Ah yes… No end of the year without a proper review of the past year.
2010 started with a run on one of the beaches in Canun, Mexico. As I recall, it was a rough 6km run, which took me 40-something minutes. Rough, in the sense that I hadn’t really done the kind of training I do now. My fitness level was not where I wanted it to be and something needed to change.
At roughly the same time thoughts emerged on what my three main focus areas in life should be. Eventually I picked family, work as the first two natural choices. Training, finally was put in place as the third. That I wanted three main focus areas was no coincidence. Anything that you wish to do well requires focus, and cluttering your day with activities takes time and focus away from what’s really important. I started making a more serious effort to make my trainings and set two sports goals for 2010:
1) compete in a sprint triathlon;
2) run a 5km in less than 20 minutes.
Come April I had gotten doing the trainings down to being fairly regular and consistent. All three sports of triathlon: running, cycling and swimming was getting attention and improvements were being made. Also my media consumption changed and I spent more time listening to podcasts that were endurance sports related.
That lead to more and more input on the sport about training, racing, recovering and also about nutrition.
In May that lead to me dumping coffee altogether, which you can read about elsewhere. Either way we’ve now come out of 2010 without me having had any coffee the past 7 months.
I think it was during this time that Klaus, my racing buddy, brought up in conversatin that he had signed up for the Aalsmeer Triathlon and asked if I wanted to join. Shortly after I had signed up to the first triathlon since my debut in 2002 on the Olympic distance. My goals quickly became to beat Klaus, but also to beat the finish time for friend and ex-colleague Keld, who had raced a strong sprint distance at the same race a few years earlier. Also, I decided to change what happens on this blog. It used to be more about technology, and while tech is interesting it just isn’t one of my three focus areas and had to go.
During summer training went on and on race day in August I managed to keep Klaus just seconds behind me, but not beat the time that Keld had raced earlier (I still wonder how he managed such a strong bike leg).
Having checked the first box of my 2010, training focus shifted to running for. 12th September run in Haarlem. The 5km distance there was to be where I would see if I could break 20-minutes.
Eventually I did really well the first 3km, but started to fade on the fourth kilometer and finished with a time of 20:48 – just 49 seconds off my goal or 10 seconds too slow per kilometer. I’m confident I can reach that goal in 2011.
With all races for 2010 completed training focus moved to my weakest discipline and I’ve spent more time in the pool in the second half of 2010 than ever before. 2011 was comong closer and races started appearing on calendars.
So far I’ve signed up for three races. The first is the “Broløbet” in Denmark on the 28th of May – a half marathon across Storebælt on a highway bridge. My goal is to finish that race in less than 1 hour 45 minutes. I’ve also signed up for Triathlon Holten’s Olympic distance race on the 10th of July, but the big one for 2011 is one week prior to that.
The original plan was to gradually increase the distance of triathlons starting with sprint in 2010, do olympic in 2011, do half ironman distance in 2012 and then see what should happen after that. But when the Challenge organization came up with the half ironman distance race “Challenge Aarhus” in my birth city and what I consider my home city in Denmark, I couldn’t resist signing up!
The goal for my participation in “Challenge Aarhus” on 3rd of July is to complete the race and enjoy every minute of what promises to be a spectacular race.
2011 lies ahead and for 2010 I can only conclude that the season has been extremely
satisfying. I reached or gotnvery close to my goals and became quite fit in the progress. It’s also given me an opportunity to discuss health, sports, lifestyleand perspectives on life in general with old, close friends as well as more recent acquaintances. All of that has been very interesting and provided food for thought.
That’s a style and a focus I wish to continue in 2011 as I get started with new challenges in sport as well as professionally. It feels like I will have a good year.
Here’s to your 2011: I hope it will bring you health and happiness!
Comments 4
Nicely written! Keep it up! (training and blogging that is)
Author
Thanks Fred. Will try to keep it up. Sure is a whole lot more fun to blog about sports than about technology.
Nice article Jakob, I always enjoy reading your blog, especially when my name is mentioned 😉
btw I signed up for triathlons Almere (sprint), Holten (olymp), Huizen (olymp) and Aalsmeer (sprint). Hope you can join Aaslmeer so I get a chance for revenge? ( I will do sprint again to compare times to 2010).
looking forward to our continued competition, our goals are very similar, mine are:
– 5k in less than 20 mins (in spring)
– 10K in less than 40 mins (in autumn) -> very ambitious, I know … this is my 2011 superstrecth-goal
– finish first Olympic distance triathlon
– finish first half-marathon
and… of course: beat all my personal bests from previous races (e.g. Aalsmeer triathlon or Dam-tot-Dam)
Author
Klaus, thanks for the nice comment – always welcome! 🙂
Shouldn’t “beating Jakob in Aalsmeer” be part of your goals for th year? ;-). Nice and measurable, ambitious goals for 2011. Look forward to follow your progress!!
Anyway, I’ll try to make Aalsmeer happen. I liked racing in there and would like to do that again.