a Top Notch Cooper-test with the Lads

Yesterday I finally managed to try the cooper running test for the first time in like a year or so. The preparation had been far from the optimum as I had been training pretty hard at the gym 2 times in the previous 3 days and played in a football match on the same week as well.

Still I was rather confident before starting to warm up. The tartan soft type of surface suddenly felt like a pathway of quicksand and I didn't really feel like running at all. Still after a quick warm-up round I managed to join two of my mates at the starting line and started running.

After the torturing first lap the next 5 minutes or so went surprisingly smoothly despite the fact that the track was pretty crowded with all kinds of tourists like little kids warming up for their hockey practice and other groups of random joggers more or less willing to make space on the inner lane of the track.

The last 6 minutes were the most painful I've experienced with running for years. My head was aching for some reason, but it probably didn't slow me down that much.

In the end I just managed to reach the 300m line of the 9th lap in 12 minutes with the final result being me laying sideways on the track at 3500m exact. 20m improvement on the previous personal record wasn't really that much, but I presume that with better preparation and the right mood for fast running I might be able to reach 3600m or at least 3550m this summer. Or maybe even reach my actual goal for the season which would be benchpressing 100kg and running 3500m on the cooper test on the same day. 100kg is not much, but it still requires enough weight training to make it difficult to run enough in the same period.

And after the test it was time for a bit over an hour of relaxed football training followed by an impulsive "top notch night out with the lads". So the recovery was and will probably be even worse than the preparation - the 16 chicken mcnuggets I ate at 4am must've provided the necessary proteins though!

And I noticed that even the size XL running shirt provided is a bit tight on the back and also a way too short for me. I don't really know what to do to it as it doesn't seem to stretch that much, at least not permanently.

- Jason