Doh!

And there was me smugly thinking I had done a perfect job when pacing the 3:15 group in Monday's marathon, when I get a comment from the boss (no, not Niamh, the other one) that the brief had been to come home within 30 seconds of target, rather than 30-60 seconds as I had thought. So, the target for next year will be to run 17 seconds slower. Still, I don't think I did too badly. I certainly didn't get any complaints from my pacees, and that's the one group that counts.

Photo courtesy of Alan Murphy

There are lots of photos available of the runners, but I didn't see many of me, which is a bit surprising considering I was wearing a huge pink fairy wing. Actually that suits me just fine, I don't tend to be at my photogenic best when I'm running a marathon.

As regards to recovery, Dublin was just another training run (a rather long one, admittedly), and I never intended to take time off. You still have to respect the distance and therefore this week is a very easy low-mileage one, but training keeps going on uninterrupted. Walking down the staircase in Nana's house is an excellent indicator for the state of sore quads, and since I managed that without problems on Tuesday morning I went out of a short 5-miler straight away.

I thought I was running easily until I caught a glimpse of the Garmin and realised I was going at 7:30 pace, which is definitely too fast the day after a marathon. The HR reading was strange, very low. Either the Garmin was wrong or my leg muscles did a number on me. A low heart rate is not necessarily a sign of fitness, it can be a warning sign that the muscles are severely fatigued and most fibres just do not get activated, something I clearly cannot rule out in that case.

Anyway, I ran at a much more relaxed pace on Wednesday, and this time the low HR is certainly believable due to the easy effort.
Today, Thursday, the legs felt almost back to normal, though I know perfectly well that it takes a lot longer to be fully recovered, even after the stiffness has gone. I did an extra couple of miles (an extra two loops in Deer Park, that is), starting out slowly and gradually speeding up without even realising. In theory I should probably be running a little bit slower than that. In reality, I take the fact that the legs keep speeding up while on autopilot as a good sign.
There will be a few more easy days; I might do a longer run on the weekend; I will decide then, depending on how I feel. Next week I'll get back into proper training again. Last year I ran 2 weeks of 80-something miles after Dublin and had a fantastic race in Sixmilebridge, which came as a complete surprise. If I can replicate that, it would be great.

30 Oct

5 miles, 38:07, 7:37 pace, HR 138

31 Oct

5 miles, 40:11, 8:02 pace, HR 136

1 Nov

7 miles, 53:49, 7:41 pace, HR 150