A Sunny Weekend

My, my, doesn’t time fly. It’s been three days since my last entry, and I feel slightly guilty because I spent most of the last three evenings in front of the computer but couldn’t wean myself off YouTube. The reason is, Caragh Lake has belatedly joined the civilised world and we finally got broadband in our house. I felt like a kid let loose in the candy store, but at least I managed to keep the bulk of each day computer free.

Despite the late nights my running over the weekend felt just great. I can’t quite explain why I felt so good. I expected to be crawling after Friday’s 20-miler, but the truth is that the legs felt fresher than they have for a while. I ran 13 miles on Saturday, very relaxed and easy initially, but then the fun took over and I got a little bit faster with each mile. I managed to hold myself back and didn’t move into tempo run territory because I didn’t want to ruin the legs again, but sub-8:00 pace has rarely felt so easy. And all this despite the fact that I went back to the much hillier Caragh Lake road. I got fed up with the same Ard-na-Sidhe loop again and again and decided to risk the up-and downhills despite the ongoing knee issues.

And since it went so well on Saturday I went back there on Sunday, but for a shorter loop. Again, my legs felt surprisingly fresh and again the pace kept surprising me. I certainly didn’t expect to feel so good, at the end of my highest mileage week ever. Not that I’m complaining, I take a good day or two anytime. Maybe it has something to do with the time of the day. Maybe the legs just feel better at the weekend when I’m running at 9am in the morning rather than at 6am. I’ve read somewhere that early mornings are the worst times for a run because your muscles are cold and stiff (not that I’m going to change my habits). Maybe there is something to it.

Just to prove that theory, today felt tougher again, but compared to last Monday’s painful jog it was a lot better. I combined the Ard-na-Sidhe loop with the Caragh Lake road, but did the flat loop first in order to force the legs over some hills later on when they were tired already. I didn’t feel anywhere near as fresh as the days before, but it wasn't too bad. Towards the end of the run I even added 6 or 7 strides into the mix. That's something I've badly neglected over the last few weeks and I felt guilty about it. But I was astounded how quickly my heart rate returned back to normal after each set. That's not something that happened all of a sudden, though. I’ve noticed in the last two weeks or so that my heart rate has been steadily dropping. I remember something similar happening during my last training cycle when I consistently hit 80 mpw. There seems to be some threshold in my legs; as soon as I hit that mileage they start improving. Which is good, I just hope that the improvements will continue.

There will be a bit of disruption over the next few weeks, because we’re off to Valentia Island again. In fact, Niamh and the kids will go there tomorrow, and I’ll follow a day later. Since I’ve used up a lot of my holiday allocation already for this year (I’m keeping one week for November when the baby arrives) , I’ll have to commute from there. It’s not far, the drive from there to Killorglin is about 45 minutes, but that’s a lot more than the 10 minutes it takes from Caragh Lake, and that will mean getting up 30 minutes earlier. Ugh. At least Valentia is a nice place to run, as long as the weather cooperates.

7 Jul: 13 miles, 1:41:52, 7:50 pace, avg. HR 149
8 Jul: 9 miles, 1:09:58, 7:46 pace, avg. HR 149
9 Jul: 15 miles, 2:03:16, 8:13 pace, avg. HR 142 (!), incl. 6-7x1000 strides

Weekly mileage: 92