The Linz Marathon is getting closer...

Stefan Rauchenzauner tells:

Time does not stand still! Only 6 more weeks until the marathon. I wish there were more! For a few days I have been tormented by pain in the foot area, so I could not complete the long Sunday run for the first time and will probably have to take a break from running. On Friday I had to stop my run after 4 km due to pain, again the evaluation with the Vitalmonitor is very interesting. As you can see in this graph, my recovery phases are "normally" very good. But since the foot hurts, things look a little different. Of course, the stress has increased a little bit. I hope that a short break from running will ease the pain a bit. Until then I will use the time more for swimming and cycling. Otherwise, it went running already very well, my first three-hour endurance run I could finish with 30km and the subsequent afternoon walk with my girlfriend was also no problem.

Christian Mayr writes:

This time more weeks are summarized. I had a lot of stress at work in the last weeks, with my training load of about 15h per week and the time I spend my family there was just no time left. My little problems with toe, metatarsophalangeal joint and thigh muscle have improved again. Unfortunately, I did not really get going physically in the last few weeks. Especially during the week my vital signs needed improvement. And that's exactly how I felt. The training was generally very difficult for me and I had to motivate myself permanently to keep up the training. Especially the fast workouts were very hard for me and the results were weak. In week 5 I had actually regeneration week, but the vital values remained stable on a low level. From 2.2.-6.2. we were on winter vacation in Wagrain. In this week mainly cross-country skiing training was on the schedule. The very unfamiliar load was quite challenging and the result at the Crosscup St. Pölten was accordingly. I would like to emphasize the long run on 09.2., there were 3h on the program and I completed 34km in this time. During the run I felt pretty good, but I need almost the whole week to recover. What Berny surely doesn't like to hear is that I therefore and for time reasons distributed my training days differently than planned. I postponed my tempo endurance run, which was planned for Tuesday, to Saturday although I participated in the Crosscup Melk on Sunday. On Tuesday my legs would not have been able to run the required 4:15min/km for 10km. What makes me very happy is the fact that I was able to improve my personal 10km best to 42:06 minutes during this training run. Due to the moderate recovery in the last weeks I concentrated more on regeneration in week 8. By stretching a lot and doing exercises with a massage roller I was able to shorten the recovery time significantly. Here I really have to say, even if it is boring, I benefit a lot from these measures.

Matthias Leitner writes:

About the last week: A week completely according to plan. Slowly, my training plan from Berny Schimpl (SIM) and I get used to each other ;-) Favored by the fact that I am healthy again and also the weather has played along great. Until today. 30km in slush. The core units this week: tempo change run 04:30 / 03:45 min/km, longer run with final acceleration, interval training with 13x 500m in 01:40 with 500 trot, 9km in 03:45 min/km and a long run 30km easy. Sounds a lot, but hopefully brings a lot. "Filler runs" are no longer even considered there. That's why I did a really easy run of 14km on Tuesday. I needed that for the psyche. Also the spring-like weather did me good. Brought out the 3/4 tights for the first time. That is always something special for a runner, when finally "air comes to the legs". The week in numbers: 115km running, 2 units on the ergometer, 1x 30km cross-country skiing, 1x gym and several times on the Blackroll. The processing of the workouts works wonderfully. In the meantime, I have also reached my competition weight, which fits well in terms of timing, since I don't want to worry about my weight in the coming hard weeks as well. So everything is on schedule! 8 weeks to go. Next Sunday (01.03.) the Tyrolean Championships in cross-country are coming up. There I will have to push the training schedule a bit. On the other hand I can do the long tempo run in the competition. That's also very good for me.