We had a company day out on Friday at the Eclipse centre near Kenmare, which is a great place, especially so if someone else pays the bill. Unfortunately, I hurt my knee at the assault course. It was my good knee, too. I still managed to do the activities for the rest of the day, but I could feel my knee swelling up. In the evening I inspected the damage. It is badly scratched, but that's not a problem. There is definitely some swelling on the outside of the knee, but not much. I decided to skip Saturday's run, but ventured out today. Funny how these things work. It was my first run since Bangor where I did not have my left knee strapped up, but now the right knee is sore. A bigger problem became apparent after about 2 miles when I realised that I had not drunk enough water beforehand. I was badly dehydrated and the fact that the sun was shining brightly exacerbated the problem. This explains the high HR today (that, and the fact that I ran faster than I would have otherwise because I could not wait to get to that glass of water awaiting me at the end).
During the run it struck me that Dingle is only 5 weeks away. Under normal circumstances right would be my most intense training weeks. Instead I barely got the mileage into the 40s for the second week in a row. I keep wondering how Dingle will go. I'm confident that I would go under 7 hours if I trained properly; what will happen when I run it just 8 weeks after Bangor is anyone's guess. Actually, I think I'll be doing alright, but I hope these words will not come back to haunt me on top of Conor Pass (from where it is still over 30 miles to the finish, provided you don't drop out when going through Dingle).
At least I'm gaining confidence in my right knee again, and the left knee won't bother me for long. I'm looking forward to getting back onto the Kerry Way and Windy Gap, where I built up the leg strength for the 24 hours. It also helps that the views up there are stunning. What's not to love about it?
I still have to decide if I want to do a race before Dingle.
- 27 Jul
- 5 miles, 38:53, 7:46 pace, HR 143
- 28 Jul
- 0 miles
- 29 Jul
- 8 miles, 1:00:30, 7:33 pace, HR 154
How come the widget says there's only 1 participant? There must be more than 1 crazy person in Ireland!
ReplyDeleteLast I heard was that they had over 50 runners signed up for the Ultra (and that was several weeks ago), but apparently only one of us is on dailymile.
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