80k of Paris. I started this week doing something I would have liked to do a while ago: resting.

I dedicated week 9 to exploring the country side around Cantoblanco, the district of Madrid where I am staying. As I mentioned earlier the terrain is quite diverse, giving me a series of options that I choose according to my schedule. Regardless the terrain that can be simply road or rocky or sandy or muddy, what really characterises this place is the elevation. It's not possible to run for longer than 1 km without hitting a hill which usually kills my legs or slows me down at the point that I have to reconsider my will to keep that pace longer.
The average milage of the last three weeks was 110 km. Week 9's was just a bit above it.

24/02/2014
Coming from a 19km run at progressively higher pace, the run of a monday is usually easy and slow. This reflects a bit the mondays at the office, during which people get familiar with their new (working) condition

25/02/2014
Rest was just what I needed

26/02/2014
Probably one of the most adventurous running experiences I had in the last few years. I wrote about it here. As a recap, I ran for 30 km on the hills near Tres Cantos, with a bull chasing me and dogs so close to my legs they were probably confident of seeing two big sausages instead

27/02/2014
Easy run and stability exercises, following the schedule of the physiotherapist to prevent injuries of ankles and feet

28/02/2014
Second expedition to El Pardo, following a dry rocky road, climbing short and steep hills. I'm still aware that terrain would be more indicated for cyclists on a mountain bike rather than runners. A total of 30 km and dumb legs. Of course...

01/03/2014
Easy run again. No exercises this time. I felt so stiff that the only thing I would have liked to do was sitting in front of a beer and a boccadillo de tortilla. Which I did.

02/03/2014
Purpose of the day was to keep the milage high. Another expedition to El Pardo, with a total of 30 km did it.

Attempt to finish a marathon in Italy (~km 18)

The amount of work and the unexpected happenings of every day life didn't give me much time to write some lines any time soon. Better late than never, of course.
Year 2014 already had the flavour of an intense year full of things to take care of and targets to achieve. And that feeling was not wrong at all.

My running activity is taking the scary pace of the competitive phase. The race of the year is getting closer and closer, being now only two months far. I have been increasing the mileage quite smoothly after the injury to the posterior tibial tendon, fixed in no time (a record in my career).
I started running a bit everywhere between the hills of Sart Tilman and the flat lands around Leuven.
What made week 6 though was an unexpected trip to my hometown in Puglia, south of Italy. Caroline and I found and booked a flight in the time I need to run 1 mile and prepared the luggage in much less than that. It was that fast!
The trip to Italy was amazing. Great food, great places to visit, great weather and, of course, a lot of miles to run.
On the day dedicated to the long distance training I felt so good that I was about to complete a full marathon. Blisters under three toes of the right foot put an end to my attempt at the 40th km.

Attempt to finish a marathon in Italy (~km 20)

I rested a bit only one day, to give some time to the blisters to get dry. Some good taping and special plasters fixed everything in a bit more than one night. Those are the benefits of having a girlfriend on my side who is into sports and nutrition as a profession.

After two days I was back on the road and did some interval training on 1000 meters. The pace was unexpectedly high, around 3'30" per km.
It seems that I can keep the intensity of the schedule after those two weeks in which I was forced to stay at home due to the injury. I can claim that it is true: giving the body some rest regenerates it and prepares it to the worse. Or the best.

I'm gonna skip week 02, for the reasons I explained in a previous post. I deliberately planned for a break between two intense training blocks. Anyway my body anticipated me with a stressed posterior tibial tendon that needed to be fixed any time soon.
Week 02 has been dedicated to resting, specifically active resting which consisted of a bit of cycling at the gym and loads of repetitions of the exercise you can see in the picture above.
According to my physiotherapist, I could have started running again on monday of week 03, after 7 days of no running. That's exactly what I did.

13/01/2014
20' run and the usual exercises. I headed to the gym a number of times to strengthen some muscular groups that needed some intervention, such as hamstrings and shoulders, upper back and abs. Running, running, running is not exactly what every runner should do. Sometimes we have to plan some workout sessions at the gym or, if you feel more like Rocky Balboa at the steps of a stadium in the suburbs of your city ;)

14/01/2014
30' trail in Sart Tilman in Liege, wearing trail running shoes. This session was characterised by the usual amount of hills and irregular terrain which made it a tough and quite stiff experience. At some point I was scared that the tendon would have collapsed again. I was really waiting for the running session to finish as soon as possible. Not fun, at all.

15/01/2014
Of course my physiotherapist kicked in, discouraging me from running on irregular terrain for at least one more week. She was quite diplomatic by avoiding the more appropriate "you are an idiot" conclusion.
I proceeded as requested by wearing softer road running shoes for about 40', finishing on the track and field. I still felt a bit of stiffness in both the ankles and mainly on the injured tendon. Way less than the day before, though.

