June 6, 2009
After Fridays 10.000m State Championships I competed only 18 hours later in a local race not far away from my home town Zwickau. The race started in the Vogtland arena, where also international skiing competitions such as the world cup for the nordic combined take place.
I came a bit too late to register for the 15km, so I changed plans and ran the 10km. Anyway, it was a very challenging course on cross-country terrain and a steep climb (up to 25% !!) in the first two km. The first climb I started pretty easy and ran with the leaders of the women race. When the steep part was over I decided to chase the guys in front of me. On the following flat kilometers I gradually decreased to race leader and running comrade Tim Herold. After around 7km I was level with him and by km 8 I decided to stay on pace, so I charged away and secured a victory with a 40-seconds margin.
Again the legs were pretty good, especially considering the 10.000m race yesterday. But also the mind is much more free then it was couple of weeks before. The “take it easy and just let it come” -approach seems to work.
Tomorrow no competition 
but long run with my coach on the bike instead.
June 6, 2009
State Champion!!
Friday I ran the 10.000m championships of Saxony and won the title. I’m really satisfied with my performance and the shape is heading into the right direction it seems. After a week with easier training and less mileage also the freshness was there.
The race went as I planned it together with my coach: Going out with a group/competitor for the first 5.000m and then running the second 5.000m faster. Rene Müller was a good competition for the first half of the race and I could lay back in his wind shadow to complete the first 5.000 in 16:20min. Then I picked up the pace and the laps came steadily in 75 seconds – at 6K I was on my own and found a really good rhythm. The second 5.000m was around 15:34 and that satisfied me a lot. The legs were feeling good and with some competitors it might even have been faster. But the main thing was to get the title for my club and to test the shape with this second 5.000m. Both aims achieved = can’t complain
May 26, 2009
Another pedestrian performance (in my eyes).
I only learnt about the race 2 days ago, so my coach and me decided to run this 3.000m track race instead of the planned workout on Wednesday. Only 3 participants toed the line, so the there was almost no competition. However, Mari Järvenpää was in the race and before the race her coach somehow convinced me to make pace for her in the first km. Actually, I was trying to go for the 9-minutes mark, i.e. 3:00min-pace but since they asked me so kindly and Mari wanted to run a fast time (3:05min splits) I agreed. So I started the first km in 3:05, the second kilometer was actually the fastest with 3:01 and the last one was 3:03. The aggressiveness was missing, so I couldn’t even finish strongly – the last round was only 72sec or something like that.
The best performance of the race was of course Mari’s performance of 9:34,88 min which was a seasonal best for Finland.
For me it was nothing but a better training and a dissapointment. I mean, my 10K PB is 30:04min and last year I ran 30:34min. So 9:09min is like the split time for a 30:30min 10K! Even with a lot of kilometers (170+180 per week for the last two weeks) I should be able to run at least 9 minutes.
May 23, 2009
Today I wrote history at least some part of my own history in Finland. For the first time I could defend a title in a Finnish running competition and also I set my first course record on Finnish soil.
Last year I competed in the “Kettuhölkkä” as the race is called three weeks after I ran my first marathon. Last year I won with a time of 45:28min, so this year I improved my own time by 47seconds and broke the previous course record by 4seconds. I actually didn’t knew the course record so I was pretty surprised when the speaker announced it at the finish. At least the previous record holder was a 2:22h-marathoner, so not too bad.
Conditions were great, even if it was a bit warm at the end, because the sun came out again in the second half of the race and temperatures almost reached 20 degrees. Overall the feeling was better than in the competition two days ago. Even though the freshness in the legs was again missing I could stay calm all the time and controlled myself, not to brake anything or to cramp. So the mental focus was much better and relaxed. The pace was again between 3:20 and 3:30 for most of the time and given that the course was more challenging than the one I ran two days ago the performance was at least not worse than in that last race. Anyway, 3:20 would be marathon pace and there is still a lot of work to do until I am ready to go this pace for 42,2km.
Now I hope that I will have more opponents in the next competition, because this time I had a lead of 3minutes again and was not pushed at all. Most likely the next race will be the 10.000m track championships of my German home federal state of Saxony and there I hope that someone will kick my butt
May 21, 2009
Today was public holiday in Finland (“Helatorstai”, or Ascension Day in English) so a good opportunity to compete in a small race. The journey took me to the town of Alavus in South Ostrobothnia, Central Finland. It’s really nice that I can explore the country by means of the sport of running. The race office of the competition today was in a small school in the middle of the Finnish countryside and the prize ceremony took place in the biggest classroom. Really small and cosy, I guess the building has a long history.
Yeah, about the race: Unfortunately I had to run the whole 11km on my own again and I was only challenged by the clock. 100m after the start I was on my own and in the finish the next competitor came in more than 2 minutes behind me. Still I’m not too satisfied because the legs were feeling like rubber gum and even though I tried to change stride length and frequency: The feeling was still heavy and the muscled were tight. The pace of 3:20-3:25min/km is what I was planning to run but the course was not difficult and completely on asphalt, so it could have been a bit faster. After all it was not more than a medium-well training.
The weather was close to perfect, with temperatures around 15 degrees and some rain that felt like a warm summer rain already. Sometimes the air was a bit moist but altogether the conditions were enjoyable.
Now a good recovery and the next small competition on Saturday (most probably).
May 17, 2009
Another screwed weekend!! Fortunately it was not completely my fault this time. I was planning on running the long course (12K) in Finnish Cross Country Championships this Sunday (17.05.2009), but in the result lists you won’t find my name. The reason: We came some 10 minutes late for picking up the bib! We were on the site of the competition 80 minutes before the start but the registration for the mens long course was already closed. Last year it used to close 60 minutes before the start but this year they changed it to 90 minutes. They said it was because of the TV-broadcast and they couldn’t make an excuse, even if there were two other runners with the same problem of not arriving early enough.
