Active Recovery

I was never going to break any mileage records this week. The emphasis was clearly on recovery from the 30 miles on Sunday. I might not have run it at race effort (and don't I know it!) but it was still a significant effort and recovery was needed.

Accordingly I did not do any workouts, just ran at what felt like a reasonably comfortable pace. The HR was always a bit higher that what I would have liked to see. I never looked at the Garmin during the runs, they was done always purely by feel. It was only afterwards that I checked out the numbers, and I was always surprised by the high HR figure. This only changed today, Sunday, when the HR finally went below 150. All these runs have been at pretty much the same perceived effort, though.

The most challenging feature this week may well have been the weather, with heavy wind and rain and partially flooded road at the start of the week and icy cold temperatures towards the end. I don't mind either too much, I have run in worse conditions, though there was a short hail shower as well one day, and that's a bit too painful to be called "fun". Otherwise I was ok with it, I see it as additional mental training. I remember the winner of the championship in Bangor, John O'Regan, remarking to someone else after that race "who would train in such conditions!", and, well, I do. It's a side-product of always running in the morning. I get up and then I run, no matter what.

The pace has generally been pretty fast for an easy effort, maybe a bit faster than would have been advisable in a recovery week. Today I ran the last few miles, after the big hills had been left behind, at about 7:00 pace and felt comfortable enough. This bodes very well for Tralee. My present marathon PB pace is 6:50. If I can already run virtually the same pace feeling as good as that, that's a great place to be in, and yet the real training is still to come. The race is 16 weeks away, and the next phase of training, when things will finally start ramping up, is not too far off. I'm already looking forward to it.

23 Nov

10 miles, 1:12:53, 7:17 pace, HR 150

24 Nov

10 miles, 1:12:39, 7:15 pace, HR 157

25 Nov

14.75 miles, 1:49:25, 7:25 pace, HR 147

Weekly Mileage: 58