Tag Archives: running

June 13, 2013 · 8:00 am

San Diego Marathon

“The next time you’re in the USA, run a marathon there”. Those were the words from by brother Jaime after he took part in Chicago marathon in 2011.

It has taken me 2 years to go back there. This time for my honeymoon. This did not stop me to follow the advice. I went through a website with all the marathons in California and found that San Diego Rock’n'Roll marathon was taking place on the very last day of the trip. Perfect! That way the muscle soreness of the following days would not interrupt the tourism activities.

June 2nd, the day of the race was only one month and a half after March 17th, when we ran Rome marathon, thus I did not follow any special training plan for this marathon. I just tried to keep the form with which I arrived to Rome by running often, though I didn’t do any series session and only one long run… I paid for that.

The atmosphere was very good but only in some neighbourhoods, in others not so many people cheering the runners. Along the road 163, during the steepest (up to 6% along 1km) and longest (about 4km) climb there was almost nobody. Even if the overall profile is a descent I found the course quite tough. The times of the first 3 runners seem to say the same (2h15 for the winner, 20 minutes more for the second…). The other thing that I didn’t like much was the solid or the lack of abundant and varied solid supplies along the course. I thus only relied on my 3 energetic gels and drinks.

Course of San Diego marathon as recorded by my Garmin.

Course of San Diego marathon as recorded by my Garmin.

San Diego marathon profile.

San Diego marathon profile.

At 5:30am, before departing.

At 5:30am, before departing.

I went quite well at the expected pace (below 5’20″ / km) for the first 28 kilometres, then I started to miss endurance and right afterwards the long climb “killed” me. I, however, did not stop and kept running up, if very slow (most of the runners in my time -between 3h45 and 4h- where walking during those kms). I’ve gone through much tougher situations in the last years, thus I only thought “well, slow the rhythm and the climb will finish at some point, keep up”.

Running at some point of San Diego marathon.

Running at some point of San Diego marathon.

In the end I finished in some 3h56’19″ as clocked by the official chip (see the report of the race as recorded by my Garmin here). I was happy enough with the result and with having finished the second marathon in the year, another sub-4-hour marathon (the 4th in a row under 4h) and the 9th overall.

San Diego marathon finisher diploma.

San Diego marathon finisher diploma.

San Diego marathon medal.

San Diego marathon medal.

9 marathons!

9 marathons!

Enjoying the feat.

Enjoying the feat (behind me: San Diego Padres baseball stadium).

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March 31, 2013 · 11:30 pm

Trail des Citadelles: epic run in the mud

The Château de Montségur used to be a Cathar castle dating from late XII / early XIII century. For some time it was the centre of the Cathar church, though today only some ruins remain. The castle is at the top of a 1,200m-high rocky mountain, some kilometres away from the small village of Lavelanet out of which the Trail des Citadelles started.

This was my first long run and first race just 2 weeks after completing Rome marathon. I had only run 2 days between then and today, thus I took it more as a run in the nature than as a race, no stress from the departure. I even took the photo camera as I suspected I could take some nice pics.

The race consisted of 20km from Lavelanet to the castle and back, going as much as possible through the forest and as little as possible through paved roads (basically the first and last kilometres and little else). The rain of the previous days, of that precise morning and the passing of hundreds of runners left many of the paths impracticable, completely muddy and enabling the funniest situations.

Trail des Citadelles (20km) profile.

Trail des Citadelles (20km) profile.

Before having completed the 2nd kilometre my running shoes and socks were already completely soaked. Before the 3rd kilometre we had been running through some stretches in which the feet were covered up to the ankles with mud (chop, chop, splash!).

I love trails for they put you in close contact with nature, the variety of their landscapes, the absence of time pressure; even if I acknowledge that I am not particularly good with difficult descents which require some technique and equipment that I lack of.

Today I missed some mountain sticks. At the starting line I saw many people with them. I wasn’t sure if it was because they would walk instead of run. Indeed. The thing is that I would also have to walk a lot, uphill, through rocks covered with very slippery mud. Only during the race I understood why they brought them. Between the 4th and 5th kilometre we started to walk uphill more than run, and it lasted like that for almost the next 7 kilometres.

Montségur castle from afar.

Montségur castle from afar at the top of the mountain (notice the footprints in the mud). Picture taken at about km. 5

The mostly walking uphill took a full hour to cover about 5 kilometres to the bottom of the castle stairs.

Montségur castle from below.

Montségur castle from below.

