Ignore the above… I’ll get through it.
Monday, May 4th (Milan)
> Warm Up / Isometrics
> 5 x 20m A skips
> 6 x 20m B skips
> 6 x 20m straight leg bounds
> 6 x 20m running A skips
> 4-5 x 20m accelerations (I wasn’t counting…
> 4-5 x 30-40m runs (I don’t really know… )
Tuesday, May 5th:
> Upper body rebound reps (150)
> Isometrics
> 6 x 30m A skips
> 3 x 30m B skips
> 5 x 80m running A skips
I am not sure what’s wrong with me, my hamstrings are still very sore from last week, I’m generally tired, I slept 8hrs two nights ago, 3 hours yesterday afternoon, 8 hours again last night and now in the afternoon I am also so very sleepy…
Maybe I’m burnt out from trying to comprehend seminars that were all in italian this week. :rolleyes:
Yesterday’s session fatigued me a lot.
Oh and now my left groin is sore.
:o
I’ve also lost some more weight, not so much deliberately, but it happened… That’s a personal ‘yay’.
I only wish I had no knee issue. I will have to take it very conservatively… Again. Blah… This is not for me. 
EMS training today.
John I might listen to you…
Saturday, May 9th, 2009:
Well I wanted to research some EMS stuff… I couldn’t help it…
On another note… I’ve been very sick since you said that John :eek:
For once I thought I had the swine flu… But I have been having just two strong symptoms: a terrible headache (It hurt to look up or left or right… and if I sneezed or coughed I thought that I would pass out from pain. YIkes) and a fever (38.5 Celsius). Both symptoms are still ongoing, but I decided yesterday to do the Stef-groundbreaking move and go to the pharmacist for some medicine (I think my last medicine was 5 years ago), so temperature has dropped to more sane values, and less headache makes life more functionable…
My whole body was aching and sore for 3 days, and still is, but I am feeling considerably better…
At least my knee got better from this.
I have been sleeping for 9 hours each night, and during the day after my meetings, I laid down for another 5. And I’m still always sleepy.
I wonder how much strength I have lost.
The strangest thing is being on my own, as I am craving mom-soup all the time :o !!!
That was my ranting for the day =)
Now I am really taking a break, and will get back on my feet again away from this journal. It hasn’t worked out for me that well anyway.
There goes another journal…
I honestly thank everyone who read and encouraged =)
I will post paintings though.
I am working on 4 different ones now.
(John, taking a training break bounced off on something else, you see =)
so you had the normal flu?
Possibly the lethargy you felt was the early stages of it.
How is it the fault of the journal? 
Stef a journal is simply a recording of what happens.
I never said it’s its fault. I’m just tired of it.
Now I am really taking a break, and will get back on my feet again away from this journal. It hasn’t worked out for me that well anyway.
I meant that every journal has ended the same way so far (being far from pleased).
I’ll try a training block without ‘journaling’ now. For the heck of change.
Hi Stefanie. How’s your knee doing?
So and so !! When I’m pain free, I might post in excitement :o
(Let me just point out that I haven’t quit training, I am just not writing about it. I’m taking a writing break :)).
6 WEEKS INTO TRAINING AND NO PROBLEMS !!! (last time this happened was in 2004).
Nice to have you back. How’s life?
Life is going well, I think.
Training is fun again… 
PhD is almost over for the summer (yay), I just need to go to Bergamo now for 2 weeks, starting on Sunday, for a PhD summer school workshop. I’ll have to squeeze in sessions between noon and 2pm every day, or after 8pm, if the track is open!
EMS will also be hard to do , as I’ll be living in a hostel with other phd candidates in the room… oh boy !! Should be fun though!
Painting is going well, but a bit slower than I would like. Dejan is helping me create a website, which is not nearly finished, I still have to put up all my portfolio work, etc, and touch up on things…
I accept comments =)
Now I’m packing all my things and into a storage place in the building, as after Bergamo I’m going straight to Thessaloniki for the summer. I also plan to run a couple of meetings there.
Then back to Milan in late September, at a new place.
With perhaps some more travelling in between =) who knows!
Yes, it is nice to hear from you again. Congrats on being pain and injury free.
Seems like you’re doing great in all areas as well, maybe this is meant to be a good summer for you. Hope you kick some a… at those meetings. 
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. ).
thanks for the update and pics. WOW fast splits for the 400m no wonder you died at 320m :o on reflection maybe 200m may have been a better choice. What were the times like in that?
Deleted Post.
(sorry Dejan, I accidentally posted from your account above… :o)
Hi John =)
Yes, I was told the same thing about the 200. Bad choices, but oh well !!
The girl in lane 4 won my heat, and later that day the final also. Her preliminary was 55.49, and the slowest time in that heat was 60 or 61. The final was won in 54.32.