Feeling Old

They, whoever they are, say that the one major thing about aging runners is the recovery times from tough workouts. Older runners just take longer to recover. According to my legs, I have been an older runner since Sunday.

The first things I felt as I got up at 5:30 on Monday morning were my very sore hamstrings. This is quite unusual; if my legs ache it's normally the quads, but not always. I briefly wondered if running 15 miles over very hilly terrain was a good idea, but, as always, pushed those thoughts aside and got ready. The run wasn't as bad as I feared. The first 11 miles, the hilly part, went reasonably well. Then I started on my "strong finish" stretch, where I had managed at average pace of 6:48 only a fortnight ago – just before getting sick. I knew that pace was well out of reach, and all I could tease out of my tired and very achy legs was 7:10 pace. Still, that's better than on the same run 3 weeks earlier, so things aren't all bad. It confirmed what I already knew, that the sickness had set me back a bit, but not by too much.

However, for the rest of the day I felt twice my age, moaning every time I had to get in or out of a chair, and it wasn't pretty. I particularly cursed the fact that we lived 5 miles out of town, because cycling that distance wasn't fun at all. I hoped that a good night's sleep would do wonders, but things weren't helped by the fact that I was on call for technical support from work and promptly got a call at 4 am, which lasted for about half an hour (Niamh wasn't overly pleased either). It took me a while to get back to sleep, and the alarm at 6 o'clock sounded far too early. I was still groggy by the time I hit the road, ran 10 miles easily, was surprised that I managed sub-8 pace with my tired legs, was equally surprised at the high HR, and subsequently had a hard time staying awake at all times during office hours. Somehow I made it through.

There were no emergency support requests last night and I slept reasonably well, but somehow the legs were still sore, but by now the quads had overtaken the hamstrings in that regard. I wasn't too sure how I would make it through today's hill workout, but decided to go ahead anyway. I was dreading the tempo run part all through my warm-up. Of course, if you don't expect to run well you never will, and I subsequently ran my slowest "tempo run" in a while, clocking the less-than-three-miles segment at 6:53 pace (slower than marathon pace!!) though the HR confirms that it wasn't down to me slacking off. As soon as that particular torture was over I started dreading the oncoming hill repeats in equals measure. I had done previous hill sprints in 45 seconds; this time I resolved to keep going for 60 seconds each. However, maximum effort they were not. I have no idea if it's better to run 45 seconds all out or 60 seconds at a slightly more measured effort. Interestingly, the HR at the top of the 60 seconds was the same as I had reached during previous 45 seconds efforts. In any case, I had thought the legs were heavy at the start, but it was nothing in comparison how they felt at the end of the workout. It's a different kind of sore today, though. If there is a difference between acute soreness from today's run and chronic soreness from a run several days ago then that's what I can feel right now. If that's good (cause I'm working hard) or bad (cause I'm working too hard) is anyone's guess. So far, I have another hill workout planned for Friday. I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but I just have to keep the faith that those torture sessions might enable me to run Boston in less than 3 hours.

16 Feb

15 miles, 1:58:12, 7:53 pace, HR 153
last 4 @ 7:10 pace

17 Feb

10 miles, 1:19:10, 7:55 pace, HR 148

18 Feb

10.5 miles, 1:28:20, 8:25 pace, HR 150
incl. 2.75 miles @ 6:53 (HR 163) and 8x60 secs hill sprints