Season starts in Espoo...

Summer is just around the corner and running season has officially started.

27.4.2014, My first Länsiväylä run, in Espoo.

The running event is called "the start of finnish running season" and it certainly had quite a few participants. I also saw few finnish politics either running or campaigning for euro elections.

Grumpy Janne before the race. I forgot my water bottle somewhere, so had to purchase something to drink...

This time I started the season with a quick run, only 6 kilometers run, but it was enough for me. At least for now, as they say - you get more hungry, the more you eat ;) Time was around 30 minutes, I didn't enter to run competively anyways. I was with a friend who just started the running hobby. So I tried to run around the same time. Well that didn't really work and in the end we went separate ways :D.

Maybe next time I just say "see you at the finishing line!"

Overall Länsiväylä juoksu (run) was organized really well, there were signs everywhere at the starting location for WC, where to get running bibs, etc. Definately will try to participate next year also.

The weather was also great. Sun was shining, so hopefuly people remembered to take care of their suplements and that they drank enough water!

I read that the 6 kilometer race was also re-modeled from last year and this year the route was different. I'm not sure how was it previously, but I enjoyed this years route. It was definetely a great 6 kilometers to run.

Finisher with a medal, sun is shining and everything is good!

I've also started going to gym more frequently and I even have a personal trainer. I will tell you about this more in a later blog post.

Have you already started your running season?

Espoo BeachMarathon

My first ½marathon as a rabbit!

It's been a week since last run, but I got the chance to participate as a rabbit on Espoo BeachMarathon. Free run as rabbit, fame & glory so why not!

That and from last run (Kaisaniemi marathon) there was no signs of injuries or anything. I was good to go and try being a rabbit.

Rabbit... hopefuly I don't end up laying on the floor chilling like this bunny does

Espoo and my way making it to the running location

Espoo (area in Finland) isn't that familiar to me, as a place, so I had to leave early from my home so I could make sure I wouldn't be late from anything important. Though we had a rabbit-meeting the day before, where all the relevant information was told to us. So I had a hinch where I should be and at what time. But it's never bad to be 110% sure, that everything goes according to plan.

I got on to a bus from Centre of Helsinki, that was heading towards the running place and started making my way to the next best experience ever.

Lot's of other runners took the same bus as I did, so I didn't have to worry about where was I needed to get off from the bus. That's probably one of the many great things in running events, lots of people wearing sport clothing packed in same place, headed the same way as you are.

I got to the running place and took quick sneak peek at the place. I found all the important places (like the officials cafe... free food and coffee, yum), got my staff access card, then proceeding to swap my clothes to my running outfit at the officials changing rooms.

Officials access-card

 I was one hour too early, but it's fine, since I had my smartphone with me and there was connection to internet. My trusted Samsung S2... Great phone, need to upgrade it later on to S4.

I didn't need to wait too long, before other rabbits started pouring in to the changing rooms and I met my other team mates, that would ran with me as rabbits.

Lucky for me they were pro's and veterans in running Espoo BeachMaraton. So I could take it easy and just follow their lead. I'm such a lazy guy it makes me blush sometimes...

We took a balloon with our estimated net time on it and took few photos to post on Facebook. After that we proceeded to go where the warming up exercises were held by Fressi (fitness company, gym etc.). Some of the moves they did looked so silly, that I didn't quite follow their warming up session, but the audience seemed to be 110% into it. Good job Fressi!

Me with the 2.05 estimated running-time balloon

Fressi warming people up!

Some people were brave enough to start moving the way pro as girls from Fressi were doing

After warming excercise, we headed to the starting line where we would start our journey to the unknow. Or at least around Espoo. Whichever comes first.

Starting line

AND THE RACE STARTS!

No big surprises here, ran went smoothly, beautiful view of landscape, beaches, yachts, boats... and stuff. Really good journey to the unknown.

I'm not sure was the race itself really hard or were people just trying too good times, because there were many injured people/ ambulancess called and even one helicopter was ordered to pick up person who was being cpr on. I really, really hope he gets better... Also there was one person who apparently gave up few kilometers (~1 mile) before the finishing line... I wanted to go shout at her "YOU AREN'T GIVING UP HERE, GET UP AND START WALKING!", but she probably had told the staff members about she quitting already... Which is really, really shame. Good luck to you next time miss!

The funny part about the race was that the end of it would be running uphill road for a while, which the other rabbit team member told me about. Well, I didn't really think the uphill would be that tiring... But it was quite interesting to notice how before the uphill, there was lots of people behind us and after the uphill there were just few running with us, going for our estimated time...

Well, after the uphill there is always downhill (even in life, sadly), which made the last hundread of meters seem peace of cake.

Hi!
(Our balloon broke @Hansasilta)

LOOK AT ME IM A BUNNY, I HOP *hops*

Hopping is surprisingly tiring...

aaaaaand we finished the race in time! Yay, way to go team 2.05 rabbits!

 

Team Rabbit!

Medal <3 I'm like a kid on x-mas eve, when it comes getting medals :D

All in all my first experience as a rabbit was very good. I'm happy I joined the Espoo Beachmarathon Rabbit team. and definetly will come here again next year. Even if the rabbit spots are full, I'm most definetly wanting to join us a regular runner (and beat my earlier records, hehe).

 Random stuff

Lots of people particapated!

Thanks for reading! next blog post will be something else than running!

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!