Blogging With One Hand

I’m typing this one-handed while simultaneously holding Maia, so if my thought processes are a bit disjointed, you know why.

Despite their well-deserved reputation for being welcoming and friendly, Irish people can actually be quite reserved when dealing with strangers, and especially so early in the morning (this is not a country of early risers). There is a farmer who lives on the Caragh Lake road, about a mile from here. I see him nearly every morning, at least during the week. For months, or is it years, I always gave him a cheerful “Good Morning” only to be pretty much ignored. During the summer he suddenly started warming towards me, and sometimes even looked up as I passed by. A few weeks ago he began to respond to my greetings, and recently he’s even said good morning before I did. This is major progress. Last week he really startled me once when I was passing him in near total darkness and all of a sudden a dark shadow on the roadside said hello. Since then he tends to give a little cough as I’m approaching, and then we wish each other a good morning, two near strangers at around 6:20 am on the side of the lake, but by now very familiar with each other’s presence.

My mileage is pretty much settled now. I had hoped to be able to get into 90 mpw territory in November, which I managed last week, and that’s where I intent to stay. Don’t forget than in addition to running I'm also cycling 50 miles per week on my way to and from work, and I don’t want to overdo things. I’m comfortable with that sort of mileage, and it took over 11 hours to run that mileage; any more might well mean overdoing things.

Three miles into yesterday’s 15.5 miles run my left thigh started hurting. I kept going in the hope that it would be just a temporary glitch, but it got quite painful. Despite the fact that it started on a climb, the pain was most pronounced on the downhill sections, and it really started hurting quite a bit, and on 2 or 3 occasions a short sharp pain shot all the way through my leg. I tend to run the downhill sections reasonably hard, but had to hold back yesterday. I had hoped to run the last 5 miles at a strong pace, which would have made this a double header in combination with Sunday’s tempo run, but had to hold back a little bit due to the pain. The more I tried to relax my stride the lesser the pain seemed to be, and that’s how I managed to finish the entire loop.

Maia’s off for a feed now and I can type freely again.

Now, you probably think I’m a complete idiot, and you may even be right, but I went out again today, despite still being handicapped. I have collected numerous aches and pains over the last few years, and if I had stopped running at each of them I would have missed half of my training. I have therefore developed the strategy of running for a few days through each pain, even if it hurts quite a bit, and almost always the pain started receding even without sacrificing any miles. I was a bit apprehensive, but actually felt better than on Monday. I re-graded the sensation from pain back to mere discomfort, and on the second half even felt adventurous enough to add a few strides. I didn’t run them all-out and held back just enough not to stress my leg too much, but considering the circumstances it was a decent run. The best thing about both Monday and Tuesday was the low heart rate. With each training cycle so far my heart rate has kept dropping, and this one is following the same pattern. Even half a year ago I would have laughed in your face had you told me that I would be able to run sub-8 pace at less than 140 bpm.

26 Nov

15.5 miles 2:00:22, 7:45 pace, HR 141
last 5 in 37:14 @ 7:26

27 Nov

10 miles 1:19:19, 7:55 pace, HR 138
including 9x100 strides