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.
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 :-).
Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2012. (1)
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.
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!
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(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.
About a month ago I was struggling to get back into the habit of frequently running. What is more, I had to be starting with the specific training plan for the Berlin marathon (30 September, which I will run together with my friend Serna and my brother Jaime).
At the beginning of July I checked the stats from Garmin connect from the previous year. In July 2011 I had run 283km. I wrote the following tweet to commit myself:
Slowly getting back the habit… in July 2011 I ran 283km… will try to beat that in July 2012… #running
— Javier Irastorza (@javierirastorza) July 5, 2012
In the end, in July I ran 25 days and rested 6. I ran in Toulouse, Sevilla, El Rompido (Huelva, Spain), Madrid and Papendal (The Netherlands). I ran one race in Toulouse, I ran in the beach, did 3 days of treadmill, 4 days of series and one half marathon training. I ran in two different athletics tracks: in Toulouse and Papendal.
And in the end… I completed over 297km, 14km more than in July 2011, fulfilling the objective, setting a new personal record (previous one being 287km from September 2011 – ultramarathon of 100km included) and heading right into the marathon training mode.
Injures permitting: Berlin, see you in less than 2 months.
During 2000 and 2001 I ran 3 marathons in Madrid. The best time I achieved then was just slightly above 4 hours, 4:00:41. Then I didn’t train much for them and I paid for that during the races.
Running in Paris (@ km ~26)
Last Sunday, in Paris, I ran together with my friend Serna and my brother Jaime my 5th marathon. For this one I had a training plan to go through for 17 weeks. That training plan amounted to over 1,100 km running, and a series session per week. I started a bit late with it, then I had trouble in the adapation to the new soles, injures… in the end, during the last 4 months I ran almost 500 km, or about 45% of the plan and did only 5 days of series.
Even if I was under trained, I managed to recover from the injure about 2 months before the race. I run as much as I could during the weeks following the recovery: 330km in 7 weeks, including 4 consecutive Sundays with a run over 20km in each of them.
The result: I completed Paris marathon in 3h45’35”, just at my target time before starting. My first sub-4-hour marathon. You can’t imagine how happy I am for that.
Some curiosities related to the race. You may find the route we followed in the diploma below. Some of the views while running were superb (Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, Les Champs-Élysées, Place de la Bastille…), even if when running a marathon you don’t get to enjoy much the views. In the diploma you will see as well two times and positions. This is due to the fact that it took me 11 minutes to reach the starting line. Positions are calculated taking into consideration net times (deducting time to starting line, “real”) and arrival order (“official”).
Paris 2012 diploma.
You can also see below a small graphic prepared from the info recorded by my Garmin. There you’ll see how until km. ~29, I managed to run below my target pace to achieve 3h45′ (that was 5’20” per km). There are some kilometers before km. 29 in which it took longer, that is due to stops (“WC”) or slowing down to take drinks at every 5km. From km. 30 it was hard to maintain paces even below 5’30”. In the last 12km I burnt the 2-minute buffer I built in the first 25km.
In order to keep the rhythm in the last kilometres, it is extremely important not only the long runs (I got the one and only “muscle warning” at km. 39) and the series training, the famous Yasso’s to keep “speed” and endurance.
Let me share with you a brief recap of my 2011 (as I already did last year).
If I then characterized 2010 as a learning year, I would say 2011 was a year on the run.
At the beginning of the year I set out my objectives for 2011, of which I have achieved 71.4% (just above my 70% target!). One of them was only to “become again a frequent runner”, for which I set up some modest steps, e.g., buy new running shoes, run 3 days before mid-January, run a 10k popular race before November, lose some 10kg by June… If there was a yearly objective which I widely met, it was this one:
Last kilometre at the ultramarathon "100km de Millau".
I ran over 170 days along the year, covering over 1,800 kilometres.
I took part in 11 popular races, including 6 of 10km, 2 half marathons, 1 marathon (42km) and 1 ultramarathon (100km). More races and more kilometres than ever before.
I found myself running in Granada, Villa del Río, Madrid, Torrelodones, Luarca, Rijswijk, Wijchen, Toulouse, Luz Saint Sauveur, Chicago, Washington DC, Des Moines, Montreal…
Learning. After taking some classes in Madrid, I continued studying French and now I feel more confident when facing shop attendants :-). I had to learn and continue to learn lots of new things every day at the new job where I landed about a year ago.
I still enjoy as learning moments the print weekly issues of The Economist or the monthly issues of Scientific American. I delivered the necessary speeches to become ACB within Toastmasters (though lately I’ve missed more meetings than I should). Finally, I read a dozen books along the year (a bit less than in previous years, though some in the new eReader!), being the ones I liked the most the following: first, second and third.
Investing & helping others. I set myself a high objective of saving and investing: I overachieved it by around 50%. I once mentioned it in Twitter: the best thing behind investing is the discipline of saving that is behind it. I not only dedicated a percentage of personal income to savings but as I announced in a post at the beginning of 2010, I directed a percentage to different charities. I initially set it out to be 0.7% of my income, but after raising some funds and contributing others to charities related to the races in which I am taking part, in the end this percentage has been well over 1% in 2011.
