Hello =)
I’m happy to say I finished the summer with no problems, while getting back into training.
I tried only one competition for the year, that being greek nationals :o, after I followed some type of short-to-long program in only 6 weeks that I had available, but it was more of a creative Stef-thing, since I was doing mostly hills for my special endurance, and whatever tempo I could accomplish.
(Bergamo’s Piazza Vecchia. According to Le Corbusier, ‘the most beautiful piazza in the world’).
I was in Bergamo 3 weeks before the meeting, and those 2 weeks that I spent there were truly very challenging, as my phd obligations had me occupied in studios, lectures and workshops from 9am until midnight, and sometimes the early hours of the morning. I would grab my colleague’s bike during lunch break, and ride to the stadium for a quick 1-hr speed session, or I would jog up Citta Alta (the High City), and do some 200m hills, or go to another gorgeous flat field up there, overlooking beautiful Bergamo, positioned in the middle of hills, to do my tempo…
It would have been a lovely place for training camp, if all the stress were absent.
However, I had a great load of experiences, knowledge, stimuli and creativity to work with…
View from my 200m hill on Citta Alta:
My tempo field:
The most charming feeling was the calamity of feeling good, with no physical problems whatsoever. If any sort of shin splint were to peak out of nowhere, I would simply hook me on the EMS at like 1:30am, in the tv room of the hostel, and fall asleep until the machine “beep”. Then sleepwalking to my room, and falling in the deepest sleep possible. Surprizingly, every morning I felt refreshed.
Just mentally tired. The physical fatigue came in the second week, however, it is a blur to me now.
I had a dilemma of picking an event coming back to Greece :rolleyes:.
a)For the 100m, I had not worked enough acceleration and pure speed.
b)For the 200m, I had not worked a), and no special endurance specific for it.
c) For the 400m, although I had tried following a progressive S-L program, my tempo was never enough, and my special endurance was only up to 200+80+80, on grass, up a hill.
I did a 200m test 9 days before the Race, but wanting so badly to feel good, I ordered the wrong kind of Guarana :o, which was apparently mixed inside of red wine, appropriate for “spiritual enlightment”. I ended up feeling dizzy beforehand, and later highly dehydrated, and performed a pathetic 28". I decided to drop the 200 that day.
Three days later I decided to perform a 300m test. No Guarana this time :rolleyes:. I felt like crap warming up, it was 8pm and I had no energy. However, my splits were 13 and 26, and then I died. I finished in 43.
I wasn’t that happy about my condition, I felt like I had worke on some sort of speed but was not in any kind of state to hold it for more than like 40m… , however I was persuaded by my sister and a couple of friends to just go and have fun, and run the 400m, also because the national level was relatively low this year.
And so I did.
I felt very good that morning, the preliminary race was scheduled at 10:45am on a Saturday, and we had a short delay and ran at 11. It was VERY hot, at 34 degrees Celsius, but luckily there was no wind. (We ran at the stadium where the IAAF Final Grand Prix is going to take place in September).
My speed was very good that day, but obviously my body was not trained for a 400m this summer. Two people were taking my splits, and both agreed to a 12.5" 100m, then a 25.8" 200m, then I started seeing things blurry and slowed down to a 42" 300m, then both my hamstrings seriously cramped and I had to stop at 320m. I don’t believe I gave up. My body was seriously not letting me finish.
To be honest, I was not disappointed with what I had accomplished. It was indeed my first race ever that I DNF and that felt like a personal let down, but it’s ok now…
(My race, I am on lane 8. ).
