No Taper

I'm in a bit of a rush because strictly speaking I should be hopping into the car and heading for Cork right now. I'm taking a rather relaxed approach to tomorrow's run ever since I got confirmation that I had been moved back to the 3:30 group, which will make this the easiest of the long runs in this training cycle. Accordingly there was no need to taper for tomorrow, though since I was still in recovery mode from Staplestown I wasn't going mad anyway.

The legs had the customary heavy feeling that always comes the day after a mountain run, no more and no less than that. The miles passed quickly enough. Friday was easier again, with the same runs coming just that little bit easier.

By now I had realised why my HR data seems to be up and down a bit, as mentioned in the last post. Turns out it wasn't my body but the HRM fluctuating; the graphs showed plenty of spikes that I knew for certain were not there in real life. I have been using this HR strap for half a year, so I got a new battery in the expectation that this will fix the problem. So far so good. I'm curious what 26 miles at 8-minute pace will do, and if there will be any HR drift.

Since I have spent most of teh last weeks constantly in recovery mode from the most recent marathon/ultra, I haven't been doing much running at faster pace. With the legs feeling much better already I did 8 miles at a higher effort level than usual on Saturday morning. I didn't quite manage to hold 7-minute pace; maybe if I pushed harder I might haven but that would have defeated the purpose of the training run. It's almost certainly a good thing I'm not pacing 3:15 tomorrow - if I can't hold 7-minute pace for 8 miles I'd almost certainly be in trouble going 7:20-ish for 26.

The legs made me pay for it, today (Sunday) I had to grind out every single mile. I called it a good training for tomorrow's marathon pacing effort, but it had not been planned that way.

I better head off now.

Funnily enough I still managed 100 miles this week, even without a long run. This high-mileage running lark is easy.

30 May

am: 10 miles, 1:19:05, 7:54 pace, HR ???

pm: 5+ miles, 39:13, 7:45 pace, HR 131

31 May

am: 10 miles, 1:13:23, 7:20 pace, HR 143, incl 8 miles @ 7:05

pm: 5+ miles, 38:57, 7:42 pace, HR 136

1 Jun

11.5 miles, 1:32:23, 8:02 pace, HR 130

Weekly Mileage: 100+