Saturday, June 30, 2012

Crossed the 6K mark

WOW, this is what I needed! After an horrible running week, I finally got my rhythm back :-D I ran 6.22K in just over 37 minutes, which comes down to 6min/km!!! And the funny part: I had 4 1 minute slow sections.

I started off with a 5k 2 8k interval training but after about 4k (4 sections of 7 minutes 145BPM and 1 minute 137BPM from the Podrunner interval website, the Gateway 2 8K section, week 1), my Bluetooth® headset started to act weird. The problem is, I have a Bluetooth® headset with the Bluetooth® receiver at the back, and a Bluetooth® HRM, with the receiver on the front and my phone strapped to my left biceps. The challenge with this is that Bluetooth® signals don't travel through the body... When I have my phone on the outside of my upper arm, everything is fine, until I look at my left. Then the connection with my headset breaks and the audio pauses. So as soon as I swivel my head back in a position where the connection is re-established, I simply push the middle button on the right side of my headset and music continues playing again. (As you can imagine, that middle button is the play/pause button) Can you guess what the left and right button do on that side for the headset? You have probably guessed it, they skip backward and forward. And as you most likely guessed as well, I pressed either of these outer buttons in stead of the middle button. Gone was my training podcast :( But this is a running blog and not a moan-about-crappy-techie-stuff-blog. I pulled off my headset and continued the last 2k without the guidance of a stead beat and the signalling of the end of an interval section and continued running. My Runkeeper app continued to talk to me every 5 minutes and/or every km so I got a fairly decent idea of what I was doing. This brought me to bring my average pace down in the last 400m from about 6.03 min/km to an even 6.00 min/km. And boy oh boy was I a happy man when I made it! Over the next few weeks I will be trying to add to the distance I can run. For me, distance is more important than pace at this moment. Don't forget, I need to get to 10mi (~16k) by September 23. That doesn't mean I don't want to run it in a decent time but running it is my first priority. Doing so in unde 1:30:00 is my second ;-)

Till the next blog

Greetinx
Johan

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The search for excuses

Oh boy, I thought it would become easier over time, but my 5K today was a 34:44. My wife would now use a saying which literally translates to: The bow can't be tensed all the time. Which basically means you can't always perform at your peak. Okay, I get that but I want to increase my distance and not the time I need for a 5K. In fact, I want to triple the distance in the next 3 months. So what's the cause of the increased time? Is it the night I was called for stand-by 5 times last Wednesday followed by a night of bad sleep on Thursday? Was it the mental drawback of the Dutch National team performing their worst group phase in a European or World Championship only being outperformed in badness by the Irish team who scored one less goal than "us"? (Hmm, I think I can safely scrape that one off the list) Or was it the tough Aikido training we had yesterday in preparation for our 5th Kyu exam next week? It could also have been the sore throat I'm sporting (although sore might be overstating it quite a bit but hey, I'm on the prowl for excuses here). Oh, no, I know what it must have been! I forgot to charge my bluetooth headset, so every time I turned my head the wrong way, my phone which was playing the 138BPM mix by DJ Steve Boyett faulted and I missed a step... (yeah right, that must be it)

Or could my wife be right and I just have to carry on and all will be well? Nah that could never be it, that would mean that I can't blame anyone for my lesser performance. But do I have to?

NO OF COURSE NOT. It was just a lesser run. It wasn't all bad. Well not the first 20 minutes anyway. After that I got a little tired. But I still finised the 5K (and a bit) in 34:44, including 2 walks.

In the end, I just have to keep up my training, run my rounds and be ready to run a 10Mile on September 23, 2012

Oh, I almost forgot, I bought myself another nice little gadget. The Polar WearLink®+ transmitter with Bluetooth®. It works great with the RunKeeper app for Android (No, it doesn't work with the iPhone) on my Samsung Galaxy S3. Talking of which, I got that almost 2 weeks ago and guess what, it was a little bigger than the S2. Which meant that I had to get myself a new armband for it :-( I had this Belking Dualfit Armband for the S2. It was okay. But now, I have this Muvit (Hmm, why is their catalog page so bad???) armband and it is much more comfortable.

