Icy Rain

For once I was glad I had looked at the weather forecast. Monday had been a reasonable morning, Tuesday had been okay as well, except that I did not appreciate the icy cold rain shower that started less than 5 minutes into my run but luckily did not last for long. Wednesday was a different level, though. The temperature at 5:50 in the morning was 3C/37F, but that did not take into account the freezing cold wind nor the occasional rain shower. Rain at these temperatures feels colder than snow; I prefer running in -13C dry nights than rain at +3C. However, running is an outdoor sport and you just have to HTFU; besides, for the majority of today’s run I enjoyed reasonable conditions and because I had managed to catch the weather forecast, I had brought my gloves along, the first time this year. Good move.

Getting up at 5:30 was probably to toughest part of the entire training. Readers of years gone by will of course remember that this used to be a regular occurrence (in fact, I used to get up significantly earlier at times). But I switched my long runs to the weekend when training for the Dingle Ultra last year, because running back-to-back 4 and 5 hour long runs in the morning before work was not a realistic option. I never switched back to weekday long runs, and have enjoyed longer sleeps ever since. With Connemara slowly drawing nearer, however, I want to do higher mileage than at the same stage last year, and that requires the occasional early morning.

Tuesday’s run was very pleasing; I never once looked at the Garmin (it’s too dark to read the display anyway), just ran easily and was really surprised to see an average pace of 7:35 at the end. I'm not complaining. I can’t help but compare the numbers with last year, and they are good. However, I will have to see how the Dublin marathon, more precisely my recovery from it, will impact on those numbers.

Still managing without headlamp ...

17 Oct

10 miles, 1:19:15, 7:55 pace, HR 138

18 Oct

10 miles, 1:15:48, 7:35 pace, HR 140

19 Oct

15 miles, 1:59:50, 7:56 pace, HR 141