The Best Laid Plans

Training has been rather mundane so far. I've only just started running again and anything fancy will have to wait a little bit longer, so all I did every morning was to run 8 miles. To be honest, I expected to seem some form of improvement by this time already, but so far the pace might have improved but at the expense of a higher average HR. The perceived effort was always the same, so I was a bit surprised by some of the HR readings. I won’t take any real notice of that yet and just have to tell myself to show a little bit of patience.

My next race will be the half marathon in Valentia (no, not the one in Spain) a little over 6 weeks from now, but it will very much be a fun day out rather than a goal race. I really enjoyed the race the last time I did it, 2 years ago, which also happens to be the last time I ran a half. The fact that I set a new PB on a tough course and managed to win my age group helped of course.

After that, well, I will do my annual pacing duty at the Dublin marathon, this time for the 3:10 pace group. In November I will try and wipe the memory of last year’s traumatic finish in Sixmilebridge away (I don’t need to win, just not throw away a winnable race this time) and I am already looking forward to a nice December marathon in Clonakilty, which promises to be a good day already. All of these races are just training runs and there will be plenty more of that in 2014; the plan is to use plenty of marathons as my long runs to whip myself into shape to tackle my next real ultra.

26 Aug

8 miles, 1:05:22, 8:10 pace, HR 141

27 Aug

8 miles, 1:04:32, 8:04 pace, HR 144

28 Aug

8 miles, 1:03:38, 7:57 pace, HR 145

29 Aug

8 miles, 1:03:05, 7:53 pace, HR 149