In 2022 I had the first race that I had signed up for. I had been working up to the Berlin HM on the 3rd of April with Jack Daniels' Half Marathon plan. The set goal was 1:18 (a qualifying time for Berlin Track Club) and this was after having first cracked 90 minutes in October 2021 in a self organised time trial.

The build up was really good with only a couple Q sessions missed because of illness (winter time and a child in daycare) but the week before during a longer run something felt off and my HR was a lot higher than before. Not really a disaster but it sowed some doubts.

1:22:21 During an M-pace Workout in the training block I had achieved a 1:27 HM time so still a large PR for myself but quite a bit off my target.

The week after Berlin I headed with the family to Augsburg and had extended the stay enough to run the half marathon held there in the woods just south of the city. The race was on the 24th of April so just 3 weeks seperating it with Berlin. With a week of easy running for recovery and a week at the end to reduce load before the race only left me with a week of getting in some quality sessions, which did not go according to plan. I had to abort one threshold section of 4 x 2mi due to stomach issues and just feeling flat, the other R session I paced badly and just could not hold R for 600m (*). (T,I/H,R,M,E are different workout intensities described by Daniels).

Despite the knock in confidence from the workouts I felt like I got into a good flow and settled in to the chase pack in the start, before dropping with 3 or 4 other guys who I ended up running the next 15km with. The final 4km were completely alone as I couldn't hold my position at the front and dropped off - here there was a lot of mental fortitude needed to finish the last lap and get out of the woods and to the finish.

The end result of 1:20:36 was almost 2 minutes of improvement over Berlin so was happy to be able to show that there was some more fitness in me - the 80 minute barrier though still stands.

* Finally nailing 600m repeats has definitely been one of the highligts of the year. Great to get a mixture of intensity and volume in a workout.

I knew I wanted to PR the race. I was aiming for low 1:19 but realised after the brutal climb at the beginning that it would be difficult (a 4 minute km followed by a 3:30 downhill).

I was suspecting that I had overcooked the lead up to it after having a longer session that was definitely pushing threshold pace on the Tuesday before the race on Saturday. On Friday I was still feeling my legs but after the warm up on the Saturday I was ready to go.

I came through km 11 really strong with an estimated finish of 78:30 which I managed to hold all the way up to km 16/17 where I started fading hard.

After a horrible short but steep climb up a motorway bridge to the finish in the stadium in Slottskogen, running past my family a second time, I was done. 1:20:26 - 10 seconds quicker than in Augsburg, and accounting for climbs I reckon I could have hit the low 79/high 78.

I will be doing a 3km time trial in the coming weeks and then have the Adidas City Night 10km at the end of July. Training however will take the form of Jack Daniels five week cycles in order to get a significant amount of training in before my 'A Race' of the year - the Berlin Marathon.

Not much to report about this one. My training partner Sean called my up on the morning of the race asking if I could step in for a collegue of his. I had done a classic 20' (too quick for) threshold run the day before and was active the rest of the day running errands and swimming but thought it would be a good training session.

I went out way too hard (spurred on by having Philipp Pflieger doing the start) and hit 3km at 10 minutes. I had gapped the chase pack nicely but was far from the lead and then was overtaken after 4km where I significantly slowed down.

Unofficially I ran it in 17:41 which was miles off of the 17 minutes I was eyeing but considering the lead up to the race and the less than ideal racing conditions it was at least a good training stimulus.

Two weeks prior to the race I had done a 5km Staffel with my training partner and his company but was not able to get an official split (and wasn't that happy with my performance either - although if the 3km marker is to be trusted I covered the first part in 3:20 pace).

After picking up my bib from the office (first time there in nearly 10 months) I walked with the colleagues who were taking part to the race start area, before splitting up and doing my warm up and getting a good position near the start.

I ran within myself and was able to overtake quite a few people after the 3km mark but feel like I was a bit conservative on the home stretch as I was too scared of judging the finish wrong (like two weeks before) and having the lactate stop me too early - this cost me 2/3 places.

In any case I was delighted at coming 14th - especially considering the caliber of some of the people racing such as Robel Tewelde of Berlin Track Club (15:34!) and Philipp Baar of SCC's pro team.

The City Night was planned as one of the 2 tune-up races leading into the final phase of marathon training (but turned out to be the only one due to being away for the Plänterwald Lauf where I wanted to do the 15km).

I wanted to use City Night as a true fitness gauge and made sure to taper somewhat and build in some recovery into my training plan. I was aiming for 35 minutes but was still ecstatic at coming so close to the mark as it is a big jump in fitness in the tables from The Running Formula. Sean was also very happy with his performance and we finished the night feeling really confident for our A race of the year.

On a personal note it was really cool to see the professionals three times because of how the course is shaped and it was also nice to be able to have a chat with Flo from BTC as well as walk past the Schöneborn sisters at the finish.

That was definitely a new level of pain, but really happy even though I couldn't finish as strong as I would have wanted.

The three week tapering which took the form of switching from the 5 week cycle to Daniels 2Q hadn't gone to plan with one of the key workouts (6M, 1T, 6M) being interuppted by a nasty pain in my ankle. Instead of running through it I took a break of a week and only did 2 easy runs that were mostly on the grass. With it not being gone after a week I got an appointed which resulted in xrays being done from a number of directions although no stress fracture was found.

The day after the results of the x-ray I did a litte dress rehearsal (WU, 1mi T, 2mi M, 1mi T,) session with a 73 minute run on the following Sunday at ~85% MP as the final LR.

The final week I had a couple days home with sick kids and always felt on the edge of getting a proper cold but apart from a little bit of coughing and slight headache there was no drama and I tested negative for corona too.

The first 30km were relatively undramatic, not too much fluctuation in pace (although I did take advantage of the few downhills and paid attention to effort on the slight inclines) and felt pretty comfortable. With 33km down I felt my muscles getting pretty fatigued, first one of my calves before everything save my left quad was hurting at the 35km mark. With 3km I was slowing down drastically, dropping about 15-20s/km from my pace until then. With the pain I felt it difficult to push and just felt like I would break if I would speed up - here I noticed an absence of longer hard runs in training.

With the goal time out of the window I saw that I would glide comfortably under 2:50 so just tried to maintain whilst everyone else was gunning for the finish. Overall a good first marathon and confident that I can work down the time (just a bit over 10 minutes over the Swedish norm!).

Really happy with the strong performance after following Pfitz's recovery program post marathon!

Was really cool seeing the back of Schöneborn's head for the first few kms. Overtook Thea Heim's group but they subsequently caught me up. Thought the podium was gone when I saw some BTC guys in the switching area but we managed. Sean said I looked a state when I handed over the baton and he was right, I didn't think my HR could go that high. Nice to have broken the 17 minute barrier for the 5km and definitely see that Daniel's speed work in the form of Rs and Is during the training block definitely helped.

Travelled via train with Sean in the morning. Went with a goal of top 5 and definitely happy with the result.

Classic Norddeutscher Volkslauf. 2nd until km11, a step behind until ~19. Lost 3rd place with 3km to go. Brutal climbs, crazy descents. Great course though and great run. Managed sub 80 HM ✅

Really great way to finish the first year of running in races and hope that I can convince my family to go up for Ratzeburg again.