A core part of our training in Rostock is the Rostocker Heide, a huge forest which spans for miles just outside of the city. The forest has a wealth of fantastic wide trails, some sandy, some soily, some grass, some metalled. With the costal setting we often have strong winds but the forest provides us protection from the wind, shelter from the sun (so bad it can even affect our GPS signals) and soft trails to get the miles in.
At least twice a week Ts'otleho, Carsten and I run in the forest, normally Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings for 20-30 km runs; following an easy 2 miles we then pick up the pace and normally run 6:10-6:20 minute miles for the various loops that we now have sorted. Just excellent training. The first time in there with Ts'otleho we averaged 4:00 minute k's (about 6:30 min miles) and it killed me, and today we averaged 3:52 (6:18 min miles), the aim is by Berlin we're covering the same loop at an average of 3:45 min km (6:02 min miles).. we'll see.. great running in the group and we're getting the miles in.
Today was the first day of week 6 of a 6 week block of structured 90-100 mile weeks before I start the two week taper to the World Trail Running Champs (with the standard drop of 70% and 40% load over the final 2 weeks, maintaining sharp work), it always feels hard work but its been 90 miles with a lot of quality, so I should expect to feel fairly battered.
Strava link for today's run is in the RH column, only 20k today but pace built throughout, the others have Hamburg Half Marathon next Sunday - Ts'otleho is aiming for sub 65 minutes, and it's only a week after Chojnik Marathon for me, so a shorter hard session suited.
Photos from a recent recce of new areas of the Heide.
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