Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Rachel

Seriously, someone needs to have a chat with the guys and girls from Met Eireann and tell them that 2 degrees Celsius is not "bitterly cold", not by any stretch of the imagination; not even by Irish standards.

Until Wednesday morning, conditions were still fine for running; any excuses would just have been very poor indeed. Niamh doesn't particularly like it when I go running wearing my tights but at my time of day it's still dark outside and nobody can see me anyway.

Recovery from the marathon is going exceedingly well. Following my always-the-same method of recovery, I have run easy 5 milers for a few days until the legs felt okay again, and by Tuesday that was definitely the case. My HR for that day was also a lot lower than the days before, so it's not just my muscles that are recovering rather quickly. I'm not saying that I am fully recovered after only three days but I am recovered sufficiently to think about running properly again.

I do actually have one hangover from Saturday, namely my left knee. It did hurt a little bit after the marathon (actually, after driving back up to Dublin) but has been fine when running. There is, however, some discomfort after sitting in the office chair for too long at work. I can't feel anything wrong at any other time, just after getting up from a prolonged spell in a sitting position. That too goes away if I keep walking for a minute, so nothing to worry about.

Winter has been throwing a few challenges our way; temperatures the last few days have always been a few degrees above 0. There was a bit of slush on the road on Wednesday morning that used to be ice a few hours beforehand, but by the time I ran on it it was crunchy and no longer slippery, so that was still fine.

With storm Rachel approaching our shores it eventually turned into not-fine-any-more throughout Wednesday and now it sure looks like my run tomorrow will have to be cancelled. Since I am travelling on Friday, I am most likely going to miss 2 days of running in a row. Let's call it additional recovery, but I sure would prefer to add a few miles. What can you do. Running is an outdoors sport, and these things do happen.

Update: Met Eireann owe me 8 miles! The weather was fine this (Thursday) morning, I easily could have gone running. They clearly erred on the side of caution. by a significant margin, at least around here in Kerry. We had celebrations last night when the kids heard that the schools were closed, followed by bitter tears and screaming 10 seconds later when Maia realised that her ballet lesson would be cancelled as well. Sometimes you just can't win.
12 Jan
5 miles, 43:08, 8:37 pace, HR 140
13 Jan
5 miles, 41:21, 8:18 pace, HR 135
14 Jan
8 miles, 1:07:00, 8:22 pace, HR 136

2 comments:

  1. It's not too often I hear of you taking two days rest in a row, especially without an injury. I've never ran in the snow before, but Wednesday morning I couldn't sleep & hit the roads at 4:40am (I went to be very early the previous night) a great experience on fresh snow, it must be the perfect surface & not slippy as I was the first to use it. Although I don't think the muscles warmed up much so I'm not sure of the benefits.

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  2. Great blog and great time for Vienna! I notice that you like to run at low heart rates which is the way to do it. Too many people train too fast imo. Are you doing Cork this year? I might have to join you! :-)

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