conquering new lands, meeting the guru and then SHIT

Here we go: fucking photos of my food. Look there is my healthy porridge breakfast and there are my nutritious and oh so photogenic spinach, cheese and avocado lunch sandwiches! Look my life and training is under control and it looks good too...

Or it's not all that great after all. I am ill. My throat has endless amounts of lumpy snot stuck inside. Well at least I am giving my body all this beautiful nutritious food to help fight the germs. I am also giving it biscuits and wine (not in the picture). 

Last weekend I was rolling. Everything was going amazingly and my superpowers were definitely growing. On Saturday I planned my run beforehand on the map and then conquered Victoria Park. I can not believe how close it actually is! I've been an ignorant fool thinking it's somehow far away. Running alongside cycling are activities that indeed shrink your world. It started raining on my way home but I felt like a winner and decided to love the rain as well. Later on that evening I went to Niina's house and tried to help her swap the inner tubes and tyres on her bike. We were not totally successful but the evening was more of a hero evening than your usual Saturday night in a pub. Sunday was a busy day too. We went to see the exciting Cosmonauts exhibition in the Science Museum and straight from there I travelled to a very special karate class. Shihan (translates into something like a super duper extreme martial arts guru boss person) Stacey Karetsian had travelled from the other side of the world to teach us some of his karate magic. I imagined it being bit like meeting Jackie Chan or Master Shifu from Kungfu Panda. It wasn't exactly like that. I think the problem was the location. We were not on the top of a mountain in China but in a sports hall of a school in North London. I wasn't meeting my guru alone but there were LOTS other people too. It was all very good in any case and when I finally got home just before ten I was knackered but energised at the same time. I felt so good about myself but it was all about to change within an hour! After I managed to finish eating my late dinner, on the very moment of stopping to chew, my throat started to hurt. The pain came FROM NOWHERE. The illness came all of the sudden from NOWHERE!!!! What the actual fuck? What is the point of being all healthy and sporty over the weekend when partying hard leaves you feel better? ANGER

run like there would be an explosion behind you!

I realise that few weeks has passed and I haven't updated anything about my excruciating training routine in here. This may be because the training has not been that excruciating or because I haven't come up with any enlightening realisations about my training. The smartest moment I had was when I decided to start jumping on and over everything whilst running. I can run. I can run long distances. Running is pretty much like meditation. No, running IS meditation. After roughly 20 minutes I start getting into a blissful zone. It's just me, myself and I and the ever changing surroundings. I don't need to think about what my body is doing too much. It just keeps on rolling. This is why I love running. When not running I am a nervous wreck kind of person. I feel strongly, I stress out about everything, I'm passionate, excitable, easily annoyed…I'm everything exhausting. I do not know how to relax properly unless running(or swimming to be fair). Now this may seem like madness to someone who does not run but I swear it makes perfect sense to me. So long distance running is my meditation and my shrink. BUT Tough Mudder is not just about running a distance. It's about everything else on the way. It's basically bit like running in an action film with your heart bounding from fear and excitement and exhaustion. It will be opposite to my meditative runs. I need to be alerted. I need to incorporate extra action and challenges to my run. I can't forget my body and just let it roll. My body needs to be ready to do zillion different things. That's why I started disrupting my runs by jumping on and over things. I also try to do all the "rides" on kids playgrounds, hang from anywhere possible etc. Basically I try to do parkour. To make my training even more Tough Mudder like I should probably roll on all the mud. I haven't done that yet. I might not ever do that.

Oh and above, that's me ready for my Valentines Day solo run. It was very romantic with me, myself and I.

storm? I go swimming then!

Storm Henry has been rampaging through Britain. To be fair London probably only had the baby Henry but it has been very windy indeed. Cycling has been either stupidly easy or nearly an impossible task depending on the direction of this wind in relation to the direction of your journey. Sudden side way gusts do make any journey through traffic a rather dangerous activity. So on a day like this I decided to cycle a bit more on my way home. I cycled to London Fields lido to swim OUTDOORS! Since I don't really understand how to train for the Tough Mudder, I thought better to do a great variety of sports. Also I love swimming. I especially love swimming outdoors. Last year I got to know an amazing group of kick ass women who do outdoors swimming. I was lucky enough to go for a swimming trip to Thames with them last summer and meet them lots of times at my favourite spot in London: the Ladies' Bathing Pond. These super ladies swim in a pond all year round. Last time I went with them was in October when the water temperature was +12.5 C. Us Finnish people do swim all year round as well and even in much colder conditions than here in the UK but we go to sauna before and after. That makes a massive difference and makes these Brits pretty much super human. But back to todays swim. The lido is heated up. It's actually really lovely to swim in the middle of the winter. It's especially cool to swim in a stormy weather. There were even waves in the pool! I did 20 laps which is 1 km! I am not that good swimmer technique wise and really would love to learn better. Might go to some swimming classes at some point.

metamorphosis

This is the metamorphosis of my feet during a regular day of intense training. Footwear is the key for everything. So I start my day with monster feet then progress to running feet and finish my day with spiderman feet. Basically the size of my feet shrinks. The spiderman shoes are one size bigger than those terrible foot binding things from China. The photo is a CLOSE UP one. It's wonderful how putting on a pair of shoes can enable you to transform into a whole new character. I love shoes that have a purpose, shoes that give me superpowers. Those are the very shoes that ran the London marathon. I could have not done it with just any shitty pair of shoes. The tiny spiderman ones allow me to climb walls in a way that no normal shoes would. And the monster ones…well they make me a monster!

