Monday, August 27, 2007

A busy day in the life of a joggler


This is a long clip of Kenenisa Bekele's 10,000m world record, but it's worth skipping to the end to watch his final lap. How is it possible to run that fast in the final 400m of a 10K?

Bekele just won the 10,000m in Osaka, his third World Championships win in a row.

On Sunday, I had a killer training day. After 2.5 hours of sleep, I dragged myself out of bed at 6 am for my long run. I left the juggling beanbags at home because I was planning to run with my friend Mohammed and didn't want the joggling to get in the way of converstion.

After an espresso and a 5-mile warmup, I met Mohammed at the park and we covered about 10 miles together. I then hooked up with the Shirtless Gang, a bunch of very fast (and shirtless) masters runners who do a regular Sunday 10-miler at a very good pace.

By the time I arrived home I had covered just under 26 miles in under three hours. My run was longer than my sleep. But there was no rest for the weary joggler, because I only had time for a quick shower and snack before I had to head out to the Toronto Buskerfest.

Teaching kids how to juggle at the Buskerfest was so much fun that I forgot how tired I was. If I can keep up with the high-quality training even if my weekly mileage isn't what I had hoped, the record may be still be within reach.

2 comments:

23Gears said...

Completely fantastic! I hadn't seen that before. That's an astounding effort and it brought tears to my eyes.

Michal The Joggler Kapral said...

I know, it's electrifying. Nobody cares about the 10,000m in North America - they're too busy following the sprinters. But as far as I'm concerned, the distance runners are the real deal. I saw Kenenisa interviewed on BBC TV the other day the he's the humblest guy you can imagine. I guess when your race involves pounding away 25 punishing laps, you can't get too cocky.