Tuesday, December 21, 2010

globe-trotting : part 2

I forgot to mention in the previous post that right before leaving to Europe I did a detour at a Decathlon sport store in China (yes... there are also here..) and raided the running section of all the cold winter stuff I could find: winter gloves, cap, rain jacket, etc... (actually the choice was quite limited but the essential was there...but I could not expect more in a city where the minimum temperature rarely drops below 10C....).
So I was not totally unprepared to the cold wave which I met in Europe...

It was also funny to notice that basically 90% of the runners whom I met while running in the Park in Monza were all wearing decathlon stuff.... so I passed totally unnoticed, since everybody else was wearing my same outift (next time I will show up with a tracksuit from LiNing brand with China written on the back...).

Anyway the week went quite well, considering that I was in a whirlwind of meetings and moving around Europe.

Mon: DNR

TUE:  very nice run along the River Sile in Treviso (near Venice). It was TERRIBLY cold (-4.3C). I run 30' easy then I started to push the pace just to keep warm... total 13K

WED: Havant (Hampshire, UK). Not very familiar with the place, so I just run along the main road (also because it was with streetlights) for 30' and then return. The temperature was much better (around +1C).

THU:  also in Havant. I went further down the road and on the way back some strides and 1' hard effort. Temperature was quite enjoyable (5C)

SAT: near Piacenza (Italy). This was probably one of the "coldest" runs in my life.
I really wanted to make a long run all around the hills and flatland of the town, but when I woke up all the streets, trees, cars, whatever was covered by frost (locally called "galaverna").
At 9am, it was -6C !
By the way, there is a very nice plug-in of SportTracks (Weather plugin) which read the data from GPS track and match with weather data from the nearest weather station. So you can get exact weather profile during the workout.
(yes.... all the 2 hours at around -6C... not bad for a guy from Tropic)

At the beginning I was really struggling to warm-up. But the climb from 100m to 300m altitude in the first 5k did the trick and I was able to sweat a bit...
Honestly once you are dressed properly it is much better to run at -6C than at +30C so I did not felt any problem to keep a decent pace around 4'10"-15".
In good weather, I would have enjoyed a landscape like this:
but basically it was all in white 

Unfortunately even this time, my right hamstring started to seize once I passed 25k and I was really struggling. I really need to understand what is going on because the hamstring get tight once I hit a certain distance and is not painful at all after the run. There is some biomechanics wrong and I need to sort it out (also working with stretching and strengthening)

TOTAL WEEKLY: 75Km which is really not bad considering the schedule... now I am back to China and there are 20C+... so another week, another temperature....



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