“Month in review” posts keep me accountable. At least that’s the theory. January wasn’t a remarkable month. I had some health issues (a stomach bug that impacted me for the majority of a week) and the indoor track competitions I did turned out to be less than stellar as far as absolute performances are concerned….
Race report: Meeting Régio #2 – 200m 24″20
On Monday evening preceding this weekend’s Meeting Régio #2, we trained starting blocks. I felt strong. Then I returned home, had dinner and about an hour later I suddenly felt ill. I’ll skip the details, but suffice to say that the next time I could stand the thought of having any kind of food was…
Race report: Meeting Régio #1 – 60m 7″60
Going into 2017’s first race, I thought I had a good shot at being faster than the previous year. I’d done a much more thorough preparation phase over the previous several months, also because my achilles tendon had allowed me to get in more quality sprint workouts. I even had the privilege of joining the…
Month in review: December 2016
I stopped writing “month in review”s in February because my statistics show that nobody ever visits this blog. “Why bother?”, I thought. But almost a year later I realize (once more) that by regularly scrutinizing my training (and related factors) in semi-public, that I might hold myself more accountable; and therefore make better progress towards…
Race report: Indoor Lafmeeting, 300m, 39″18
For the past several years, the Luxembourgish Federation has been organizing a regional indoor meet in late December. Since the inside of the indoor track (with 60m lanes) is only put in place around Christmas, that means the meet is limited to the outside lanes. As for distances, the federation is concentrating on “odd” distances:…
Race report: Red Rock X-Challenge (MTB/trail duathlon)
Ever since its inception a few years ago I’ve been aware of the “Red Rock Challenge”, a weekend-long event in October that offers a multitude of different trail run and mountain bike races; near my home in the south of Luxembourg. After I covered part of the event for the newspaper in 2014 and 2015,…
Race Report: Mamores VK (5km, 1000Hm)
One of my favourite side effects of competing in athletic events has always been to travel to places I normally wouldn’t get to see and experience. So when in early 2016, I stumbled across an announcement for the Mamores VK, which would take place in a fairly isolated corner of Scotland, I jumped at the…
Race report: KM Vertical du Mont-Blanc
[osm_map_v3 map_center=”45.93,6.857″ zoom=”15″ width=”100%” height=”500″ file_list=”../../../../wp-content/uploads/2016/06/activity_1227001334.gpx” file_color_list=”blue”] If you’ve done something once and then set out to do it again, the expectation is that you’ll do better. Otherwise, why bother, right? For the second year in a row, I was in Chamonix, France for the “KM Vertical du Mont-Blanc”, a vertical kilometer race that ascends…
Race report: Katrinberglauf 2016 (4.5km, 943 Hm)
The gun goes off. The timing chip beeps as I cross the starting line, surrounded by around 200 other runners. This is my second attempt at running Katrinberglauf (2015 blog entry). The basic premise is simple: the race spans an official 4.4km and climbs 943 meters of elevation. The first few hundred meters are on…
Race report: European Champion Clubs Cup, Leiria, Portugal: 100m, 4x100m
Sometime in April, my club asked me if I could join them in Portugal for the European Champion Clubs Club on the 100m and 4x100m. At 38 years old, I didn’t consider myself the strongest sprinter for that task, but their options (not that many 100m sprinters, studies, injuries, people not having the Luxembourgish nationality,…