Five Things Running: Issue #55

How was your Easter Weekend? Did you get any runs in?

Hello and welcome back to Five Things Running! I hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend and did not eat as many marzipan eggs as I did.

On Friday I finally got my first run of the week in, which was wonderful. I didn’t feel well for over a week and even though my Oura ring said that my sleep data was amazing and that I should be able to have an active day, I felt otherwise. This disagreement between me and my ring went on for a few days, until my Oura ring died.

This is so weird. For over two years I wore the ring daily and interpreted the data, or let the ring suggest interpretations. Now it feels empty without a ring. Within 12 hours Oura sent out an email conforming that they would replace my ring under the Oura warranty. This is pretty awesome customer service. Until my new ring arrives, I just have to rely on my gut feeling to find out how I am doing. I actually once met the head of marketing of Oura a few years ago. We were in front of a hotel in Helsinki waiting for a cab to get to Slush, one of the best tech conferences out there. We decided to share a cab and he gave me a short overview of what the ring can do and by the time we got to the conference, I was sure I wanted an Oura ring. We never stayed in contact, though.

For the time being I just have to rely on my watch data, like some savage…

Saturday I did a nice run around the airport and on the photo you can see me chewing some energy chews while trying to smile.

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Hallucinations and no sleep: Jasmin Paris on her historic ultramarathon

Let’s start these Five Things with the extraordinary effort by Jasmin Paris. I’m still in awe about her achievement. I think I would get lost after 30 mins, just to put her accomplishment into perspective.

(CLICK HERE!)

How to Build Volume Heading Toward Summer Race Season

Well, it’s never to late to get started with building volume, but really, it’s time now. Here’s a good primer to be able to rack up enough kilometers to run into the sunrise.

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Running recovery: Four ways to recover faster from your long run

Just in case you’re building up your volume already, remember to focus on recovery as well. I’m focusing on the last point and try to sleep a lot, that’s easy and efficient.

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What It’s Like to Take a VO2 Max Test (and Why You Should)

I do a VO2 Max Test once a year during my routine checkup. Part of that routine is also that I immediately missplace the letter from my doctor that has all the findings in great detail. So I just rely on my doc telling me that everything is okay and that my VO2 Max is much better than that of most men my age.

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The History-Making Shot

Let’s focus once again on Jasmin Paris.

Sarah Lavender Smith

tells the story of this iconic photo by Howie Stern: “The photo shows Jasmin’s momentum, her hair flying, her string of spit swinging sideways. It communicates exhaustion and pain through her grimace, her furrowed brow, and her closed eyes. It magnifies her grittiness with the touches of dirt, most notably on her hands and under her wedding band. She appears to grasp and lean on the gate both for support and for proof that she made it. The photo thereby also immortalizes the yellow gate, which is every Barkley participant’s touchpoint, and gives it a place in history.”

(CLICK HERE!)

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That’s all for now!

Thank you for reading Five Things Running. Remember to go paid now! It will make me run with a huge smile!

If you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here:

Five Things Running: Issue #54

Now, go running!

— Nico

🏃🏻‍♂️