Unexpected Need For Recovery

I had a bizarre start to the week; my very first thought upon waking up on Monday morning was "what a weird nightmare coming 101st in Ballycotton" before realising a split-second later that it hadn't been a dream at all! Despite this, I am actually not obsessing about it. My second thought was "my quads are really sore", which took me completely by surprise because they were in significantly worse state than after racing more than 3 times as far in Donadea 3 weeks earlier. I take those really sore legs as proof that I really raced as hard as I could in Ballycotton and have nothing to be sorry about. Had I taken it easy and missed out on a t-shirt by a couple of seconds I would have been seriously annoyed with myself but that way I can tell myself I did what I could (and I'll just ignore the fact that I should not have run that fartlek workout on Thursday).

I also figured it's a very good thing that I never intended to race in Tralee anyway - Ballycotton really would have messed this up royally. This week is all about recovering and getting some legs back, jogging 26 miles should actually be comparatively easy compared to Sunday's last mile. I am now really looking forward to Tralee, which is as close to a hometown marathon as I have at the moment (and almost certainly for as long as I keep living in Caragh Lake). Any pressure is off, and after destroying my quads in Ballycotton it should be easier to resist any attempts to race this even with race-day adrenaline coursing through my veins, an old weakness of mine.

I have been doing nothing but easy 5 mile runs every morning, nursing my sore quads along but very much enjoying the sunshine as well as the crispy cold mornings, absolutely beautiful conditions. Winter has been absolutely brutal, the worst I can remember, but if spring remains like this I'll have no complaints.

Three days after teh race my right leg feel fine but my left is still having some residue of soreness, which is a bit weird as I'm pretty sure I ran equally hard on both legs. What caught my eye was today's rock-bottom heart rate measurement, which would probably be my highest ever VDOT reading. On the other hand my weight is almost 3 pounds up since Sunday, which I guess is mostly water retention because I don't remember pigging out post race (one extra Mars bar excepted) and should be gone away soon.

I'm actually considering focusing on Ballycotton next year. If I want a t-shirt I should do it before I get too old and if I focused on it I should definitely be able to run under an hour. There are plenty of people who keep telling me that my longer race times would benefit from focusing on shorter distances for a while as well, though I'm not 100% sold. I'll see how I feel in a few months.

10 Mar

5+ miles, 41:23, 8:12 pace, HR 131

11 Mar

5 miles, 40:57, 8:11 pace, HR 135

12 Mar

5 miles, 39:12, 7:50 pace, HR 129