Discussion: Tough Stuff

Hey, congrats for finishing through even when things got tough. I know exactly what you mean by "shitstorm" after 30km. But i really hope you dont get discouraged from future marathons just because you didnt quite have the race you wanted. But dont be too hard on yourself, given your history being out of training both june and july, and starting to train just a month before. Thats pretty impressive.

Next time, if you have a couple months of 30 hours of running in each before a marathon, im sure you will notice a big difference. I myself tried to do that, but havent had a single month in 2011...

Last thing: theres been a study on the body type of the best orienteers in the world champs, and what they found out, was that they could not find any correlation with body weight and how well they did / how good they were.

Thanks Mathias, what I wrote yesterday was largely the result of frustration. I'm pretty sure I felt exactly the same way the first time I ran a half-marathon distance or an M21 long orienteering race, but now I can finish those without too many difficulties. I knew that running a marathon was going to be hard, but I don't think I was quite prepared for just how difficult it would be.

Even though the last couple of summers coming out of the Arctic where I have been hiking 8-10 hours a day and moving lots of heavy things around like rocks and fuel barrels I have felt quite strong, regaining running speed and endurance is something else entirely. COCs last year showed that.

This won't discourage me from my plans to do minimum 20 quality hours of running training a month until next summer in preparation for COCs, O-ringen, etc. If I can get 6-8 months solid running training in a row rather than my previous spotty 1-3 months at a time I am sure it will make a difference, I just have to stick with it.