Half Marathon In 59 Minutes

I thought I was pushed to the limit five weeks ago when I went to Saarikylät tour skating track with Timpa the Extraweight. We skated 20.64 k's in one hour and I really felt that there is no way I could do better at least in this season. After all the ice track was an excellent condition, the weather was all right and we're using skiing poles to get more speed. Of course, there were some cons, as always. My speed slowed down at the corners and it took a lot of effort to accelerate to normal cruise speed.

As you already may know, Rautahumppa's last blog post went viral with the great help of Hiking Travel Hit and Saarikylät Ice Track Facebook sites. During two last weeks there has been 800 views, which is a lot more than the blog normally gets. In the post, which is actually a test, I wrote that my favourite ice track is the Sorsapuisto field, mainly for its quietness and well-maintained ice. Today, I got yet another prove for that. Even though I experienced some heavy wind from the direction of Sorsapuisto pond, I managed to skate kilometres in 2:50 pace. After 11 k's I realized that there are some possibilities to reach 21 k's in one hour.

Since the head wind slowed down my speed, I tried to bend my upper body forward as I have seen speed skaters do on TV. Actually, when I put my wrist against my lower back I found a really good position which helped a lot. So, a managed to skate every k's under three minutes and eight of them under 2:50. That makes my record 21.18 k's in one hour and 59 mins 44 secs for the half marathon. My record on rollerblade is 23 k's in one hour, however I believe I could go faster than that on the ice. Let's see.

200 pounds men

Biceps in pain

Considering my relatively active training and rather low-fat diet in the last two weeks, it hasn't shown its positive results on the weight scale. Because my yesterday was a day off, today I decided to punish myself for good.

Timpa the Extra Weight

It has been a while since I trained with a good friend of mine, the one and only, The fitness-fakir of the Western Finland himself, Mr. Timpa the Extra Weight. So we went to the gym in the morning, or actully it was after 10 am, but newertheless it was morning in order to my physical abilities and inner clock. After my one mile warm-up run on the treadmill, we spent most of the time by the bench press. Today I took a giant leap into the holy union of 200 lbs brotherhood. However, Timpa made four repeats with that weight, and above all, one fellow athlete suggested to Timpa that 220 should be a piece of cake with wider grip. After some triceps and biceps workout,

I went on the treadmill for another k.

There are three lights!

But this wasn't the whole story. In the evening I went to the ice track even though the temperature was about -11°C. So it took 2-3 kilometers before my technical clothing started to operate. I was little too sudden for praising the local ice track caretakers, because today the ice was in rather bad condition. Anyway, I did my Endomondo record for Cooper on skates, now it is 3,45 kilometres and again without any extra effort.

Tiredness is increasing and speed is decreasing