Merry Christmas

I used to hate Christmas. Not in the indifferent, Scrooge kind of way; I utterly detested the commercialism, greedy materialism and blank greed that went with it. People haven't changed, but my feelings for Christmas have. Why? There are four reasons and they are by now aged 10, 10, 8 and 4. It's so different with children, for them the magic is still very much alive and the excitement built every single day. For the sake of these shining eyes, it's all worth it.

But of course I keep running. It keeps me sane. I heard an interview with Mo Farah the other day; they asked him, what's in store for Christmas day? “A 10 mile run”.

Slacker!

After a disappointing set of numbers from Tuesday's evaluation, by Wednesday the legs all of a sudden felt great; probably due to recovery from the weekend. I kept things easy, and again on Thursday.

Because I felt so good I resurrected Fast Friday and did 10 strong miles on the reasonably flat Killorglin loop. I made sure to keep the HR in check, apart from one stretch when I got a few cat calls from a couple of drunks. Not sure what they were doing at that time of day, usually it's a safe bet that they're asleep by the time I come along. Anyway, I always get a smile on my face when the pace on these runs averages less than 7 minutes per mile, and Friday was no exception.

I pretty much followed the coach's original weekend plan, where he had a fast run followed by two longer runs. My long training runs never built up to much this autumn, courtesy of the marathons and ultras I did in Dingle, Dublin and Sixmilebridge, and I never reached 20 miles in training outside of these. Saturday's 16.5 mile loop around Caragh Lake was my longest training run in a while. The gale force wind added a bit to the challenge. The weather forecast seems to have missed that and apparently the rest of the country was calm enough but out on the hills it was pretty bad and I had to work through it. At least I got plenty in return on the way home, I did a few miles pretty close to 7 minutes without straining. In fact, after crossing the worst of the hills I spent much of my time repeatedly slowing myself down. I had an eye on Sunday.

Sunday, Christmas day, was slightly easier as it only had 15 miles, but of course how easy that would feel depended very much on the recovery from the previous two days. I'm glad to say that the legs felt great. The wind was even stronger than the day before and the occasional heavy rain shower added to the fun, but what else would I want to do on Christmas day? Actually, I had spent the previous few hours with the kids, first unwrapping Santa's massive heap of presents and then helping them assemble various bits and pieces, putting in batteries, reading manuals, the things dads do on Christmas day. I left behind 4 blissfully happy children; they were still playing happily when I came back, and Niamh even managed to get some rest; we'd only gotten 5 hours of sleep between arranging the presents preparing for Santa and the kids unleashing their force.

The run? It went very well, despite the weather. I still held back a lot during the first half and finally let it loose on the last few miles. Whatever the evaluation said, right now I fell pretty damn good.

Happy Christmas everyone.

22 Dec

10 miles, 1:18:01, 7:48 pace, HR 144

23 Dec

10 miles, 1:09:40, 6:58 pace, HR 153

24 Dec

16.5 miles, 2:08:16, 7:46 pace, HR 149

25 Dec

15+ miles, 1:55:26, 7:40 pace, HR 150

Weekly Mileage: 81.5