In pain

Again it's difficult to give the exact training amount scheduled for this week. My trainer still hasn't answered my questions about the errors in the training schedule. No service please, we are German! I have sent him a couple of emails by now to which he did not react and I cannot reach him by phone either.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to run a half-marathon race this week and asked the afore mentioned trainer to include this in the training schedule. He just told me that it would be ok to run the race, but that I should not run "too fast". What exactly that means remains his secret.

So, the schedule before inclusion of the half-marathon (and with my assumed correction of the error): 8 hours 10 minutes and58.1 k

I included the half-marathon and scheduled 2 hours 10 minutes for it, which I thought was fast, but not too fast. Based on this the stats of the week are as follows:

Total running time this week: 5 hours 32 minutes (scheduled: 7 hours 10 minutes)

Total distance run: 48.2 km (scheduled 57.4 km)

The half-marathon was ok, the track not quite as nice as I had expected it to be. The half-marathon race is part of Königsforst Marathon (for the marathon distance you have to run the half-marathon loop twice - surprise, surprise). The track runs through a forest area in the East of Cologne, but it includes a couple of the roads through the forest (some of them are quite busy) and even in the forest part of the track is tarmac. I was satisfied with my result: 02:02:33 for the 21.1 km. That's an average speed of 05:53 min/km.

The good news is, that my right knee is no longer hurting. The pain has gone completely. The bad news: my left calf is killing me. During the race yesterday it pinched a bit, but not too badly. When I got out of bed this morning, I could hardly walk. A nightmare! I limped to the kiosk to get my Sunday paper and decided that that was enough movement for the day. No running and - if at all possible - no walking either. I have put on a salve bandage and am keeping my fingers crossed that it will do the trick. My drugstore is not as impressive as Uli's and I would like to keep it that way.