Long runs in Collserola

Between Friday and today, Sunday, I decided to do long runs along the track of the Collserola Mountain Marathon. During my first try I missed a critical trail and headed in a different direction and decided to continue the adventure and just learn about a new part of this beautiful training ground. Since summer has finally arrived both days I left home early to avoid the heat and sunshine.

On both days I started from home and joined the marathon trail near the Tibidabo. It is always nice to have a new day start with a beautiful sunrise.

 The beginning was familiar ground for me since I have run there many times, though it is always a pleasure to run here since it is a more humid and more fairytale kind of forest.

After a long mostly downhill stretch I arrived in the area near Sant Cugat where a famous pine tree, el Pi de Can Xandri is marking the landscape with Montserrat in the background.

Just at this point the trail turns left and goes along a corn field and here I made the mistake the first day. The trail is marked quite well with green arrows, but not here so I missed the right turn more or less half way of the field and continued straight onwards to Sol i Aire and les Planes crossing underneath the highway to join the marathon trail going up on Cami de Can Balasch. Today I took the right turn and if you look carefull enough the green arrows guide you well enough from there onwards.

 Part of the trails are wide and easy to run, but there are also long stretches of stony "canals", very narrow paths that are carved out by rain water over the years. At some point just passed a paved road called, La Carretera de la Arrebasada, some green arrows indicate to go left, the path is hardly to been seen here, but going left through the pine trees somewhat further down the path becomes more clear.

The only other point where I missed the green arrows at first is just passed Can Flo in La Floresta where you have to climb up this steep hill, cross a street and continue the climb a while more to find more green arrows to indicate the way.

Soon after the trail goes winding through a very nice area, with great views of the surroundings and at some point you can see Montserrat again far away, with a faint rainbow on the left in this picture.

 

After entering La Floresta again and running along the edge of this area of houses scattered on the mountain side I crossed the highway high above this time and soon I started the long climb to Castellví along the trail I mentioned earlier, Cami Can Balasch. I will repeat the trail again some day soon and do the full marathon from its original starting point and time it to compare my training pace to the race pace of October last year.

Cursa La Maquinista - 10k

Today the 12th race of the Barcelona Challenge 10k. I did not as well as I hoped for finishing in 38m56. I guess that after two weeks of more than 100k mountaintraining each and one week of normal 10k training the body is not ready for the full 10k at my highest pace.

The day started with no clouds to be seen like yesterday when we had some very heavy rain in the morning. Eventhough it was not warm yet, it might be very quickly. I arrived in the start area well on time and around 8 o'clock I handed in my backpack and started my warmup. Just before 9 I entered the red box and waited to be shot away. The first kilometer was quick in 3m33 and the second was exactly on the 37 minutes schedule in 7m24. The third kilometer had a climb in it but I still passed in 11m00. Maybe I should have done the climb a bit more easy. In spite of passing the 4k marker exactly on schedule for 37 minutes in 14m48 I felt I was getting tired already and on to the 5th kilometer I dropped pace to pass in 18m40. It was starting to be very warm and the 6th and 7th kilometer went slow and the 8th with the uphill I was running above 4 minutes per k. I braced myself for the last two kilometers and sprinted the last part to the finish to stay within 39 minutes.

This race concludes the Barcelona Challenge 10k 2012/2013. It has been fun to run all the races and also in doing so I gathered enough points to be second in the ranking of my age group. I am certainly not the fastest, but running all races gave me the points I needed. After the mountain season I will get back to the shorter distances on the road, though next year I will not run all 12 races and I will have a go at 5k and maybe even shorter.