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28 February 2021

WINTER PREPARATIONS

The temperature is minus outside, the fire is burning inside us!

Building a strong base, packing kilometers, working on weaknesses … all this is part of the winter preparations. One of our famous marathoners told me: “Your legs should be burning for kilometers now!”

This winter has been great, or rather it is not over yet. The races will start soon and hopefully there will be more of them than the previous ones.

I did long run trainings once a week of course. And on other days different trainings of intervals on the flat, intervals on the hill, pace at 30min, 40min …For example, on Sunday I do long run training almost always. Monday is for warming up and short and fast intervals (50m,100m,200m),at the other days we combine long intervals, fartlek, intervals on the hill, easy runs, tempo …

In Serbia, we often had sudden changes in the weather and that was the biggest problem. It literally happened that the temperature was plus 15 for a couple of days and then it suddenly dropped to 0 or worse to minus.

We had to fit certain trainings accordingly. Although, in spite of everything, I mostly ran outside. It was hard to work long intervals at minus 7, minus 8, but the organism gets used to everything.

As part of the preparations, I also had one race, more precisely my first marathon at minus 8 with constant snowfall. Before the marathon I was on the mountain for a few days where it was minus 13, and then when I went down to the city at -8 it wasn’t so terrible. I didn’t have any problems with breathing or cold during the marathon.

You all know that runners go to competitions a few days earlier to acclimatize, and it’s no coincidence. It all makes sense to adapt the body to the weather conditions.

Strength training
I must emphasize again that these workouts are very important. Especially the exercises for the abdomen and back, as we said the core must be strong! I do abdominal exercises every day, and I do whole body exercises 3 to 4 times a week.
These trainings usually last about an hour. I determine the exercises that I will do that training and I enjoy it :).

There is a lot of work in the winter, although people who are not runners think that we rest more in the winter because it is … winter?! 😀

But we know it’s not like they say there’s no bad weather to run, just wrong equipment!

How do you train during the winter?

\Snezana Djuric

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