Island Life

As is customary, we are spending a week on Valentia Island. Which is great for the rest of the family as they can enjoy their holidays. The three older kids are taking part in a water sports camp, leaving Niamh with the comparably easy task of having only one of the offspring to mind. It’s a right old pain for me though as I'm still at work, commuting from Valentia to Killorglin and back on a daily basis. The additional 90 minutes of driving are eating into my day.

On the other hand, Valentia is great for running, the coast road is totally flat and the hill road the polar opposite, there are a plenty of options for hill running and the low level of traffic is another plus. The wind van be a problem at times, but not so this week.

They called me Doubting Thomas when I said I’d believe the 25 degrees weather forecast when I see it. Turns out, I was right. Drizzly rain yesterday, 13 degrees and cloudy this morning, this is not what we were promised. The odd sunny hour does not make up for the misery of the rest of the day.

I'm sounding like a broken record, I know. I’ll leave it at that.

Running felt pretty easy on Sunday, despite running barely 14 hours after Saturday’s race, but there was definitely some effect because by Monday the legs were decidedly lethargic and did not feel much like running at all. I thought I’d mix things up this morning and headed for the hills, first running up to the slate quarry on the route that’s being used in the Valentia triathlon as well as the inaugural half-marathon that will be held later this year, and then a set of short, maximal effort uphill sprints on a very steep road. Because of the long breaks between the sprints I thought this would be an easy workout. It wasn’t. After seven repeats I was close to collapse, had to sit down beside the road and was decidedly grateful that my stomach was empty, otherwise I would have been re-acquainted with its contents. Having said that, there seems to have been a stomach bug doing the rounds prior to our arrival here, and I may have caught the tail-end of it; the next day or two will tell.

There is a race on Friday in Kilgobnet that I really do not want to miss as it’s organised by my own club. It would also be really cool to set a third PB on the third weekend in a row, but let’s not be greedy. I’ll settle for having some craic.

24 Jul

5 miles, 38:47, 7:45 pace, HR 145

25 Jul

6 miles, 47:09, 7:52 pace, HR 141

26 Jul

6.5 miles, 57:33, 8:51 pace, HR 141
   incl. 7x10 seconds all-out hill sprints