Running to Think

A small update from the running department. 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. The training of the last four weeks has changed to become harder and harder. A steep...

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...

This summary will be short, for the reasons that will be clear in a minute. 21/04/2014 rest 22/04/2014 Went to Sart Tilman. Ran the usual loop around Bois de Saint Jean the first time with Francois, then I made it longer alone, which meant another loop. Total milage of 27 km and elevation gain of 550 meters.  Felt a bit of pain in the left...

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...

Two weeks after the not-easy-at-all 80 km of Paris, the only purpose has been to get back to the road with an easy pace and relax as much as possible.  7/04/2014 9 km on the hills of Sart Tilman. I must admit that I've been running easy here. Hills were not scary but I never tried to attack one. I also found a new path, quite steep, that...

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...

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...

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. 03/03/2014  04/03/2014 intervals on a longer distance of 3km for a total run of 23 km. Really cool interval...

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...

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...

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...

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. From Monday 30th December 2013 to Sunday 5th January 2014 I have been reducing the mileage a lot with respect...

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...

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...