The Calm Before The Storm

The met office spent most of the last 2 days warning us about the impending “first major storm” of the winter. Lying in my bed last night it sure felt like it had arrived a day early, but listening to the wind howling outside right now I guess they were right after all, last night did not sound half as bad and the storm proper is yet to arrive. At least it gave us plenty of time to bring all the outside furniture into the shed for the winter months. As far as running is concerned, I guess it's time to suck it up.

After almost a week of agony I finally did something about my back. No, not going to to the doctor as Niamh had been nagging me to do, but googling for a cure. The one about keeping the affected area warm appealed to me the most and after judicious use of the hot water bottle (much to Niamh's disapproval), I can only call this a miracle cure. All of a sudden I feel much, much better.

Last week had been really stressful at work, something I can deal with very well normally but it really started to get to me towards the end. Having mostly finished the item that had been taking most of my time, things should hopefully improve next week.

I took it reasonably easy on Friday, running 9 miles along Caragh Lake. I can't even remember it now, so it can't have been particularly interesting. Saturday was a day for sleeping in for everyone but me; I had to get up at 6:45 to be able to run because I had to leave early to get the twins to Tralee for their CTY course. At least they chose the one course that was offered in Tralee or else we'd be driving to Cork every week, four times as far. By now this has become routine: I run in the morning, drive to Tralee, do the weekly shopping while they're there and drive them back home. This works fine but it feels like sacrificing half of my weekend. And the next two weekends will be different because instead of going shopping I will drive to Killarney to run a 5K instead. I did that in February and the timing works out beautifully as long as I don't hang around at either place.

Saturday's run was quite quick without really noticing until I was back home, which I take as a good sign. I added about 6 strides towards the end of it, which also brought the average pace down by about 5 seconds (and obviously increased the HR). Today was an easier version of last week's run through Cromane. A week ago this had been too much and too soon after the Dublin marathon, today I cut it by one mile, but felt much better anyway. I had a bit of a rough patch around mile 8 but managed to recover. 7:30 pace is starting to feel fairly comfortable. But I do remember that in summer of 2009 I used to run this loop at sub-7 pace on several occasions and I'm pretty far away from that shape right now. Then again I think the coach would say that's actually a good thing, so far out from the next race.

5 Nov

9 miles, 1:10:21, 7:49 pace, HR 146

6 Nov

10 miles, 1:14:30, 7:27 pace, HR 156
incl. 6 strides

7 Nov

12 miles, 1:30:19, 7:31 pace, HR 154

Weekly Mileage: 67.5