Sean's Running Blog

Finally had a good speed workout. It was an 8-mile tempo run with cutdowns. Started at 5:34s and then every two miles dropped 8 seconds per mile. I hit :30, :32, :26, :25, :16, :17, :09 and then finished hard with a 4:58. The only bad part was I had to jump on a plane two hours later and spend 11 hours flying to Amsterdam. I'm headed out now for a run in the rainy gusty weather. Feels like home.

48 degrees and pouring rain for my first run in Amsterdam. Vondelpark is a quarter mile from my hotel and it's 2 miles around the park. So Saturday's long run should be pretty familiar after 10-12 laps. Felt really good considering i have no idea what day it is. 6:26 pace throughout the run. I have to admit running in the rain felt nice. Hope the clothes dry out in time for the next run.

Couldn't sleep from 2am on so I broke our Google maps and charted a run. Found a wonderful 6 mile loop which I did twice. It's still really windy here but the temperature was a balmy 50 degrees and no rain. Yippee.

It was cool looking at my Garmin and seeing the elevation was -17. Nothing like running below sea level. Full day of work ahead and then hoping to get 6-8 more in this evening.

By the way, the sun doesn't rise here until 8:15 and with the clouds, it's not really light until 8:30-8:45. I thought Seattle was bad. It gets dark around 5:15. So very short days here in the far north.

7 more miles this evening. I need to get a good meal in my belly and then sleep like there was no tomorrow.

34 degrees and partly cloudy at 5:30 this morning. A beautiful morning for a run around Amsterdam. It helped that I got a good night sleep for the first time since Sunday.

Ran another 6.75 miles this evening before darkness set in. Ran one of the miles in 5:10 because I was anxious to get back and eat dinner.

Fartlek workout this morning in Vonderspark as part of a 10.5 mile run. 4x5:30 hard with 3:00 jog between each rep.

It was cold this morning even though it was sunny. That plus the breeze and feeling a bit under the weather had me feeling pretty dubious about the workout. I left it all on the track today though and all things considered, did OK. Here's what I did for each 5:30 rep. To be honest, the way I felt, I was expecting to maybe do only a mile in the 5:30 time.

Rep 1 – 1.08 miles (5:07)

Rep 2 – 1.07 miles (5:09)

Rep 3 – 1.08 miles (5:05)

Rep 4 – 1.07 miles (5:08)

Long 20-22 miler tomorrow to conclude what will be about 84 miles run during my stay in Amsterdam. Then I get to sit on a plane for 11 hours on Sunday.

Longest run in a long time. Still feeling quite a bit of congestion in my chest but my legs felt great. 22 miles at about 6:49 pace. It was 36 degrees at the start and 50 at the end so the jacket became a burden as time went on.

I decided to make my last run in Amsterdam a tour of the city so I went all over before finishing up with three laps around my new home: Vondelpark.

Here's a link to the course I ran. This is a beautiful city complimented by another gorgeous day of weather. Long flight home tomorrow.

http://www.toporoute.com/cgi-bin/getSavedRoute.cgi?routeKey=GSLOJTKOKNYPBCE