Summer running
Summer is my favorite season for running. What better time to build up the distance? Vacations give me new places to explore on foot. Every route is open, and I can dream up as many as I like.
Daylight arrives early. I run through empty, sunlit streets and along deserted waterfronts, feeling that the city belongs to me. If the forecast promises 30°C, six in the morning is when I want to be out. Miss that cool air and I'm stuck running in the heat.
Heat is a serious test. More than once I have literally wrung out my shirt after a run. I rarely carry a water bottle in my hand, but some days call for it. Daytime running also means sunglasses and a cap. I have to watch the heat and stay on top of my fluids.
Summer runs can leave quite a tan, especially along the sea with my shirt off. Conveniently, an out-and-back route gives each side equal exposure. Sunscreen matters, particularly if I'll be out for a couple of hours.
There are organized summer races too. On those, I find myself hunting for shade and choosing the shaded side of the street for a little relief.
Summer is the perfect season for running.
The weekly total
Running apps provide endless statistics. One of the simplest and most useful is distance. There's today's workout, this week's total, the month, the year, or just about any time frame I want.
At first I watched only the monthly number. If I reached 100 to 150 km, I thought I was doing fine. NRC shows the month by default.
Before this year, I'd only topped 200 km in a month a few times. I remembered how much work it took and wasn't in a hurry to do it again.
Then I read an article suggesting 80 km a week as preparation for a strong marathon. My 120 to 150 km a month amounted to only about 30 to 40 km a week, roughly half that. Apparently there was more work to do.
Six months into the year, I decided to try reaching 80 km in a week.
Running every day makes the arithmetic simple: a little over 11 km each day gives roughly 77 to 80 km. After six months of consistent training, 11 km no longer frightened me. A little over an hour a day, without turning my schedule upside down.
Fewer running days mean longer runs. Five sessions would require 16 km each. That felt harder.
I began running about 11 km a day and reached the weekly target on my first attempt. But I'd put in six months of daily training to get there, some easy and some difficult. It wasn't a lucky accident. The increase felt manageable, another step toward my goal.
For me, though, 80 km was a magic number. My running changed, and my body visibly changed with it.
Life beyond eighty
Eighty kilometers a week is a lot of running. Your body has to adapt, and it will. Keep that up for a couple of months and you can feel like a different person.
Strangely enough, my body odor changed once I was running more than 80 km a week. I put it down to the toxins that build up in any city dweller's body: I imagined my runs flushing them out faster than they could accumulate again, with one workout following another. I'd sped up my metabolism, and it felt as though my body was cleaning itself out faster too.
After 5 or 10 km, I sometimes felt no thirstier than after an ordinary hour-long conversation. I knew I had lost fluid and needed to replace it, but I drank because I knew I needed to, not because my body was begging for water.
I had already lost considerable weight. Beyond 80 km a week, I noticed less fat beneath the skin and more visible veins in my arms, legs, and calves.
I could barely believe the mirror. It felt as though someone had issued me a new body. Eighty kilometers changed everything.
After keeping that up for two months, I entered a marathon in Riverton, scheduled for the end of August.
Different kinds of training
Running the same route, over the same terrain, at the same speed can eventually become a rut. The body gets used to it, progress slows, and boredom follows. I needed variety.
Different routes and distances. Flat ground and hills. Uphill and downhill. Faster and slower. I needed no elaborate system to start making my body work in different ways.
Sometimes I wanted more than variety. I wanted a workout with a purpose. So I started learning about the different types of runs. Each deserves a chapter of its own. Here's the short version.
Long runs
As the name suggests, this is simply a longer run, with the distance built up gradually. Most of the advice I read warned against training runs beyond about 35 km: a full marathon is more like a major test than an ordinary workout. Occasional long runs of 25 to 30 km were enough for what I wanted to do. I ran them more slowly than my shorter workouts.
To help avoid injury, start these runs with an easy warm-up and finish with a cooldown. Let your muscles relax and your heart rate settle gradually. The purpose is obvious: building endurance.
