Recovering

Well, last week I managed to dig myself into a hole by running too many miles too fast over too hilly a territory, in short I did not take recovery into account at all. This week I tried to take it easier, especially on the "easy" runs, which seems to have worked well enough. I also thought I had dialled back the mileage a little bit, but adding it all up now I can see that by Sunday I'll be pretty much back to where I was last week.

Thursday was a tad faster than the previous easy runs but still very much within myself and was happy enough with the effort level. I remembered that at some stage during the Vienna base phase I sent off an email or two to the coach, telling him how easy everything was and that I hardly felt like training at all, to which he basically replied that that's what it's supposed to feel like. It's fair to say that last week was not like that at all, but this week I got a lot closer.

I felt sufficiently recovered to attempt another "Fast Friday", where I try to run at a higher effort level than the rest of the week, but still very much within limits and the HR under 155. I managed that a lot better than last week (last week's long run serving as a dire warning not to be so stupid again), though still a bit too fast. One thing I managed to do was not looking at the pace fields of the Garmin at all during the run, which meant I was never tempted to speed up just to hit some random target.

I was pretty happy with that run but the test was to come on Saturday. I made several changes to last week. I made sure I started out very well hydrated, I ran slower and started an hour earlier, all of which helped but the major change was that I ran on legs that had not been trashed the previous days. The big climb felt much easier than last week, but to be fair it always feels much easier when I have done it already the week before. The first run after a break is always the toughest, once I get over the hills once my climbing legs tend to come back quickly,

Anyway, while I did get a bit tired later on it was nothing like last week's death trot and I arrived home still feeling good despite running a mile more. As long as I can keep last week's lesson in mind it will have served its purpose.

Just to confirm Niamh's suspicion that I'm a bit weird, I ran a mile around the house later that evening, just to confirm to Shea that 20 laps do indeed add up to one mile. According to the Garmin, that's surprisingly accurate. I hoped to add a few drills and sprints at the end of that, but Maia and Lola put an end to that. That's ok of course, some quality time with my girls tops everything else any time.

30 Jun

8 miles, 1:02:25, 7:48 pace, HR 146

1 Jul

10 miles, 1:10:44, 7:04 pace, HR 154

2 Jul

am:18 miles, 2:23:17, 7:57 pace, HR 149
pm: 1 mile, 7:55