Exactly 4 weeks to Costa Rica LaTranstica Extreme race.
My runner number for Costa Rica LaTranstica Extreme
October is building to be a strong month – more or less as planned, though it has its ups and downs. Last 2 weeks has been focused on endurance training – long stretches of time in the mountain trails, with under-supplying the body with calories.
I am not sure how effective this training is towards Costa Rica, but it seems like I managed to put a big crack in the long-standing weight “wall” if not break it completely. The week before last, I already managed to spend 3 days just under the wall, before spending a long weekend in Niijima Island, jumping back up 5 kg. Then this last week, back in training despite a knee that hurt throughout – running through it (“embrace the pain”), though using this as an excuse to reduce distances and elevation gains somewhat. With a strong push at the end, I found myself at the beginning of this week at almost 4 kg under the wall line.
Taking a couple of rest days, will mean jumping back up, but it seems safe to say the “wall” as such is broken.
My scale tells me I am 30 years old again
As a quick reminder – this “wall” I am referring to is the lowest weight my body has seem for what I believe to be at least 18 years. That seems to mean it required some extra push to remind the body that these are extra fuel resources it can burn and use. It seems like the 150km in the mountains last week helped!
As a little bonus, with all this training and weight loss, at some point in both endurance-weeks, my little home-scale has revealed this number – as my “body age”. We have arrived.
As the LaTranstica race gets closer, I still do not feel ready for it, but training continues – planning another hard endurance week this week before a concluding power-week next (with full on carb uploading).
The runner numbers were revealed as well (I will be running as “7”), along with the runner list.
This is turning out to be a proper boutique race – with only 20 runners registered at the moment, out of which 15 will be challenging the full-on 200 km “extreme” course.
Even with such a small number of runners, we will be representing 8 different countries, with the biggest representation being from France (9), followed by Costa Rica (4). Other represented countries are UK, Denmark, Colombia, USA, South Africa, and last but not least – Israel. I was amazed to find out that in such a small event there is actually another Israeli that will be running the extreme course with me. (full runner list here)
Now on with the training.