Travelling. We together visited Montreal, Ottawa, DC, Chicago, Omaha, and several places in the south of France and throughout Spain. The moment that I liked the most was attending the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, no doubt.
Javi 2.0. I continued to often write in this blog with some remarkable posts. I admit that my twitter account is one of my biggest sources of information / distraction.
our friends Teresa & Alberto, María & Óscar, Isa & Pedro got married,
we welcomed the newborns Mar, Hugo, Luis and Eneko, while another of our friends is pregnant today (that we know),
my sister Beatriz started working as an intern; my brother Jaime continued to enjoy his job in Airbus and moved to a new apartment; my mother Fidela continued to take several courses (and to give wonderful massages) and my father Juan Bautista finally and happily retired (after working for 43 years!).
Luca completed all the requirements to become a full-fledged lawyer, winning some court cases in the process.
Now it’s time to update the objectives setting for 2012. This year the exercise will be easier as I already have the methodology and the habit. If the objectives are well chosen and challenging enough, next year’s account will be even shinier.
Finally the 23rd of October came and with it the marathon of Toulouse, an event I planned to run as much as 8 months ago. An event I wrote about twice before in this blog, when I announced that I would run it and on the 23rd of October to publish the funds we raised for the charity I ran for, “Vaincre la mucoviscidose”.
To set the stage, I must say that in January I only had the objective of running some 10km races along the year and subscribing to a half marathon, not necessarily to be run in 2011. But then, on February I started thinking of actually going for a full marathon before year-end. I locked on the Toulouse marathon.
Time went by, and I took part in many races along the year, went from casual running to running a lot, to engaging myself in a formal training plan for the marathon… and to subscribe myself with a friend for an ultramarathon which we completed back in September, a month ago.
In September I completed the half marathon of Toulouse in 1h42’30”, my personal best time ever in the distance, ending with very good feelings. With that reference in mind, and taking into account a “running calculator” that I had been checking from time to time, I had in mind a marathon pace of 5’08″/km for the marathon… that would make a 3h36′ marathon. 24 minutes down from my best time 10 years ago.
One week after the half marathon, a friend and I took part in the 100km of Millau, more than 15 hours of racing. A great experience as I described in the post about it, but it brought some collateral damage in the form of a peroneal tendonitis that hasn’t been healed a month afterwards. During the last 30 days I only ran 3 days: One test prior to the race “Ronde des foies gras”, that race and short test run prior to the marathon.
Knowing that the injure wasn’t yet healed and that I hadn’t trained in a month, I decided to ease a little with the pace for the race: I set the objective in 5’20″/km, that would make a 3h45′ marathon…
Before leaving my home I put a special surgical bandage to strengthen the ankle that had given trouble in the last month. I put some anti inflammatory cream around and took a couple of analgesic pills. Ready for the race.
The marathon started very close to my place so I went to the starting lane jogging, as a warm up exercise. I got acquainted with the departing blocks by times and left my bag to the organization. I started with the group of 3h45′ as was my objective.
The first ~9km went through the centre of Toulouse, already with lots of people cheering in some parts of the city, especially in my neighbourhood, Saint Cyprien, despite of the early departure time.
After the first 10km, and feeling well, I decided to go a bit faster and I went ahead of the 3h45′ group, running by my own, finding another pack of runners going at about 5’10″/km. Everything went fine until km 19 more or less, then I started feeling some stiffnes in the right leg.
The pain wasn’t anymore restricted to the ankle but went up to the outer part of the knee. I managed to keep pace for about 2 kilometres until km 22. From then on, it proved impossible. The leg was not responding. Time was increasing between one kilometre and the next. 5’30”, then 5’50”, 6’30”, 7’00″… You may see the evolution in the following link with the performance along the race recorded by my Garmin GPS.
From that point around km 22 till the end there were some challenges. The first one was the running itself; it was increasingly difficult to move the right leg, but I knew that if I stopped for a few metres walking to calm down the pain it would only get worse, cool down and would be even harder to start again. Another challenge was to defeat the bad mood coming from the fact of knowing that I wouldn’t make the 3h45′ marathon that I aimed at, but would make a time somewhat worse, probably much worse. A final challenge was to get used to the idea of another 17km of pain while running, making some numbers in my mind at some point and figuring out that “ok, it’ll be at most about 1h40′ more of running with this pain, I can handle it”. If I took something from Millau, it was the mind management and coping with pain while running. This time it was less of a challenge.
At some point between km 25 and 27 I was overtaken by the 3h45′ group. One of the guys who lead it told me to try to follow them at the back of the pack. Impossible. I knew they were running at 5’20”, I was wandering at 5’40” by then and worsening. They were like a plane for me.
Later on, in the kilometre 33 I met my friend Juan, who was visiting me in Toulouse during the weekend. He would run the last kilometres together with me. That proved an invaluable help in the form of cheering, small talk, holding some drinks and finally making lots of pictures and videos that you may see below.
