Contrast

They told us the storm was coming on Wednesday, and they were right. Tuesday was indeed only a taster of what was about to hit us, and when it did hit, it hit hard. Having said that, looking at the news and seeing the trail of death and destruction that that particular storm has caused all over Europe I think we have gotten away lightly. I mean, it was pretty bad with the usual stuff, fallen tree, local flooding and electricity cuts, but considering that many parts of Europe had to withstand hurricane levels of wind speed I think we escaped the worst.

I still got a lot of funny looks every time I confirmed that I had indeed been out running Thursday morning. In order to avoid any danger from falling trees and branches I had decided to run on the western side of Caragh Lake which is out in the open. Of course it meant running straight into the wind on the outward leg. I did manage ok during the first 2.5 miles, the water witch provides some shelter, and while I clearly struggled to get into tempo-run territory, it went ok. Then the road takes a turn, and from then on it’s 2 miles straight against the wind. To make things worse, the rain had re-started by then, and it came down nearly horizontally, and straight into my face. That hurt, and I tried to shield my face with my gloved hands, but it’s impossible to run that way. When I reached the 3-mile point I could no longer remember why I kept torturing myself that way and turned around. It felt a lot easier on the way back, but I kind of forgot that this was supposed to be a tempo run. I did remember again about a mile from home, and upped the pace once more. To make up for the shortfall I added an extra section in the woods, and it was a lot better there, and I didn’t notice any real wind damage. Running there would have been the better option, I guess. The faster 2.5 or 3 miles towards the end of the run constituted a proper tempo run, but all in all I felt this was a wasted effort.

I was a bit apprehensive about today’s long run, not because of the planned 22 miles (I’ve gotten used to long runs by now) but because I was afraid of similarly bad conditions. I resolved to run 3 loops around the devil’s elbow (plus 2.5 extra miles somewhere) if the wind was too strong, but I was very pleasantly surprised at 4:15 in the morning when I woke up and couldn’t even hear the wind. I had set the alarm for 4:30, but woke from the sound of Cian crying. I managed to get him back to sleep, and despite better judgement went back to bed for 10 more minutes of sleep (which felt like about 10 seconds). Mindful of yesterday’s atrocious conditions I wore two layers on top as well as extra warm gloves, but that proved to be a mistake. Since the wind was nowhere near as bas as feared I did my extended Caragh Lake loop (17+ miles) and added an out-and-back section to Ard-na-Sidhe at the end. I usually check my time after the first 3 miles; it is always a good indicator of how I’m doing. Well, my pace continues to drop, I had averaged 8:33, and it was a sign of things to come. The road was deserted (well, duh, at this time of night) and I ran mostly with my light turned off. Despite it being New Moon I was still able to make out the road, and what more do you need to see? Well, I did have three moments when I wished I had it turned on, once when I somehow managed to step off the road (no harm done), once when I stepped right into a big, deep puddle, and once when all of a sudden several big white shapes appeared right in front of me and nearly tripped me up (a flock of sheep on the middle of the road, but they were more startled than I was). Between miles 11 and 16 I felt truly fantastic and ran at a very good clip, and I had the feeling I could keep this pace forever. This turned out to be not the case; after climbing a hill of maybe half a mile the legs felt a lot heavier, and I slowed down again. I passed our driveway to go for the out-and-back section, and I soon felt a lot worse. Around the 18.5 miles point I was truly knackered and wasn’t exactly looking forward to the rest of the run, but that was the low point and I somehow started to feel better again after that. The next crisis came at around 20.5 miles when I got rather hungry (remember, I don’t eat a thing before running), but by then I was close enough to home to ignore the pangs. I finished the run in less than 3 hours, which surprised me. I’m pretty sure that I had indeed covered 22 miles, but 8:05 pace sounds very fast. Even if I somewhere missed half a mile and only covered 21.5 miles, that would still make it around 8:15 pace, which isn’t bad either. Having said that, I do think my original calculation is accurate, and that’s what I put into the log.

There’s another bit of good news, I’ve now lost all of the extra Christmas weight and I’m back on my pre-marathon weight of 149 pounds. I didn’t diet or even watch my food intake, but I guess the high mileage took care of that automatically. Great!

And I think I did work out one thing that had been puzzling me for a few weeks. If you remember back a few weeks ago, I got completely wasted on a 15.5 miles run in Dublin just before the New Year. I couldn’t quite explain why I felt so bad, and thought I was running right at my limit. I’ve come to the conclusion that the change in diet was responsible. Niamh is a vegetarian, and subsequently a vegetarian diet is what sustains me for most of the year. Whenever I come to Dublin my mother-in-law insists on stuffing me with meat like a goose in the mistaken belief that I must be craving things like pork, beef, mutton and, over Christmas, turkey. I guess next time I just have to tell her that I prefer Niamh’s vegetarian options. I hope she can take the shock.

18 Jan: 8.25 miles, 1:00:50, 7:22 pace, avg. HR 156
19 Jan: 22 miles, 2:58, 8:05 pace, avg. HR 148