Goodbye 2011

What a year 2011 was! For me it was full of proud achievements and great friends (new and old). First and foremost the thing I'm most proud of is getting through what is probably the most stressful period of my life; the first 4 months of living in Munich.

Moving abroad is an incredibly large step and not one that should be taken lightly, or with any doubt in your ability to achieve what is necessary to stay. Of this, I think, I can speak from experience. When I moved I had neither the financial security to guarantee safety or the confidence in my ability to confidently assume my new position at Sony Ericsson. Throw in the requirement to pass a driving test in Germany within a very short time-frame or I would lose the job, and you have a melting pot of stress, anxiety and sleepless nights that even looking back on it now curdles my gut.

Well; all's well that ends well. For that my first mention is Mara Börger, my driving instructor, who was instrumental in me fulfilling this requirement. She's one of the only people that knew the stress I was under, and could tell when I was so uncharacteristically nervous when she picked me up for my test! I got a bit of good fortune that day, because unknown to me, we booked my test on her birthday. The examiner knew this and, as a present to her, made my test relatively short.

After this things were really looking up. I'd made a good impression at work, made a lot of friends and was enjoying literally every hour of my days. This is thanks in a large part to everyone's favourite "Stammtisch", Dienstag Drinks, organised by Magda Dubiel and Erin Beaton.

In addition to the new friends I've made, what made me happiest I think was that I hadn't lost my friends from England, I would see them when I went home and my closest friends have all visited me! So a special thanks go out to Erik Orrgarde and Sarah Nicholson for the most mental of all visits and to Holly Adams, Chris Morrison, for being visiting TWICE! I guess Mike Fearon also deserves a special mention, but most of the events from that tip can't be told because we might go to jail!

So here are my favourite events:

• Very stupidly getting lost cycling up a mountain in Austria
• Erik's bongo drumming in the crazy bongo club
• My Bavarians & Barbarians housewarming party
• Oktoberfest
• Getting caught with my trousers down in a hospital ward...
• Throwing rocks off a mountain with Aditi, Jamin and Erin
• Prague with Magda and Birgit Hillebrand

This picture has not made it on my blog yet, mostly because it happened before I started the blog. The guy on the left is Erik at the bongo club. The other guy desperately wanted his picture taken with us. Erik is like WTF...

Thanks to my GPS tracker I can tell you how far I've cycled and ran this year. I've ran 267 miles (the equivalent of running from Munich to Bern in Switzerland) and I've cycled 609 miles (in total like cycling from Munich back to London!)

What a fun year, thanks a lot to all those that made it special :) 

Viel Spaß homies

Prague Part 1 - Holland Declares War against the Czech Republic!

Once again my wanderlust took control of me, and with the aid of some friends of mime who share this particular character trait we decided that Prague would be the next city we visit! My companions for the trip would be my friends Birgit and Magdalena in the above picture.

After some research into the travel choices I realised that it was not only cheaper to take the bus, but also faster than the train! No brainer really. What can go wrong? Well, as it turns out a lot (it wouldn't be one of my blogs if everything went right ;) ). The ticket said we would travel from Hauptbahnhof Arnulfstraße (main station on the street Arnulfstraße). I assumed this meant Munich's main bus station, which is on that street. Lesson 1, don't assume anything!

So when I got to the main bus station Magda was already there, and told me we go from platform 4. Great, I thought. Time for a drink then! Then Birgit joined the party, looking like she was going to war! Unfortunately I can't show you a picture yet, I guess she deleted them...

After poking some fun at her for her bag and attire we went down to where the buses depart, about 25 minutes before departure. Platform 4 had a train to Istanbul, probably not stopping in Prague then! I saw that there was one going to Poland via the Czech Republic departing the same time as ours. So I assumed that was the correct one. Remember lesson 1?