By then we were re-entering the city centre and the streets were filled by people cheering the runners. The bibs we carried had our names printed on them. This made people cheering you by your name “Allez, Javier! Courage!”. That was great. If you just had enough strength to run and look at them to thank for it…
By the kilometre 36 more or less I was overtaken by the 4h00 group. I already knew they would pass me, as I was seeing at every moment the times I was making and I had an idea of what final time I could manage. Again, the 4-hour group was like a plane for me, impossible to jump on it. They came at less than 6’/km while I was running at about 7′ by then. But it was only about 6 km to go, at most 40 more minutes. The marathon was almost finished.
I managed my way through the last kilometres seeing that in the end I wouldn’t be above 4h15′, that cheered me up a bit, and when I crossed the 41km line I made a small calculation: if I increased pace I could still be below 4h10′ official time, so I did.
During the next kilometre I increased the pace but still saving some strength to allow my self a last sprint from Wilson square to Capitol, where the finish lane was placed. By then the crowd was almost carrying you, pain was barely felt, the sight was locked on the “Arrivée” sign and the clock below… 4h09’35″… 36″… 37″…
Few more metres of sprint and crossing the line at 4h09’53” (4h08’31” net time), just below the 3rd objective, 25 minutes more than the original 3h45′, almost 10 minutes more than a sub-4-hour marathon. My second best time in a marathon.
On the plus side: I completed again a marathon, 10 years after the last one. The objective from February was accomplished. I could run the whole of it despite the injure and subsequent pain.
Nevertheless, I finished with a bit of bitterness from not having been able to meet my 3h45′ objective, nor the sub-4h one… This teaches me a lesson for the future: when you run a marathon being injured, far from making personal best times, you’ll most probably end up suffering a lot. A lot. After all a marathon is what it is for a reason, and one should never underestimate it. Lesson learned. Now it’s time to finally fully recover from the injure; 2012 will be another season.
As I announced back in August, today 23rd October 2011, I’m running my 4th marathon, 10 years after having run the last one. When I wrote that post, I mentioned that I would be raising funds for a charity, “Vaincre la mucoviscidose”.
With this post I wanted to thank those persons who contributed to the cause: Nacho, Jaime and Luca. Thank you for your contributions!! The people affected by the illness and I sincerely thank you for them. Together we have raised 240€ as you can see in the cheque below extended to the charity association.
Check sent to the charity "Vaincre la mucoviscidose".
Finally, in case you wake up early enough, you may follow the race live through this link. My bib number: 2329!
It is 10 years since I ran my last marathon. I have been running again quite often since the beginning of 2011, and a few of you know that in October 2011 I’ll be running the next Toulouse marathon if health permits.
Some months ago, following a recommendation of my brother Jaime, I watched a movie in Youtube called “The Spirit of the Marathon” based on the experiences of some beginners during their training towards running the Chicago marathon in 2007. I strongly recommend the movie to anyone willing take on such challenge.
In the movie, I especially liked the character of Lori, who apart of conveying a positive attitude all time and sharing a beautiful story behind, is running the marathon supporting a cause.
In February, when I decided to take part in the marathon in Toulouse, I thought it would be nice to do as Lori did and try to raise some funds for a cause, for a charity. However, I didn’t know which one to choose nor how exactly to set it up. In the meantime months have passed by, I have not started raising any cash, but luckily my Airbus Running club has sorted out which charity I could run for.
This year, all Airbus runners taking part in the Toulouse marathon are encouraged by the club to raise funds to help the association “Vaincre la mucoviscidose” which helps families of children suffering the illness and creates awareness about it. I think this is surely a worthy cause to run 42.195km for and raise some funds during the training period.
How can you contribute to such cause?
Easy, I have set up an ING savings account for that purpose. All contributions received in that account will be transferred to the associations bank account by 21st October.
Bank account: 1465 0100 91 2021356780 (ING Direct)
IBAN: ES68 1465 0100 91 2021356780
BIC / Swift Code: INGDESMMXXX
Beneficiary: Javier Irastorza
Since in France, contributions to charities are deducted from taxes up to a 66% and I do not want to get any tax benefit out of possible contributions from friends, I will double any contribution that you make so as to offset possible benefits and thus contribute myself to the cause as well, i.e.: if you give 5€ for the charity, I will put another 10€, making a total of 15€ for the charity, out of which 10€ would be tax-deductible, equal to the disbursement I had made.
What’s in it for you?
Apart from contributing to a worthy cause, I will explicitly dedicate my marathon in this blog to all those who have contributed to the cause (if they haven’t requested anonymity).
What it’s more, in line with crowd funding initiatives, I have been working since January on a special project that will only be unveiled after the marathon. That project will also be dedicated to the contributors to that cause who will have the chance of enjoying it before the general public.
Summing up
I’ll do:
100% of the training in these months (~1,100km in 17 weeks),
100% of the running in the marathon (42.195km on October 23rd),
66% of the financial contribution to the cause…
All you have to do is give some euros to make up for that 33% that we will contribute to the children suffering from mucoviscidose. Let’s do it together!
Running at "Corrida Pedrestre" in Toulouse, July 1st 2011.
The Blog by Javier 