Bureaucracy

I’m sure one day I’ll manage to write a post without mentioning Maia, but that might take some time. In the meantime, you’ll have to grin and bear it. I had some brush with the local bureaucracy; on Thursday I drove to Tralee to register her birth, but unfortunately only brought one form rather than the required two. Why they need two forms with virtually the same information on it is beyond me, especially since they then store that information electronically. Thus I had to drive to Killarney today for a second attempt. This time I took Cian with me, and we went to the swimming pool for an hour of quality father-son time. Niamh doesn’t want him to feel neglected, now that the baby is taking so much of mummy’s attention, and she’s absolutely right. He loved the swim as well as daddy’s undivided attention, and Maia is a fully registered Irish citizen by now.

The running is still going well. In fact, I would not have dared to dream about being able to run so much before the birth, and I’m also very pleased with the way the individual runs are going. Because of my trip to Tralee Thursday’s run was a bit shorter than usual, just 7 miles, and since it was a very windy day I ran it on the Ard-na-Sidhe road. I decided to do a 2 miles time trial. It’s one of Mystery Coach’s recipes, if you do the same time trial every week or every fortnight you can compare the figures and get a very good understanding of you the way your fitness is developing. I decided to try and run it at heart rate 165, which seemed reasonable, as it’s a good aerobic effort, but with some buffer towards the anaerobic zone. The first mile went very well indeed, I kept checking the HRM every 30 seconds but it was always between 163 and 167, spot on, and the time was 6:47. The second mile was much more uneven (by effort I mean, the terrain was the same, just going the other way), and the HR fluctuated between 169 (due to a hill) and 157 (me overcompensating for said hill) and took 6:59. The extra 12 seconds were not because I got tired but because I had kept such an uneven effort in the vain attempt to keep the heart rate at the required level. Next time I might try to ignore the HR and just run it by feel, which is the way I usually run anyway. What pleased me was the recovery after the time trial, the HR took just 43 seconds to reach 120, and an additional 14 for 110, which is less than expected.

Niamh gave a disapproving scowl when I told her this morning that I would be out for two hours, but let me go anyway. For 22 hours a day I’m her dedicated servant, I do the laundry, hoovering, dishes, cooking, cleaning, shopping and provide her with whatever she wants, but the time on the road is me-time, and probably required to keep me sane. It was just enough time to run around Caragh Lake again. I surprised myself when I checked the time after 10.5 miles, because I reached it almost 2.5 minutes earlier than on the same run on Tuesday. However, back then I had started accelerating at that point and additionally hammered the last mile, today I just ran the rest at a relaxed pace. I did laugh out loud when I got home and pressed the stop button, because I had finished the loop to the second in the same time as Tuesday, and with the same average HR to boot. What are the chances? In any case, I’m running much faster than anytime before in my training. While I can’t completely rule out the possibility that I’m running too fast and will pay for it later on, I think it could be because my body has finally managed to soak up all the miles I had done for the Loch Ness marathon and has gained some strength in the weeks of recovery since that race. I’ll find out soon enough, if I’m overcooking myself I’ll pay the price soon, and if I’m merely getting stronger, it will show.

8 Nov

7 miles, 51:14, 7:19 pace
2 miles TT @ HR 165 in 6:47,6:59, recovery 120/43,110/57

9 Nov

15.5 miles, 1:54:52, 7:24 pace, HR 155