Recovery? What Recovery?

I have one last note about the Blarney half marathon. There is a series of videos on YouTube, apparently taken around the 12-mile mark, though I think it was closer to the end. This particular video features both Grellan and me. Grellan is the runner in white singlet and black headband, 3:00 into the video. I’m the idiot in the dark outfit (not the purple one, two runners later) who’s checking his watch not just once but twice, almost a minute later.



Am I just paranoid, or is there something odd about my running style?

After 9 easy miles on Wednesday, I had another pair of cruise intervals on schedule. I wondered if it was wise to run at HMP yet again, 4 days after the race, but went ahead anyway. I was quite confident I’d be able to run at 6:30 pace, after all I have proven conclusively that this is my true race pace for that distance. It was quite surprised when it turned out that my HMP training speed was essentially the same as last week. It wasn’t because I was not working as hard as on Sunday; my heart rate during the intervals was actually higher than the average HR from the race. Maybe the fact that I was wearing my normal trainers rather than my racing shoes is a factor? They are 3.5 ounces each heavier, which allegedly means a slowdown of 7 seconds per mile, which would account for at least some of the discrepancy. That of course begs the question if I should wear my racing shoes for those workouts. I haven’t worn them at all outside of racing. My was worried about my PF, because the pain always seemed to flare up in the days after a race. Now that there seems to be an improvement I might be able to get away with wearing them more often.

If you’re reading this blog on a regular basis you know that I always do my long runs on the day immediately following a tempo run, and this week was no exception. I decide to run 22 miles, the longest run of the present training cycle so far. In the past weeks and months the long runs have always served as a great confidence booster. Even if my speedier workouts were below par, I could always take heart from how well the long runs went. I was therefore quite confident about today’s run.

Things didn’t quite work out to plan. I felt slow and sluggish from the word go. When I checked the watch at mile3, my pace was slower than 8:20, even though it definitely felt faster than that to me. I also noticed that I started to check the distance on the Garmin every 30 seconds or so, barely 4 miles into the run. That is a seriously bad sign, and the first thing I did was to turn off the backlight of said device. It was almost pitch dark, more than two hours before sunrise and with the moon hiding behind the clouds. I could make out the road but not much else, and this meant I could no longer see the figures on the watch. This worked, I eventually managed to tune into the run, but it never felt particularly smooth. I got back to our driveway at the halfway mark, had some water, and decided to run the same loop for a second time. I had toyed with the idea of running a couple of shorter loops, but deliberately went back towards Cromane, to make sure that I would not be able to bail out early. This was probably a good idea, because around mile 18 or 19 I had a rather bad low and felt like dying on my feet. However, I managed to pull through that and even had a decent finish.

With the heavy legs I was never even remotely tempted to speed up towards MP, and boy was I glad when I got home. I was almost crawling into the kitchen, and could only mumble “this better be worth it in the end” when Niamh enquired about my run. Cycling to and from work did not come easy today. But it felt very satisfying to note a big fat 22 into the log.

17 Sep

9 miles, 1:10:42, 7:51 pace, HR 140

18 Sep

12 miles, 1:25:53, 7:09 pace, HR 159
incl. 2x4 miles @ 6:40, 6:44

19 Sep

22 miles, 2:54:56, 7:57 pace, HR 144
first half @ 8:03, second half @ 7:50