Evaluating Recovery

From what I’ve gathered so far, base training is all about recovery and ensuring that you get enough of it. Accordingly I made doubly sure to run very easily on Monday. The rather demanding set of runs over the weekend had left some soreness behind and the legs felt rather heavy at first. My mood was not exactly helped by the fact that it was raining as I left home. I almost wished for the ice to come back instead, but sadly the weather is not up to me. What is up to me, though, is the effort of my run and this time I produced the lowest HR of my training cycle yet. I’m actually supposed to keep the HR between 140 and 155, with far more time spent at the lower end, and this time I undershot the band by a good bit. Never mind, I felt the legs would thank me for it at Tuesday’s evaluation.

Before it came to that, there was another problem to be tackled. When first Cian and then Niamh got a nasty stomach bug we kept saying it would be ok as long as Maia did not contract it. Those hopes were dashed on Monday evening when she started to throw up. To make matter worse, Niamh was in Killarney for the evening and I had to clean up the mess and console the girl on my own, as was well as keeping an eye on the rest of the brood. Luckily she is a very resilient little girl and between her spells of throwing up violently she was remarkably cheerful. By the time Niamh was home, the worst was actually over. We braced ourselves for a tough night, but she slept through – until 4:30 that is, from when on she demanded to be entertained, but hey, that's better than the state she had been in 10 hours earlier. Shortly after 6 o’clock I managed to get out of the house, her big sister taking over the entertainment duties (they both fell asleep again soon anyway).

Finally out of the door and free of worries for the little one, I embarked on yet another evaluation workout. During the warm-up I was quite confident that this would go well, as I was jogging along easily at about 7:40 pace with a HR in the mid 130s, something I had not seen in a while. After close to 4 miles I started the evaluation proper. It took a while to get into the rhythm, I seemed to have to work harder than usual to get the HR up to 161 and I needed the Garmin’s alarm more than usual to stay at the target HR. When I felt like running uphill towards the end of the third mile, even though I knew the road was flat, I realised that I was getting tired, but at that stage I also noticed the wind for the first time. If it had just picked up or if I was just getting overly sensitive, I’m not sure.

Mile 1        6:44 (HR 161)
Mile 2        6:47 (HR 161)
Mile 3        6:49 (HR 162)
Mile 4        6:52 (HR 162)

Time to 130:     39

Once I finished the evaluation I came to a complete stop and was surprised that it took 39 seconds for the HR to come back down to 130. It seemed to take an age to get to 150, but once it finally started dropping I came down reasonably quickly. The overall pace compares favourably to previous evaluations but kept fading a bit more that I'd like to see, really. I guess the slower last mile together with the long recovery afterwards is a sign that I have not recovered from the weekend yet. Maybe I should have waited a few days with the evaluation, but what’s done is done.

10 Jan

8 miles, 1:04:19, 8:02 pace, HR 136

11 Jan

11.75 miles, 1:26:47, 7:23 pace, HR 151
incl. 4 miles evaluation:
    6:44, 6:47, 6:49, 6:52; 39 seconds to HR 130