That’s my boy!

Tuesday, 26 Jun:
Me: Cian, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Cian: A fire-fighter. Daddy, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Me: A marathon runner.

Wednesday, 27 Jun:
Me: Cian, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Cian: A fire-fighter. Daddy, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Me: A marathon runner.

Thursday, 28 Jun:
Me: Cian, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Cian: I’ve changed my mind, Daddy. When I grow up I want to be a marathon runner like you!


I took it relatively easy on Thursday after the double header, and just ran 8 miles at some reasonable pace. I discovered that, like on the day before, my daydreaming pace is about 8:10. If I want to run faster than that I have to put my mind to it. I ran about half of the workout at daydreaming pace, and half of it at about 7:50 pace, and combined with a slow warm-up it produced 8:05 pace overall. I had yet another run-in with the pack of dogs that lives about 2 miles away from us and has attacked me before. I don’t know the owner personally, but apparently she’s an eccentric German lady who picks up stray dogs and keeps them. Unfortunately she make no attempt at controlling them, with the result that all her neighbours are basically barred from walking on the road, and a lone runner like myself gets attacked regularly. I know from personal experience that the fucking useless police are doing fuck all about it, even when you get bitten. I avoided a bite this time, mainly thanks to a stone I managed to pick up and hurl at the pests, but I’m so pissed off about the situation, I haven’t got the words for it.

When I checked my online running log yesterday the sentence “longest run in the last 13 weeks: 17 miles” struck me as unacceptable and I decided there and then to pump up today’s mileage to 18. It won’t make any difference to my endurance in October if I run 17 or 18 miles now, but it made me feel better, because in my world long runs start at 18 miles. For this I had to get up at 5am, which is why I didn’t particularly appreciate Cian’s refusal to fall asleep until way past 11pm. The alarm subsequently ripped me from very deep sleep, and it took a bit longer than usual to get out of the door. I faced the problem of how to run 18 miles. A trip around Caragh Lake is out of the question because of the long downhill sections, and I really didn’t fancy 3 out-and back trips on my usual 6-mile loop, because that would take me past the crazy dog lady’s house no less than 6 times, and I had no intentions of chancing my luck. I eventually decided to run part of the Caragh Lake loop, 4 miles out-and-back, and to add 2 loops on the Ard-na-Sidhe road. In fact that’s pretty much the same route I used to run for most of my long runs last year, before I started doing the whole Caragh Lake loop regularly instead.

The run went fine, especially considering that it was just 2 days after my double header, which, a fortnight ago, took me 5 days to recover from. I felt pretty good today, and after covering the first 3 miles at about 8:30 I managed to speed up sufficiently to get the average pace down to 8:00 at the end. My heart rate was also pretty low, which is always an encouraging sign. Running 18 miles didn’t particularly tax me; I think I’ll pump my longest run up to 20 next week. The knee held up fine again. It did hurt on every downhill stretch, but was fine otherwise. But sitting in my office chair at work once again left me in agony. I can’t find a sitting position that doesn’t cause a lot of pain. I still hope to heal soon, but I am relieved that at least my training doesn’t seem to be affected.

28 Jun: 8 miles, 1:04:47, 8:05 pace, avg. HR 151
29 Jun: 18 miles, 2:24:02, 8:00 pace, avg. HR 148