We waited and waited but the bus did not come, then 20 minutes after scheduled departure the sign changed to a different departure. Now we were at panic stations, and very angry with the Deutsche Bahn (with whom I booked the tickets). I asked Magda if she could talk on the phone to the DB service line to find out what happened. They said we had no idea (all 5 people and the machine!) and said we had to talk to someone at the DB service point in the main train station.

So we queued up, but that did not mean we had to stop partying! We had already started drinking some of the hot glüwein that Birgit brought. That was probably the most fun I've had in a queue. Well we eventually made it to the front and Magda talked to the guy (because my German is not good and hers is perfect). We discovered (as you might have guessed) that the bus didn't actually go from the main bus station but from a drop-off/taxi point. He did agree however that the ticket was misleading and did us the great favour (which he did not have to do) and signed and stamped the reverse of our tickets saying that we can take a train.

Excellent! We even got to travel with in the comfort of a train compartment. WIN! Until the ticket collector came and said that it wasn't valid. Well, actually she said it was like buying chips at McDonald's and claiming them at Burger King. Bugger, we had to pay, but the ticket girl said we could get the Deutsche Bahn to pay it back. That reminds me, I need to go and sort that out...

Well, as it happened it wasn't expensive ( less than 25 € pp ) and we got to travel in comfort, and we actually made it to Prague that night. We were all to knackered to party that night because we arrived after 12 and the girls had already slept on the train. Thankfully, we did have enough energy between us for a night cap at the hotel bar. Lovely Jonny Walker Black Label, and the same price as the Red :)

That makes day 1 of the trip, and a natural end to part 1 of this already lengthy blog. I promise more pictures for the next one!

Viel Spaß homies!

Why Kettlebells Rock

Hello Readers!

This is an exciting exercise week for me (if such a thing is allowed!) because I have received my order for some new kettlebells. These are the exercise tool that, alongside ChiRunning, got me out of a major down point in my life. The situation was that I was quite overweight at around 16 stone (over 100Kg) and none of it was muscle.

My parents had membership to a posh gym, where they met Roger and Claire, who were personal trainers there. Due to a disagreement with the management there they left there and started their own studio gym, for just them to train (and punish!) willing candidates. I was one of these candidates.

Claire got straight to work on me, and discovered that the reason I got so many injuries while running was that my core stability muscles were very weak, and I was asking small muscle groups to do difficult tasks, which leads to injury. One example of this is shin splints; if you get shin splints then you are probably using the small muscle on the front of your shin to do part of the pushing forward when you run. This is an incredibly small muscle for that kind of task and so gets fatigued quickly and can no longer perform its primary function when you run, which is to aid in keeping your foot stable on the floor under the impact of your stride.

In order to fix this for me I was trained on how to use kettlebells, which helped me to become strong and flexible enough to be able to successfully change my running technique. Since then I actually have never actually had an injury from running, so it seems to have worked!

So how does it work?

This is the all important swing, if you play the video you can see how the swing uses all muscle groups in the legs. It increases strength, endurance and flexibility all in one. Also, you can see that the movement is aimed at driving your body forward, all important for running. I have already noticed an improvement in my power and speed, having just ran a new distance personal best of 15 miles, and managed to keep it under 10 minutes per mile. The training is really starting to pay off!

This is the website for their studio, located in Bracknell, England. Drop them a line if you're interested in learning the techniques.

Viel Spaß homies!

Marathon Mini Series: Updated Training Plan

So the change to my training plan has come about because of 2 things; the speedier progress up to the half marathon than I predicted, and the arrival of my new kettlebells!

My next post will explain why kettlebell training is excellent for runners, but bear with me until then. The working week starts on Monday, but the running week starts on Sunday, so I'll start there:

Sunday
On Sundays is when I will do my long runs. The goal is for every time to increase my maximum running distance by 1 mile, but it is also OK to consider it a recovery run every now and then if my body is fatigued, and save that longer one for the next week. Hopefully this tactic will help me stave off injuries, especially in the critical last 6 weeks of the training.

Monday
Will always be a rest day.

