Single Digit Countdown

I probably should not have been surprised but I was: my quads were surprisingly sore on Monday, obviously a direct result of Sunday's mountain run. The fact that I had run it all at a very sedate effort had not saved me from a fair amount of DOMS. It sure felt a lot more sore than after the Dingle marathon or the Achill Ultra.

I took it easy on Monday anyway as it was another heat adaptation run wrapped in 4 layers. There is definitely some progress being made on that front. The HR was lower than on the previous adaptation runs (though the run being half a mile shorter affects that as well) and I did not get that dizzy feeling after finishing, which is definitely a plus. I will do a couple more, to make sure I do not lose the hard-gained adaptations so far. How much this is relevant in reality - I guess I'm going to find out!

After all those workouts I was actually looking forward to a bag-standard 10 mile run on Tuesday. I don't know how often I have run those 5 miles along the lake and back again but it must be in the hundreds, and yet I still enjoy the scenery and it never feels old. Only problem was, I have run 8 miles so often in recent times that I automatically turned around at the 4-mile point without thinking and it took me another mile to realise that I was supposed to run out for another mile. Ah well. I tagged on another out-and-back mile back home instead, no matter.

Wednesday was one last interval workout. Since the race is getting rather close I decided to deliberately run a bit slower than last time and rather teh 6:30-6:40 pace slot. I almost managed it during the first repeat; after that I concentrated on running as relaxed as possible instead of pushing the effort and wouldn't you believe it, I was actually running faster that way despite it feeling easier. It would have been an epiphany except that I have experienced it before and the lesson never seems to stick. I also cut the recovery even further, down to 0.15 miles which really did not feel very long. I started feeling the effort at the fourth repeat and even more so at the fifth and decided to call it a day there and then because you should always end an interval workout when you still have at least one more interval in you, even more so 9 days before your goal race. It was definitely the right call.

14 Sep

7.5 miles, 1:02:39, 8:21 pace, HR 151

   heat adaptation

15 Sep

10 miles, 1:21:29, 8:09 pace, HR 145

16 Sep

7 miles, 55:49, 7:58 pace, HR 151

   incl 5 x 800 @ 6:29, 6:26, 6:19, 6:25, 6:22 pace