My private 1/2M

While Janathon is in full swing, due to extensive work load and some travelling this month, I had to skip my attendance at the 1/2M in Egmond, a race that I was looking forward to since Christmas. The idea of matching my longest run so far (Leiden 1/2M back in spring of 2012) kept sitting in my head, though. I thought I had the legs for it and after the last week treadmill torture there was even the mental prep. The only thing I did not have was a plan.

Last night, I went out with a friend – just one beer as we both had a looong working day behind us. But then as we were almost leaving the pub, our waitress by mistake served us double scotch on the house and what do you do? Letting the ice melt in the long glass filled with whisky was not in my books. And I still had my Janathon run to make! By the time I dragged myself through 4 painful and sleepy kilometers, showered and hit my bed, it was way past midnight.

This morning I woke up with the “I’ll never drink again” feeling and somehow, almost automatically started pouring water in my camel bag. The thing is, I thought, when carrying a water bag, I will be motivated to run further than just a few miles. If only my head was not sore…

Little by little I gathered my running gear, a package of caffeine chewing gums to substitute my morning coffee and once my Garmin (“Did we change continents AGAIN?”) found its position, off I went. I decided to run westwards following the Coastal Road until I passed the Old Port and the new marina.

There at the crossroads I chose the southern unpaved road to Lady’s Mile. By then, I was about 5 km into my run feeling good. The surrounding scenery quickly changed from industrial views of the harbor to the semi desert landscape around the Akrotiri salt lake.

Unfortunately, the flies and other unidentified insects equipped with wings and stungs wanted to join me… And so we were all running/flying through hard sand and over the salty plains up until the point where we could enjoy the sea view. Despite my habits I drank quite regularly as the temperature started to climb and I was really happy with my water bag. Around 11th km I stopped for a while and still felt surprisingly fresh. Nevertheless, I decided to turn back and run towards the city again.

After 14 km I finally started to feel some discomfort and slowed down a bit. Unfortunately the caffeine chewing gums turned to be of no use for me (unless I wanted to keep them whenever I need to turn my stomach inside out) so I threw the whole package away and bit 2 pieces of fruit sugar instead. That helped for another 4 km or so. I think that is where I had a small crisis. Being me, I covered it by a short break at the ATM machine as I needed to withdraw some cash anyway.
These magical 5 or perhaps 10 minutes did the trick again and the rest of my run was luckily as easy as the beginning. By the time I was approaching the starting point, I figured that with a tiny D-tour I could press the Garmin stop button at 21.1km. By then, I clocked 2:26:30.

Can one’s day start in any better way?

P.S. The pictures are not mine this time…

My private Janathon stats

As we left January far behind us, there is time for a small update:

Preggo running: Against all odds, I am still pregnant. We have successfully made it to week 36 and the baby is growing as cabbage. Funny enough, I now feel better, stronger and more energetic than a month ago. They say this is the sign that my body is getting ready for the hardest (ultra)marathon ever (=labor). We’ll see. Oh, by the way: 14 kg total weight gain.

Janathon: Although I have not been commenting much on your blogs, dear Janathoners, I surely was reading them, often green with jealousy every time a beautiful run was accomplished and described. The same goes for all other runners: Enjoy the mud, snow, blizzard and sweat as long as you can! Soon I will be breathing at your back again.

Janathon Day 32 – Epilogue

Janathon had all signs of a great journey for me: it was totally unpredictable and highly adventurous. After coming across the Janathon logo accidentally, in no time I had so many virtual friends around me, people who I did not know and yet they were supporting me as I went along. So thank you, Phil, for posting some boosts to my short runs. And thank you, Lena, for running so much that I just  had to go out there and do at least my 5km loop. And thank you, Cheeta, for the inspiring stories and pictures. And thank you, Cathy, for pulling all this together. Thank you all the 200+ Janathoners who signed up and struggled throughout the cold days with me.  Thank you, Bear Runner. And thank you, Running Shadow, 12HonzaDe, Peggy and others… Although I don’t live in CZ anymore, the Czech running blogs provide for so much wisdom, fun and motivation.

