A bit nervous

Helsinki Half Marathon 2014

It's been almost one month since this year's first half marathon, Helsinki City Run. Even though it didn't go as smooth as I had hoped, there's a saying "there is always tomorrow - in this case, there's always a next marathon".

Helsinki Half Marathon is rather new as a running event, it's organized for the first time this year, so I'm rather exciting to go test the course out and how the services work. in- and out of the event. Looking at the map, there seem to be a lot of music for the runners to enjoy during the running course (This resembles Rock'N'Roll marathon -series).

I'm going to get my BIB and other stuff during friday and the run happens on saturday. Will see how it goes. I will definetely make a blogpost about the whole event.

I'm rather nervous though, I've been going to the gym lately a lot more and been running. My whole body is rather tingling though, maybe my muscles are a bit sore. I decided to rest thursday and friday and take it easy. Eat a bit of candies and drink carbohydrate drinks to fill me up on carbs for saturday.

The carbs drink I'm using is called Vitargo -carboloader. It works at least at the gym, giving nice energy for the muscle training. I haven't tested it for endurance yet, but this saturdays Half marathon will do just fine.

I'll make a new blogpost about Vitargo carboloader review. Definetely worth it, if it works as a energizer for endurance also.

You can find more informationa about Helsinki Half Marathon on their website.
Here

Wish me luck!

Armin van Buuren Intense Tour Finland, Helsinki

Ladies and gentlemen let me present you with Intense Tour: DJ Armiiiiiin van Buuuuuuuuuren!

 

So how does music concert has to do anything with sports you may ask? I'll give a hint: "jump, jump, jump" - for 5 hours. That ought to burn some calories. Add on top of that a visually spectacular, breath taking play from one of the best DJ's in the world and you have pretty much a amazing time at your hands.

I'm not going to write for long this time around. I'll let photo's speak for themself. 

How did I end up at Armin Van Buurens concert? Well, I received free tickets to the show and I'm not one to miss a good opportunity to have great time, listening to good music. While I knew Armin is a world famous DJ and I knew some of his tracks, I didn't expect him to be that good of a DJ. I honestly thought, that he would play couple of hours at max, but instead he played for nearly 5 hours straight. What makes it even better, he even brought various artists he has done work with with him.

Also the shows visual effects were just breath taking. The show lasted for 5 hours, but it felt like watching a good movie, with the stage capturing your eyes all the time and music pleasing your eyes the whole time.

At start of the show, Armin van Buuren hiding

At the Start, there was an egg/pearl/ball that kept captivating the minds of people.

Giant Armin staring at the singer lady.

Are you in state of trance?

Simply mind blowing. I kept staring at the stage of visual effects, while trying to jump/ dance (well finnish men don't dance - they shake) and listen to music. Man this Buuren guy knows what he's doing!

Armin van Buuren

Armin van Buuren

Armin van Buuren

and if people  started to get too drunk, it was clearly told whos concert they were listening to;)

Armin van Buuren

Some people were not that intrested on listening to music, but had their eyes on this mountain of treasures people kept throwing away. The creativity of people trying to snatch those goodies kept entertaining me the whole concert, while the security guards had their hands full the whole time trying to guard those, haha.

Treasure inside a cage

Are you ready to go even deeper?

How to make tired people jump even more when the clock is past midnight? Simple. Take out the Finnish flag and show to the audience you know where we are at. I will tell you no lies, nearly everyone got excited and started to jump and throw their hands in the air. He would have probably got people jumping on their heads, if he mentioned Finland had won Bronze medal on Olympics mens ice hockey earlier...

Armin van Buuren holding the Finnish flag

Whatever you do, do it with intense

The time seemed to be this trance audiences worst enemy and clock kept going without stopping to think of the people having fun. For many hours people had a great time listening to music played by world best DJ, watching the visual sight they call the stage and other various artists kept us entertained the whole play.

There were maybe some problems with holding a big mass concert like this at exhibition center, but I didn't notice anything to mention for. I had time of my life and all I can say: DJ saved my life tonight. Save the night for others Armin, you're the light between us!

Armin van Buuren, close to a surprise!