It looks like I'm set for the next stage in my running career. I have all the tools, gadgets and goodies.
All I need now is ....................................

PRACTICE

'Till next time

Greetinx
Johan.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Run for KiKa 2012

Afgelopen zondag, 10 juni 2012, was het eindelijk zo ver. Mijn eerste georganiseerde 5k. Run for KiKa 2012 Spaarnwoude.

De weersverwachtingen waren niet super. 60% kans op regen. Eenmaal aangekomen op het terrein blijkt maar weer eens dat het voorspellen van het weer niets te maken heeft met iets dat ook maar enigzins in de buurt komt van zekerheden. Het was 21C en prachtig weer!

Patryck, Kevin en ik gingen voor de 5k, Marijke, Manja, Coen en Hans deden de 10k.

Leermomentje bij de start: Ga in het startvak niet helemaal achteraan staan! Het startvak is namelijk een stuk breder dan de weg waarop gelopen wordt... De trechter waar we in terecht kwamen heeft ongeveer 1.5 minuut gekost waardoor ik niet onder de 30 minuten ben gebleven :( Daarnaast kostte de drukte waarin we liepen ook nog eens veel tijd. Na een meter of 500 ben ik bij Patryck en Kevin weggelopen en heb mijn eigen ritme gezocht.

Dat ritme was ook nog een klein obstakel waar ik overheen moest. Vlak voor de start kwam ik er achter dat mijn headset het niet goed deed. Dus heb ik toen maar besloten om, voor het eerst in mijn nog jonge hardloop carriere, zonder muziek te gaan lopen. Dus geen steady-BPM ritme van de Podrunner website. Gelukkig kon ik de audio cues van mijn Runkeeper app op mijn telefoon wel goed horen dus wist ik wel ongeveer hoe hard ik ging.

Ook nieuw was die heuvel van 13m hoog. Het grootste hoogteverschil waar ik tot nog toe mee te maken heb gehad was ongeveer 2m dus toen ik die "enorme berg" in het parkours zag opdoemen moest ik wel even slikken. Maar uiteindelijk viel die 300 meter best mee :-D

Na een lang recht stuk nog een bocht naar rechts, een korte eindsprint en toen was daar de finish!

I DID IT!!! Met een tijd van 31:45

Net geen 30 minuten maar al met al was ik toch zeer tevreden.

Patryck en Kevin hadden een mooie tijd van net over de 34 minuten en de 10k renners waren ook tevreden over hun resultaat.

De opbrengst voor KiKa vanuit ons team "ITSA Runners" was € 1080 en de totale opbrengst voor het evenement van Spaarnwoude heeft de 100.000 ruim gepasseerd.

Namens de "ITSA Runners" en KiKa wil ik al onze sponsors heel hartelijk bedanken voor hun bijdrage!

Nu ga ik werken naar het volgende evenement: de 10 engelse mijl van de Dam tot Dam loop op 23 september 2012 (ook weer met collegae).

Greetinx
Johan

Friday, June 1, 2012

My first 5K under 30

WOW, what a thrill!!! After the first K I didn't think I was going to make it. I went too fast and I was get out of breath rapidly. Sooo I slowed it down a bit. Same rhythm shorter strides and once my heart rate slowed down to around 155, I kept the pace as steady as possible and once my Runkeeper app told me I ran 2.7K in 15 minutes (this time I decided to start the monitoring after my warming-up), I felt the fatigue slide away and the energy boost was amazing. The next 2.3K were mostly a breeze. Once I hit 5K I could have gone further but I decided not to overdo things and went into cooling down mode.

So, just a little over 1 week to go before the Run for KiKa 2012 for which we can still use all the sponsors we can get, so PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE show your support for KiKa at http://goo.gl/7ZZd3 Your help will be highly appreciated.