 Race season 2016 is over…..it was short but intense! After the birth of our daughter (Viivi) end of June Jasmina had 2,5 months to get in shape for Solvalla swimrun in September and then another 6 weeks for ÖtillÖ 1000 Lakes (Germany) in October. While my training buddy was effectively on a 9 month “tapering period” I decided to work on my overall running skills. I ended up doing two half marathons, Paavo Nurmi marathon and Nuuksio Classic Trail marathon before the baby was born. The two half marathons served for the purpose of improving speed endurance, Paavo Nurmi marathon to improve threshold running and Nuuksio to improve trail running form and core strength. All said and done I struggled to get the volume in due to sickness which made the last 5 kilometers of Paavo Nurmi marathon a mental and physical struggle. At the end I was pleased to see that I could stick to a 3:58 minute/km pace for 36km’s, ending up fourth overall.
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 Get ready for the Master Swimrunners……hey that’s us PJ!….oh No! I forgot you are already a Senior Swimrunner...respect Sir Dude!
We are losing speed, muscle mass and recover slower than the young generation….speaking for myself now “I am one of those old farts in lycra desperately trying to prove to himself that he can still beat the young boys”. Mmmmmh there is actually some truth in it I must admit.  “……..Mother Nature Always Wins” I don’t think there is a sport today where you are so exposed to the elements as swim running. Unique environments away from urban civilisation this sport brings you back to the roots of being human: survival and taking care of each other! This may sound exaggerated to some but at least for me this race weekend in Rheinsberg, Germany turned out to be a crazy cocktail of extreme impressions. On Saturday we were having coffee and cakes with our friends Nancy and PJ from Team Monaco Life in a local café. Less then 24 hours later we were literally crawling out of the cold water on both hands and knees. Completely disoriented I remember muttering to Jasmina: “Are you OK?”....being cold just got a new meaning this weekend.  After a one year break from the swimrun scene due to a broken foot and the birth of our daughter we decided to register for Lake to Lake swimrun. In fact it was our first race together after Porkkala swimrun in 2015.
Filled with enthusiasm we decided to practice the course based on a course map we downloaded and printed from the website. Now it is important to know that we have a tendency to get off the course so finding our way to the first lake was really impressive. We even managed to get to the second lake after running in circles for an hour or so. The fact that our badly packed course map got soaking wet when it started to rain did not help to find our way around but hey….at least we could use it as a bad excuse for getting lost. Having practiced the course for the first 3km’s we eventually returned to the car and officially agreed (for once) that we both suck at orienteering. Thank goodness the course was going to be marked on race day otherwise we would not even finish the race. |
AuthorMe: Thomas Schreven Archives
September 2019
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