Armin van Buuren releases his secret: lots of airballoons from the sky

You can find more information about Intense Tour and Armin van Buuren from his official website:
http://www.arminvanbuuren.com/news/2013/10/armin-announces-armin-only-intense-world-tour/

Thank you Armin, was a wonderful play. I'm not sure why I hadn't purchased tickets earlier to your concert, but next time you come to Finland I will!

Armin van Buurens whole artist crew, dancers/ acrobatics/singers/ guitar/ drum players

Where you at the concert? Have you ever been at Armins concerts? Comment below or subsribe!

<3 Armin van Buuren <3

Kaisaniemi half marathon

BOOM

I participated to my second half-marathon today, sunday 15th of September.

I was sort of excited to see how my training has been doing, ever since I did my first half-marathon (the Helsinki city run). On my first half-marathon ever, my time was 2.13.25.,  which was 4 months ago. The time seems to fly very fast, when you're having fun.

I picked up my running number and shirt day before, on saturday, so I wasn't in a hurry to go to the running site. I left my apartment around 11.50 o´clock, just to realise today was sunday and the public transportation time schedules run slower  than normally. The start of the half-marathon was at 12.45 o´clock.

So I went into slight panic, and ran all the way to the train station, just to notice the train was running late by 6 minutes and would arrive quickly. Luckyyyyy me! VR, oh how I love you so (VR=goverment railroads)

I arrived at center of station around 12.15, where I headed off to the running area. Since it was near the train-station, it didn't take more than just couple of minutes.

I quickly noticed the event is quite small, but I liked the atmosphere. Very friendly and smiling people everywhere. Some of the people were young, some old, so this race would become very intresting.

The run was designed to start at 12.45 and the runners were announced to go to the starting like 5 minutes before the start.

15 seconds before the starting, they announced some very famous runner would send us off with his start pistol. But I don't think he understood finnish, because the announcer said "paikoillenne! (means get ready!) and after that the pistol fired... everyone was quite confused but we started to run anyways.

The run was quite smooth, no bigger problems and it had really beautiful scenery. We ran past parks and stuff in the middle of the city. Very relaxing and great atmosphere.

I noticed there wasn't any toilets though... Would have been unlucky to get the urges to go pee or poop while running!

But like always, everything fun comes to an end and the 21+ km run started to getting closer to the finishing line. I was going to pick up my pace around 1km before the finishing line, but decided I'll just go with the flow and enjoy scenerys.

Last few hundred meters, I could see the finishing line getting closer and closer and BOOM! My second half-marathon was completed!

TIME WAS 1.57.50 !!! That means I ran my second half-marathon 15 minutes faster than my first! WOW. This if what is when you can see results of your hard work (though i'm quite lazy - infact if I were a Pokemon, I would probably be a Snorlax...)

I was quite happy with the outcome and clearly my motivation and the bar to train even further and get better times just got raised up quite a bit!

The whole day was fun! I definetly go to Kaisaniemi run next year also!
(you can find more information about Kaisaniemi juoksu here:)



And since pictures tell more than a thousand words here are some:

                                       It's me, it's me !!! LOOK I'm on TV... Err, on picture!!

                                        10 km to go, or was I trying to wave at someone?

 

                                                                     Eye of the tiger...

                                                                          Last spurt!

                                         AND HE FINISHES THE RACE TIME 1.57.50!

                                                                    Victory pose! 

                                           Attempting to eat the medal... I was hungry!

                                                         YEAAAH, sports are fun!
                                          15 minutes better time than last half marathon!!!




                                                     

                               Wait, if I'm a clown, does that mean I'm a clown marathonist?!



                                                            Thanks for reading!

                                                                       Subsribe!

Midnight run 2013

Midnight run 2013 Helsinki

Boom! I ran my first midnight run event yesterday, saturday 31th of August (time to finish was 0:58:06) and all I can say is, that the event is insane! Lots of sideshows like samba, cheerleaders, music etc. corners are present at the event and around the running track, which went around the center of the city of Helsinki. 

The distance was 10 km, which after running a full lenght marathon (42 km) didn't seem hard at all. On the contrary, it felt like a trip at the park. Only problem was, that I didn't really think I could run it on the time I did, so I placed myself in the group 6A (estimated finishing time 1:30 hour), where I should have been in the groups 3A or 4A, because I ran it under 1 hour (58 minutes) and I got stuck behind the slower runners, which cost me many, many precious minutes.

