Gamlárshlaup ÍR a.k.a Old Year Run 2007

Registered to run the December 31st run, last year I did this run in 51 min 59 sec and was not very happy with the result. I am going to try to break the 50 minutes barrier again this year, however it looks like the weather Gods are not going to cooperate, according to the Icelandic weather forecasting the wind is going to blow at 10 m/s which is not that much compared to what it has been yesterday, it was close to 25 m/s and it has been raining. I think this is probably the worst condition that I have ever seen in Iceland.

Anyway, I am going to run and hopefully do it in a respectable time. Wish me luck :)

Berlin Marathon 4:04:20!

It was incredible & unforgettable! running the last km and seeing the Brendenburg Gate and more than 10,000 people cheering... I was very happy and delighted to have completed the berlin marathon and acheive my personal best.

To put things in perspective I have run 5 marathons in the last 13 months and I don´t recommend doing this! It has been one heck of an experience to learn about myself and my limits. I have promised my wife that I will concentrate on doing maybe one or two marathons a year from now on!

I accomplished one of the goals of beating my personal best, here is the official result. I was impressed with the result certificate. Here is the split up of my time and average pace:

I was quite impressed with the organization and the event management. There were 40000+ runners and everything went very smoothly atleast for me and our team from Iceland.

Haile Gebrselassie broke the world record at 2:04:26, what an incredible acheivement!!! I can tell from running 5 marathons, every second improvement is an accomplishments and he shattered the world record by more than 29 seconds.

Everyone from my running group did very well, Villi and Joi my buddies did great! Villi completed the marathon in 3:24:24 and Joi in 3:37:40. I am very proud to have been running with them and to see them accomplish their goals. It was Joi´s personal best.

Berlin Marathon Day

It is Marathon day and I am up at 5am, excited about the day. checked the weather and it is going to be perfect :) about 12 to 14 degrees celsius. Last evening was great, had a sports massage and a 10 minute sauna, showered and ate a lot of pasta. Went to bed around 11pm. To summarize everthing is going according to plan, I bought myself a new pair of shoes Brooks Trancer 7. I feel very good in the shoes and it matches my outfit :) I am sure my wife will be very proud of me.

Three goals for the day:
1. Beat my personal best of 4:08
2. Less than 4:00
3. Less than 3:49 :), my colleague Jan Forsbom has challenged me that he did the Berlin Marathon in that time and I should be able to beat it as I am a younger man than he! well, it is a stretch but I am going to give it my best shot.

Training Log Updated

I lost most of my training data just before the Reykjavik Marathon. But I have updated my training log with whatever I could salvage. I have to admit that it looks rather bleek with me just having run 152 kms so far, but I know that I had about 350 km or something like that before I ran the Reykjavik Marathon so I am feeling ok. I missed running a long run this weekend because I went to the sports massage and I was hurting after that... just wanted to heal before I took a long run.

I have been focusing on building up speed by doing more tempo and speed workouts. I have to admit I am not feeling very confident with my performance so far... lets see what the next couple of weeks transpires into.

Picture from Reykjavik Marathon

This is a picture that was taken by ASI, I ran the last 50 meters carrying my daughter... I was amazed to notice that my wife, mom, dad, father-in-law and friend in the background. Thank you Alex (my colleague) for pointing out the picture. Though I have to admit it was quite expensive (Euro 25) to get one picture.

4:16:18 Reykjavik Marathon 2007

It was a perfect day... bright and sunny, but cool with no wind. I was probably in the best of spirits and energy. Ari Danielsson a colleague of mine started the race with me and we stayed together for about 25 km, then I broke away feeling that I was slowing down. During the 25km, I had not put vaseline or bandaid over my chest to prevent my nipples from brasing, it started to bleed so I was a little distracted but I just accepted the fact that it was going to be the case and I cannot do anything about it. I found some vaseline at the 15th km and I found another colleague, Harald Haraldsson, who was watching the marathon and he had a bicycle and requested him to find some bandaid or tape... I got the tape around the 17th km... Thank you Halli, but the tape did not hold and I was bleeding badly, I just kept a positive mind that I can do nothing about it and I should just keep on.

I was feeling extremely strong and I was hardly tired, it was perfect until the 30th km... then my thigh muscle was tightening, by then Ari had caught up with me and he was feeling great. I was very proud that he was feeling strong and running well as he had a bad experience in NY Marathon last year. I stopped to stretch and Ari carried on... he finished in 4:01.