Janathon Day 31

Loooong day with  a lot of work. No way I could go running – except for the fact that I HAD to as today was the final Janathon day! Reached the gym just 40 minutes before the closing time and jumped on the treadmill. 5 km later I yelled “I DID IT!” I exercised for 31 days in a row. I do admit I did not manage to run every single day but heeey, I went out there every day to work out and sweat and this is the result:

Run: 130.5 km

Bike: 174.9 km

Cross training (elliptical and rowing): 160.9 km

Walk: 35.3 km

In total, this is 401.5 km and 36.6 hours of exercise.

Janathon Day 30

Something tells me this week’s blogs will resemble the blogs written in week 1: weather reports. So here we go: frost, snow and most annoyingly: ICE. Ice is not bad when one plans to go skating (coming weekend I hope). But it is a killer when one makes preparations for an evening run.

So I re-dressed and re-shoed and headed towards the gym again. Since I cought the run-outside bug I don’t feel like going there all the time anymore. So as I was walking from the car park (no bike tonight), I was trying to figure out how to survive the work out. And then it hit me: It was this blog entry by PaintedRunner that inspired me: I looked up the musical collection on my iPod. The hour on the elliptical cross trainer flew by.

Btw, was this how planking started?

Janathon Day 29

So far the best Janathon day as V. decided to join me on my Sunday long run. The sun was shining and it was freezing as we left our house. I was a bit worried about V. as her arms were cold and her throat sore but little did I know about her hidden powers: half way through she outran me and then struggled with herself not to run faster than me (The most important reason probably being that I had the key from our front door).

Awesome experience, being out there, together. I have all the good hope that she will be joining Juneathon with me :-).

Janathon Day 28

Woke up into a cold morning. Walked with April, enjoyed early morning coffee and together with V. went to the gym. Spent an hour on the bike while V. was sweating on the treadmill. Now what you don’t know, dear reader, is that V. does not like running. Give her tennis, skiing, golf or just about any sport – but NOT running. But here comes the weird thing about Janathon: ever since I started leaving her alone in the living room in the evening crawling upstairs to enter yet another blog report, she started getting the bug as well. The first week she was rather uninterested (“as long as you leave me out of it, feel free to do your thing…”). The second week she every now and then showed some curiosity (“what are the rules actually and how does one become a member?”). And today came the sentence I was patiently waiting for: “I wouldn’t mind running with you – as long as you don’t wake me up at 6 am to do so.”

Guess what: tomorrow morning we will be running out there together! Cannot wait.

Janathon Day 27

Friday is usually our resting day as the gym is closed in the evening but the faithful reader knows that rules are for fools in January. I went for what was supposed to be a gentle evening run only to return half an hour later with my new PB. For the first time since I was a student I managed to run 5+ km maintaining the speed above 9 km per hour. The snail is speeding up!
Does it matter that the dark streets were crowded and that is why I tried to run faster? Does it matter that my knee hurts and I am tired now? No, no, no. Despite all pain, I am a happy Janathoner tonight.

Janathon Day 26

Australia Day. Despite our night session in front of the TV neither Kvitova nor Clijsters made it to finals.

Gym and yet another 7 km with a new (old) mp3 music mix. How comes that while running, all the old hits sound so good? Is it the endorphines?

 

Janathon Day 25

Yet another day with ‘all work no play’. Except at night while watching Australian Open. Last night V. was up almost all night again and since the female singles approach semifinals and there are 3 players fighting to become the WTA nr 1, I will be watching too. Here is a picture that fits the tennis theme:

Oh not to forget: 18+ biking km’s in the gym tonight while listening to Dvorak’s Rusalka. Sport meets art… in my iPod.