Yep. A few days after I write a blog entry about overcoming a year-long plantar fascia injury, and the day after I make my first appearance at a track training; I bump into the leg of the couch and (presumably) break my pinky toe on the right foot. So far, the prognosis is from 2 to 4 weeks of forced (running) break. The good part about injuring myself straight after another injury is that I can’t really lose much fitness.
On July 1st 2018, I ran my first 42k race, Marathon du Mont-Blanc. At the end of the same month, I also ran the 32km Saarschleifen Run. But somewhere in between on a training run, I jumped over a small stream and landed on the embankment with only the forefoot of my left leg.
At the beginning of January 2019, I started tracking my work commutes. In recent years, both external factors and my own thoughts about sustainability have caused me to re-evaluate the old-fashioned habit of taking a car commute as granted.
In running, as with everything in life, there’s good days and there’s bad days. Inevitably, you need to make decisions based on the cards you’re dealt. At Kilometer 4 my body told me “I’ve had enough” and I turned around even though I’d already covered 80% of the distance and 90% of the elevation.
Einstein may or may not have said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. Likewise in trail running, expecting to do better at a race you’ve done the previous year without having done a better preparation may indeed be, well, insane.
“Don’t go out too hard” is pretty much the universal advice for long distance trail running. So why was I in an unlikely second place the entire first Kilometer?
“How do you know a runner has done a marathon? – they’ll tell you”. So here I am to tell you about my very first marathon. And because I like a good challenge, I didn’t just pick a flat and boring road marathon but an iconic race in the mountains with plenty of elevation gain and loss.
Just a week after running a 12km trail race, I toed the starting line on a 10km road race. This seems slightly illogical, considering I’m supposed to run an iconic mountain marathon later this year and at this point should be doing long runs and lots of elevation. But if for a variety of reasons I can’t do that right now, there’s still a few lessons that can be learned at races like this.
The preparation for my summer mountain running challenges isn’t going great. With my main job and side job both taking up considerable time and energy (both physical and mental), my proverbial tank has been empty on a lot of days, which means I’m not getting in as much mileage and vertical elevation as planned. My running and cycling commutes are also taking a lot out of me, without bringing either mountain- or speed-specific training to the table. But rather than lamenting about this while watching TV on my couch, I decided that maybe a short 12k trail race would be a good reminder of what this summer’s challenges are about.