Nice

Despite the not entirely universal approval of taking it easy during the week, I did manage to reap some benefits this weekend - which is the entire point of doing easy runs, of course. Run your easy runs easy so that you can run your hard runs hard. Otherwise you just end up with medium runs all the time.

Anyway, after yet another easy 10 on Friday (the fourth one in succession), I had to drive the kids to Cork on Saturday morning, because their CTY course has started again. The choice was either to get up at stupid o'clock and run in Caragh Lake before driving to Cork, or to drop them off and do my run while they're in class. I chose the latter.

I ran two loops from Blackrock castle, following the Cork marathon course from about mile 11 to 15 but heading towards Blackrock from the Marina. Each loop was just under 5 miles and I added an out-and-back section to make up the distance. I believe this is his playground. The run also doubled for breaking in my new pair of Lunaracers - the old pair was literally falling apart after 650 miles. Wearing these shoes always makes me run fast, even first warm-up mile was at 7:00 pace. The plan had been to run at about marathon effort for 10 miles, but I just got faster and faster with each mile, but still without going anywhere near race effort. The 10 mile segment ended up averaging 6:29 pace, which until 4 months ago would have been faster than my half-marathon PR pace. One fast looking lady runner gave me a "moving well" comment, and for a while I wondered if that by any chance had been Sonia O'Sullivan (I wasn't wearing my glasses and am blind as a bat, which is why I can never identify people while running), but as far as I know she's in Australia at the moment, so it wasn't her. I got another ego boost when a cyclist told me I was doing very nice pace - during my cool-down mile!

1:26:38 for a half-marathon distance training run. I must be in good shape!

I was back on my familiar Caragh Lake loop this morning, and when the big climb started after the initial 3 flat(-ish) miles, the quads immediately started protesting, telling me to go home. Instead I somehow managed to tune into autopilot and since I kept feeling better and better with each passing mile I decided to put the foot down over the last few miles. Last year, Mystery Coach had given me some back-to-back runs that really pushed me to my limits, this year they feel easier, because the effort is a little bit easier, owing to the slower race pace of the Ultra I'm aiming for. Still, the numbers of this weekend have been nothing but spectacular.

3 Feb

10 miles, 1:19:05, 7:54 pace, HR 147

4 Feb

13.1 miles, 1:26:38, 6:37 pace, HR 160
   incl. 10 miles @ 6:29 pace, HR 160

5 Feb

18 miles, 2:16:23, 7:34 pace, HR 143
   incl. 5.5 miles @ 6:56 pace

Weekly Mileage: 79+ miles