And so the streak ends

No, not the one about me running day for day, that’s still ongoing. The one about correctly predicting the gender of our children, I mean. After guessing correctly for the first 3 I made the confident prediction that we’re in for another boy. On Friday we had a scan (very late, Niamh is already 25 weeks). It’s a girl. Lola is thrilled, she really really really wanted a sister. Cian on the other hand burst into tears. He wants three brothers. Because 3 is his favourite number. Because he himself is 3. Sorry, Cian, that’s just not happening.

I faced a problem over the weekend, because after staying home in Caragh Lake for a couple of days (for the scan and the concert), we went back to Valentia and I promptly forgot to take my HRM and my stopwatch with me. It meant three runs without a timing device, and I felt half-naked without the chest strap. Of course it didn’t really matter. I got a pretty good idea of how long I’d been out from looking at the clock in the hall, and the training effect isn’t actually altered even if you get the time wrong by a minute or two, even though it hurts my geeky fondness for numbers.

I went back to the hills on Friday for another set of repeats. The highest hill in Valentia is called Geokaun (with loads of different spellings) and there is a private road up to the very top. The cost for pedestrians is 1 Euro, which I brought along with me. I proceeded with 3 sets of steep-hill running, each followed by a few laps around the car park up there, gingerly jogging down the steep hill (my knee is still dodgy) and 3x200 meters of sprints on a dirt road at the bottom. After the third repeat I actually ran the extra half mile up to the very top, but I didn’t do the high knee lift for that section, just ran normally. The view up there was breathtaking, even though it was a bit hazy. I had inadvertently taken the long way round on my way there. By the time I started my first hill repeat I had already covered more than 5 miles, which isn’t quite ideal, but as I found out there is a shorter way via the lighthouse road. I’ll keep that in mind for the next time. I didn’t know how much distance I had covered, but the whole run had taken well over 2 hours and I settled for a 14.5 miles estimate.

I still felt pretty good on Sunday, and was looking forward to the 10 miles to finish off the week. Somehow it was liberating to run without a stopwatch, and I turned the run into a fartlek session, with a faster segment each mile or so. Obviously I didn’t time it, but I kept up a good pace even on the recovery parts, and was back home in about 1:15. It was a very good run at the end of yet another 100-mile week, and I was pleased to be able to crank out a few faster miles even after such a high mileage.

I expected to be sore again today, because that’s what happened after the last hill repeat workout. But I awoke without any soreness and happily went on my way for another 16 miles. I’m officially going into my hill phase now, but to ease into it I’ll only do 2 sets of hills this week. My mileage will drop a bit, which means those 2 100mpw weeks will remain there on their own. I haven’t decided on quite how much I will run, but I will cut down the longest run from 22 to 20 miles. At the very least it will give me an extra 15 minutes of sleep on Wednesday, and I’m happy to take that after last week’s madness. I managed to catch up on sleep over the weekend, I got in excess of 8 each night, including the one to Monday.

I drove via Caragh Lake on my way to work today to pick up my stopwatch and HRM (plus a few other things). It was fun to run without a timing device for a while, but I’m glad to be able to satisfy my obsession for numbers again.

21 Jul: 3 hill repeats, 2:06, ~14.5 miles
22 Jul: 10 miles, ~1:15, ~7:30 pace
23 Jul: 16 miles, ~2:12, ~ 8:15 pace

Weekly mileage: 102.5 miles