Here we go again

I’m back and I’m just gonna jump right back in…

After a super hectic December I’ve been having a ridiculous amount of colds ( graciously handed to me by my daughter, who brought them with her home from kindergarten). I haven’t been able to train nearly as much as I had planned, but I have tried to focus on strength training.
In March me and my family went skiing.

We had a fantastic time. I haven’t gone skiing for years and had almost forgotten how much I enjoy it.
I prepared for the trip with a rigorous lunge and squat routine, which really payed of.

My first race of the season was scheduled for the 26th of April. I had no idea what to expect given the poor amount of training during winter so I decided to go with the flow.

The flow turned out to be not so fluid… It was tough and I considered just running in another direction. But thankfully I know that a 5K is a relatively speedy business I hung in. I was quite alone. With the leading pack, consisting of some thirteen years olds and a pregnant woman were running to fast for me, and my only competition, a fierce looking lady in her Sixties suddenly, rather surprisingly took a shortcut during the last kilometer. I soldiered on in my regular speedwalkinguesque fashion :

And finally finished in 22.22. I finished 12th overall and came second in my age group. It’s actually my second fastest 5K ever so all in all I am happy that I haven’t lost any fitness during winter.
It’s nice to be back in the blogosphere.
See you soon!

Here and there and everywhere…

Things have been a bit busy lately. After a rather slow period of mostly doing admin and teaching ( and practising) I have a lot of baroque-orchestra work and last weekend my trio recorded the last tracks for our upcoming CD. I settled in to the studio vibe by sporting an Anchor Man inspired outfit:

This weekend I sang a choir concert and travelled to Jutland to play the first of this seasons many Christmas Oratories. I love playing the opening trills and virtually feeling the Christmas spirit dancing around in the church. If you have never heard the Christmas Oratory by Bach this is what the opening choir sounds like:

Terror on Temp bridge

An iconic route for running in the Copenhagen area is around Søerne  “The Lakes” which consist of five artificial dams, laid out in a row. And this is where I take all my late evening runs, since it is quite lit up and there are always other runners and people talking walks. Due to the expansion of the subway system in Copenhagen a lot of construction work is taking place and large parts of the city has transformed into a building site. On one of the dams they have constructed  a temporary bridge across to the other side. This concrete bridge is roughly 180 metres long and is perfect for some fun. I try to do something there every time I pass. Last week had me doing sprints one evening and lunges and drills another. In the Strava program the bridge is named Temp bridge which in my head quickly became  terror on Temp bridge. It is a super way to spice up any run, and especially to get those lunges incorporated to my work-out. I also love how it renders a bladerunneresque feel to it all.

An involontary PR and Misty the dinosaur!

So I took a little break from blogging but certainly not from running. I’ve been slowly upping my mileage and feel great. Running with a club is such a nice way to get more and longer runs in. This Saturday I involuntarily PR’d at parkrun. It was a weird experience. I started the day of with feeling slightly asthmatic even before the run, so during my warm-up I negotiated with myself and came to the conclusion that it was OK to take it easy during the run. This one guy had promised to run a 22:30 5K and I decided to keep close to him for as long as possible. I also decided to run without my watch, something which I really want to do more often. Boom, of we went, and it was tough from the very start. There where so many runners in front of me and I struggled to keep up with the 22:30 crowd. I felt incredibly slow but decided to hang in there for my dear life but i couldn’t manage to keep up. Finally finishing totally spent and a little surprised by how tough the race had been I found out that the 22:30 guys and girl had ran in well under 22 minutes it explained everything. Finding out later that day that my time was 22:09 and that I had actually set a PR with 16 seconds took me completely by surprise.

I celebrated by going to the zoological museum with E and A and checking out dinosaur Misty.

Here’s a video of Misty being assembled in the Zoological museum in Copenhagen:

Saturday Parkrun and a new PR!

Saturday was my last day alone at home and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to run my local Park run. Me and my husband try to take turns to run it, but life gets in the way ( read sleep-ins and long Saturday breakfasts) and this was my first time running since mid-summer.

I managed to get out of bed at around 7.30 and had a banana and chia seed smoothie. The evening before I had read an article about how to warm up for the 5 K and had that in the back of my mind when leaving the house. I started of with a very slow jog for about 10 minutes than set the pace up for about 5 minutes and topped it of with a bunch of strides. The weather was lovely, sunny with a bite to the air. After a welcome to the run and some info about the route we gathered behind the starting point. I tried to figure out were to stand but managed to position myself a little bit to far back.

Boom! Off we went. I got locked in between some slower runners and sort of panicked a bit. I hope I didn’t step on anyones feet. I found my place and pace. Everything felt fine. I checked my watch and as always during the start of i race it I was holding a tempo steadily below 4:00 pace. I decided that it was way to fast and slowed down. The route consists of three rounds around in a circle. The first round felt absolutely fantastic, I had a smile on my face the whole way ( Which probably means I could have pushed my self some more). I found myself at the exact same pace as two other runners. This always makes me feel sort of like a stalker.

