Thunderbolt And Lightning

When I started my run on Sunday, I immediately noticed that the legs were rather sluggish. This did not come as a great surprise, having run a tempo run on Saturday as well as a too-fast run on Friday. I did wonder if it was wise to be heading out on the loop around Caragh Lake, but of course carried on regardless. Memories of that awful long run a few months ago were playing in my head, but luckily a repeat was not on the cards. In fact, after about 10 miles I started feeling much better and ended the run with a few faster miles. The fact that the weather deteriorated with every minute did play its part in urging me back home.

Monday did have heavy legs again, which came as even less of a surprise, but this time I made sure to take it very easy indeed. It was a lovely sunny morning, very unusual for the last few weeks, and I could see that the Caragh River and Lake were both exceptionally high and the road was waterlogged in a couple of places, leaving me with wet and very cold feet.

Very Very Frightening indeed it was on Tuesday when the weather changed once more. I was undeterred at first, but after about 6 easy miles I saw some lightning with the thunder coming a second later, so this was very close. I was less than a mile away from home so I turned around and hightailed it home at 6-minute pace, which wasn’t exactly easy effort any more. Ironically, by the time I got home it started brightening up but another roll of thunder convinced me that heading back out was not a good idea, instead I accepted the loss of a few miles and called it a day. I still ended the year on 3276 miles, a very similar figure to all the previous 5 years.

New Year’s Day brought some more wind and rain. By now arrived in Dublin, I headed for the Stillorgan Heath and did some laps there. Normally I would not choose to run in circles in training, but I did a workout of 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy fartlek, which broke the monotony. I ran by feel but on the 2 or 3 occasions when I glanced at my Garmin I saw about 5:40 pace, so this was roughly 5k effort. After a while I checked the time, did some calculations and realised that I had already done 22 repeats, which was about twice as many as I had initially planned so I called it a day, did a cool down and headed for home. I had not noticed it while running, but I was completely frozen when I got home; the shower did its bit to thaw me up but I had pins and needles more or less all over my body and I spent a good while hugging the radiator afterwards. The legs, on the other hand, felt just wonderful and apart from being turned into an icicle I had loved the run.

I like to think it was a great start to 2014. Happy New Year.

29 Dec

15+ miles, 1:58:37, 7:51 pace, HR 150

30 Dec

10 miles, 1:18:39, 7:51 pace, HR 145

31 Dec

6.8 miles, 52:09, 7:40 pace, HR 144

1 Jan

10 miles, 1:15:43, 7:34 pace, HR 148
   incl 22x 60 sec hard