11 December 2012

Hey Everyone.

What has been happening? What is new? 

I have been busy. I have had a week away doing a coaching course with Cycling Germany, plus training and, of course, hitting the books. 

First of all the coaching course: It was a very interesting week. Most of the week was old information for me, yet so super to hear about the issues and the information in German. It is interesting seeing the layout of how German cycling works. Really interesting how they breakdown training for kids and young people, they really like to make sure all the basic skills are covered and have activities that focus on that skill. No mixing up and working on lots of things at once, no just focus on one thing.

 

We had lots of fun and it was a great group of people. And we had a great dump of snow. 30cm in one night, this made my wife’s little Polo look a lot bigger. This really put a big stop on all our outdoor activities. So more time inside then is normal. 

Got home to Waldshut and for the first time (for me) snow was on the ground. Only 5cm yet it made running in it fun. I must say running is a little bit of snow is fun. 

I went to an athletics club on Monday night, my first time running with these people. Naturally they asked a little about what running I have done and what I am looking at doing in the future. When I said the events I am looking at and the chief comments were…… Um….. We are mainly 5 to 10km runners. We run on the track and have a couple of people that will run a Marathon. We haven’t had anyone who runs over a Marathon.  At this point I got really, really worried that I wouldn’t keep up. 

Once we started running we headed into doing intervals…. after we had cleared the first lane of the track of snow… As I hadn’t done any real speed work, just nice LSD (long slow distance) training. Yet it was so much fun pushing myself with other people and not being really slow, and running while it was snowing. Good times.

Then on Tuesday all the snow in Waldshut was gone. I did a nice little easy run on Tuesday. The ground was so wet…. I slipped and slid all over the place. It wasn’t all that much fun, and it was raining. So I headed out on Wednesday thinking that I will be having a wet run…. Still as I left home the Sun was shining and it was warm (4.3 degrees). As I started running up the hill, and it got a little bit colder… When I was 6km (250 meters above home) from home the snow started. As I got a little higher…. Lots of snow and it was really snowing. I couldn’t believe how close I was to home and how much snow there was. Still I carried on and snow got deeper and that made running harder, man it was hard work. In fact it was great resistance training. Once I got to a clear bit of road my legs felt so light and free!

I have woken up and it is Thursday morning and it is snowing in Waldshut….. What will it be like up on the hill…. I don’t know…. I am looking forward to finding out!

Cam.