Monthly Archives: September 2008

Back From Paradise

Posted on by
3

I’m finally back home after a few days of vacations. I managed to get a couple of runs while I was away, it was nice to get a chance to run on a completely different environment, to get a chance to see different things while you run and get used to different weather, although I’m not a fan of warmer weather, but still, a good experience.

I also got the chance to swim on open waters, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. It’s harder to swim when there are currents and bigger waves than in a pool. Not to mention salty water!!! It might sound like something non-important, but when swimming for a long time on the sea the salty water taste can get really disgusting!

I leave you with a few pictures from Morrocoy (where I was), the Caribbean at it’s finest :P

The first 2 are from one of the most famous beaches there, called ‘Cayo Sombrero’. which means ‘key hat’, and I think it has that name because it’s a small island shaped like a hat.

This one is from a ‘Bajo’. Which is were I went on Saturday. A ‘Bajo’ is a place where the water level is really low, so what we do is throw the anchor there and just pass the day swimming and on the boat. It doesn’t get more peaceful than that!

And this one is me sitting on the boat, the sky was beautiful that day!

Good run to everyone on this weekend! I’ll update later once I start training again next week.

Approaching Paradise

Posted on by
4

I decided to spend my last few days of vacations away from home, so I came to Valencia, which is 2 hours away from where I live, to visit some family and friends. Tomorrow we are going to go to Morrocoy, about an hour away from here.

Morrocoy is a set of really small islands that you can only get if you have your own boat or rent one. And once you get there you are as close to paradise as you can get. Beautiful beaches, warm water, beautiful marine life. Surrounded by peace and friends, nothing to bother you… Oh, how I love the Caribbean!!! Jealous yet? you should be ( :P ) And if you’re not, i’ll leave you with a picture of where I’ll be:

I’ll probably be away for a few days. I’ll try to get a run in if possible and I’ll be back the next week with more updates and some pics of my new tan. Have fun and good luck to all of you that have big runs or races this weekend.

Creating a habit

Posted on by
1

I have 2 more weeks before I start the university again, and with that comes a more busy schedule than what I have right now. So my plan for the last 2 weeks has been to create a different habit for training, to get the body and mind used to it so that when I start classes it doesn’t get so hard to get used to everything.

The plan is to train twice a day. An early morning session and a late afternoon/evening session. Usually the morning session consist of a short run or weight training and they take between 20 and 45 mins. The second session takes between 45 and 90 mins, and it’s the ‘strong’ session for the day, be it running, biking or swimming. But these sessions are not really that intense, I’m trying to get used to the high volume first, to get the body to the point where I can train twice a day without getting too tired, and once I accomplish this I can start thinking about increasing the intensity and making the evening sessions longer.

Since I don’t have any other ‘A’ races planned for the year (I might do a couple of 10k’s, but I’m not specially training for them), I’m thinking that creating the habit to train twice a day and to get used to high volume training is a good way to prepare for next year, for which I have a lot of plans and (ambitious) goals, but more from that on another post!.

I’m so jealous reading at everyone else’s blog! Most people are either tapering or just had their ‘Big Race of the Year’!! I’d like to be there right now, training for my big race!! I’m cheering to all of you from here! keep it up, keep up the training and you all will do great!

Active Recovery

Posted on by
2

After the bad race last Sunday I decided that I was going to attempt some active recovery. The plan was to keep up with the volume of training that I had before the race, but just lowering the intensity of each workout. And so far this has been working pretty well.

I started on Wednesday with a 5 mile run, I felt great, still had sore legs but besides that, everything was fine. Then on Thursday I did 3 miles and went swimming on Friday, still, everything feeling perfect, as if nothing happened last Sunday.

