Running

So far I blogged here only about failing at my first marathon. The lessons learned paid off in the end. Meanwhile I ran two official marathons: My debut in Dresden 2013 (03:55:16) and in 2014 I ran the Berlin marathon (03:55:13). Success is worth mentioning too, right? ;) Berlin Marathon Berlin Marathon Finish Berlin Marathon Medals Both I was able to finish in under 4h. For me that’s a great result especially for the debut in Dresden. Great achievements? Well for sure, but no reason to settle. Actually a good foundation to build upon: Now I am aiming at running my first ultra marathon! In 2015 I would like to run 50km at once. Does not necessarily have to be an official race, something in the country side would be great, as a contrast to the city runs. ...

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Last year I failed miserably on running my first marathon. Severe pain from shin splints forced me to stop running completely while training for Berlin marathon 2012. I really tried to continue running but that was probably the worst thing to do. Finally I realized I had to take a break. I stopped running completely for about three months. Having to do so was disappointing of course. But it also was an important lesson, an opportunity to learn. I thought about why my body shut down. What did I do wrong? Here are three things I learned: ...

In my last post I told myself “not to overdo” it. Sadly exactly this happened. I have lots of trouble with shin splints (medial). :( What happened? The last long run, which went well was on 19th August. Previously I was running over 30km multiple times on the weekend. Obviously this was too much. I ended up with painful shin splints in both legs. Normally these are a result of overstress. ...

About two month ago I did sign up for my first marathon and started to focus my training for that event. In my previous post I defined a simple way to measure my progress towards the goal, running the marathon distance. Another month has passed and here is my updated report. It was not a great month for training, as we did move to Berlin and a had a bad cold for almost 2 weeks. Both things did collide with my training schedule. But let’s have a closer look at the state of affairs: ...

Roughly one month ago I did sign up for my first marathon. At that time I also wrote a post about how I will prepare for that. So let’s have fun and create some additional pressure by publishing the results so far. How to measure progress The main goal is to be able to run the marathon distance. That’s why maximum run distance is of major importance. Secondly I want to finish in under 4 hours. This means a pace of under 5.7 min/km (btw. I really dislike using this unit, but it’s just so common for running). So I am having an eye on the average pace of the longest run. ...

Running a marathon has been on my list for quite a while now. The past 1.5 years I did focus on learning Sambo (russian martial arts). But I just did sign up for the Frankfurt Marathon in October. What are the goals? The primary goal is to finish. In general this probably should be the only goal for a first marathon. However since I did very well in over fulfilling my self set goals recently, I will aim at a finish time below 4h. ...