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!

Important factor in running - how you feel about it, HCR 2014

Specsavers Helsinki City Run 10.5.2014

 

The most favourite half marathon event in Finland, the Helsinki City Run has been held once again. I had big hopes and major goals for this years HCR-run, how did it go?

There are bad news and there are good news. In the movies and tv-series, they always start with the good news. This year HCR was so surprisingly positive as a event, so let's leave the good news as last and start off with the bad news.

Bad news...

There are many factors that affect your running: Training, eating properly, sleeping enough, your set goals, how fit you are, avoiding injuries, correctrunning techniques and what matters the most - how you feel about it. If you don't have great feeling "everything will go perfectly 110% today!", then you can expect everything to go as planned.

I haven't had feeling like that for awhile, well particularly for HCR. That might have affected the outcome of my run. Last year, around December, I was high in spirits and was looking forward to breaking my personal records big time. I even dared to challenge one of my former schools teachers and a good friend of mine to participate in the run. Both of them initially accepted the challenge and I decided to train faster harder better, so I would beat them 10-0.

Closing in on year 2014 start of the Helsinki City Run, it came clear to me, that neither of them was going to take part of this challenge after all. This might have affected on my feelings for the run, but there were other reasons aswell. Bad preparing, eating badly and not enough proper training. Excuses one could find endlesly, but in the end you have to man up and look into the mirror and find the reason why the race went as it did. No excuses. Let's leave them to the policians.

Year 2014 Helsinki City run ½marathon time for me was 2hours,04minutes. Far, far from my goal of 1hour45minutes.  As I laid there on the Olympic Stadiums grassfield, I just thought of many things. Many things. Some of them aren't fit enough to be written on a blog with all age people reading

The sight as I was laying on the field...

Luckily for me, human learn from mistakes. That should hold true for me aswell. Learning for this, I need to start working towards the next marathon and make it even better. No excuses. That's my new motto. Run like you've never ran before. The most important thing is that you finish what you start. The worst thing possible you could do, is to quit without proper reason (like injury)!

Thumbs up for next years City Run!

 I have around one month for my next marathon. Let's see how I do there.

My socks unsigned their contract.

 Then the good, positive sides of Specsavers Helsinki City Run 2014

Ok, so I wanted to leave the good side of the event as last. There were many, many good things about the running event to tell about.

The starting groups: HCR took advices from other internation running events and organized more starting groups for this year HCR. There were more than ten thousand runners expected to participate on this event, so the smooth start of the run was needed. This was done very good this year. Everyone seemed to think so. Even I enjoyed this years start.

Helsinki Cityrun 2014 official race shirt was orange-coloured.

 The race route was correct lenght this year. At least it felt a bit longer :D - last year it was missing a good few hundread meters. So techniculy I ran my full-lenght first HCR half marathon this year. The route was challenging enough, beautiful landscapes. The last few kilometer uphills were quite pain for the legs though...

The supporters along the running route was magnificent as always. The weather wasn't the best, but people were cheering like it was a hot summer day. This is veryimportant factor for runners to keep going.

Finishing line and last service point after finishing was organized differently this year. It's good to see the organizes listen to feedback and do properly things. The servicepoint in the goal was working like a dream and no major queues for the bananas etc. was in sight this year - unlike last year, which took 15 minutes to get your final drinks/foods.

My item storage bag and goodies I received after finishing the race.

 The item storage was done differently this year also. We were handed out green sailor bags, which we just put our running number sticker and put our stuff inside the bag. Then we gave the bags to a certain fenced area. There was security to keep the bags in place and it worked really well. Previously we just  have had to leave our stuff laying on the benches inside olympic stadium, which did give some excitement, as would you get your stuff back. So this years fenced solution worked really, really good.

Item storage place. Items were put in bags, which was given to the officials.

 This blog post was a bit lenghty, going from emotional whining to happiness of enjoyable running event, but that's how it goes sometimes. Now I just need to get my focus back and continue to train. Next year I will get under 1hour 45minutes in HCR!

This year Helsinki City Run was 10/10. I recommend to participate if you haven't before.

Helsinki City Run 2014 Medal

Kulta Katriina offered free coffee! Yes!

 What about my lovelyreaders, have you participated in HCR before? Was this your first time, How did your run go?

Busy year 2014!

Year 2014 is the year of sports themed events for couch-athletes or amateur-atheletes!

Couch-athletes have been enjoying themselves already with Olympics at Sochi, under20 icehockey world championship tournament, or if you like badminton, you might have the luxury to watch badminton country championship tournaments this year.

For fun-loving, amateur-athletes that I like to call myself, the fun is however just about to start. Year 2014 brings hundreads of intresting sport events. While it may be close to impossible, or super hard to fit all of these fun events to your calendar - I'm going to write down few of the events I'm going to participate at. Let me introduce to you "Year 2014 Dream Calendar":

Month	Competition
March	-
April	Länsiväyläjuoksu
May	Helsinki City Run (21km)
June	Helsinki Half Marathon (21km)
July
August	Helsinki City Marathon (42km)	Midnightrun	Helsinki City Triathlon
September	Pääkaupunkijuoksu (21km)
October	-
November	-
December	Messukeskusjuoksu

Almost every month has some intresting competition I'm attending at. In September there is tons of other activies also, like: Vantaa Marathon, Espoo beachmarathon, Stockholm (Sweden) Marathon and many others. That is one of the reasons I haven't finalized my plans as of yet. Also since July is quite open for events to attend to, I have to search up for intresting competitions. Which possibly will be held abroad. I'm taking suggestions, if you know good places to competite at!

