All's Well

Thanks for all your concern, folks, I can assure you I’m feeling absolutely fine again. I googled the web for some background information on dizzy spells, and the most likely explanation is low blood sugar. I definitely wasn’t dehydrated, but I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime, and since the football was basically the second speed session of the day, I probably ran low. I’ll learn from this. I won’t be playing this Thursday (though for a different reason), and I’ll reconsider doing speed work on Mondays if I’m playing later that evening. I’m not yet prepared to give it up. In fact I think that it might be a useful workout, at least during the anaerobic phase of your marathon preparation.

After all my cockiness about how my easy pace just keeps dropping and dropping, Tuesday’s run was rather pedestrian, and back at the “old” recovery pace. Fine, the legs definitely needed some easy going after Monday. I wore the Nike’s for the first time. Reviews often mention that the toebox in Nike shoes are often smaller than other manufacturers’. I can vouch for that now, my toes felt somewhat squashed. However, the first run in a new pair of shoes is usually less than pleasant, and I’m hopeful I’ll grow into them. Case in point, when I wore my present pair of Asics Nimbus for the first few times, they made a mess out of my feet. Now they are snug like a rug, and are totally comfortable on long runs.

I’m racing a half-marathon on Sunday, and decided to make a few adjustments to this week’s training. I switched my long run from Friday to Wednesday, and shortened it from 20 to 18 miles. Thus, it meant getting up at 5 am this morning, which was more difficult than anticipated. I had gone to bed at 10 o’clock, but wasn’t able to fall asleep until nearly midnight, and then I woke twice during the night. When I finally made it out of bed I felt ok, but the lack of sleep will hit me later today. Leaving the house was delayed when I saw Niamh’s notice asking me to put some bread mix into the bread machine and turn it on – but since that meant wonderfully self-baked fresh bread for lunch, I was only too happy to oblige.

The run was rather unremarkable. The legs felt rather tired initially, and I thought I might be in trouble during the later miles, but I still felt strong towards the end. The first 2 miles were slower, about 9:00 pace, an the rest of the run was pretty much at 8:00 pace, maybe even a tad faster in places. As I’ve said, I still felt good at the end, but when I stopped, the quads immediately felt quite sore. I think I just about went to the edge of what I could do while still feeling good. Any more, and it could have gotten ugly.

I’ll take it easy for the rest of the week, probably something like 5-11-5 and then the race on Sunday, and it will still get me close to 70 miles for the week.

5 Sep: 6 miles, 56:11, 9:21 pace
6 Sep: 18.2 miles, 2:27, 8:04 pace