Monday 26-Oct: MTB ride, on trails. Had the day off work, so I wasn’t time-limited, but still elected to keep it reasonable (1h06, 22.5km, 369m elevation) because for some reason whenever I ride the bike nowadays I get a sore left knee and neck pain. (Strava)

Tuesday 27-Oct: A faster sprint training! We did the classic 10x200m training program with decreasing rest time (start at 3 minutes, 20sec less after each repeat, down to 20sec at the end). Mostly ran 32-33s on the 200m’s, except for the last two which sucked because of the short recovery time. Was expecting to pay for the faster sprints the next day, but surprisingly the impact was manageable. (Strava)

Wednesday 28-Oct: 4.1km lunch hike in 44h51, 82m elevation gain. (Strava)

Thursday 29-Oct: 5.4km lunch hike in 59h14, 160m elevation gain (Strava). In the evening, joined the track group for an indoor training (medicine balls, etc.). Did 2km warm-up and 2km cool-down.

Friday 30-Oct: 52min MTB ride on trails and road for 18.4km, 232m elevation (Strava).

Saturday 31-Oct: Off. (Not feeling well.)

Sunday 01-Nov: Nice hill session at the Saarschleife. It was foggy and dreary in Luxembourg, but on the Cloef trail the sun came out and I almost over-heated. Did 3 climbs, the first two of which I ran and the third I alternated (but mostly walked). On the first repeat, I managed to beat my personal best time. From a heart rate perspective, I was at my limit, but otherwise the effort (leg muscles, speed) seemed very manageable. 10.3km, 1h31 on my feet, 592m of elevation.(Strava)

 

At lunch, I walked 4.21km in 48:10 (11:26/km) with 110m of elevation gain. In the evening, I once again went to a club training. I forgot to switch the GPS back on after some stretches, so I don’t have complete numbers for the evening, but it seems I did about 5km of running, some lunges, some air squats, and some very limited stair work. At the end of the training I thought I overdid it, the running on uncushioned street surface probably didn’t help, but in the morning the achilles wasn’t in a terrible shape. Still, I figured I probably need to be more careful.

At lunch-time, I did a 4.1km walk at a leisurely pace (10:46/km). In the evening, I joined the sprint group at CSL. Did a warm-up on my own (on grass while they jogged on pavement outside), then joined the team for some more slow/faster running on the grass, and a small amount of stair work. The Achilles was OK with 6min/km running, and even tolerated a lap or two at 4:30min pace, but I opted to do stretching whenever the rest of the team did any kind of aggressive stair jumps (like one-sided jumps up two stairs at a time) or sprints. Clocked 5.6km in total, which is the most I’ve done since the 2-month injury break.

Strava activities: lunch-time, evening

Did another lunch-time bike ride. Fairly average, 26.98km, 1:02:02 duration, 26,1 km/h average speed, 184m elevation gain. The bad part (and I’m not sure if it’s entirely the fault of today’s ride) was that in the evening, I had excruciating neck pain, which in turn caused a very strong and persistent headache that I only managed to shake off the next morning. Maybe I need a professional bike fit on the MTB. More activity info on Strava.

In September 2014, I set out to summit Ben Nevis on the easy Mountain Path route. Since I was pressed for time, I chose to run/powerhike and made the 16km trip up and down the highest mountain in the UK in less than 4 hours, half of what it might take a typical hiker.

This page chronicles my hike to the top of Zugspitze – Germany’s highest mountain – over the Höllental route. While this ascent does not require technical climbing it is still quite tough, since it involves a height difference of almost 2200m (7200ft), a small glacier crossing and a via ferrata for the last 400m height meters.