But well, now that I'm one experience richer, I now know I should enter straight off to the faster groups.

 Midnight run is also organized in different countries, like for example in Sweden. So if you miss one event, you can still participate on the other and this year there was runners all over the world!

 Here are few pictures of the event:

 

 AND THE RUN HAS STARTED (at least for the first group)!
Flame, fire, destruction! Ragnaros (wait, what?)!

 Lots of people was enjoying the event and cheering for the runners. I personally found it intresting, that around 70 percent of the participant were female! - and oh some of them were so beautiful <3 - Definetly coming next year also!

 Me (on the right) and my rabbit Timo (on the left) which kept me going and attempting the best possible run record. Next year under 50 minute on the elite groups, eh, Timbe?!
(thanks to the random beautiful group of women who took the time to take this picture of us)

                                       Yeah victory pose!

     Is it a spiderman or who, climbing up the starting/finishing area?

            My starting group 6A! Next year hopefuly 3A!

All in all the whole running event was absolutely amazingly organized and I personally had great time.

See you all next year @Midnight run 2014!

If you're intrested to know more about Midnight run, you can find more information on their website: http://www.midnattsloppet.com/en/

 

First post!

 Introduction

Doesn't everything great start with a introduction? In this case, that probably won't be true, but a "first post" is always a great way to start your own blog.

Little bit about me: I'm a 28-year old male, living in Helsinki, Finland. My english is horrible, but maintaining this blog, I hopefuly improve it a little bit. Let's see how often I need to use Google translator. I've never been in to sports, apart from occasional game sessions with friends back in my childhood, which was ages ago. I've also been "slightly" overweight (maybe I'll add a before and after photos at some point), which probably is the reason why I'm now so intrested in doing training - you fit in to all these cute clothes, you can be as much random as you want and nobody cares and the best part is sports are fun!

If you read the blog channel description "achieving your goals", you pretty much know what this blog contains. It's about achieving your goals, getting better and being able to push to your limits. Yes it can mean sports, but can also mean something else, like eating your vegteables.

In my case, this is, indeed a sports training blog. The purpose is to keep me motivated to train, keep pushing forward, improving and ultimately enter a ironman competition.

If by any chance someone ends up reading this and is motivated to start healthy lifestyle with sports, then it has done even more than I hoped for!

I'm a complete beginner when it comes to sports, eating healthy and stuff. I've only entered few endurance tests this year (a half- and full marathon), which I somehow managed to complete with decent times.

I've looked into possible ironman triathlon completitions and the most reasonable place to compete in it, is in Sweden. I would also have a year to train for it also. A year for a beginner to enter a ironman triathlon? Sounds like a dream doesn't it? - But like Nike says: Just do it. - I'm going to follow that example and train for it, see where it leads and if I think I have a shot at completing the ironman challenge under 17 hours, I will enter the competition.

What is Ironman?

Oh what is a Ironman triathlon? It's probably one of the hardest endurance tests there are, pushing your body to the limits and those who have finished it under 17 hours have the bragging rights for life.

Hey you want to be ironman too, what you need to do? In the competition you have to:
1) swim 3.86 kilometers/ 2.4-miles (this is going to be really, really hard)
2) bicycle ride 180.25 kilometer/ 112-miles (I need to buy a proper bike for this)
3) run a full marathon (42.2 kilometers/ 26.2-miles)
You have 17 hours to do them all...

I've read you need to train around 15 hours a week... sounds easy!

You can find more information at www.ironman.com

In any case, this is the first post of hopefuly many to come and I will keep posting about stuff I do, like training, eating, marathons I enter and so forth.

 Oh and what did I do today? I was at the gym:

- Cross trainer for 30 minutes (15 minutes at level 10, 10 minutes in level 12 and 5 minutes at level 15) for warm-up,
- Did some back and chest training, abs training,
- Finished it with running for 15 minutes at high pace.

 No pictures, but there will be in the future.

 Thanks for reading!

Ps. If you are on my google+ circle and do not wish to receive this mumbojumbo blog posts, remove the contact. Thank you!