Inside the castle.

Inside the castle.

The views from the castle are stunning. The picture below does not make enough justice so I took a panoramic video.

Views from the castle.

Views from the castle.

From the castle to the end of the race most of the time we would be descending. In theory, this should have made it easier. But that was only the theory. That is when the fun began (to call it that way).

The way down started with the same stairs of the castle, which we descended with much care. Then some hundreds of metres of going up and down over more or less dry surface and finally the same kind of very steep descent, sometimes along and others crossed by water flows, fully covered with slippery mud.

I lost count of how many times I slid without any control on the verge of falling down. I do keep count of the 5 times that these detours ended with me, my face, arms, whatever it was… in the mud. They were not especially painful, but left you with hands and face covered of mud, having to wash yourself in the next current of brownish water. Other times the sliding left you looking uphill to the wrong side of the race hands in the ground to prevent a full-blown fall. As I was not the only one going through this, you can get an idea of the image…

Eating at ~ km. 12.

Eating at ~ km. 12.

Around the kilometre 11-12 there was the only point of supply so I did a little stop to drink some Coke, eat some chocolate, etc.

After this stop, the mix of sliding / running continued for about another kilometre until we entered a forest of pine trees where the ground was a bit drier. There I was happy as I started running faster, less worried about falling and more focused on keeping the pace… until I bent my ankle… the same ankle I strained 3 times during winter. That one was painful. I had to stop and walk for some 2-3 minutes to recover from it.

It was then that I took the camera to film another short video as an update of the race so far at 13.4 km (in Spanish):

The making of the video, the self-deprecating humour of the situation lifted my morale. I tried the ankle, which responded positively, so I started running again.

During the last 5 kilometres, more or less flat, even if still going at times through water flows or mud, I tried to enjoy running a little. I think it was only at this point that I was overtaking others instead of being overtaken :-) . I discovered then that instead of avoiding water flows and poodles, it was indeed better going through them as their bottom used to be firmer. The guys of the organization took it seriously and somehow made us literally run along the river for about 200m! That was another high moment of the trail, which I recorded here (excuse my French):

When arriving at the village, one final sprint and done. I mean, done. 

Finish line.

Finish line.

My performance: 2h49’16″, 201 out of 366 finishing within the time given of 3h30′ (see Garmin records).

—

PD: All this happened in the 20 km race; bear in mind that at the same time 2 other races were taking place one of 40 km and one of 73 km (the runners having departed at 6am to run… 9 hours? 12?). My admiration to all those heroes.

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March 17, 2013 · 9:30 am

Buon giorno, Roma!

This morning, as this post is being published I’ll be starting the 19th Rome marathon, together with my friends Serna, Manuel and brother Jaime.

I am very satisfied with the way I could train towards this marathon, no injuries this time.

Since running Berlin marathon last September 30th, I only stopped for a couple of weeks and swiftly started running again. Even if I started a bit late to pick up with the number of miles run per week (from mid December instead of mid November) I have amounted almost 800km in these last months, including:

  • 5 days of tough series training: 12x400m, 14x400m, 8x800m, 9x800m and 10x800m.
  • 7 long runs of over 16km each, 4 of them over 20km.
  • 5 races: San Silvestre Vallecana (10km), Course des Rois (10km), Le Deca d’Escalquens (10km), Trailhounet (18km) and Media Maratón de La Latina (21km).

You can see below the mileage run per week:

Maratona di Roma 2013 training season. Kilometres run per week.

Maratona di Roma 2013 training season. Kilometres run per week.

A lesson learned from previous training sessions: when I noticed that some muscle or tendon was getting sore from too much training I did not hesitate in slowing down that week, instead of keeping up with the training until getting seriously injured. Let’s see today how it goes, anyway, as Jaime says, it’ll sure be a day for the epic :-) .

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March 3, 2013 · 2:00 pm

Triumph retirement

After 6 months running together, it has come the time to retire the old Saucony Triumph 8 running shoes and start using the new Saucony Triumph 9.

Saucony's: old Triumph 8 and new Triumph 9.

Saucony’s: old Triumph 8 and new Triumph 9.

Let this short post be a tribute to the Triumph 8s, which have run to date over 770km, in several cities and countries, and including 6 races, among them a marathon and a half-marathon. A similar curriculum awaits the Triumph 9 pair: several races including 2 marathons and no less than 700 km in a few months.

Triumph 8s will live side by side with the 9s, as casual sport shoes from now on, instead of running shoes.