From 31st km to the end of the marathon it was horrible pain, every muscle in my leg was cramping.... especially my big muscles in my thigh and the muscles behind my knee and the calf muscle. I had to stop and stretch, walk and at times crawl the last 12km. It was very hard and I felt disappointed as I was going to break the 4 hour barrier this time. The first 30 km I ran at an average pace of 5 min and 19 seconds, if I had kept up the pace I would have finished the marathon in 3:44:19 even if I slowed down by another 25 seconds I would have finished the marathon in 3:59:08... but I finished the marathon in 4:16:18!

I think mentally I was quite strong to have finished the marathon because there were several instances when my body was screeming to stop but I kept on because I had a very positive outlook the entire way. I was running for a cause, to help build schools and bring learning and knowledge to girls who are shut out from everything positive and decent about the world.

I am looking forward to Berlin Marathon, and I am determined to beat the 4 hour barrier. I wanted to thank all those who contributed money towards Central Asia Institute and my running from the bottom of my heart. You made a difference and I hope we can make this world a better place to live in by our simple acts of kindness.

So thank you and your inspiration made me finish the marathon!

Marathon day

Getting ready to run the Reykjavik Marathon... it is very exciting although I have already run 3 marathons.



Food:

I had pasta and noodles last night and museli & granola with AB Lite milk.



Money raised so far:

235.500 ISK ~ US$3485.79



Statistics
I lost my statistics but I know I had run about 350 km

Reykjavik Marathon & Central Asia Institute

I decided to run the Reykjavik Marathon and the Berlin Marathon. The reason I decided to run the Reykjavik Marathon is to maximize the charity donation that I can contribute. My bank is donating US $ 45.75 per km to a charity of choice of the runner.

As I had mentioned in my previous posting, I am devoting all my fund raising activity to contribute towards the exceptional work that Greg Mortensen is doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is my Hero and I hope whoever is reading this post can contribute something to his effort to educate girls and women in place where there is very little value placed on women and girls!

Flora London Marathon Result: 4 hrs 8 min & 10 sec!

Finished the Flora London Marathon in 4 hours 8 minutes and 10 seconds (official result here), it was a 4 minutes and 20 seconds improvement from my personal best. It was a great experience and I would recommend running one of the major marathon to anyone. It was incredible to watch a sea of people in front of me the entire time I was running.

I did not manage to acheive my goal of under 4 hours, I guess I was holding back during the run as it was one of the hottest days in London and people were collapsing all aroud me while I was running. However, I don't want to use that as an excuse for my performance! I have learnt a bit more about my capacity to compete and I will acheive this goal in my next marathon.

I was thinking about running the Glitnir Reykjavik Marathon but my buddy Villi is trying to convince me that I should run the Berlin marathon in the end of September. I have not decided yet... as always the blog will be update with what I am planning to do!

10k in 50:06 personal best

I improved on my personal best in 10km last wednesday in Oslo. I was running with couple of my buddies and I was quite surprised that I was able to do 10km in 50 minutes and 6 seconds at an average pace of 5 min/km. That is a 2 minutes improvement from my previous best in the Reykjavik.

Training update

As you can see in my training log on the right... I have been keeping up with the running although it has not been easy with all the travel and long meetings that I have been facilitating. My ITB is getting better, I figured out if I maintain a good posture I don't have the pain. I have been doing the strength training exercise and stretching quite a bit. I am feeling good lets see how it transpires. I got my London Marathon Running Number 57195. I am extremely excited about the marathon... and the magazine was quite inspiring.
I did 27 km today, but my goal was 30! The reason was I lost my energy gels while I was running and I had done about 2 and half hours of running without any supplement and when I reached for the gel it was gone!!! it was quite disappointing and I realized that I might get into a fix if I tried to run the entire run without any supplement. But on the positive note, I was feeling very good running the entire 2 hours and 39 minutes with just water.

iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS)

Well, for the past couple of weeks I have been suffering from iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS). I think it is probably due to a couple of reasons:
1. My right leg is 4mm shorter than my left leg
2. I increased the total distance to 60km per week the week before I got the pain on my knee
3. My legs are not that strong

I have been addressing point 3 by doing strength training, mainly weight lifting and cross training. But could not do anything about the fact that I got it. Today I had a good 9.56km run in the treadmill and I have been stretching a lot and doing a number of exercises to strengthen my iliotibial band. April 22 is approaching quite fast and I feel like I need to do a couple of long runs so tomorrow I am planning to do 30km very slow maybe around 6 min 30 sec pace per km.