The leader of our little gang held a stable pace around about 4:36 min/km. everything continued to feel fine until the fourth kilometer. For me that’s always where I have a fleeting thought about maybe just walking for a while. But I soldiered on and all of a sudden there was only about 800 meters left. I felt strong and picked up the pace and easily left my two fellow runners. I hung in there and finally I was at the finish line. Finish time: 22:25 and a new PR and I improved my Parkrun PR with over a minute.  This was my sixth time racing the 5k and it was by far the easiest. I had huge negative split, which makes me think that I can aim to hold a higher pace next time.

The rest of the day went by with music making and my new favorite lazy fast food:

Food styling isn’t really my forte, but it tasted really good.

Lesson no.2. There is a time for talking and running and a time for just running

My Thursday outing with the Spartans ( that’s the name of the club) was a success. I chose to run a 12 k tempo run with the 5 min/km group and it was a great fit. We ran for about 5k and than split up in to two groups, all those with a Sunday-marathon on their schedule headed back to the clubhouse and the rest of us ( a small group) continued for another 7k. It was such a nice route, taking us along the seafront, cruise ship passenger waving to us from up high. One of many benefits of joining a club is the adding of new routes to ones program. Although I am quite good at varying my pace and intervals etc. I  tend to keep to a couple of different routes and running with the Spartans has already taken me to places I haven’t been to before, even though I’ve lived in this neighborhood for years.

Since my dashing husband E:

and my beloved daughter A:

are spending some time with the horse in the photo above, I am all alone in the city. I have been keeping busy with work, running, admin, seeing friends and going to concerts, but I must admit that it is getting really lonely, and I am so very much looking forward to their return (thank god for Skype).

My recent state of solitude might have contributed to my being a bit overeager to chat with the other runners in the group. I’m so used to running on my own that being able to strike up a conversation is a most welcome change to my routine. Everyone in the group was chatting happily, and it was really nice to hear about everyones marathon training and peoples running background, however during the end of the run people grew more quiet as the pace rose. It is easy to imagine a scenario where people would be polite ( Runners generally strike me as the polite kind) enough to answer during a pace that might be a tad to high thus rendering them out of breath. What are the codes for running and talking? How does one know when to rant and when to run? I hope I didn’t overstep any boundaries. I manged to stay behind the instructor for the entire run. In all it was great. I am surprised at how easy it felt. I’m even tempted to try the 4:45 min/km  group next time. Afterwards I went to my gym for some core exercises and stretching and to top it of I ended the session with a nice steam. It was pure bliss.

 

Lesson no.1. Never run in front of the instructor

Yesterday I went running with the running club I have just joined and afterwards there was a gathering for new and prospective members. It was a great evening, however if one is used to running alone I think it can probably take a while to get used to running in a big crowd. I tried to to follow the other runners lead and find my self pointing my hands Having no desire of ending up all alone  in the middle of a park somewhere, not being able to follow the rest of the runners, I followed the advise to choose a group that held a pace a little  slower than  my normal tempo run pace. I joined the 5:15 min/km group for a 12 kilometer fartlek session, it was a lot of fun ,although I have a tendency to get a bit carried away during group interval training, as soon as they say go I just start running like crazy and only if I am very lucky will the last repeat be the fastest one. But I really can´t help my self.  I litterally feel like this

:

But this is what I actually look like:

(how is it even possible to call this running? I swear both my feet are firmly planted to the ground. I  Should probably just  take a shot at learning race walking instead.)

Yesterday I actually had  great feeling, I was thoroughly warmed up and it felt easy but rightfully exhausting. On the way back to the clubhouse I had a bit of trouble with winding down in to the collective tempo , and i might have happened to run in front of the instructor, although  Another woman in the group ran up by my side and said: you haven´t considered running with the 5:00 group instead? I told her that I´m new to all this and finding out as I go, but I had a fleeting feeling that I had done something wrong. I was soon to find out what had been my fatal mistake. During the introduction to the club that took place after the workout there was a power point presentation listing Club Etiquette and of course both no.1 and no. 8 on the list was NEVER RUN IN FRONT OF THE INSTRUCTOR!!!!!!

I was mortified and red as a tomato. Tomorrow I am going for another workout and I am very much looking forward to it. I will join the 5:00 or the 4:45 group and run in the back of the pack.

Have you ever committed  a running group faux past?

Hi!

Hi! So… This is my very first blog post and it is a little bit scary, so I´m just going to dive right in.

,

Little did I know in the summer of 2013 when I spent my evenings being chased by frightening, yet a tad phlegmatic, zombies ( I kicked their Zombie asses) around various locations in Scandinavia, that one year later I could actually run for hours on end without any entertainment whatsoever and that, in fact, the running itself would become the very entertainment. But here I am totally addicted to running. In daily life as a flautist I get to play a lot of trills, however I am somewhat lacking in the drills department, so today I am joining a running club.