Today’s long run was (from the start) a bit of a bad run (see my result on Strava). It wasn’t so much the temperature, but the fact I wasn’t recovered (enough) from last Sunday’s intensive long run of 32 km. I had to walk the last 6 km. Better luck next time, in three weeks.🏃‍♂️

On my run this afternoon I saw a guy in winter clothing and mittens, while it’s 31℃ (88℉) in the shade 🫢 I thought myself being odd for running in hot weather, but, apparently, I didn’t even scratch the surface of strange 🤡 human behavior.

I looked into doing multiple marathons within a year. The best advice I found was:

• plan the marathon races far in advance, so you know what you’re up to
• concentrate on post-marathon recovery, especially the first week after a marathon (mostly non-running related activities: walk, cycle, swim)

🏃‍♂️

Yesterday I ran a 22 km race as part of a 32 km training session.

Around 8 o’clock in the morning I jogged 9 km, took a shower, dressed in my race outfit, drank a cup of coffee, grabbed my race gear, and jogged the kilometer between where I live and the track and field club, where the start of the Brabantse Wal Marathon was at 10:45 AM. I did the half marathon event, which actually was 22 km (900 m longer than the half of the 42,195 m marathon distance).

The course was mostly off-road, with some steep short climbs and stretches of loose sand, which I had practiced in the past couple of weeks. In the first kilometer there was a single track, and with 270 runners we got stuck now and then, as you would expect. After the field was more spread apart, single tracks were no longer a problem.

I kept a steady pace, though slower than usual, because of the 10 km pre-race jogging. While I struggled to keep from falling, the inevitable fall happened, giving me bruises on my left shoulder and knee. I couldn’t see that tree root on the heavily shaded path. It didn’t slow me down much (like a few seconds).

In the last five kilometers I ran on familiar territory and could pick up pace. The last 1600 m on the road I could pick up even more speed, sprinting in the last 300 m on the track towards the finish line.

The time wasn’t that impressive. But I hadn’t expected that anyway, because of the added distance, and because of the off-road bits that were rather challenging. The 32 km I did in less than 3 hours and 20 minutes I was proud of, especially because of the low average heart rate under warm conditions (21℃). Corrected for temperature (into a result with 8℃), this would have resulted in a 1 hour 50 minutes for a half marathon road race.

Now I will take a few days to recover with easy training. Next Sunday will be my next long run, 29 km at a more leisurely pace.

🏃‍♂️

I streamlined my followers list on Strava, by removing the athletes who didn’t have any running activities in the past 4 weeks, and whoever did activities (in a way) I’m not interested in. No use to follow inactive accounts, nor any fun to follow activities that only annoy or bore me.

I get why email newsletters are so popular. Most don’t understand RSS/newsreaders, while email is much easier. And if newsreaders are not allowed on the company computer, email always is. But why would anyone publish newsletters, besides promotion and “marketing” (actually, creeping on strangers)?

There’s this separate bike path in town where on one side (where’s a ditch) it’s full of butterbur, like weeds. After summer they’re always cut back to the ground, yet they keep coming back early summer.

Sun worshipers 🐱☀️

I know a physiotherapist who refuses to treat runners, because those are the worst patients. In those runners' minds, running is all about getting fit, so how can that make you sick? There’s no patience and a reluctance to see an injury as a serieus affliction that needs careful treatment. 🏃‍♂️

In just 12 days Runalyze dropped my estimated time in the marathon race by 4 minutes, while my marathon shape has reached 99%. By losing some of my excess weight slowly over the next 5 months, I might be able to lose a proportional amount of 15 minutes, provided I slowly speed up my training. 🏃‍♂️

Why you shouldn’t make fun about people’s names: a name is just some noise other people make when they’re around you; it isn’t you, nor what you’re all about, even if it’s Flapberry Fudgewhistle.

I wanted to go shopping, but, apparently, I am not 🐱😻

ATM entering photography as a hobby is ludicrously expensive (say thousands of Euros). I pay €1000 for a top-of-the-line smartphone, so a “budget” camera that lacks versatility and user-friendliness, should cost a fraction of that. I suppose economies of scale has never touched the camera market 😕

6 years and counting 😺🥳

I decided to do my 15 km run inside the municipality of where I live, and run between two of the three historical windmills. Well, the third is a tidal mill, though no longer operational, if I read correctly. With every flood there was lots of damage. With the Delta Works, no more floods, nor tides.

If I were as eager into doing my garden as my cat is into eating, my garden would’ve been done already. Ah well, lazybones is making some progress now, at the start of meteorological summer. (Sry 4 🙈 🎞️🛍️ job… LZ.) 😂

I’m told by freelancers, being a freelancer doesn’t mean you’re your own boss, but rather that you get to pick your “boss”, IOW, your client. The client still gets more value out of you than your product is worth. This is what capitalism is, extracting value out of a workforce.

The graph shows what I could expect as a reasonable time on the marathon, based on training data. Two years ago, I could expect 5u30', a year ago 5u15', and now 4u15'. In all cases I was/am preparing for a marathon in October/November. Notice the serious detraining after the 2021 marathon 🏃‍♂️

I tried to add some of my Garmin Connect activities to my Dutch running blog, using iFrame snippets with code running on Garmin Connect. My blog slowed down to less than a crawl. Aside from security risks, using iFrame code seems a bad idea.

One of the advantages of having a blog… I wondered why a year ago I had such poor training regime for running. Then I read: overtrained in January (with complete bed rest for a week), followed by a slew of injuries after I picked up my training far too quickly. I was out of shape, quite a bit 🏃