As you can already see on this very short blog I seem to have a love-hate relationship with running. At times I love it, and at times I really hate it and can’t get out. Today was the latter. The plan according to my half marathon plan was to run 15K. I had slept about 4h on average the past week and lazy Michael was fast trying to convince me that I shouldn’t go out because it would very likely suck. But fit Michael managed to convince lazy Michael to shut the fuck up because I also missed a run on Wednesdays. So I decided to out with 3 very concrete goals to be completed in the prioritized order.
- Run the entire thing with no breaks at my usual long run pace around 6:50min/km
- Just try to have fun
- Just do more than 10K
One day Herstedhøje I’m going to get you. But not today.
Before this run I just barely finished 10K with no breaks a few weeks ago after employing extensive Wim Hof power breathing throughout the run. And precisely a week ago I was supposed to run 12.5K but ended up running 14.25K after a wrong turn and I was running on empty the final 3-4K.
So I don’t know what the fuck happened today. But I somehow managed to run the entire freaking run with no breaks! No fucking breaks! The longest I’d “run” before was those 14.25K which I was walking the last 3K almost. Now I just ran 15K with no breaks. What gives?
Pace graph, look at that flat line. And yes it’s a measurement error at just after 13K. I did NOT stop there. I think I just passed one of the anti-bike rail thingies which might have caused my pace to look like I was stopping.
Looking at the stats one thing makes little sense. Usually I can feel the sting of lactic acid as soon as my pulse goes beyond 160-165ish. Today I had run an entire hour at threshold (>169).
It’s times like these I really try to ask myself WTF did I do different?
- Time of run? I went out a bit earlier than usual. Usually I run around 11:30 right around the time where I’m usually starting to get hungry for lunch. Today I ran at 10:00 so perhaps I just had more energy?
- Pace?: I really focussed very strongly on maintaining my pace around 6:40 and 6:50 especially in the beginning. I was really stepping on the break for the entire first 3K.
- Form? I was also really trying to remember to lean forward most of the time. I noticed that everytime I remembered that my pace would increase a little bit so I could then step off the throttle and thus save energy.
- Wim Hof? Last night I broke my pushups record by doing 39 push-ups without breathing. Is the Wim Hof breathing starting to do their thing?
- Lack of sleep? This one’s really weird because it goes against everything you read about running. But there seem to be a strong relation for me between sleeping poorly and performing well on a run.
- New playlist? Found a great AC/DC playlist. Could that be it? THUNDERSTRUCK! 🤘
- Great guided run? I run with Nike Running Club app primarily because of the nice design and the great guided runs. This one seemed to be able to read my mind and was very supportive. Highly recommended.
Possibly it’s one big mix. But never the less this was a great run in sometimes a sea of bad ones.