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...