Disappointing 3000m (9:10,42 min)
On Thursday I ran a 3000m here in Jyväskylä as a track season opener and finished in ~9:10mins (2nd place, but that's unimportant). I am rather frustrated with this performance even if it was the first race on track for about 9 months and the marathon is only 3 1/2 weeks old.
The first 2 kilometers were still ok (2:59,9 + 3:02,9min) and it would still have been possible to run sub 9 minutes. However, this shouldn't happen and the last km was 3:08. Especially the last round I was thinking I am standing and the lactate took it's toll. It seems that 2 speed work-outs are not enough to prepare a "short" track race. The positive thing is, that I have an aim of improving this time by a big margin throughout the season (there are few more 3000s I am planning) and should accomplish this aim pretty easily - assuming a good training and more specific speed work on the track. On the other hand I'm a bit scared, because it won't be easy to run the 5000m somewhere close to 15 minutes (that's one of the main aims for the track season). Now I have 2 weeks time before I run the next track race. When I'm running in spikes (today I ran in my normal training shoes) some faster times should be in reach. Talking about shoes: in the 3000m race today there was a guy running barefoot (as you can see on the pictures) - and he was really running fast (~9:15). Respect, Respect.

800m into the race - trying to find a rhythm but never found it (all pictures presented by Jaakko Nieminen)

after 2000 meters: I had contact with leader but on the last lap I was dying and had to settle with second place and a bad time