Last test before the marathon: Pentin Pinkaisu 10K in 33:10 (3rd place)
Today was the last "competition" (or fast training) before I'm going to run the Mainz marathon next weeks' Sunday. The race was a 10K on a hilly course and I was riding bike to the competition site (approx. 13km each way). That's one reason why I didn't expect something spectacular. The other reason was the marathon training of the last weeks; I hardly did any speed workouts and the fastest pace in training was about 3:20min/km for the medium-long tempo runs.
In the race there were some fast guys (Miika Takala, Jaakko Kero, Tuomas Puttonen). Miika set an high early pace and was joined by Jaakko after couple of kilometers. For me the pace was just too fast and I made a second group together with teammate Tuomas. At the end Miika could win with a new track record (31:45) ahead of Jaakko (31:45) and I could beat Tuomas on the last kilometer, finishing 1 second ahead of him. Altogether it was an ok competition even though the time could have been a bit faster and it seems as like there are some "gears missing" when I want to run faster. The pace was a bit faster than my marathon pace is going to be and I hope with fresh legs and a good tapering next week I can survive my first marathon with a reasonable time. Maybe the missing speed will even help me, not going out too fast for the first kilometers of the marathon.

Tomorrow will be Hamburg marathon, with 3 Germans (Beckmann, Cierpinski, Steidl) trying to run the qualification time for the Olympics (2:13:00h) and also 3 of my club mates are running (Jari, Matti, Jyrki). Let's hope they will broadcast it on internet (9.30-14.00 finnish time).

For now that's all from a super-sunny Suomi.