Clouds on the Horizon

I really did not feel my best over the last few days. I don’t know if it was a cold I was fighting off, the shock of being back from my holidays or the fatigue from the double header workout, but every day the alarm went off much too early and I had to heave an unwilling body out of the bed, and started each run with an audible groan. The first two miles were always a drag and I constantly contemplated returning home and going back to bed. Of course I never did, and after two, or maybe three, miles I always felt better and managed to finish the workout.

Monday was pretty bad, actually. Even after the first 2 miles I somehow felt like I was dragging my feet along the road, and the 12 miles just couldn’t pass soon enough. After 9 miles I really had more than enough, but at that stage all that was left was to return home. The numbers in the logbook may make it sound like an easy run with 8:06 pace and an average HR of 142, but take my word for it, it felt much tougher than that. After that workout I seriously doubted my ability to run a marathon at anywhere near my target time.

I did feel better on Tuesday, though. Not on the first two miles, granted, they just dragged as badly as any other miles for the past few days. But when I upped the pace and started concentrating on a bit of tempo, the shackles seemed to fall off and I managed a decent run. From my stopwatch I could tell that I was moving along at roughly 7:15 pace. This is my planned marathon pace, but that fact is merely coincidental. I didn’t plan a marathon pace run, I just ran along at a reasonably strong pace that felt manageable easy enough. I checked my HR monitor a few times, and even on the inclines it stayed around 157-160. This definitely felt manageable for marathon pace, and all of a sudden I felt a lot more optimistic.

At the beginning of the week I had decided to follow Eric’s advice to not do a double header this week. Instead I’ll pump up the mileage a bit, and when I scribbled down a few figures that seemed reasonable they added up to 83 miles, so that’s the plan for this week. It meant a 17 mile run today, and after last night’s weather forecast I really didn’t look forward to it. The weather has been rather dreary ever since I’ve been back (and no, this isn’t just my perception), but for this morning they predicted heavy rainfall. Luckily they were out by a bit. The conditions were fine, it didn’t rain at all when I set off, and a few drizzly showers along the way didn’t dampen my mood. The best bit was that all of a sudden I felt much better again. Maybe the cold that had threatened to pay me a visit has moved on, or maybe it really took five days to recover from the double header, but all of a sudden running was a joy again. The by now very familiar loop around Caragh Lake always seems to lift my mood, and even when I got to mile 8.5 and faced 3 miles of climbing I didn’t mind. Those ascends are never as bad when you actually have to do them then what they seem like from afar.

Anyway, even though I started out slowly (3 miles at 8:30 pace) and even though I didn’t pay any attention to my pace at all, by the end of the run I had the average pace down to 8:02, which again pleased me. I might have missed the magical 8:00 by over half a minute, but I didn’t care, it was more important to me to run easily and to know that I could have run faster, if that makes sense.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, last night I attended my first yoga class in nearly a year. I was a bit self-conscious, being the only male member of a group of about a dozen people, but the teacher seems nice enough. Afterwards she asked me if I run a lot. How did she know? She lives a couple of miles away from our house and has seen me on the road on a few occasions when she was out cycling.

There has to be a downside to everything, and in my case it’s a pain in my left knee. I felt it on every climb today, but it wasn’t too bad, it didn’t stop me from running and it didn’t stop me from feeling good overall, but it’s a worry nonetheless. I did google a bit, and immediately came across a description of an injury that most runners are only too familiar with, but I don’t even want to spell it out for fear of jinxing myself. So far I’m still in hope that it’s something else and might go away.

18 Jun: 12 miles, 1:37:17, 8:06 pace, avg. HR 142
19 Jun: 8 miles, 59:45, 7:28 pace, avg. HR 152
20 Jun: 17 miles, 2:16:44, 8:02 pace, avg. HR 149