Training | Bremen Half: Week 2

So it appears I’m getting the hang of this training thing again. As much as I enjoyed my break after the Hamburg Marathon, it’s also nice to be working towards a goal again. Bremen Half Marathon, I’m coming for you!

Monday: 30 minutes of swimming. I always feel so accomplished after a swim, mostly for having stuck it out the entire 30 minutes. I’m not a fan of having to share the pool with screaming kids doing cannonballs off the diving board. It’s just not that relaxing. Yes, there are a couple lanes reserved for the real swimmers, but I’m too self-conscious about my slowness and poor form to join their lanes, so I make do with doing laps in the open swim part of the pool. Honestly, the pool situation could be improved. We’ll see.

Tuesday: Planned rest day. (But I did sweat completely through all of my clothes at the Mudhoney show, so there’s that.)

Wednesday: Unplanned rest day. Should have done my easy run, but just didn’t.

Thursday: Easy 3-mile run along the Osterdeich.

Friday: 3-mile tempo run + 15-minute strength training. 1 mile warm-up, 1-mile tempo pace, 1-mile cool down. At the moment, I’m doing my speed and tempo workouts by effort. It was incredibly warm and humid that evening, which my body is definitely not used to, so I didn’t want to set a pace that wouldn’t make sense in that kind of weather. For that middle mile, I settled into a pace that was challenging, but that I could hold for the entire mile (but maybe not for longer).

Saturday: Easy 3-mile run in the Bürgerpark. I was essentially running in the midday heat, so I took it very slow.

Sunday: 6-mile run, mid-morning, on one of the hottest days we’ve had so far this summer. Despite being drenched in sweat and drinking a liter of water during my run, I felt pretty solid.

That’s it for this week! All in all: four days of running, one day of cross-training, and two rest days. This week I’m going to make more of an effort to do more strength training and to get my runs in earlier in the week instead of bunching them all around the weekend. Hope you have a great start to your week!

July 18, 2016

Training | Bremen Half: Week 1

Friends, it is that time of year again: time to get myself in gear for the Bremen Half Marathon on October 2nd. I don’t want to go too crazy with the running posts, but you guys know running is kind of what I do for fun, so just skip over them if you’re not into it. Plus the Runner Beans and Ali On the Run are really inspiring me right now with their training updates for the NYC Marathon, so here I go with logging Week 1 of the Bremen Half!

My general plan is actually four days of running per week, including one speed or tempo run and one long run, plus a few runs at half-marathon pace thrown in here and there. I’m following a modified Hal Higdon plan using the paces from the Run Less, Run Faster book. I don’t want to completely abandon the Run Less, Run Faster approach since it helped me shave nearly 10 minutes off my half marathon time in under a year, but it also left me completely exhausted all the time and usually sick at least once per training cycle. Not good. So, let’s see how a hybrid version works for helping me get under 2:00 (or at least under my record of 2:04). I’m also trying to incorporate strength training (as often as I can) and at least one cross-training session (i.e., swimming or cycling) per week.

Honestly, the first week got off to kind of a slow start thanks to general laziness, terrible weather, and crazy deadlines at work. But I hope I’ve gotten into a groove that will carry me through to October.

Monday: Rest day

Tuesday: 3 easy miles

Wednesday: Should have done my speed workout, but I ended up working til 10pm instead.

Thursday: The pouring rain drowned out my motivation, plus I was exhausted. (But not too exhausted to go to Breminale!)

Friday: Finally, my speed workout — 10-minute warm-up, plus 5 rounds of 400 meters as fast as I could manage, plus a 10-minute cool down. All of the running tracks that I know of are not located so conveniently for me, so I usually just find a straight away near the park or the river without too many pedestrians and rely on my GPS watch to tell me when the 400 meters are up. I definitely slowed down during my marathon training and my times are definitely not as fast as they need to be by the time of the half, but I’m sure they will improve over the next 12 weeks.

Saturday: 30-minute strength training at home using the Nike Training Club app.

Sunday: Just an easy 5 miles on one of first summer-like days we’ve had so far this summer.

That’s it for this week! I hope I have more to report to you by the end of Week 2. :)

Anyone else training for a fall race? Just for fun, or do you want to break a personal record?

July 1, 2016

InstaFriday | Jet Lag

Circles and squares. #designtriennial #cooperhewitt — Designed by Andreas Engesvik and Daniel Rybakken

It’s 8:30 in the evening and I’m writing this post to postpone falling sleep until my normal bed time. I arrived back in Germany yesterday afternoon after an overnight flight and survived somehow until 9pm. In order to establish some sort of normal rhythm, I put in more or less a full day in at work today, but I’m fading pretty fast .

In any case, my time in DC and NYC was absolutely wonderful and a much needed balm for my soul. It’s rare to find friends who are truly kindred spirits, who continuously inspire you, and who remind you that it’s still worth trying to make the world a better place. More photos and posts to come later, for sure.

And guess who I spotted on my way back to Germany at JFK, eating dinner with his family across from my gate? Oh, just Macklemore. I decided to just leave them in peace since no one else seemed to be bothering him, but I did glance their way about a dozen times while I was standing in line to board. :) Definitely made my flight, and ranks right up there with passing Philip Seymour Hoffman on the sidewalk in the West Village, and sitting across the aisle from Christoph Waltz once on a flight to Berlin.

I’m not sure I can construct many more coherent sentences, so how about you just tell me: how has your week been?

June 17, 2016

Travel | Heybeliada Island

You’ll have to forgive me for keeping this post short on words and long on photos. It feels like the only thing I’ve done this week is work, eat, and sleep. But that’s not completely true — at least some of that work involved another trip to Istanbul, two nights on the 31st floor of a fancy hotel, getting upgraded to a suite larger than my apartment, and swimming in a beautiful pool after the day’s meeting was done. It was actually kind of worth arriving at midnight on Monday and catching a cab back to the airport at 6am Wednesday morning.

But I’m not here to talk about my most recent trip — instead I want to go back to my day trip to Heybeliada during my first visit to Istanbul! There are only a few Lira and about a one hour ferry trip separating downtown Istanbul from Heybeliada, the second largest of the Prince Islands. No cars are allowed on the island, so visitors mostly ride bikes or take a ride in the horse drawn carriages (which I wouldn’t especially recommend — those horses did not look like they were treated very well). My friend and I spent the day on foot, which was also wonderful.

We visited on a Saturday, which is prime time for visitors from the city, so the island was overrun with families and children. Unfortunately, despite circling the entire perimeter of the island, we didn’t find any public place to swim that didn’t involve paying a fee. But I did love wandering around and checking out all the beautiful old wooden houses — something of a curiosity in this part of the world!

In any case, our visit to Heybeliada was a nice change from the hustle and bustle of the city and a great location for a day trip! If you get going earlier than we managed, you can also visit the other Prince Islands on the same day. For more photos from my entire trip, click over here.

What’s your favorite day trip in recent memory?