Budding Artist

With only 3 weeks left until Connemara I thought I had taken it relatively easy with my 22/15 workouts this week. What I had not quite factored in was how stiff I would feel after running the last few miles of both runs at a significantly faster pace. Well, I hadn’t exactly planned on doing it. But I’m dealing with the fallout now, I was quite sore yesterday and I really did not enjoy my swimming workout, which was a first. Things did improve today, but not by an awful lot. First of all, I overslept. I can’t even remember the last time this happened. I always set the radio alarm on my side of the bed to a barely audible volume. That ensures that Niamh doesn’t get woken but is sufficient to wake me – until today that is. I must have slept deeper than usual (in fact, most days I’m awake before the alarm anyway) and when I opened my eyes at 7 o’clock I realised I had slept through it.

It didn’t help that both Shea and Maia were awake as well, and I had to fix up breakfast before I was able to leave, but I still had time for 5 miles, as long as I hurried afterwards, getting ready for work. The first mile was still rather stiff and sore, but things improved and I included a set of strides towards the end. I should have done those much more regularly, but I simply don’t think of it most of the time.

Enough of that, have a look at this:



I think we have yet another child prodigy on our hands, Maia drew this picture of a “crawly, crawly spider”, and she’s still well over half a year away from her third birthday (no, Ewen, don’t make the joke about the signature even more impressive for a 2-year old). I had to scan it to preserve it through the ages. It’s at least as impressive as Cian’s early work.

Should I mention the change of plans I hinted at last time? I guess so. Sorry John, still no Fling this year. See, I drew up my plans for 2010 about half a year ago. I would run Connemara in April, a charity marathon (only one!) in July as a training run and Dingle in September. When I started contemplating racing the charity marathon rather than running it as a training run I knew I would be asking for trouble, 2 months before Dingle. Anyway, I decided to add an extra marathon there, 3 months before Dingle, which conveniently happens to be Cork. And I’ll race it. When I went through my old training diaries after Sunday’s tempo run I realised that I had never even gotten within 10 seconds per mile of that pace for a tempo run. I must be in good shape, not just for an ultra but also for a marathon, and I want to put that to the test. I know I can handle Connemara and Cork in the same year, because I did just that 2 years ago and had a great marathon (still my second fastest).

18 Mar

45 minutes swimming

19 Mar

5 miles, 40:32, 8:06 pace, HR 137
incl. 6x100 strides