Speed intervals
These sessions alternate short bursts of fast running with easy recovery jogs. Start with five to fifteen minutes of easy running at a low heart rate. Then run hard for a short interval before jogging to recover your breathing and heart rate. And repeat.
For example: two minutes hard, one or two minutes easy, then another two minutes hard and another one or two minutes of easy jogging. Keep moving throughout. Repeat five, seven, or ten times, depending on your plan and how you feel.
It's hard work, aimed at improving speed and your ability to sustain high-intensity efforts. No more than once a week.
Tempo runs
A tempo run is shorter than a long run. You choose a target pace and hold it for a sustained stretch. Part of the workout is easy; part is fast. With intervals, you run a short, hard effort and recover straight afterward. Here, you keep that faster pace going without a break. Only then do you ease off, recover, and finish with a cooldown.
On a 7 km run, for example, I might take the first and last kilometer slowly and run the middle five at my target pace. On a 15 km run, I might warm up, run 2 km at my usual pace, 3 km faster, another 2 km at my usual pace, another 3 km faster, then settle back into a steady pace to finish.
The aim was to develop speed and endurance together, getting better at sustaining a demanding effort as lactate production increased.
Progression runs
The classic idea is to run steadily for thirty or forty minutes, perhaps an hour, and only then speed up. I wanted my body to learn that it could accelerate even when it was already tired. Tired muscles still had another gear.
For a beginner, the same idea could start on a much smaller scale: a third kilometer faster than the first two. The point is to be a little tired and then accelerate. My natural tendency had been the reverse: begin enthusiastically, tire, and slow. Progression runs challenged that habit.
As you get fitter, you can run longer and farther before that tiredness sets in. Realizing that feels good.
I found it helpful to choose a route that climbed during the first part, naturally holding my pace down, then descended toward the end so I could speed up. I liked the idea of teaching my body to find some speed even when tired.
Fartlek
Fartlek means "speed play" in Swedish. Developed in Sweden before the Second World War, it alternates easier and harder efforts, preparing the runner for changing demands.
It's often done on woodland trails, where uneven terrain makes speeding up and slowing down feel natural. The hills practically make the game up for you.
But I can play with speed on a track or road as well, alternating hard bursts with recovery running. The irregularity is part of the appeal. It's still a tough workout, so for an amateur like me, once a week was plenty.
Combined sessions
One workout can bring several types of running together.
A warm-up, intervals, a target-pace stretch, tempo work, then a cooldown, for example. Or a warm-up, tempo running, a short easy recovery, intervals, and a cooldown.
Combined sessions can be complicated for amateurs, but I occasionally enjoyed experimenting. Unlike the spontaneous feel of fartlek, these were planned, orderly workouts.
Easy recovery runs
Slow, steady running at a low heart rate, without spending more energy than necessary.
I found this useful for easing into training and getting back out after hard sessions or races. Compared with simply lying on the couch, gentle movement let me keep running while giving my body a break.
These weren't empty kilometers. In runcoin terms, I was adding to my savings. I could use all the savings I could get.
Reasons to wait
I'd have been wary of the most intense sessions with less than six months of experience or fewer than 40 km a week behind me. My approach was to build a base first, reach something like 50-plus kilometers a week, and only then experiment. Easy runs and long runs already offered more than enough to work on.
Running watches
Of all the electronic gadgets available to runners, a sports watch seems the most useful to me. Mine is a Garmin, but there are plenty of other brands: Suunto, Polar, Xiaomi, Samsung, Apple, and more. There's no shortage of reviews and comparisons. As with shoes, personal preference has a lot to do with it.
My running watch gives me a reality check. I might think I'm taking it easy while my heart rate is climbing, or feel fast when I'm actually slower than last week. Feelings can fool you. Most of the time, I trust the numbers more than my impressions.
Besides pace and heart rate, there's a wealth of information. I like examining sleep, daily steps, cadence, and elevation. In the morning I check Garmin Connect to see how well I "really" rested. On a run I use the watch to follow my heart-rate zones.
