Torturted

After her illness two weeks ago (which she managed to pass on to me), Maia had still not fully recovered before she caught the next one. She is in decent form during the day, but she is definitely keeping us awake at night. I would have gotten adequate sleep over the last two nights but lost 90 minutes to the screaming baby on each occasion, and I can definitely feel the effects. Sleep deprivation is a kind of torture, and at the moment Maia the Merciless could qualify for a job in Guantanamo. At least she seems to be over the worst, and we have hopes of eventually being able to sleep again.

I felt really guilty this morning because when I got up at 5:30, I could still hear her cry. Luckily she fell asleep even before I was ready to leave for my run, which went some way to alleviate my shame.

Just to clarify Tuesday’s workout, the miles were never meant to be faster than MP effort and 7:10 is probably my present marathon pace, though I was working on perceived exertion, not pace. In that light, 7 mile repeats are not a hard workout. There will be a lot more of that to come, and hopefully my pace will improve. After all, that’s what I’m doing the training for.

Yesterday’s run was an easy 10 miler. I used to run loads of them last year; 10 miles were my bread-and-butter workout and the base for the higher mileage. After experimenting with a different training philosophy for the Dublin marathon, I’m back on the high mileage bandwagon. I hope this will enable me to avoid hitting the wall like I did in Dublin; time will tell. I felt good on Thursday, and I was surprised that the pace was so much faster than on Tuesday, when I had done the same run on the same stretch of road; the effort had felt pretty much the same.

Today was a bit tougher again, especially in my sleep-deprived state. All higher mileage plans include a mid-week medium long run, and today it was time for one of those (my weeks are a bit skewed because I do my long runs on Monday). I ran around Caragh Lake, and because Ron Daws’ schedule called for a medium effort rather than an easy one I ran a bit faster than on Monday. I also tried to up the effort over the last 5 miles. I like ending long runs with a good strong effort over the last few miles, and 7:30 pace would have satisfied me. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to be done. 7:35 was all I had in my legs this morning, which does not compare favourably with workouts from my previous training cycles. There is a lot of room for improvement here. The base phase will last for 6 weeks, and I really hope to be able to get those times down significantly. Maybe I’m a bit hard on myself, I have noticeably increased my mileage, and the legs are bound to feel sluggish at the moment. At least I managed to avoid the worst of the weather; the next storm front hit us today, but that early in the morning I was merely dealing with light rain and gale force winds rather than the full brunt of what was in store for later. Be grateful for small mercies!

11 Dec

10 miles, 1:21:15, 8:07 pace, HR 147

12 Dec

15 miles, 2:00:02, 8:00 pace, HR 152