Cursa Sant Antoni - 10k

 After the half marathon of last week today an easy 10k run near home. Recovery has been slow ofcourse and I have no expectations for todays run. The fun part is that Jordi, my son, also signed up and he was going to try and break 40 minutes. After yet another very very rainy day, today luckily we woke up to a rather cloudless sky, though it was very windy and cold. We left early and got off the metro at Plaça Catalunya to run to the  start area from there. We took of the warmer layers and left them in a backpack since we would certainly need them after finishing. In the drop off area I see one of my trail buddies, Barend den Drooge. He is running as an assistant runner with a visually handicapped runner.

The warmup was just some easy running and soon we entered our start boxes. I had arranged for Jordi to be able to start in the green box, but he forgot his bracelet so he would start more at the back. In the end that would not matter too much since his box was the first of the second wave, meaning he would have a clear road ahead of him as well.

At 9am we started our run and the first 2k is mainly being carefull and not fall since there are people that go slow up front and others that go fast coming from behind pushing and cutting you off. As soon as we turn on to Gran Via. As always I went out quite fast but I just went with it and up to 5k I was just behind 45 minutes pace. Just before the 5k marker Jordi passed me saying he was doing ok. After the 5k I slowly had to let the 4m35 pace go and around 9k I was close to 5m per kilometer pace. I saw on my watch that with a 4m50 I maybe could just go under 48 minutes, so the last kilometer I pushed a little bit and indeed just managed to finished under 48 minutes with a time of  47m59s. Jordi accomplished his goal and ran 39m25s, which for the amount of training he does is a very good result. Also this will help to get into a better box for upcoming races.

The coming weeks I will start training for the next Ultra season, but maybe I can slot in some shorter races.

La Mitja de Granollers - 21km

On the 29th of January, the day after the race in Castelldefels I made a wrong move training in the gym and injured my lower back. The day after I had an appointment with a Physiotherapist at KINEA, so instead of doing leg work we fully focused on the lower back. With a list of exercises to do every day and no running for what I expected to be at least a month my first concern was to at least be able to travel for work on the 12th of January.  The first week all movement was complicated and a week later at the PT and more release massage on the whole of my back the PT suggested to try some running to see if the body would tolerate that counting on muscle memory. So the next day I went to the gym to do an easy upper workout and then tried to run one kilometer. It was very uncomfortable, but at least I could finish 1k. Two days after I repeated and this time it was slightly more easy to finish 1k. The week after I did some slightly long runs of around 4k with some strength training in between and eventhough I was not at all sure I could run on sunday I did pick up my bib number for the half marathon of Granollers on saturday.

Back home I went to the gym to try and run 3k on the treadmill at a normal pace, and much to my surprise that went very well. So I decided to try for the impossible and go and run 21km.

The weather forecast was not too good, predicting rain througout the morning. On saturday it already had been raining very hard, so hopefully it was just less rain than the day before.

When I arrived and parked my car it was already raining, so I was happy to have taken with me full gear for bad weather.

I walked to the sports center where we could drop of a bag and changed into my running gear, more or less dressed as I would do for an ultra. 

Some people in spite of the cold and rain still went out in minimal clothing, but I did not want to risk catching a cold today.

Just about when I arrived at the door to see if it was still raining it seemed to have stopped so I left for a a short warmup run. It soon started raining again, and it didn't seem to be stopping soon. I went to the starting area and around 10h30 am we started our run.

My plan was to first just go slow and see what pace that would be. After the first very crowded kilometers it seemed like a good pace was around 5m15, which maybe would allow a sub 2h time. I passed the first 5k in 26m21 and I was just mainly trying to go easy and avoid the puddles that were every where. Slowly we left Granollers on our way to La Garriga where we would turn around and go the same way back. Around 7km the front runners came by already heading back to Granollers. Meanwhile I was battling the short uphill stretches before reaching that town and passed the 10k marker in 54m13 already running 5m30 pace. 

finished