The Long Weekend

I was slightly worried how long it would take to recover from my double header, especially as I was slightly sick. I usually recover very quickly from long runs (much faster than from speed workouts), but I had never run nearly 40 miles in two days, and doing so when not feeling 100% healthy added to the uncertainty. As it turns out, I must have recovered pretty well; the signs of sickness are gone and the legs are still able to carry me on my workouts.

I usually head up the devil’s elbow on Saturday, but as I had covered that loop 5 times over the last two days I decided to change the scenery and ran the considerably flatter route along Caragh Lake instead. I used to regard that road as hilly, but my perception has changed in the last 4 months. The legs were very heavy to start with but got better as the run went on. I did decide to add a few fast strides, just to get the legs moving again after so many hours and miles at comparatively slow pace. The weather was nice, the road was empty and the workout was much better than I could have hoped for.

Since the recovery from my last hill workout had been so much better then the preceding week, I decided to add a second day of hills to my weekly schedule, and Sunday was the day that had to be changed. I decided that I should no longer push my luck as far as running on a private driveway was concerned, and chose a different road. It’s on the opposite side of the same hill, and leads up to a picnic area with a stunning view of Caragh Lake and Dingle Bay (and, judging from the used condoms off the far side of said area, can be used for a different purpose as well). I wasn’t going up that high, however. I decided that 3:30 was as long as I could manage of the steep hill running while still being able to lift those knees. After that I jogged along for a minute or so (on a still quite steep section, so I ran really slowly), before turning around. I did measure my heart rates, and found the readings quite interesting. The steep hill running pushed the HR up to 175, after a minute of further (uphill) jogging it was down to about 160, back at the bottom of the hill it was as low as 120, and the first set of 150m windsprints pushed it up to 165 again, each cycle taking about 10 minutes. That’s a greater disparity of heart rates than I would have expected. The steep hill running was really tough work, and despite that I decided to up the ante on the last one and halfway up the hill I switched to bounding. 90 seconds later I was reduced to a drooling wreck, the HR up to 180, feeling slightly nauseous and close to fainting. There is clear room for improvement here. On the way down one particularly masochistic part of my brain contemplated doing a 5th repeat, but the thought of Niamh’s scones was too tempting and I headed for home instead. I was pretty much wiped out for the rest of the day, but watching my beloved Manchester City reach the quarterfinals of the FA Cup for the second year in a row lifted my spirits no end (last year I had predicted it would take another 15 years to reach that stage of the competition again).

Unfortunately the brief interlude of acceptable weather turned out to be very brief indeed, the rain returned Sunday afternoon, and our driveway turned into a shallow swimming pool overnight. I was drenched as soon as I stepped out of the house today, and the legs decided to take it easy once more. I ran the old Ard-na-sidhe out-and-back route twice, and the splits for the 2.5 miles sections were about 22:00-20:45-20:15-19:55. Apart from the first part, when the legs were not quite cooperating I was reasonably pleased with the effort, especially with the fact that each section was faster then the previous one without any increase in effort. Tomorrow I’ll bound up that hill once more, and then I’ll mentally prepare for my next double header. The weather forecast is bad, but then what’s new.

17 Feb: 11 miles, 1:26:14, 7:50 pace, avg. HR 147, including 10x100 strides
18 Feb: 4 hill repeats, 1:10, avg. HR 147
19 Feb: 10.5 miles, 1:27:42, 8:21 pace, avg. HR 145

Weekly mileage: 83.5 miles (including 2 hill workouts)