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February 21, 2013 · 8:00 am

Trailhounet (Gruissan)

Last weekend Luca and I went to Gruissan, a small village by the Mediterranean sea. I must say that in winter time it is not very lively (not by a night at least). One of the reasons for coming to Gruissan was to take part in the trail “Trailhounet” (18km), one of three races that would take during the weekend (the others covering distance of 25km and an ultra of 50km!).

 

Trailhounet circuit around Gruissan.

Trailhounet circuit around Gruissan.

I have often mentioned that running trails through the country side feels different from running on the asphalt of city streets. However, at some points the slopes in trails get too steep to run up, or too dangerous to go as fast as possible on the way down. This time, the circuit was covered to a great extent by small stones and rocks, this made it even more challenging and painful.

Profile of the race.

Profile of the race.

Let me share a couple of pictures from the start and the arrival:

Start line, using for the 1st time the new sweat band with the flag.

Start line, using for the 1st time the new sweat band with the flag.

Last sprint.

Last sprint.

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February 3, 2013 · 11:00 am

Athletic World Records vs. my times (speed vs. distance in log plot)

Two weeks ago I published a post where I showed a graphic of the different world records in athletics with the speeds and paces.

I received a comment from Uwe, a reader of the blog, suggesting to plot it using a logarithmic scale. At first, I wanted to show how the long distance runners could almost keep a speed (between 20.5 and 23.8 km/h) for distances from 5 kilometres to 42, a marathon. However, Uwe convinced me to make the plot and here it is:

Athletics World Records vs. my times (speed) - logarithmic scale for the distances

Athletics World Records vs. my times (speed) – logarithmic scale for the distances.

In this view, what it is interesting is to appreciate the different slops of the lines connecting the different records. There you can see how:

  • 100m and 200m races are fully anaerobic where Usain Bolt is capable of maintaining an average speed of above 37.5 km/h. You can see in the explanation in the Wikipedia how these two races (both lasting below ~30 seconds) use as energy source high energy phosphates.
  • races from 400m to 1 km are still a high intensity activity, with some anaerobic component, though another energy source enters into play: anaerobic glycolisis. And as we have heard often in descriptions about 400m races, the consequence of rapid glucose breakdown is the formation of lactic acid.
  • from then (1.5 or 2km) on (up to 42km) professional runners are able to keep a high speed out of aerobic metabolism (using adenosine triphosphate, ATP). Of course, speed decreases with distance, but from the 26.2 km/h of a 1,500m to the 20.5 km/h of a marathon the speed decrease is of -22% for a race 28 times longer!
  • for ultramarathons (over 42k) speed starts decreasing at a higher pace, though Wikipedia only offered the 100k time. Probably more data can be found in the web to try to find with more accuracy up to which distance the long distance stable pace could be maintained.

Uwe, you were certainly right. This view offers another very interesting perspective to the game :-) .

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January 19, 2013 · 3:00 pm

Athletic World Records vs. my times (pace & speed)

I have many times commented with friends and acquaintances how impressive professional athletes are, what does it mean running a marathon in barely over 2 hours…

Many amateurs (not to mention sedentary people) would not keep up pace much longer than 100 metres. Each time I have made this comment to someone I had to verbally make some numbers for my interlocutor. I am sure these verbal calculations were not always well understood and digested. Following the adage “an image is worth more than a thousand words”:

Athletics World Records vs. my times

Athletics World Records vs. my times

Red lines show speed (in km/h; decreasing as race distances get longer). Blue lines show pace (in mm:ss / km; increasing as race distances get longer). I have included a table so you can compare the numbers.

I took athletics world records from the Wikipedia. You can find my times in the page “Races” of this blog. I only added a tag to the records that most of you will recognise, as they were achieved by well-known super stars.

There are many catches in the graphic. Two impress me the most:

  • I could have kept up the pace of Patrick Makau in his marathon world-record-beating performance for 100 metres… but not for 400m! (see black dotted lines).
  • How once we enter into aerobic exercise, we’re able to almost keep up speed despite distance increases. The difference in speeds between Bekele’s 5k (23.77 km/h) and Makau’s marathon (20.48 km/h) is only 3.25 km/h!

***

NOTE: I am not a particularly fast runner, thus don’t take the times and paces and interpret them as if no amateur runner could keep up pace for more than 100m… some will keep it up somewhat longer. I just wanted to share the idea.

