Weekly Results 20th August – and another Thing To Consider

First of all the official Havneløbet result – 38:08. I was 28^th out of the men, plus 3 ladies beat me. So 31^st overall out of about 550. Pretty good!

I only ran 3 times this week – the Havneløbet, then a 17km run on Thursday and a 14.6 this afternoon. The 17k was the injury run plus all the lakes, in 1 hour 10 minutes – the 14.6 was my now-standard ‘Injury Run plus 2 lakes’ – and ended up being a personal best by 6 seconds. It wasn’t meant to be, as I’d been out at a friend’s birthday party last night until 5am, so it was really just a run to get a few more kilometres in. The first 10k were a little slower, but the lakes, and in particular the last 2k stretch back home, were quicker than usual.

I went for a walk this morning with the aim of getting some Kastellet photos – to write a proper ‘Guide to Running Kastellet’ post – but the place was packed with serious-looking walkers, clad in their trendy gore-tex and clutching maps. It was the start of the ‘Walkathon’ (there are some pics of Kastellet on that site) – and a sign stated that you could only access the fortress from the opposite gate until 6pm in the evening. So rather than fight my way through the crowds, I’ll do it another day. Just as well I saw it as otherwise I would have run straight into it - I waited until after 6 for my run.

Thing To Consider No. 3 is that I am actually doing pretty well with the training! After a slightly slower than anticipated recovery, I am now getting on for 50k a week, and the runs are reasonably quick and comfortable. There is no need to push things at this stage and risk injury – so far in August I have done 111km – in March 2005, the corresponding month before my marathon record in May that year, I only managed 90km – and I’m pretty sure the runs did not feel so good as they do now. Another 50k week to come this month and I’ll easily be over the 150k I had in mind at the start of the month. So let’s just keep taking it smoothly!

Distance run this week: 47km

Distance run to date: 248.0km

Distance cycled this week: 0km

Distance cycled to date: 139km

Distance rowed this week: 0km

Distance rowed to date: 55.3km

I haven’t done any rowing this week, but have increased my pre- and post-run rows to 2k each (used to be 1k each). Warm-up rowing does not count in the above as usual.