Training Log Archive: W

Man, who schedules group meetings for Sunday at noon? Seriously. Lame. I probably should have gone for a workout in the morning, but things went a little too slowly and it didn't happen. Then after the meeting I ate a bit too much poor quality pizza, so this run was a not the most fun at some times. Shame to get in so little training on a Sunday. I haven't been able to get in many long runs lately, but with the snow melting and hopefully spring coming it will open on new places to run that's not on the road that I can run on for a longer time.

Snagged a lift over to Huutason for some skiing at my old NeljanVuorenHiihto stomping grounds. It was significantly faster conditions today, I basically skied the same speed as the 25k Sunday race, but I wasn't trying at all. Maybe my skis were better now, but the track was also lightning fast. We got back to the cars at 27k and I had to get to 30, just had to.

There's two older guys with Tera who don't speak very much English at all, and every time I see them there's this awkward look because they're too shy to want to speak English with me, and I'm too shy to want to speak Finnish with them, and so we just don't speak to each other at all. I'm resolved to be the person who tries first, but sure as hell this damn language ain't easy.

Wish I'd done an afternoon workout, though.

Mr Sorvisto was in town from Helsinki for the weekend, so I told him I'd meet him in Hippos for some 1000m repeats 8 times. Ran 3:34, 3:37, 3:30, 3:28, 3:23, 3:22, 3:18, and 3:16, all of which felt cruise-y and comfortable. I tried to make it seem SUPER comfortable because both Toni and Juha are coming off injuries and both claims were super gassed during/after this workout. And, well, they're really fast. So... mega ego-boost for me!

Another ski around Ladun Maija, with a bunch of legs only. I'm getting really tired of being wet all the time. Its not quite raining, not quite snowing, but everything is still getting worse. Theski conditions are still quite nice, but its not going to take very many more rain/snow days to make it much, much worse. I've had enough of fake winter. Bring on spring. Post-haste.

I wasn't a fan of the track workout planned for today (2 x 5000m), so I went off to find a hill to run up. Chose the one behind the Mustalampi (Mustalampin takana), which was a decent idea. About 90 seconds long, and took it briskly but not psychotically hard. Nice to do some hills, which is something I haven't done in a while. The season gets ever closer so this is just the start of the pace of training to ramp up a little.

Even if I can't make the volume increase, I can at increase the intensity. That's the goal, anyway. I also really enjoy napping.

C • . 4

I figure its high time to start bringing back some semblance of the "5 peaks" run I used to do. So far, I've only found 3 peaks, but with a little route tweaking I think I could have a few more peaks. The one on the Mattilaniemi campus is a good one, except about half of it is stairs. Not that I'm opposed to training hills on stairs, but Keskisuomi forests do not seem to have an abundance of stairs.

Remember my molasses ski the other day? Well, it got worse. I did an extra 3km, and it took me an extra 25 minutes. And, on average, my heart rate was higher. It was such hard work. When the snow gets all slushy and wet like that you can hear the suction on your skis. Would have been a nice day to have a special pairs of skis for me to structure the crap out of them. Alas, I do not.