Thursday, 6 August 2020

Cycling Streak

stats of the week: run 5 km, cycled 329 km
stats of the previous week: cycled 407 km
stats of the week before: run 5 km, cycled 271 km

During the Provence holiday I managed a streak of 15 days of cycling, counting 943 km and 13,300 meters of ascent. I don't know a more perfect area for road cycling than the beautiful landscape around Mont Ventoux. You have such a big choice of mountain passes that you don't have to repeat any route during a fortnight of cycling. I look forward to being back hopefully already in October.

However, I hoped to improve my performance by this amount of daily training. Okay, I lost two kilos of weight in spite of a lot of very good food and wine. But having turned back home I feel more exhausted than improved. Maybe it will take some more days to get the benefit.










Sunday, 12 July 2020

French mountains waiting

stats of the week: run 24 km, cycled 36 km, indoor cycled 45 min

I did plan to start at a Solo 10  K run in our neighbour town Dortmund but sudden problems with the Achilles tendon restrained me to race. No idea what the reason for the pain could have been.

However, last week's cycle tour had some impact as I was able to reach a new level on the indoor bike: an average of 168 Watt for the whole of the session. Cycling will be our main sport for the next 3 weeks that we are going to spend at the foot of beloved Mont Ventoux. Lots of sunshine awaiting, great landscape, good food and wine. Looking forward to this!

Monday, 6 July 2020

Cycling the home country

stats of the week: cycled 425 km
stats of the previous week: run 22 km, cycled 184 km

Did a 7-day leisure cycling trip along one of the most German and most romantic part of Germany. Corona lets one see parts of the home country that were never seen before. The journey took us along the rivers Tauber, Aisch and Main for almost 500 km.


Towing the trailer for up to 90 km daily by an average speed of 21 km/h took me to my limits several times.


Approaching Rothenburg when it turned out to be the perfect time to be there. Usually
the Unesco village is flooded by tourists - even from Japan and the USA -
now it was very relaxed.

Beautiful Bamberg was much more busy.

Home of the storks.

Stopover at Kitzingen

Saturday, 27 June 2020

Decent week - almost

stats of the week: run 40 km, cycled 56 km

It was a decent week of running although I did only short distances. Since Corona I havn't run a single long run of more than 20 km. Running performance is still low and most of my workouts were sort of a torment. I remember times when I enjoyed the Runner's High regularly but those times are gone since long. However - never give up!

Tuesday, 16 June 2020

Another Comrades Medal

stats of the week: run 32 km, cycled 183 km, hiked 25 km

It was a busy and satisfying week. Cycling meant a 2-day-trip from Rhine to Maas on my cross bike towing a trailer with 15 kg baggage. Good exercise although it was a very flat route. We enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere in the Netherlands.


Hiking meant the first half of a hilly local marathon route I published at the Alltrails platform.

And running included the unique opportunity to get a Comrades medal for running only 10 K. The worldwide virtual race counted more than 35,000 participants on distances from 5 to 90 K!




Wednesday, 10 June 2020

Weariness and a race

stats of the week: run 23 km, cycled 217 km

I enjoy cycling but running feels unusually hard these days. Without knowing any reason for it I sense running as a physical burdon.


However, I was fit enough to accompany C on a 5 K race that took place in spite of Corona. A field of 250 runners was started in pairs every minute. So the start procedure took more than 2 hours but it still felt almost like a proper race.

Tuesday, 2 June 2020

Suffering

stats of the week: run 14 km, cycled 113 km, hiked 23 km

Another low level week owing to some minor muscle problems but adding to this I underwent my very first racebike fall after at least 15 years of cycling. It happened without anyone else involved when I overlooked a small step while passing a construction area. Luckily I was quite slow and only suffered skin surface injuries.

Following the George Floyd murder and the president's behaviour I count 4 countries I would be very unhappy to live in: North Korea, China, Russia, USA. And I am not sure about the ranking.