Moving Swiftly On

Running a marathon at 8:21 pace has the distinctive advantage of not requiring any real time for recovery. I went out for 5 miles on Sunday feeling perfectly fine, but I did spare a thought for Gerry and Ken; running another marathon would not have been at the top of my wish list that day; it reinforced the magnitude of their undertaking and I am even more in awe of the lads now. I’m glad to read that things are improving for Ken; after Saturday I had great doubts if he would be able to continue, but it looks like he’s pulling through.

I followed the weekend with another easy run on Monday, and then I started thinking about my training. Ever since Connemara in April I have not been training but recovering, first from that Ultra and then from the Cork marathon. With less than 8 weeks until Dingle, it is high time to get serious again. I found a training schedule on Runner’s World, possibly the first ever piece of information from that source that I have looked at (not true, I liked the core workout videos as well). I printed it out and hung it on my wall, though of course I’m jumping in halfway through the program. But since I have just managed to run a marathon without feeling tired I think I should be fit enough to keep up.

Niamh took one look at the schedule and said “I’m going to be a running widow!”. That’s true to some part; for the first time since taking up running 6 years ago I intend to do my long runs on the weekend. Running 5-hour long runs before work just isn’t feasible, not even for me. But Niamh and the kids will be in Dublin for the next 2 weekends and there will be a taper later on, so the really long family-abandoning runs will be limited to about 4 weekends, which I can justify, both to Niamh and to myself.

Then she took a second look and theatrically proclaimed “What’s this? Do my eyes deceive me? What’s the meaning of the word ‘rest’?”, at which point I obviously pointed out that this schedule would be only a rough guideline, not to be followed slavishly. Actually, now looking at it in a bit more detail, it isn’t all that impressive. The weekdays are pretty much the same all the way through. Instead of following to the letter I will try and listen to my body and adapt training accordingly.

Tuesday called for a set of repeats, and since I had not looked at the program properly I thought it would be miles at marathon pace when they should have been at 10-mile pace. Never mind, 3 days after a marathon this felt fast enough as it was. I did 7 repeats, and the target was my (Garmin-adjusted) pace from the Cork marathon of 7:15. What I did was 7:04, 7:07, 7:00, 7:07, 7:20, 7:20, 6:58, which was just a tad fast, but the differences between each repeat closely match the elevation profile and the effort was very constant. I might do a few faster miles tomorrow to make up for the mix-up but will see how the legs feel first.

I followed this up with another easy run this morning. The thought of a couple of long runs on the weekend ensured that I kept the effort very, very easy. That’s a good thing, and I hope I can keep this going for all of my recovery runs. I suspect they have often been too fast in the past, leading to less than ideal workouts. Then again, I also suspect this is a very common mistake amongst runners.

My resting HR was 43 this morning, a good bit higher than the 39 I measured 2 weeks ago, but then again I DID run a marathon at the weekend. With that in mind, I think this is a pretty good reading.

12 Jul

6.1 miles, 51:18, 8:25 pace, HR 134

13 Jul

10 miles, 1:15:05, 7:30 pace, HR 153
incl. 7 miles @ 7:04,7:07,7:00,7:07,7:20,7:20,6:58

14 Jul

5 miles, 43:04, 8:37 pace, HR 133