Great – 500km of travelling for almost nothing. Still I went on, to do a 25K on my own in the Finnish forests, but of course that’s not the same. As an athlete you want to compete, you always want to challenge yourself and the opponents. Anyway, I tried to make the best out of it and tried to be not too upset, even if it was the first time I was not watching such an interesting race and did my own run instead. Somehow it would have broken my heart if I would have watched the guys giving their best in a race in which I should have competed (I mean I wasn’t injured or something).
After all I see this incidence as a motivation for the summer and the upcoming weeks of training. The year 2009 so far was so totally fu%&=)… up that this was just another kick in the ass. It can only get better in the next months.
May 10, 2009
On Saturday May 9 I ran the “city run” (katujuokso) in my Finnish home city Jyväskylä. Conditions were somewhat SISU-like (that is: typically Finnish). After most of the week was really nice and sunny the weather got bad just in time for the start of the race: temperatures were around 10°C plus rain and gusty winds didn’t make it too nice to run but that’s your choice as a runner.
The race was not too exciting because after 3-4 km I was on my own already and could use the race as a better training run. I have to think quite some time back, to remember my last race where I had a lead of over 6 minutes at the finish – maybe my winning margin was never that big. Positive for me was, that I had the lead car right in front of me and the guys in 2nd and 3rd place complained about the missing signposting on the course, so they sometimes went the wrong way as they found out afterwards. If they ran longer or shorter than 21,1 km could not be found out but at least there should be better and more signs next time. I guess I also wouldn’t have taken the right way if I would have been alone.
Anyway, it was an easy race for me and only on the last 4-5km my muscles got a bit cold and the stride was not super-easy anymore.
April 26, 2009
Finally I can rule off the month of April. With a 10th place in 1:10:01h finish at the Finnish halfmarathon Championships I would not have been satisfied 1 month ago, but since I had no aim except finishing the race after the troubles in April, I am not too disappointed now. Also the way the race went was giving me new hope. I ran even splits (10K:33:12min, 20K:66:22min)and caught up a lot of guys on the last third of the race. After 12km the engine started to role and I was sure to have a positive 2nd half (in the German Champs I didn’t even come to the 12K-mark).
The course was not as fast as expected and there were quite a lot of rolling hills and turns that broke the rhythm. In each of the 4 laps an altitude difference of 33m had to be covered – that made almost 140meters for the 21,1 km. On some parts the asphalt was also really old and uneven, so only few personal bests were achieved on the course. Also the fact that a 2008 olympic marathoner for Finnland (Francis Kirwa) ran a 1.08.56h makes it a bit easier to come over the own weak performance.
I was quite surprised when I saw the results list after coming home, because immediately after the race several people told me that the time was just under 1:10h. Since I didn’t run with an own time I can’t say something about for that but still I’m a bit confused that the time is over 1:10 – WTF?
Anyway. The April in overall was a big disappointment running-wise. Now I’ll decrease the training and concentrate on studying. I’ll still keep in shape for some races and the Finnish Cross-Country Championships where my club will have a team but in general the spring is over for me.
Erik Hass (6) and Joni Rautio (29) at around halfway of the Finnish Halfmarathon Championships (SM maantie) in Pyhäselkä 2009. (picture by Miika)
April 18, 2009
After deciding not to run the Osterlauf in Paderborn we (my coach and I) thought it would be a good training to run the Osterlauf in Schesslitz 2 days after the planned start in Paderborn. I achieved my goal of reaching the finish line and not dropping out of the race. After the DNF of the German Halfmarathon Championships and some bad training runs it was important to get the mind free again. Time and place are of course not what I would have expected 1 month ago, but at least I could fight through some downtimes during the race and at the end I even caught the 3rd place runner. Anyway I’m far away from being fit and the expectations for the spring season are scaled down.
April 5, 2009
The first major competition this year – the German Halfmarathon Championship - was a disaster. For the first time in my life I dropped out of a Championship-race on the road. After 11km the game was over.
The split time for 5K was 16:00min and 10K around 32:15min. That would still have been ok and a time of sub-68 would still have been theoretically possible. However, I was feeling too bad already and felt like I would not finish the race as I wanted to.
The weather was really hot (especially coming from the still icy Finland 20°C make you feel dizzy) and also a bit humid. The course was a flat 5,1K loop with quite a lot of turns and a 500m cobblestone part. After all the conditions were not perfect but still acceptable – since it was a championship race that doesn’t matter too much anyway.
Some of the excuses I can list here would include the long travel (more than 10hours, starting at 4AM German tine) before race day, my crash on the last weekend and the hot weather. From the start on I was not feeling fresh and never really found into my race. After around 4-5km I had a first big low point, where I could just hang in at the back of a group, not trying to loose to much ground. After recovering a bit and gaining some places The second down came at around 10K. By that time I felt really horrible – pain in the back, heavy legs, only the breathing was totally easy. Also the split of 32:15 was not as fast expected, or let’s say: I should have felt much more fresh for this split, maybe going for an even or negative split on the second part. But I never got into the “rolling” feeling and when I saw my coach at 11K and made a sign that I’m going hard he also said I should quit. So, with a big “SCHEISSE” the race was over for me, lying in around 15th to 20th place and still 10K to go.
Now I will have a detailed analysis of the race and hope to fix the things that went wrong. The next race is already next week and actually I’m glad about this fact, because right now I feel I can do better and I want to see the results of the several months of training.
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