Two athletes about their marathon preparation:

Stefan Rauchenzauner

It's hard to believe, but spring is making an appearance! This can only mean that the marathon will not be long in coming. My foot injury has improved again, so that I could run again without any complaints. As life goes, the next small setback was not long in coming. At the beginning of the weekend I already noticed that I wasn't feeling so well, flu-like symptoms crept in. On Friday I definitely had to skip the run and hoped for the run on Saturday. But on this day I didn't feel very fit yet and tortured myself for 90min at the Ergo. On Sunday came the final collapse, only the bed and absolute rest helped. In the meantime I feel a bit better, but thanks to the recovery week I can still rest a bit and don't have to do any intensive runs yet. Hope that the lost training units don't set me back too much and that I can run the marathon with a good time despite that. Second performance test: Soon it will be time for the second lactate test! It will show whether my hard training is visibly reflected in the lactate curve or not ;-). My coach Bernhard Schimpl will tell me on Friday after the evaluation. I'm really looking forward to it!

Frank Ortler

The hot phase begins! The Vitalmonitor and I: pretty much best friends, you could say. Every morning after the "traditional" measurement, the Pulse7 app tells me my regeneration values, training recommendation and stress factor. Together with Berny Schimpl's customized training plan, it's off to the start line at the Linz Marathon. The last few weeks I had the feeling that things were progressing. This was also confirmed by the data from the morning and afterload measurement from the Vitalmonitor. Last week, however, I had a lot of work and a lot of stress. Without further ado, my training sessions were moved to the lunch break or started at 6 am. A day has only 24 hours, but those were almost always too few for me last week. Running technically well on the way (training plan fulfilled), however, my values at the morning measurement did not really go up: It also came as it had to come. Saturday still worked until evening, shows me the Vitalmonitor before my first application in this year the half marathon in Wels, only 76% regeneration, training recommendation 77% and stress 34%. Optimal looks different. With a time of 1:40:51 I managed to cross the finish line, but I was not really satisfied, because I wanted to run at least under 1:40:00. But there are still a few weeks of training until Linz. Berny Schimpl and the Vitalmonitor will help me to reach my goals.

Hinterdorfer Tobias

In the meantime, I have already become a Vitalmonitor junkie. After a measurement, I can hardly wait for the result and when the chart appears after a measurement (see screenshot), I can now also tell approximately how fit I am. Like today. Today I did the morning measurement and already when I got up I was tired and sluggish. The measurement brought me the expected result. The trend this week is generally not so good. I sleep very little, which in turn has a strong effect on recovery. One of the most positive experiences I had so far was the endurance run last weekend. After about 1 hour of endurance running I had the idea to change the direction and try a completely new lap (which is a bit longer). According to the vital monitor I was not that fit in the morning. But the run itself was fine. The feeling after the run was really great!

Matthias Leitner

The relief week can come! The last 3 weeks were very intense. On Sunday, the Tyrolean Championships in cross-country running were still on the program "at the end". These 10.5km were very hard, because it was run exclusively in the snow. Of course my legs were heavy, and I also had a lot of problems with my lungs. But of course everybody had to run the same distance. So I clearly could not defend my title in the M40 from 2014. But I was able to take home a medal with my teammates. Tiroler Meisterschaft Crosslauf 2015 in Itter 01.03.2015: 10th place overall, 4th place M40, 2nd place with the team of SK Rueckenwind Very interesting: As also told by Berny Schimpl in an interesting webinar, my recovery BEFORE the competition (01.03.) was not particularly good compared to the previous days. But subjectively I was not tense at all. In any case, the recovery afterwards was great, as can be seen above. Regenerative cycling with a high hit frequency (120 upm) for 1 hour is very good for me. Before the session I had a recovery of 50%, after 62%. Nice and slow though, I could use some stable weather. The ongoing snow showers make training here in Tyrol - I don't train on a treadmill - a bit tedious. Especially when you should do special programs. Well, this week with relief character it doesn't affect me much. The week in numbers: 114km running, 3 units on the ergometer, 1x 30km cross-country skiing, 1x gym and several times on the Blackroll. Still 7 weeks to go. The excitement is already starting to rise. Also for my new training plan from Berny Schimpl (SIM Sport In Motion).