Today I ran 13km. I took my phone with me in case I wanted to check the map because I wanted to conquer unknown areas. I still feel new to Hackney because we live right in the border of the council next to the areas I know very well. I really need to wander deeper into Hackney more often. Running is ideal for discovering new lands! But my phone has camera as well. So I had to stop for selfies every now and then. Here's me in the marshes wondering how to cross over the water area. The clue is in the name: MARSHES. It was wet. A week ago it was fine in there due to frosty conditions but now it was all simply water! My feet got totally soaked.

And this is me well…I don't know, taking a pretty selfie.

Not so High Tech after all

When training for the marathon I bought a GPS running watch. I felt like I had taken my sports to a brand new shiny level. I had become a high tech runner! After the marathon the watch got abandoned. I felt liberated running without meticulously tracking my every move. I preferred the old fashioned freedom of just running. Today I dug out my high tech device again, charged it and relearned how to use it. Then I ran under the watchful eye of the satellites and felt very pro. So now I know PRECISELY how far and how fast I go. The results are beautifully showcased in this colour coordinated picture. (yes the watch matches the flowers I got from Rob yesterday…but then again yellow is my favourite colour and I can easily match lots of yellow things together)

BUT apparently I am not so high tech after all. A friend asked me to become his friend on this running app or website called Strava. You need to have a GPS device compatible with the app to take part. Basically you should be able to upload your runs directly from this device to the app and then you can track your training and compare results with friends and all sorts of things. My not so high tech anymore GPS watch uploads info to other devices using the old fashioned route called eyes then brain then maybe pen and paper. Well, I am a hippie sort of runner anyways so this didn't bother me too much, however the ability to map your runs made me jealous. Since I can't get the map out of my GPS watch I had to use old fashioned mapping skills. I found a website called mapmyrun where I can recreate my runs on the map. This obviously involves a bit of guess work around the park areas where there are no marked roads or paths. But I love maps and am pretty good with orienteering so here it is, todays 10 km created with my very own GPS brain!

So today I ran 10km. It was cold for this country which is good, very good indeed. Cold enough for all the damn mud to be sort of frosty. From tomorrow on the weather goes warmer again and this country returns to it's normal state of mega mud. Then again I should be happy with the muddy conditions. I am training for the Tough MUDDER after all!

Superhero Ninja Warrior RAMBO edition

 It's time to say goodbye to the old superhero challenge and say hello to a brand new and even crazier one!

 Well to be fair the last challenge, the London Marathon 2013, happened pretty much already THREE years ago. It was the biggest and stupidest challenge of my life so far and since then I obviously haven't stopped being a superhero but uhm …there just haven't been such mega projects. I did climb up some mountains but I  wasn't too worried about the mountains. I am a superhero ninja warrior after all. Also I sort of believed that I am done with stupid athletic challenges such as marathons. One marathon in a lifetime surely is more than good enough? Turns out the answer is NO. My subconscious clearly wants me to run more marathons. It has taken me a good few years to come back to this business but I am here again. So I want to run the damn marathon again. This time I want to run in my original home town Helsinki. It feels right. Helsinki marathon is in August and annoyingly I already have commitments for this August. No worries, I will train well and run next year, I sensibly thought. The very next moment I found myself signing up for something totally different and totally much more bonkers: The Tough Mudder! Once my head wants a challenge it needs it faster than next year August! So this May I will be a Rambo fucking version of myself. I know I can do long distance running and Tough Mudder is "only" 16 kilometres BUT holy fuck all the other challenges on the way seem like a mission impossible! How do you train for electric shocks, rotating obstacles, slippery slopes, mud pools….? I am very very scared and do not have a clue how to get myself ready for this, but am also rather excited. This time the mission is not a solo mission either but I am part of a super team. It's all Jim's fault….

when the Superhero Ninja Warrior met Barry Blue

That's me running and totally not noticing my friends in the crowd. As you can see, the Tower Bridge is on the background which means I was absolutely exhausted by this point. I only had few miles to go...

After the finishing line I hiked to a friends and family meeting area but could not find anyone. The whole city was so crowded and busy because of the marathon that my sister and my man got stuck in the traffic. I finally met them in Trafalgar Square. Kiira had made me this amazing pink bunny as a 'well done' present!

We made our way to Green Park where I was given recovery drinks... We named the pink bunny Barry Blue. He looked so sleazy and relaxed when chilling out that all I could hear in my head was Barry White singing. Blue seemed funny because he is actually pink.

Extra note: Week and a half after the big day I put on my trainers and ran again. The weather was summery and running felt nice. I might need to invest in smaller summer running clothes though. Black leggings felt way too hot. But the point is: running is here to stay.