Days of luck and hope

My first post this year took some time. As efficiency became my credo in 2013 the time to write was very short. I’m trying this year to focus more on setting the priorities and concentrating on the activities planned. This also means, no blogging when other things are more important. But using the time given and planned as good as possible.

After my left-knee-injury a short crisis began to growth. A fast and by far too long run on December 31st kicked me bag with my knee hurting again. But after all small runs of 30 minutes brought back optimism. I’m still not happy with my knee but it’s by far better than in December. Cycling, core training, water running and swimming are the activities working well and giving my the chance to recover. But to be honest … I am actually running up the walls as time is going by and there are only 78 days for training before my first race.

But there are these perfect days bringing back the optimism in big bunches. And there was also the work of my therapist Sarina at Medbase in Zurich who “re-centred” my knee on Wednesday. Great work!

Up at 5:30 I started yesterday with a short core training followed by a solid breakfast with cappuccino, fresh orange juice and porridge (great food makes always a great day). I had to leave early to find my way through the fresh snow and – how great! – cold temperatures.  On one hand I was hoping for more snow and far deeper temperatures but on the other side I had to drive to my customers and back. There was a big chaos on the streets. After a solid business day I finally found my way back home through the winter traffic while eating my dinner: wholemeal fruit bread and juice from green coconuts. Within a few minutes I was ready for the run from home to the swim training where I first did my very effective 15 minutes water run exercise followed by a solid 1-hour-swimtraining.

The purpose of running to the swim training was to test my new material and – very important – to have a much longer training and to run “empty” but slow back home uphill by 8% with some good food in sight 😉

The material still was too warm for the -6°C. I was only running with my thinnest gloves and cap and some of the key items for the North Pole Marathon:

• my lightest layer one (a Aclima merino wool net shirt without collar)
• a very thin and light layer three (a Haglöfs Intense Endo Pull)
• the Salomon Snowcross shoes with merino socks

To make a long story short. This material is incredible but it’s still by far too warm to run easy at -6°C. I have to go to the cold storage house now to make the tests. Already last week when we had our brick run after spinning I was only running with a thin Merino Hoodie from Aclima. I forgot to mention the shoes: Awesome! You can run mud, snow, ice and solid ground at the same speed. Disbelieving looks of passers-by guaranteed! Anyway I will write some more about winter running material as I have learned a lot in the last weeks.

What else? The most important thing I almost forgot to mention 😉 What about coming home to your place with tons of homemade warm bread and a healthy fresh warm soup?
I’ve found my sleep very fast last night 😉 These are the days bringing back energy and optimism. Great!