Most important competitions

Truth to be told, while I may say "competitions", these all are events to keep myself in shape. As I'm not doing these to win, but to keep myself motivated to go forward toward my dream. I like to call them competitions though, I like the sound of it.

From half marathons, the most important ones for me are: Helsinki City Run, which I'm attempting to break my record by finishing faster than 1hour45minutes and the second intresting half marathon is this newly organized event Helsinki Half Marathon. Will be intresting to see how they cope up with the popularity City Run has.

From full-lenght marathons I have to nominate Helsinki City Marathon as my most important one this year. I'm looking for options to compete abroad in one other full-lenght marathon this year, which July seems to be the best option, as my Dream Calendar slot for July is rather empty.

Most of these events are familiar to me and I trust them as working running events. My first triathlon will be Helsinki City Triathlon held in August. While it's not super hard event, but more of a fun thing to attend to, I get to see what it's all about. Wish me luck!

A lil' bit of Training in my life, a lil' bit of Running by my side, a lil' bit of Sweat is what I need...

Lou Bega's mambo number 5. set aside, my set goals don't finish without training, so let's put tv-remote set aside for awhile and Olympics in Sochi can wait untill I finish running a bit!

Friend of mine asked me to accompany her for a running session (you can't believe how happy one can be when someone asks you out to run), which I gladly accepted. We set up a meeting place&time, where I arrived too early. Well, luckily I found this amazing thing I kept running up and down while waiting for her to arrive:

Friend of mine arrived on time (amazing character on females, especially since I'm always late! :D) and I had warmed up for our running training. I wish all gyms would have stepmaster as their gym equipment selection...

Running varies always when you do it solo, or as a group.

Running solo can be boring. Luckily you have your trusted Ipod, or other Mp3 player with you, so you can listen to your favourite track while running.

Running with a friend or as a group brings a whole new level to running. It's refreshing and brings more fun, as you can talk with your friends about tv-programs, olympics etc. Or Victorias Secret models if you like them. Miranda Kerr is awesome. Everyone should try to attend some group running practice, if they can. Most Marathons try to give a chance to participate on a training session one or two times prior to the event they are holding.

It might be a cultureshock to some, to actually having to have conversation while training, instead of just having a monologue from your music player... ;)

Tired dog, permission to use on blog approval by Creative Commons 2.0 on Flickr
All credits goes to photographer Pamela Stocks, original url:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenerife/240325046/in/photostream/

Training with friend end and no, I didn't end up like that doggy above. It was nice, fast paced round of sweat!

I had a energy to spare still, so I went solo for a quick jogging round outside that very evening. With my trusted TomTom Multi-Sport GPS watch with me

The feeling after workout is always great. Mind works always better when you've given some sweat while doing sports. It was a nice slow-paced jog to finish a great day. I should have ran around the block to get that last 300 meters though, so it would have shown 5 kilometers... ;)

Love the TomTom watch though! That reminds me, I need to make a review of it here, hopefuly soon.

See you all soon!

Pääkaupunki juoksu (½marathon)

Yet another marathon, is this the same though?

No, sometimes you make a bad decision and that is doing sports when you're not 100% health. Cold seems to have taken over me, yet I decided to go try break my personal record of 1.50h in a half-marathon.

I prepared well for the event, bought energy gels, printed a paper that told me how fast I would need to run per kilometer (which by the way is 5.13 minutes/km, for 1.50h time). I was certain I would go under magical 1.50!

But no, no broken record of 1.50h, but instead I broke the myth "dumb people don't get sick". Hehe.

I did break my old record though, but for some reason, this didn't bring me any joy. Well, there is always another day, another race, another given chance to break records! Just need to go forward, never look back!

Disapointed

Personal record was broken, but it didn't bring any joy. But there is always a new day - NEVER look back!

 

Thumbs up for winning yourself

1.56.12 is still ok

 

Few words about pääkaupunkiseutu marathon

The whole run was tons harder than I thought it would be. While I was running, I made a nickname for the race: "All uphill marathon". No seriously, it felt like the race was going uphill all the time and then few super radical downhills. Very exhausting.

Also I did not like the sports drinks they were serving to us runners. The taste was horrible. I think it was supposed to be mandarin flavour, but it tasted like socks. I don't even want to know what energy drinks they were. Actually yes I do want to know, so I don't buy those myself... Ugh.

Also the drinking stations... They were horribly placed. The first came when we already had ran for over 6 to 7 kilometers of the trip. Seriously what's with that? It's probably handy for the organization, but as a runner, I didn't enjoy the distance.

Positive side (which is a major big one) is that the people cheering at us runners were fabulous! It really matters in endurance tests like these, when people cheer for you, even if they are complete strangers to you.

Some kid had climbed up on the tree for better view

Last race for awhile

This was also my last race for this year probably, not sure if there are any intresting running events coming in Finland anymore, until next year. Or maybe I go try running on different country, see how it feels.

There is one new consept of a run though, that I might want to try, but will tell about it later on.

Congratulations on new world time record on marathon

Yes, it's true. Wilson Kipkang broke the world record and set a new time of 2.03.23. Now that is some sweet running. Around 20km/hour. Could you do that? I certainly would want to! Big heads up to Wilson! Oh I wish I would have been there, at Berling Marathon to see it happen...

Congratulations mr. Wilson, I shall be trying to best you some day!

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!

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!

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!