I am currently tapering for my 6th Marathon. Previously I always had a hard time tapering before a race. I knew that a good taper period where you scale back on volume and intensity is essential to reach peak performance level on race day. However I always struggled with a normal tapering strategy because I felt like tapering meant doing less or even nothing and therefore not contributing towards my goal. —
It is this time of the year again…
The nights are getting longer and dusk sets in sooner. Unless you are a treadmill or lunchtime runner you will have to run in the dark at one point to maintain your running schedule.
So here are my top 5 tips for running in the dark:
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I am not gonna lie: I LOVE food and I love eating a lot of it. That was why I was never really keen on tracking my food. I thought if I track my food it would take the enjoyment out of it. But while training for my Marathons I faced some unexpected weight gain. I obviously was indulging more than what I should have. And as you know, every gram counts when you have to run for 42km. So for Berlin Marathon I decided to be a bit stricter with my diet. I decided not to eat sweets and junk food and not drink any alcohol. Around the same time runtastic was working on it’s new food tracking app, which I was able to test before the launch. During the testing phase, I tracked my food and learned a lot about my diet, my cravings and my overall habits. Here is what I learned:
After running over 20 Marathons until now, 12 of them in 2018, I’ve made a LOT of mistakes. Especially when it comes to my Marathon pacing strategy. If you’ve ever ran a Marathon you’ve probably been told not to go out too fast. “Seconds gained in the end will be minutes lost in the end.”You might have a goal pace in mind, but then on race day the conditions change and you don’t know how to adjust. If you’ve never run a Marathon before you have probably no idea at all about how you should work out you Marathon pacing strategy. You are probably afraid to hit the wall and not finish at all. In case it’s your first marathon, you can read my five unconventional tips for your first Marathon here. Let me first explain why a Marathon pacing strategy is so important and than I’ll tell you my personal Marathon pacing strategy.
If you are into fitness, sports and a healthy lifestyle it is very likely that you have friends that are too. And you would like to spend time with your friends, so working out together seems much more sensible than having coffee and cake or going to the pub. You might also want to work out with your significant other. (couples beware!) But what if your workout buddy or workout partner has a completely different fitness level? Very often it ends up being very boring for one buddy and frustrating for the other, resulting in frustration and conflict. So to avoid this here are my top 7 workouts for different fitness levels. —
As I am writing this I am sick in bed, struck down with fever and a nasty cold. As annoying as it is, it should not come as a surprise. Three days ago I ran my biggest and hardest race so far and of course I got sick after a race. It was a 50 km obstacle race with 3000m of elevation gain in the hills of Scotland, which took me over 12 hours to finish. But the worst bit was not the distance, the elevation gain or the obstacles. It was the nasty weather. Cold, windy, with fog and heavy rain, just as typical as Scottish Summer weather can be. This is already the second race in 2 months that has taken me out because I have gotten sick afterwards. And this is no surprise, because I have committed every possible mistake that leads to post-race illness.
So here is what NOT to do: