Wednesday, May 28, 2008

End of May 2008

Ha! I'm alive and kicking here, this is for sure.
Thanks for all your kind comments:

- Flanture, Man I will talk to you soon as I always have questions about Flash and AS 3.0
(I do recommend flanture.blogspot.com for those of you who curious about latest 2D technologies, i.e. this guy gave me a definite answer to my How to put swf file into Blogger's sidebar as we can't put any Flash object using standard tools).

- Eric, we're doing so called Paul's "Farewell Run" in Astana this Saturday, May 31, 2008. Start about 9.30 in the morning. Feel free to talk to me for more details (roninxp*mail.ru 8 705 250 41 30). Going to hit 10 easy miles, (as for me 8:00 pace would be perfect) no need to consider it as a Race.
Here's a photo from Race local diplomats made in Astana couple weeks ago (sorry guys, I missed it, peak of my training took its toll)








My running life went almost as I planned, I didn't get to my chart 8 Best Weeks Ever though. The maximum volume of work I did trying to crack my body down was 63 & 60 mpw couple weeks ago. And now I Taper.

So Race is a week away from now. Next Sat we will have some fun in Almaty.

Organizers pay well for TOP3 runners in Half Marathon
3000, 2000 & 1000 (i hope not tenge but) dollars respectively.
The game is Worth the candle, isn't it?

P.S. Good Luck everybody and I'll see you soon!
P.P.S. Can you believe that a Lady from Kazakhstan WON London marathon several weeks ago? Keep reading...

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Fun Run in Astana Announce

Rus, Thanks for hosting the Karaganda 20-miler, and the media support from Sasha and Timur. Pass on my congrats on Tim's chess victory.

How about this for an announcement for our next run:
"Vecyoli Zabeg" - Saturday, May 17 at 9:30 am in Astana - 5/10 km Fun Run. We will meet at the running course near the Sariy Arka bridge along the river next to the Astana Park Hotel. I have several Americans and Kazakhstanis interested, as well as an Austrian, Italian and Canadian. So maybe we should call it the "Astana International Fun Run".

- Paul Gilmer

Monday, May 05, 2008

Training Week #22

was pretty similar to week #20, with a few changes actually.

I decided to divide Tough workouts:
- mile repeats on Thu and
- hill session on Sat.
This time I hit "interval workout" (using Mr.Garmin'slanguage) 2 x 1 mi with 11m30s rest in between. The rest time was agreed with coach for a season Spring-Summer 2007 and it is a "Subject to Change" with a notice that it will be shorter. And shorter. Times for miles:
6:17.01
Rest
6:05.94
within an inch of my PR.
Hills! No need to boast but I myself was surprised making 8 hills last Sat... and this time it didn't hurt like, i mean my pain tolerance has reached higher level. 8 hills is my current PR.

P.S. i got an Announce for Astana 5k/10k FUN RUN. I blow into my bloggin' trumpet (as long as not only foreigners read me) to join this unofficial race next Sat, May 17.
Details tomorrow. Read on.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Tough Long Run

My running friend Paul made a 3 hours drive to get to my industrial city for a long "race". We started 9 am on Sat, April 26, 2008 as i announced here. Long distance running definitely not popular in Kaz at all, no wonder nobody joined us. If you suddenly visit this park in the morning you can meet jogging people, but you know, there's a huge difference between couple miles they do and those magical number Twenty...
Weather conditions - far from ideal, wind and some rain. Local people were just shoked looking at Paul, such a strange man in T-short (!) & shorts (!!!) while everybody wears gloves and hats...
My perfomance wasn't that hard as I thought it would be, we even left this park to make 1 tough hill. Chatting from time to time we use "Boston therminology":
- so now we're facing what?
- Heartbreak hill ! :)
I didn't feel bad, at least till mile 17 or 18 I guess. But at that point I agreed with Paul to hit "twenty one & last two miles have to be sub 8:00" (which is my GoalMP) and actully was ready for this.
Mile #19: easy, about 8:40 or so.
Mile #20: we got into our stride - Paul runs increadibly fast, most of the mile having sub 7:00 pace. He just really blew me away. Paul has a shorter stride but moves it with higher frequency. I finish mile 20 having 7:40 on the tool and 19.98 mi figure which doesn't seem to be moving further. Damn! "Lost Satellite Reception. Click Enter." I stop, i click, restart, turn it on again. Stand still for about 50 sec watching Paul running fast far away. He'll kill his 21st mile with sub 8:00, soon. My Tool is ready, I push "start/" and run just to push "/stop" ten seconds later.
Outcome: 20.01 mi @ average pace 8:3x. Paul made his 21 at slightly faster pace.
The 20 miler nailed total 50+ mi for a Week #21;
One complain: Man, was I feeling bad after the long run. Sore on Sat and next day during Russian Orthodox Easter, I was not able to get out of home. It did hurt bad.
I want to Thank our Media group:
Sasha - my co-worker, almost proPhotographer for making Great shots!
My bro Tim - for spending some time with us and HD camera, i bought from Paul.
Next day Tim won Karaganda City Chess Championship and now he's gone for another tournament...
Thank you Paul for making this 20 miler with me, I used to do it solo but now I see, even putting the same level efforts as usual, it feels much easier when we do sort of Long Run / Boston simulation / almost a race. As my coach said: "There is something about having a running partner to make the miles just slide on by."