Blue zone

Across Tågaborg and out to Sofiero castle, Anna and I got to take part in the HOKA Helsingborg Half Marathon today as the Indian summer peaked with the temperature climbing up to 28 degrees. Since I overstretched my right calf muscle ten days ago, and Anna has struggled a bit health-wise recently, we both decided to take it slow and treat the race like a low-heart rate training session.

 

With the race being completely sold out, parts of the course were quite crowded but that was made up by strong crowd support, live music, and the views of the sea as we made it out to Thalassa. Running 72% of the race in the blue zone on my watch with an overall average heart rate of 136 bpm, I felt as strong as when doing Göteborgsvarvet in May. Just like then, it felt fantastic to get a receipt that all those hours of volume building are really paying off and that I am still developing as a long-distance runner. Though I would of course had loved to go racing, the number of ambulances and paramedics taking care of heat exhausted runners made it clear that this was never going to be a day for PR setting. Also, thanks to taking it slow, I had zero pain in my calf throughout. And as expected, my new grey Clifton 9 shoes were just perfect for this kind of long slow runs on asphalt.