Then yesterday I decided to run 10k again, the distance that (quoting That brazilian newsletter) made me eat the bread that the devil made. I went to ‘El parque del Este’ (East Park). This is a really nice place to run here in Caracas, it’s a big park/zoo that has a lot of trails, semi-exotic-animals that you can see while running and even a small lake with a replica of the ship where Christopher Columbus came to discover America. The weather was perfect, I decided to do 2 laps to my favorite trail, which is almost 5k.

This park It’s the only place where you can go (safely) and run on trails in Caracas, and it’s really cool that you can run near the animals that are kept in the zoo part of the park. Well, as I was running there yesterday on what was my favorite trail I see THIS:

WTH?!?!? That fence is NOT supposed to be there!!! So I stopped the run for a moment and started talking to the people that where there to find out what was going on…

If there’s ONE thing that Venezuela is famous for right now (besides the gross amount of oil we have) is our… how should I say this… our swashbuckling president. Well, ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ decided that Christopher Columbus was an Imperialist, because he came from Spain to kill the Natives of the American continent, and because of this he decided to take out the replica of his ship and use one a HUGE part of the park to build a museum for some ‘True Revolutionary’ dude that died more than 500 years ago and that no one gives a crap about right now… So my trail is gone now, along with a few other cool routes in the park.

Ok, political rant over. I did managed to finish my 10k, but I had to go through a different/new route that was a lot more crowded. Today I went biking for 20 miles in the morning and then swimming in the afternoon. So far I’ve been feeling perfectly, so next week (tomorrow) I’m starting regular -more intense- training again.

Thanks for reading and happy running!

What if…

Posted on by
3

Being the geek/gadget-lover that I am, I’ve been recovering a lot of data from the Human Race and trying to analyze it as much as possible. For starters I finally got the official results:

- I got to the 2.5k mark in 12:48 mins and I was in the 198th position at that point in my age group.

- I got to the 5k mark in 24:40 mins and I was in the 196th position at that point in my age group.

- I got to the 7.5k mark in 44:55 mins and was # 309 in my age group.

- Finished the race in 57:43 and was # 308 in my age group.

-Total # of people in my age group: 1563, which means I was in the top 20%, way above average!! And for the race totals, there were 9188 people participating in the race, and I finished as # 1604, meaning I am in the top 17.5%!!!

I finished the race happy, I had a really bad day and just being able to get to the finish line was big enough of an accomplishment for me, not at all how I had planned to finish, but I was not complaining. Now seeing those numbers, after such a bad race, I can say that I am really happy with the results.

But if I play a bit with the numbers for my first half, before I started walking, just so I can imagine what if… I was at that point #196, which means I was in the top 13%!! Also, 113 people from my category passed me on the second half of the race, this means that approximately 7% of the people on my category passed during this time, and taking this to everyone on the race means that (approximately) 643 people passed me on the second half because of my injury.

Since I usually do negative splits when racing (and training) I can be confident to say that my second half of the race could had been as good (or better) than my first half. So, what if I didn’t injury?? I could had ended in less than 50 minutes, in the top 1000 (out of over 9000 runners) and in the top 13% of runners in my age group!! Only if I didn’t had such a terrible second half.

And to make it all better, check this out:

That’s the top 10 runners in Venezuela for that day!! Do you see me there as #7??? It’s SO cool to be there! Of course, this only means that there aren’t many people that have a Nike+ system here (or that they aren’t really fast…come on #1 in 42 mins…), but still, #7!! WOHOOO!! by the way, I SO could had been #3 if I didn’t injured.. AARRRGGG!!!!!, THAT WOULD HAD BEEN SOOO COOL!!

And to finish my posts about The Human Race. I was SO jealous of Alissa’s AFC Half Marathon report. Did you see how many pictures of her she got from that race?? I was about to send her hate-mail asking if she was stalking the photographers, but I found this, the first picture of me during a race!!! (well, It was of some other guy in front of me, but after some time cleaning it up in photoshop, you can see me!! well, sorta…)

UPDATE: I cut out the guy that the picture was originally from, so I’m the one in the middle of the pic. If there’s still a doubt, I’m This One