I found a good blog post on the strength training exercise for the Iliotibial Band.

Long run comparisons... disappointing :(

I ran 29.13 km last sunday and I was curious to see the difference between that run and a long run that I did as part of my preparation for Reykjavik Marathon. To my surprise I have not improved that much, I have improved 4.37% in my pace and about 2% in my heart rate. It was quite disappointing, but I have time to improve as I have started to change my work out schedule. I am doing a lot more speed and tempo runs and strength training on my legs...

10 KM in 47 min 46 seconds

Ran my personal best 10km this morning in 47 min and 46 seconds. I have been improving on my 10km for the last 3 runs. I did 50 min and 15 seconds a week back, improved it to 49 min and 59 seconds and today the time above. I feel good about the runs, however I feel like I have been cheating 'cos I have been running on the treadmill. I guess it would not be my best until I run the distance in the time outside... Planning to do a long run tomorrow for 25 km

Went out running, returned in a Taxi!!!

Alright, everyone can laugh at me now. I guess I was foolish to take a long run after I ran twice yesterday. My buddy Villi wanted to run 25 to 30km today and I said "Sure, why not!"... Bad idea. Everything was fine until the 19km although I was running slower than Villi and Lilja, at the 19th km my whole leg started cramping and I was sooo hungry that my stomach was cramping and my hands were freezing. I had to really collect myself to get to a place where I could be warm and get a ride to the gym. I ran for another couple of km and found a Pizza Hut, how badly did I want to order a whole pizza and eat it! Now I understand how Dean was feeling when he ordered a Pizza and Cheese cake while he was running the 293 miles rally. Anyway, made it back to the gym in one piece, because I called a taxi and when I got to the gym, my wife and mother-in-law were standing with Villi, his wife laughing at me!!! I thought it was funny as well...

21.67 km today and a training tip!

I have been feeling quit @#$% the last week, have not been running regularly. I am getting frustrated that I am not making efforts to learn Icelandic and work has been hectic! However, last evening, left work at 4:20pm and ran inside the gym for about 30 minutes at less than 5 min/km pace... while I was doing that I decided that I will do a long run on Saturday morning. So headed out at 9:15am (wanted to start earlier but was too tired to wake before 8am), while I was running I met with Asgeir and he was running on the opposite direction, he turned around and wanted to know how long I was going to run and he felt that it might be too long for him! I was like "Asgeir! no distance is long for you!" The man ran 23.5 km the weekend before with me and Joi, did a bike ride on the same evening and the next day went and climbed Esja, the mountain just outside Reykjavik!

Anyway, he ran most of the distance with me and I learnt something very interesting from Asgeri that I should try to do atleast one run during the week with my heart rate less than 160 and when I do that my body learns to burns fat for energy instead of Carbohydrates! That was a very valuable advice for me given that I am always running at 175 bpm or above during my runs!

Ok... today was the toughest training run!

I ran 23.5 km in one of the worst conditions here in Iceland. The day was beautiful, absolutely clear and still... I cannot say the same to the trail that we were running. It is called the Heidmork trail, It was a lot of uphills and we had snow upto 30 cm and the temperature was close to -18.
The trail was the most beautiful that I have run so far, we could see the entire city of Reykjavik when we we almost to the top and it was literally no-one except the 3 of us and it was only 15 mintues from the city.
By the time we finished my face was covered in Ice formed from my sweat... it was quite dramatic! My running partners Asgeir and Joi were in better shape than I was so it was less tougher for them. I have updated my london marathon running log

London training runs so far...

Hardest workout session ever!

I ran 19.76km yesterday (Jan 13,'07) in -5 degrees celius and 10 to 12 inches of snow! It was my hardest workout ever and I was extremely glad when it was over :) but my running group was maybe 15 minutes faster than I was and they completed the same distance sooner. I don't want to make excuses so I thought I could have done better until I saw my heart monitor my max heart rate was close to 205 bpm which is the highest that I have recorded so far so I guess net net I pushed myself quite hard and I am quite happy about it.

It was extremely nice to spend some time in the spa after such a tough workout, we spent maybe 15 mintues in the hottest sauna, then dipped our legs to the hip in ice-cold water for about 5 minutes and rested in a lazy-boy sofa for another 15 minutes.

To top off the day, my bank had our New Year Gala party for customers in the evening and I can say that it was the party of the year yet!! Hats off to the Events Team of Glitnir Marketing!!!