A win in running and personally.

So the week has flown by and much has happened, some exciting, eg: racing, some less so eg: brushing my teeth.

The routine has returned since coming out of holiday/training camp mode and into work and day to day back in Switzerland, thankfully the weather is on the improve with some double figure days (in Celcius) by the end of the week. I wouldn't say Spring is here, but maybe we have seen off Winter...hopefully!

I had a race on the weekend, in Bremgarten, AG a small town in between Zurich, Luzern and Baden (where I work). The race was an 11km road and off road race, mostly flat starting in the town, taking in some of the trails along the River Ruess as well as some back country-side roads. It was quite a contrast to go through the mid way part of the race with only local farmers raising their heads to watch us go by, compared to the final 200m back in the Town, where the streets were lined and the crowd was packed in and hanging over the barriers to cheer the runners home.
The race went down well, we set of quick, which was a bit of a shock to the legs and left just me and two Ethiopians, who also reside in Switzerland, on the front after about 3km. I know them both, having raced them in track and road races around Europe and knew they both had more impressive kicks than my current marathon legs! As a result, my plan was to throw in some surges to break it up, and try to get a break, which would allow me to sneak off to the finish line without waiting for a big kick down.

This worked at 4km for one challenger, and by around 9km for the next and I was able to get through 10km in 29.12 and run onto the line in a new course record and a hard fought win back in the main part of Town.

The next win of the weekend, came with a successful attempt to give media interviews in both English and German, and they seemed to understand both... although my German was more like Germish (a combo of German and English, mashed together to form some sort of understandable sentence). Not sure if they were just being polite?

The final win of late, was getting the process of invitations for the Wedding finished, and sent off to the printers for processing, all going well, this chunk of the Wedding preperation will be done and Invites sent out in the next week or so. At times, getting the formatting and style we wanted was a bit of a mission, but we sat through it to get it locked away and almost ticked off!

Looking ahead I have logged a good couple of marathon sessions, and am pleased to be able to officially say that my Spring Marthon is sorted and all organised.
After having to change my plans a bit, from orginally being locked in to run the Hamburg Marathon on the 29th April, I needed to make the change as I will be on a work seminar in Tunisa from the Wednesday and into this weekend, when I was planning on banging it out on the roads of Hamburg.
Therefore I had to do some research and ground work in search of a replacement marathon, ASAP as to not disturb my build up too much but one that also matched my race golas and strategy.

After looking into London, Vienna, Paris, Zürich, Madrid, Rotterdam and a few others we have decided on the Brighton Marathon in Southern England. It is two weeks earlier than Hamburg, on the 15th April and a week before Renate will race in her 'home' marathon of Zürich.
The upside is I can keep work happy, the course is flat and fast (without wind hopefully, but who knows being on the coast!), the competition and projected pace is nicley matched for me and I will be able to help Renate for her last two weeks of prep towards Zürich.
Happy to have it all sorted and now can keep putting the hard yards in the bank for race day.

I am planning to do a bit of a weekly song that I have been listening to and/or a latest video, movie, etc that may have caught my eye this week.

Mac Miller, great party song, and solid Vid clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaTCoohGzWw


As my old man would say... The best kind of cat is a flat cat!!


Here is the first installment.
Enjoy and till next time.
Clint

* Also a shout out to my first official member of this blog, I have one!!! Mr Shaun Krawitz, solid effort mate, if you wanna be in the cool gang you can join too. Peace.

Latest Pics

Training and getting Sun in Portugal

So I will start the blogging with a fun and different place,not your typical, in Monte Gordo Portugal (in the Algarve).

I was there with Renate and a group of Swiss distance runners, ranging from 1500 to marathon for some warm weather training. After returning from Australia in early January, we had some tough conditions to deal with weather wise, as the temperature plumetted to below zero... and kept going. I think the coldest run I did was in minus 15 degrees (no, that is not a misprint!!) which was challenging to say the least.

What kept me going was getting down to Portugal, knowing that the conditions would be much more bearable and great for longer training with the temperatures sitting around +15 degrees and Sun for most of the day.

When getting down South, it was good to get out on the varied trails and train with a few different people. Most of my runs were completed with the group, and faster ones done with Swiss runners Phil Bandi and Marco Kern. One of the days, I joined two Germans for a long (30km) run, winding up the pace as we went on.

The day as which is typical when on holidays and a training camp was pretty standard each day. Not to bore with details, but it usually includes plenty of eating, running, coffee drinking, midday naps, reading as well as a bit of stretching, gym work, massage and sauna for recovery.

This format is mixed up and repeated regularly.



With the marathon being the focus, the weekly kms are high, and the staples are the long run, tempos, longer intervals and recovery runs.



Next up, I will add some pics, and keep you posted on whats happening. I encourage comments and will do my best to keep this place up to date, interesting and relevant.

Thanks for reading...

Re-vamp and keeping the blog up to date

So I have this blog account and set it up when I first arrived in Switzerland... but I have completley forgotten about it and need to keep it up to date.
I don't think I actually gave anyone the address so it can be checked!
So here we go, info to keep you updated and if you feel like a read then this will keep all up to date, your comments and feedback are most appreciated.
I plan to link this to Facebook and will make sure I pop in a few pics and what not along the way.