An ordinary watch is often about style, status, or self-expression. It should suit the clothes and the occasion. A sports watch stays on because it's collecting information around the clock. I stop wanting to take it off, day or night. Gradually it becomes part of me and pushes every other watch out of my life. I hadn't seen that coming.
Why enter races?
If you're an experienced or professional runner, you probably settled that question long ago. If you have never entered a race, all I can say is: it's wonderful. Truly wonderful.
Watching the series Vikings, I once had a vivid sense of the fear and excitement a medieval warrior might feel before battle. Only the front ranks could see the enemy. Everyone else saw their companions' backs and heard the rumble ahead. They checked their weapons, found their places, and waited. Would their bodies hold up? Would a muscle seize? Would their legs carry them? Then the crowd began moving, shouting encouragement, knowing that somewhere ahead each person would have to meet the test alone. Strength and luck would matter. And all this in a harsh northern climate: cold, wet, perhaps raining, not enough clothing for comfort, but too much clothing would hinder movement.
Standing in corral D before a marathon, I recognized something of that feeling. The countdown began. Spectators shouted. We counted the final seconds together. The crowd started moving, slowly at first, then faster. I saw the starting line and stepped across it. That was it. Now it was up to me. The finish, if I reached it, would tell me how well I had done.
In an app, you can pause the timer to tie a shoelace, pop into a café bathroom, or drink some water. In an official race, the clock keeps running. Every lost second is yours, and every one counts. No traffic light to blame, no cars to let through while you secretly catch your breath. That's your time, stops and all. You gave it everything. No excuses, no asterisks.
Training is preparation for something. Every workout doesn't have to be an all-out effort; the race is where it all comes together. For a while, everyday life falls away. I find out how well I've prepared, how well I know my body, how much I've improved, and what I can do near my limit. This is the real thing. The rehearsal is over.
I wait for the date, prepare for it, and when it finally happens, it's simply wonderful.
Running with friends
I can't remember my first 10K. My first half marathon is another matter. I feared I'd give up halfway. I worked out the laps in the park and hid a water bottle behind a bench. After the first lap I sat on that bench to recover. As a workout, it was an exhausting mess: slow running, endless stops, and finally more walking than running. But I covered the distance. Two hours and forty minutes. For a while I was very proud of that.
It did wonders for my confidence. The distance no longer scared me; I'd done it. Slowly, with difficulty, I could cover the distance. No ambulance. No taxi home.
Although I can't remember my own first 10K, I vividly remember helping friends through theirs. One had run 5 and 8 km on a gym treadmill. Physically he was ready, but the round number of ten, outdoors along the waterfront, worried him. He wanted company. At the gym he could stop anytime, water was always nearby, and an instructor was around if anything went wrong. Outdoors felt like the real world. Could he keep going that long?
We met at Riverside Park, changed shoes by the car, and set off. A lovely waterfront, plenty of runners, beautiful weather. What could go wrong? I encouraged him and helped him stick with it. He finished tired and soaked, but proud. That mental barrier cracked, crumbled, and disappeared.
A year later he ran a marathon. Then he took up triathlon, completed a full Ironman, and even ran an ultramarathon in South Africa. What a guy. I'm proud to have played a tiny part in his story.
Running is intensely personal. Yet when runners meet on a route, they lift a hand in greeting. That little wave says we're in this together. It's one of the things I love about running.
Back-to-back runs
I had a theory. Run 10 or 11 km one day and the same again the next, and perhaps the body begins to accept a half-marathon's worth of work. Yes, there's a long rest between the halves, but the total becomes familiar. Maybe that helps when the halves are eventually joined.
Two runs of 11 km hardly sound outrageous. Two consecutive half marathons, though: perhaps those could help prepare me for a full marathon.
I tried that several times and hoped it helped. What encouraged me most was that the second half marathon was no slower than the first. Perhaps the second half of the real race would be manageable too.
But in June, after one of those pairs, I picked up a small injury. It didn't happen straight away, but I suspect the two were connected. A couple of days later, around the third kilometer of a run, my leg seized up. I limped to a stop and called a taxi home. Apparently I had raised the load too quickly. For a couple of days I ran only 2 or 3 km, and then recovered.