Tuesday
Kettlebell VO2 Max training. Is really good for improving how efficiently oxygen can be delivered to the working muscles, making you a more efficient runner.

Wednesday
This will be for medium runs, usually about half of the distance of the previous long run, but about 30 sec/mile faster. This is to hopefully make me able to run the race at a faster pace.

Thursday
Kettlebell strength training, will build core, lower and upper body strength. It's helpful to give me an extra training day but without adding running miles and reducing the change of impact injuries.

Friday
Fridays are for a short recovery run to expel some of that built up lactic acid to put me in top condition for the long run on Sunday

Saturday
A well earned rest day, but if I have plans for Sunday then I can swap the long run to Saturday

16 weeks of following most of this program and then 2 weeks tone down and recovery should put me in tip-top condition for race day. I can't wait now, I'm even looking forward to the long run on Sunday, planning for 15 miles :)

Viel Spaß homies!

Marathon Mini Series: 50% down, 80% to go

Before I start, no I haven't forgotten how to do maths!

So yesterday I ran 14 miles, which was my furthest ever run, and my fastest ever half marathon. The half marathon time was 2:13:57, which was faster than my only other half marathon by over 10 minutes! I think this time will get faster as I get more miles in my legs.

That is 50% of the distance that I need to run in one go, but I believe I have only put in about 20% of the effort so far in order to reach my goal. The rest of the 80% is made up of the next 18 weeks in which I will be running about 400 miles, that's a long way to go! Even just writing that figure is daunting, considering only 26 are actually required for the run.

That said however, I only need to add 12 miles to my long run and have 18 weeks to do so, that puts a kind of better slant on it right?

I'm still enjoying the runs, no injuries, so it seems I am making regular and uneventful progress. Not exactly good for writing a blog about it :)

Viel Spaß homies!

Marathon Mini Series: 6-week sitrep

So far I have mostly been posting about my plans and very little on the progress that I have actually made, so here is an update.

6 weeks is a long time when it comes to training plans and quite a lot has happened, but thankfully it was largely uneventful progress. There was one week where I was set back with a sprained ankle, which meant I had to skip one long run. Believe it or not the ankle sprain was not when I was out on a run, or playing football or anything like that, it was running for the bus! So another run-in with a bus got me injured. What am I like eh?

In total I have ran 95.5 miles in these 6 weeks, with the longest one of these being yesterday, a 12 miler completed in 1:57:56. I am very pleased because I managed to keep up a good pace the entire run and also have enough energy for a fast finish. Take a look at the split times (time to complete each mile):

The last 3 miles were my fastest ones, this demonstrates a big change in my running gestalt, where previously I would run to fast too early and not be able to make it through the difficult endurance periods. Now even for long distances I can moderate my energy expenditure better and pay attention to what my heart rate is telling me for a much better long distance running style.

In this time my motivation and determination have not wavered, and every week after my long run I get more and more confident that I can complete the marathon next March.

My message to my readers is that our bodies limitations are only set by your mind, which you yourself have complete control over. If you have a target or a goal for something believe in yourself and anything is possible.

Viel Spaß homies!

Stupid Sexy Flanders

Do any of you remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Flanders go skiing together? Flanders turns up in skin-tight ski gear and tells Homer that "It feels like I'm wearing nothing at all" and Homer later imagines him saying that in a thought bubble shaking his arse. This sketch often comes to mind when I'm out running in Munich (and no I'm not coming out!)

I was taken by surprise by the number of runners wearing skin-tight ruining clothes. Especially compared to places I have ran in England and to a lesser extent America. Perhaps the Germans (or continental Europeans) like more showing off their glutes! As I'm feeling more and more absorbed into the culture and I'm training for a marathon this winter I thought I'd get in on that spandex action! So on my run today I was rocking the spandex 3/4 length trousers, and let me tell you, it does feel like you're wearing nothing at all!

 Viel Spaß homies!