World Championships and World Cups

Yesterday was the opening ceremony of the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. I'm not a passionate skiier by any stretch, but living in Norway has given me an appreciation of how passionate Norwegians are to winter sports, in particular Cross country skiing and Ski jumping. Hailing from a rugby nation (New Zealand), it was quite strange to see Norwegians urge their cross country skiiers the way we New Zealanders urge our rugby players up the field.

Modest gains from now on

The days of big gains in my running times have come to an end. Gains of 10 mins off my PB in a half marathon or up to 30 mins in a marathon weren't uncommon back in the day. And I thought that if I put in the hard work in training, I could keep up the big gains to get faster.

Now that I'm a more mature and more experienced runner, I've come to realise that gains in my running will be a lot less than before, even with an increased training load. When I set that goal to break 3 hours in a marathon last year, I had no idea how much work it would take to improve by 22 minutes at my current running level. In the end, after a long period of training, I was only able to improve by 80 seconds, and I thought I worked pretty hard too.