16/01/2014
52' easy run with no pain whatsoever and much less stiffness. I felt like I could have been running for 3 hours more, which I didn't do. This time, I would have really deserved to be called an idiot.

17/01/2014
again 50' easy run in the city of Bruxelles. Sore calves and both tibial tendons quite tired are probably the result of a week of training and exercising. I better close week 2 here, with a saturday of rest.

18/01/2014
Rest


I wish I could say "the gipsy is back". But I still don't feel that comfortable.
Yet.

There's nothing better than starting the year by writing about week #1. An interesting thing I noticed on the training calendar is that by counting weeks from monday to sunday, rather than by date, week 1 is right in between 2013 and 2014.

23/12/2013
Coming from a week with some interval training sessions, I decided to keep week 52 for some long distance running. Except for monday, in which I've been running quite shortly and I have been doing some mobility exercises, the rest of the week has been quite crazy. Only 10km today.

24/12/2013
After the usual wake up at 5:50am, it was not the heavy rain in Leuven to discourage me from running 20 km around the canal. Due to some interesting plans in my racing schedule - of which I will be writing in some future post - I started running with my running backpack, equipped with gels and some other snacks I am not considering to use during these first running sessions. The purpose is just to get familiar with such a gadget ;)
Anyway, 20 km at an easy pace of 4':30" per km is not bad at all, considering the impressive wind I have been running against.

25/12/2013
"How can you run on christmas??" that's what some of my friends were asking. Actually, how can you *not* run on christmas? I would have replied. Things are going a bit differently this year. Spending xmas day in a soft and scented bedding with your girl is probably one of those very few things that can make running in winter wait. Just for one day.

26/12/2013
Back on the road for what should have been a 15 km running session, which became 17 km.
Running in Bruxelles city is not bad, if you know where to go. I usually head to the Parc du Cinquantenaire and start looping around.
I forgot to take some coins with me and I had to run to the bakery to buy some breakfast right after workout. Hence the two extra kilometres. The slope of the line that indicates the overall speed is clearly positive, meaning that I was running progressively faster. Average pace 4':20" per km.

27/12/2013
Here we go with the crazy part of the week. Gianluca had a wish: running together in the forest of Sart Tilman in Liege, before the new year. The course I am talking about is quite steep, sometimes crazy steep, some other times just insane. We kept the insane part out of the equation and enjoyed a run of 500 metres of elevation on a total distance of 17 km. Wish satisfied :)

28/12/2013
We planned to spend the weekend in complete relax in the Ardennes, southern Belgium. That's probably the best location for trail running or road running with quite some elevation. Long story short, we ran from Ocquier to Durbuy, went up to the Belvedere and came back home. My hands were freezing. My legs were enjoying the 700 meters elevation course. Total distance 22 km. Still calling it relax?

29/12/2013
Whenever I am in Bruxelles and that's a sunday, I know where I should be running. La Cambre in Bruxelles is a location that my running team keeps booking every sunday since 5 years, for the usual 20 km in the forest. Amazing track, amazing people. Slow pace running with some hills to run at 90% max on distances that can vary from 300 mt to 700 mt. Quite a thing.


Total mileage this week 105 km.
Happy new year.

As a tradition I recently started on this blog, here is the summary of the last week. It has been a quite running week. I like those weeks of transition in which I try to keep my eyes away from the timer and the mind from the need of increasing the pace. In such weeks nothing really matters.

The goal of this week has been twofold. First of all going back to running constantly everyday after the 50 km of two weeks ago. Second, to gently increase the milage and build up some distance by the end of February (sounds like a long term plan to me).

I really do not respect the 10% rule that dictates there should be and increase of milage of 10% each week for 3 weeks in a row. I know that many runners take it as a golden rule. I don't think it's a formula that can be applied to everybody, as many other formulas some people speculate on or even fabricate for the sake of marketing.
I believe that every runner has his own formulas with respect to pace, milage and especially nutrition.

I enjoy running in the forest so much that I am converting most of my running activities to the trail. There's much less impact than on the road. Moreover I find the type of running more dynamic, with all these jumps I am forced to, in order to hop on mud puddles, stones and wood.
The pace is always a bit slower due to the elevation and the terrain I have to deal with. But speed is not of my concern, at the moment.

 

9/12/13 coming from a week of exercise and recovery, I decided to go out for a very easy and short run. Stretching and mobility exercises were added to the training.

10/12/2013 10km on the treadmill with some climbing up to 6-8% without changing the pace I was running at with no elevation

11/12/2013 slow and easy 13 km run from Bois de Colonster to Bois de Saint Jacques, for a total of 240 mt elevation at 4':40"/km
I had quite tired legs, due to the long resting period I had, in order to reduce the risks of that  nasty stress fracture. I also think that my fatigue was also due to a slight form of sleep deprivation I was going into for a few days.