Breaking My Promise

I know, I know, I've been going on about the Spartathlon for too long already and I said I'd move on but hey. I found an online database with all results since 1983 (even 1982, though that was not an official race) and played around a bit. What I found is that if I count myself as Irish I am the third fastest finisher, which sounds far more impressive than my performance merited. As Austrian I am in more realistic 17th position - actually, that shows that there has been far too little interest in this classic race here in Ireland over the years. This finally looks like changing now, though; half the names on the Irish list are from the last 2 years. And what do we say about the fact that the top Irish performance is from a lady? One thing only, namely that some things don't ever seem to change, if you look at the results from Turin this year!

My post-race recovery is continuing. I am very cautious in ramping up the mileage. Usually I would go from 5 to 8 miles once the legs feel like they can take it but I stepped it to a mere 6, just to be on the safe side. I feel good while running and the numbers are already improving but the legs still feel sore at times; quads and calves especially.

The weather has been absolutely brilliant this week with icy clear mornings (the first thing I see when I open my door in the morning is Orion in all its beauty) and beautiful days with actual sunshine, something that's rare enough over here. It's a bit more cloudy today but teh forecast for the weekend is still pretty good. Can't complain for once!

I finally upped the daily mileage to 8 this morning, Thursday. The legs did feel a bit sluggish and I'll keep a close eye on recovery but all in all things are going okay, the HR is still higher than I would like but obviously I know what's causing that and over time this will improve of course.

I won't do any more racing this year, which means that not only am I going to miss the Dublin marathon, I'm also skipping Sixmilebridge, two races that have been absolute fixtures in my diary over the last 5 years! Can't be helped - that Spartathlon was tough.

Someone sent me a list of the "6 toughest races in the world". Apart from the fact MdS is more a trekking holiday rather than a race, I think someone's trying to kill me.

There's only one more thing I'll add about the Spartathlon. The general advice for anyone running it the first time is to only aim at finishing. In 90% of all cases this probably makes total sense but I think it cost me - once I was assured I was going to finish comfortably below the cut-off, I did no longer push as hard as I could have done, and I found it impossible to dig as deep as I know I can. Next time* I'll be more ambitious. I think I had a very similar problem in Turin - I did not have a set target. I don't think it's coincidence that my best race, last year's Belfast, was one where I had a very challenging but clearly defined goal.

12 Oct

5 miles, 42:59, 8:36 pace, HR 143

13 Oct

6 miles, 51:12, 8:32 pace, HR 141

14 Oct

6 miles, 50:52, 8:29 pace, HR 143

15 Oct

8 miles, 1:06:56, 8:22 pace, HR 147

* What next time??? Surely I can't be so stupid as putting myself through that again!