Madrid minus 12 weeks.

[Riazor Blue]

I was resting the old leg yesterday. It's Tuesday today and I have done 45 minutes fartlek this morning. Well, it's more or less fartlek, I call it my washing machine cycle because it's a bit slow, then a bit fast , slow, slow, fast slow and then a mad bit for the spin cycle. I covered about 8km.
The hamstring felt fine today. I have a pot of Hot-Rub made by a company called medicramer and I find that with a massage of that and one of those neoprene supports, any muscle strain disappears after a day or so. The only thing is that I smell like a football changing room.

[Riazor Blue]

It's a nice bright sunny day today. 20 degrees. I decided on series today. Practically everybody who does series here in La Coruña does them on the main harbour wall. La Coruña lost it's athletics track some years ago when the stadium where Deportivo play was turned into a footie only stadium. Anyway, the harbour wall is about 1.4Km long and has a cycle track and footpath to the end. Someone, obviously a runner has spray painted 100m intervals up to 1000m on the ground so it makes life easier.
From home I first have to jog down hill to a little park, and on the other side is the National Police Station, it's next to the port and is where I usually start or finish my runs along the esplanade. From here I jog past the transatlantic dock, today there was a cruise liner in port, the Van Gogh. It must be on a SAGA cruise as there were many pensioners around. Next comes the old inshore fishing harbour, which has recently been turned into recreational moorings which is a pity. There are still about 10 of the little fishing boats with moorings here, but the majority have been moved to new fishing quays away from the centre.
Next comes the St Anton's castle, it's only small and originally was built offshore to protect the port and city. With a bit of land reclaimation it's now connected to the mainland, apart from a fortress, it was also a prison and nowadays is the geological museum.
I pass the yacht club next then I'm on the harbour wall. At about 450m is built the HQ for the Coastguard (probably that's not a good description, but I've no idea of the equivalent in English - they are more or less sea traffic controllers). It's a bih H-shaped building covered with glass and can be seen from miles around, I noticed today that it has a new plaque outside "Ministry of Works - Office of the Inquiry into the Prestige Disaster".

That jog was more or less 2km. The uninteresting bit now follows:

Reps:8 X 800m. Against the wind 3m25 per 800m, with the wind 3m15. Recovery between reps 200m of jogging/walking @ 2m30.

You have to be a bit careful on the harbour wall as there is a colony of gulls living on the other side of it. As they are coming into breeding season now they are getting a bit defensive of their territory. I watched them dive bombing one of the ferrel cats up there, given a couple more weeks it's possible they will start dive bombing runners aswell.

2 km jog home afterwards.

[Antonio247]

Well done, Brian. According to Yasso you can expect to do 3 hours, 20 minutes at the marathon. The average 800 metre time in minutes and seconds after doing several series can be turned into hours and minutes to guess the time you coud do in the marathon. Then 3 minutes 20 seconds would mean 3 hours twenty minutes in your next marathon. You could even lower it since there´s still plenty of time. He advised to do four 800 metres two months before your marathon and increase one more 800 metres each week until two weeks before the marathon when you can do the test with ten 800s. The average gives you the time you can expect at the marathon.

Well, good luck, Brian!

Antonio

[Riazor Blue]

Sunny and warm again, 16 degrees. People will start to get the wrong idea about La Coruña. Normally it's very wet at this time of year.

3hours 20 minutes would be nice. 4m45s per kilometer... hmmm, well it may be possible but sounds a bit fast for me, it's my half marathon pace at the moment. We'll have to see in the Vigo-Baiona half at the end of March.

I done a nice easy slow tempo recover jog this morning, 8 Km in about 46 minutes. As per normal ran the esplanade. There weren't many runners out this morning, I only counted 10, some days, especially Saturdays I can count about 40 or 50. Normal is about 18. The interesting thing is that you can see that amount whatever time of day it is, be it 7am 12.30pm or 9 at night.

On the way home (from the police station, up the hill) I passed a small bar, I have been inside once, it's old with huge barrels of wine behind the bar, sparsely decorated and only a couple of stools at the bar. Anyway, today there was a TV crew filming inside, I don't know what for, but outside, apart from the 3 arclights, 3 enormous trucks and 15 miles of cable there were about 25 to 30 suited bods all with mobile phones pressed to their ears. I did notice that they had re-stocked behind the bar, I wonder if the bottles will stay or are just props.

[Riazor Blue]

Yesterday was a bit of a disaster.

After a light breakfast I slipped on the running shoes, prepared a large bottle of isostar, stuck on the sunglasses and set off to get the car. Saturday is now my day for the long run as Sunday lunch with the in-laws is too good to miss (apart from race days of course). I wanted to try out a new route yesterday, it’s an area on the outskirts of La Coruña, near the university. A friend is a cyclist and he has told me that the roads are very quiet, the scenery is interesting (rural) and there are some dirt tracks to get lost on aswell (eack one guarded by a hungry rottweiler, no doubt). Ok, it’s a bloody great mountain, but who cares?

Anyway, that was the idea. After driving out of the garage, the car went for about 500 metres then stopped. After various attempts to start it I had to call the breakdown recovery people. The car ended up in the Seat dealership workshop. I ended up walking home. The worst part being that before leaving home I drank about 1.5 litres of warer, which is usual for me before a long run. Of course, having to wait for the pick-up truck, time in the repair shop, what’s one supposed to do with all that water? I was in and out of the loo there 3 times in about 20 minutes.

The day was moving on, I still had to do my run, and the option of somewhere new had gone. The only option was the esplanade (again). My 20 kilometers yesterday was an out and back from the football stadium along the seafront, passing the beaches of Riazor, Orzan and Matadero, then passing Domus, the museum of the human body and the new aquarium. Four km into the circuit one passes the symbol of La Coruña, La Torre de Hercules, which is a lighthouse originally built by the romans. Of course it has been rebuilt many times but the current lighthouse is about 350 years old and is the oldest working lighthouse in the world. La Torre is situated on a headland which is now a park. It’s used by many runners as it’s one of the only large open spaces where one can run on dirt tracks. The longest circuit in the park is about 3 km. Passing La Torre, one starts to descend a little until the esplanade levels out again just past the beach at Adormideras. It’s now a 2 km run until the road meets up with the harbour wall again. My run continues along the wall, where I see one poor chap doing 400m series, then I follow the route described earlier to the Police Station. This 10 km takes me 54 minutes. The return leg took 55 minutes, and all in all, 1hour 49 minutes.

Lunch today was lentejas a La Rioja, lentils with chorizo and bacon, followed by a viena schnitzel with fresh mediterranean salad with crème caramel for puds. I took the opportunity to weigh myself whilst there, before lunch, I might add – 82.1 kilos. The in-laws are away next weekend, so I’ll take the opportunity to either find a race or train in the atlantic oak forests in Pontedeume.

The other half will be doing her cousin’s hair in a hour or so. Given that lunch has now been digested, I will take the opportunity to escape for a nice, easy 8 km.

[El Gordo]

I was just about to write my entry but... but I'm feeling strangely hungry after reading that so I may be gone some time....