Recovery Day

Where to start?!

Okay, first the speed training with the running seminar yesterday.
We met at 7 p.m. on the testfield of the DHFK (German University for Physical Culture, it is now a part of the University of Leipzig. But if you ask any denizen of Leipzig for the DHFK, he/she will still know where you have to go.) We were a huge group as you can see.

Since the track isn't big enough for 8 different pace groups, the six "slow" groups went down to run at the river bank. (Seems to be the runners route in Leipzig, we met so many.) The training went as followed. We had to run 1 km in the time we wanted to have our normal pace later. Between the "fast" 1 km legs we had 3 minutes of trot. This 1 km we had to ran accordingly to our schedule 6 to 10 times.

So, since I want to run a 6:30 (hahaha, dream on girl!) pace, I had this amount of time to run from the special parkbank to the second stairs, which is exactly 1 km. (I'll see how the weather is on Sunday, to get some pictures for you.) And my schedule said 8 km.

If you've read my post from last week, you'll know that my normal pace is 8:57 min and I only ran 3,5 km then. You're starting to guess it, don't ya? To make things worse, I walked 11 km on Wednesday to and fro the city (5 km one leg), after the 12 km training on Tuesday. Worsest? Yesterday I walked 9 km home through the city. I guessed it was fabulous weather so why pay for a tram ticket when I have legs?! When I got home at 3:45 p.m. my feet hurt already. And then I went to speed training!!! Do I have to write any more?!?

I got there with the tram (streetcar) and walked to the changing room. Meeting all the other runners was really exciting and I couldn't get the grin from my face. Peter, the organizer, called out the groups and so I went to the 6:30 group. HUGE mistake! We trotted down to the start at the river with Katharina (our tutor). Where we started with the fast running. Well the others started. I ended up with two Ladies trailing 100 m behind the group. What a humiliation! And if that wasn't enough, my right calf couldn't decide whether it wanted to cramp or not. After km four I wanted to throw it, but I stuck with the two ladies and did 2 more. After them we trotted back to the track grabbed our things and left. Well before I left the track I trank my vial of aminoacids. Eek, but if it helps. I went home by tram.

When I got home I was totally beside me. I even took a bite from a cookie! Luckily I realized what I did after the first bite and gave the rest to my dad. (Later I was really hungry and ate a buttered roll. >-( ) After that incident I sank into a hot and very relaxing bath and granted myself a chocolate treat - Fioretto!!! (I bought it myself and don't work or write for this company and this is my honest opinion.)

Necessary items to train for a marathon: chocolate treats and a bathtub!!!

http://www.clawfoot-connection.com/Fgallery/clawfoot222.jpg
(This would be my dream bathroom. Sadly my parents have only a normal bathtub / bathroom. But it's better than nothing.)

Oh, and since my Polar didn't work I don't have any stats for you. Sorry. But here is my Mampf
Diary:
BF: 350 ml protein chocolate shake, 2 golden kiwis (the fruit! I'm not a cannibal.)
Lunch: Veal with a Dream Apple and 2 golden kiwis (pic)
Dinner: buttered roll (told ya I was totally off)
Snacks: 1 waffle with vanilla cream, 1 bag of nuts, 1 Fioretto, 1 bite of a chocolate cookie

Yesterdays lunch. Strange but Yummy!

Today was SCAL(R)E DAY! I wanted to know if I had lost some weight since Wednesday, hopefully another 300 grams. I was NOT prepared to see this:

Weight 64,2 kg

Thats 800 grams less. And it wasn't water! It's been bodyfat. The full scale stats are this:
Weight: 64,2 kg
body fat: 29,1 % (minus 0,9 % since monday!!!!)
water: 51,7 %
muscles: 34,1 %
bones: 7,6 kg

So, yesterdays nightmarish training was worth something. My thighs aren't too sore, but we'll see what they say tomorrow. Essentially I took this day off to recover. My mom was really nice and got me some marvelous beef tenderloin (she was so mad at the butcher, because it was really expensive). This is what I made for my lunch today:

Beef tenderloin with sautéd mushrooms and a tossed salad with bell pepper and tomatoes. The dressing on the tenderloin is "Balsamico Cremoso". This was a culinarily marvelous meal. *Sigh* After that I took time to recover more deeply (afternoon nap ;-).

As you can see I'm back on track when it comes to eating Paleo. Next scheduled training is on Sunday. 15 km. Tomorrow my dad and me will repaper the kitchen of my grandma. No other workout, though I thought I would run my 3,5 km but my legs feel crappy. So, I'll give them more rest. And since the weather is bad too, I've got no guilty feeling for not being out in the sunshine.

KEEP RUNNING!!

Leipzig south-western sky, Wednesday, ca. 3:30 pm.

And I thought I was doing good....

but I had no idea what I'm in for. So today I went to the opening of my runners seminar. There were a lot of people, in total about 300, so the room was packed. Then the organizers talked about ... the organization. The participants of the seminar can decide until March 30th which distance we want to run. Since the races are scheduled for April 25th thats pretty late, but good for us since we can decide when we see how the training develops.

As for me I'm undecided, in my good moments I say I go for the marathon, in my really good moments, I say I for a marathon time of 4:30 hrs and in my bad moments it's 'just' half marathon. :-P And when I saw the training times and distances, my selfesteem dropped through to Australia. But I got myself the marathon plan anyway and my jaw dropped, when I saw the distances. I told you, that I was surprised how short my route is. But guess what. Last week I ran about 7 km, this week it will be about 7 + 15 km of fast walking. Because my next weeks schedule says Tuesday 10 km, Thursday 10 km (training on the blue tartan track) and Sunday its 15 km. Since our coach wants us to get our fat metabolism going, I will walk my Alone-trainings-routes.

The coach said something about diet to, but I'll give you that and my opinion on it tomorrow.

Right now, it's time for todays run. I felt a bit sluggish today which was due to the waffle and that I rode my bike to the city. In the end I was quite a bit slower than on monday. Let's get to the stats:

distance: 3.5 km
time: 31:30 min
PACE: 9 min (yeah, there are a lot of people who walk faster than I run including me)
in zone: 15:22 min (better)
heart: 161 bpm (163 is my threshold)

And now a few pics of the leipzig christmas market and the famous waffle with vanilla creme. Enjoy.

The entrance.



The tree.



The waffle bakery.



The Waffle with THE Vanilla cream.



A nice view.

Keep running.