The Vortex

The question of mileage and/or intensity keeps creeping up. Michael questioned my decision to increase my mileage and advocates higher intensity instead. Well, as numerous comments have shown, nobody seems to be sure how the best training effects can be gained. To some respect I’m doing both, because not only am I planning on running higher mileage than ever before, I’m also covering those miles a bit faster than during my previous training cycle. And don’t forget, this is mainly my base training we’re talking about. Once I switch to the hills phase, and later the anaerobic phase, my mileage will surely come down again, in order to accommodate the increased intensity.

I ran 15 miles on Friday, and I expected it to be quite tough, because it was the first time I’d covered more than 13 miles since the ultra, seven weeks ago. I kept to the by now familiar sub-8 pace, and felt mostly comfortable. The weather was downright awful, very windy with gale force gusts, and rain. I ran three loops from my house to Ard-na-Sidhe, pretty much the only sheltered road I’ve got, but I managed just fine. There had been many days of worse conditions over the winter months. I tried to run each 5-mile segment a little bit faster than the previous one, but didn’t succeed, because the last one was a few seconds slower then the middle one. Still, it went pretty well. I felt quite tired at mile 12 but recovered to finish reasonably strong.

Yesterday’s run was still on the same stretch of road, because while the rain had subsided and the wind calmed down, it was still quite blustery. Running the Ard-na-Sidhe stretch of the road back-and-forwards three times (if someone watched me, they would probably think I’m completely nuts [they might be right]), I covered 9 miles. Since many strong runners seem to advocate finishing your runs strongly, I accelerated towards the end, and was surprised to find the last 3.5 miles had only taken 26 minutes (7:25 pace, but neither the distance nor the time were measured particularly accurate). I felt rather good about that run.

Today, just after finishing my preparations and on the verge of getting out of the house for my run, I got sucked into what Mike once very aptly called the vortex. Shea got hungry, and I made him a bowl of breakfast, then Lola demanded one too, then Cian joined in on the act, then Lola wanted a drink, and Shea a second bowl of cereal, and then a drink for Cian, … you get the picture. After half an hour the brood seemed to be getting satisfied and I managed to leave. I hoped they would get back to their games afterwards and let Niamh sleep, but apparently two minutes later Cian stormed into our bedroom shouting “Get up mummy, mummy get up”. So much for that, but it was nearly 9 o’clock by then and Niamh didn’t mind too much.

Oh yes, the run. After finally extracting myself from the flock I covered the first mile in what felt like reasonable pace (close to 8:00) when I glanced at the HRM to find it displaying some ridiculously low number, 137 or so, despite running up a small incline. I did speed up after that and held my heart beat about 15-20 beats higher for the rest of the run. As a result I covered the 7 miles in 52:20, 7:28 pace, which is much faster than any other run recently. And it didn’t feel like a tempo run, just a reasonably strong aerobic effort. I’m still not sure where my best training intensity would be. Obviously I don’t want to run so hard that I end up injured, but I don’t want to miss out on further improvement either. On the other hand, I’ve improved so much over the last 12 months that I probably shouldn’t second-guess my training too much, it obviously worked well.

Shouts go out to Mark, who is running his first marathon in years just as I’m typing this, and congratulations go to Jack who survived a tough 50 km crawl in the mud and Cindy who finished her (first?) half-marathon in a storming time of 1:31. But the man on the moment is undoubtedly Cindy’s husband Eric, who managed a second-place finish in 2:33 at his debut marathon in Fargo. The only problem is, he either doesn’t quite grasp the enormity of his achievement, or he is way too modest. Either way, I’m awed.

18 May: 15 miles, 1:57:50, 7:51 pace, avg. HR 152 (wind and rain, awful)
19 May: 9 miles, 1:09:48, 7:45 pace, avg. HR 150 (still windy)
20 May: 7 miles, 52:20, 7:28 pace, avg. HR 152 (calm and sunny. Go figure)

Weekly mileage: 65