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January 13, 2013 · 6:00 pm

Fail moments in running events

Some of you may have seen the following picture:

Fernández pointing Mutai the finish line (source: Calleja, Diario de Navarra, via El País).

That is Spanish athlete Iván Fernández Anaya letting Abel Mutai win after the latter had stopped thinking the cross was already finished.

This kind of situations do not have always the same ending. See the video below:

After hours running, and coming to an end the poor guy in the lead takes a wrong turn off the route and is overtaken by 3 runners, not being able to retake the lead.

When I watched these situations I always thought “How can this be possible? Is the guy not seeing the road, is nobody telling him the coming mistake on time?”.

Now, I got the answer. Some times shit happens. I had today my epic-fail moment.

I was going to take part in the race Course des Rois, in Villemur-sur-Tarn, over 10km. I ran it last year so I was acquainted with the route, installations, etc. Thus I paid no much attention to the specific rules of the race.

I knew that the race started at 10:05 (*), so I warmed up beforehand. Then removed some clothes, drank some water and went to the start line. And started.

After some 300 metres I noticed that I was surrounded by many teenagers and middle-aged women instead of a big pack of middle-aged men, who are the average popular runner. Then I wondered: “am I running my race or the 5km one?”

At 500m I stopped and asked a volunteer from the organization: “is this the 5k or the 10k race?” to which he replied “I don’t know” (!!). Then I asked the next woman coming, and she confirmed that it was the 5k one!

You see! It can happen! There I was, running another race.

Luckily I noticed only 500m into it :-) Then I went back running moderately fast again, as I didn’t want the start of the 10km race to catch me in the middle of the two!

Fortunately in my case there were no cameras to make further fun of me! :-D But see below the record of the GPS:

Fail: wrong start with the 5k race.

Fail: wrong start with the 5k race.

***

(*) My 10km race was indeed starting at 10:15am; if I had just read the rules of the race…

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January 6, 2013 · 6:00 pm

San Silvestre 2012

One more New Year’s Eve running the popular San Silvestre Vallecana.

Year by year we’re creating a small community: Jaime, Pablo, Kike, Jon, Juanma and Abraham.

Compared to the last year, this time Gonzalo and Nacho could not run. Though the fact that the latter couldn’t, made it possible to have the great pictures he took of the rest of us in Calle Alcalá. Enjoy them:

Kike, Jon, Pablo, Abraham, Jaime and I (picture taken by olemiswebs).

Pablo, Juanma, I, Abraham, Kike, Jon and Jaime (picture taken by olemiswebs)

Jaime was running his 14th San Silvestre in a row. Impressive! I was doing my 12th (I missed three along these years: one due to injury and other 2 being in NL). Pablo must have done around 5, Kike 3, like Juanma (?), this was the second for Jon and Abraham, I believe. But they’ll complete many more.

Numbers… the time was ridiculous: 1h7′. As usual it was impossible to run, and this time we had to fully stop twice in Vallecas due to runners’ traffic plus the long pause to make the pictures. I cannot attach the route as at the beginning of Xmas time I forgot my Garmin watch in Toulouse (Kike, Jon, if you read this, please, could you attach the records in the comments?).

Commenting on the difficulty to run in that race nowadays: I remembered our first San Silvestres back in the ’90s. Already then it was difficult to run, especially in Vallecas. I tried to find the results from the first one I ran and I couldn’t, but I found those of the 2nd, in 1999, already with Jaime. We then finished in around 55′ to 56′ net time and positions around 3,500 out of less than 5,000 finishers… about one tenth of today’s figures.

Due to the strike of underground metro workers, this time we came back from Vallecas to Jaime’s flat, close to Retiro… adding up some nearly 4km after the race.

***

PD: In last year post, I wrote that Luca wanted to have spent the past Christmas in some sunny island… well, one more year Madrid and its San Silvestre got it :-D .

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December 31, 2012 · 11:00 am

Summary of (my) 2012

Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2012. (1)

Seychelles

Finally engaged.

I defined 2010 as a learning year, 2011 as a year on the run… I would describe my 2012 as a year of change:

  • I proposed to Luca and we’ll getting married in May 2013.
  • Luca came to live in Toulouse together with me last September, 4 years after having left Madrid to become a lawyer in The Netherlands.
  • My boss at the beginning of the year, Werner, moved to Germany thus I started reporting to his boss. A colleague, Paula, moved to another department and I had to fill the gap for some months trying to learn a complete new field for me. Yet another colleague, Rosa, moved to another country, and I will partially take over her role… and this implies managing a small team of 3 from January 1st.

