7 days to Finnish Championships and the shape could be better – much better

July 24, 2009

Just as last week a track workout was scheduled for Friday. I also did a steady state run with team mate Marko Partanen on Tuesday, where we ran something around 34:30min for 10K. We went out a bit too fast in this exercise (3:22/21/22 for the first 3 K) and instead of getting faster we slowed down towards the end – still a good exercise for the marathon. As Marko is going for the World Masters Athletics Championships (28.7-8.8.2009) he should have the opportunity to win a medal in the marathon of the 40-years age category if he stays injury-free.

I recovered well from this exercise and was prepared for today’s 2.000m-repeats. The first 3 runs went as expected with times of 6:20/6:40 and 6:20 even if the 3rd one could have been a bit faster but I felt pretty exhausted already. The 4th-run was 6:39min, so what was meant to be marathon-pace but was really tough already. After this run I decided to double my recovery period but in the last (the 5th) run I still could only hold on for 1K in 3:10-pace. I felt like all-out and had to lay down for a while to recover.

In conclusion this exercise showed me, that I’m not where I wanted to be. It’s only one week to Finnish Championships/Kalevan Kisat but I feel like I did some better workouts some three weeks ago. Seems the flu took it’s toll and I have to adjust my aims for the race next week. Maybe 31:30 would be a good and realistic time to aim for.