I guess that all these changes didn’t give me the stability needed to fulfil all the objectives I had set myself at the beginning of the year… but don’t think 2012 wasn’t rich of events and fun. Have a seat in the roller coaster and run with me:

Sports. I wanted to do plenty of sports… in the end I run some 1,500 kilometres. I competed in 9 races, including tonight’s San Silvestre and two marathons: Paris and Berlin. I set personal best times in marathon (Paris, 3h45′) and 10k. I was not able to do so in half marathon due to an injury in the summer. Injuries forced me to run some 300 kilometres less than in 2011.

The year 2012 caught me running in Toulouse, Paris, Berlin, Torrelodones, Madrid, Sevilla, Rijswick, Papendal, Huelva, Asturias, Gaillac… so in a way it was also a year on the run. I also played some paddle, swam some days (including at North Sea, latitude 58º…) and got started with golf!

Learning. This year was also heavy on the learning side. It could have been much heavier if I had reached all my objectives. On the job I had to learn a great deal about configuration management in Airbus and will have to continue to do so, about leading and managing teams, about A400M aircraft systems…

Off of the job:

  • I subscribed to 4 online courses from Coursera and other platforms at the beginning of the year. I kept up with Codecademy for some 2 months while could not finish any of those courses (on valuation, corporate finance, game theory and model thinking). However, at the end of the year I took on some other 3 courses from Venture Lab and this time I did complete all 3 of them!
  • Languages: I started studying Dutch at the beginning of the year and I kept up with it for some 2-3 months… 2013 will force me to re-take it. French…
  • Toastmasters: I almost didn’t attend to my club meetings. I took part in the contests, though. having good experiences in the Spring winning both speech and evaluation and not so good in Autumn, not winning any, though being able to compete also at the area level.

Reading. At the beginning of the year I wanted to read at least 15 books. I started well, but in the end I have finished just 10 while being half way through other 4. Check out “my 2012 reading list“, including just the finished ones.

Investing & helping others. I again set myself high objectives for saving and investing. This year however, the engagement changed the focus of the savings: from stock market to a preference for cash, at least until all the wedding expenses have been paid out. On the charities side: this year I directed 0.9% of my net income to different NGOs (soon I’ll make a similar contribution, check out which ones will I support this time).

Travelling. This year either with Luca, with friends or alone, I visited Monaco (flying aboard a helicopter again!), Seychelles (where I proposed to Luca!), Asturias (twice), Huelva, The Netherlands (Papendal, Rijswick), Berlin – Nürnberg – Munich, Sevilla (twice), Madrid, Scotland, Corsica, Nancy, Geneva… those were the leisure trips; the job made me go to Madrid another 20-25 times (?), that made it tiresome and difficult to combine with other things.

Javi 2.0. For another year I kept it up with the blog. I recently reached 300 posts. I’m not sure whether I’ll always write about 100 posts per year, but if life keeps getting more interesting and I’ve got the time, count on it.

Change of plans due to the bad weather in the mountains, heading south to the coastline, re-calculating the route.

Flying back from Corsica.

Flying. Last year I took on flying lessons. I was slower in this front that had wished to, though it wasn’t always easy to find time slots to fly with so many trips on weekends. I recently surpassed 20 flight hours and started with go-arounds in the airport. Without any doubt, the trip to Corsica with a colleague was the best flying experience of the year. I’ll hopefully start with solo flights at the beginning of 2013 (beware!).

Other reasons for joy…

  • It goes without saying it: Luca came to Toulouse!
  • My sister, Beatriz, completed her masters in Political Sciences. My father spent some 5 months in Bolivia working for NGO teaching children a bit of maths and who-knows-what (he is doing similar work for NGOs now in Madrid), mom kept on giving massages and Jaime had roller coaster year with the A400M!
  • Some friends and relatives got married… Fernando, Diego, Héctor, Sergio, Ceci.
  • Newborns: Clara, Lenny…

Now it’s time to rest, celebrate and soon to update the objectives setting for 2013. I believe I’ll give myself a more relaxed set of personal goals to cope with job changes, personal changes and else. One thing I am sure of: 2013 will be, again, the best year of my life!

I wish you the same: the best for 2013, enjoy it!

—

(1) This post is becoming a classic of the blog (like those talking about aircraft discounts, best and worst posts, charities I support, etc). You can see my 2010 and 2011 recaps.

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