Frog In Boiling Water

When your weekend long run consists of 7 miles you know it's taper time!

When the coach told me last week to bin all workouts and keep the length of all runs to 7 miles I suspected that he merely took the lowest possible mileage he thought I would accept without revolting rather than base it on any physiological data. Anyway, I stuck to that.

7 easy miles on Monday home from work.

7 easy miles on Tuesday into work.

7 easy miles on Wednesday home from work.

7 easy miles on Thursday into work.

7 easy miles on Friday around some swanky parts of South Dublin.

On Saturday I was back home in Kerry. I was looking forward to running along the lake again but changed that and did one more heat adaptation run. Technically it was my only heat adaptation run this time round but with the high temperatures for the week before I think I must have gotten some adaptation from that as well. Anyway, after checking my own blog on how to do it I wrapped myself in 4 layers (long-sleeved shirt, cotton t-shirt, fleece jacket, running jacket), donned hat and gloves, and put myself onto the treadmill with the window closed and a podcast in my ear. I chose the treadmill as it's safer than the road when you're wrapped up like that and since I easily tend to overheat on the treadmill anyway it makes it practical for such a workout. I started out very easy and set the pace to 6 mph - 10 minute miles. That was as slow as I could go while still feeling comfortable, though I am aware that it's still faster than what I will be doing in Belfast next week. I soon got hot and I did 50 minutes of that, slowly steaming myself. The heat inside my layers rose steadily but almost imperceptibly. I found the HR graph afterward very interesting, rising almost linearly from below 100 at the start to 150 at the end, apart from one, er, technical glitch a few minutes in. I ran as easily as possible, the treadmill made sure the pace was completely constant, and I was never aware that the HR was rising at all.

I stepped off after 50 minutes, trying not to stress myself too much with a week to go to race day. The leg muscles probably didn't even know this had been a run at all.

Sunday was more conventional, 7 miles along the lake. Actually I had planned to run only 6 but sailed past the 3-mile point, my mind too far tuned out to realise, so I ended up with 7 out of pure habit. Again, I ran as easily as I could without feeling uncomfortable. It was a tad faster than on the treadmill but still slow enough to fall into some sort of shuffling style. I'll be doing a lot of that next week!

I'm not 100% sure what kind of shape I'm in when it comes to running for 24 hours, but the numbers sure look a lot better than before Albi. Back then the last run had been 10 beats higher for a similar pace as today, and the one before that had been 45 seconds per mile slower for a higher HR - I guess I'll gladly take today's numbers.

22 Jun

7 miles, 55:57, 8:00 pace, HR 141

23 Jun

7 miles, 55:06, 7:52 pace, HR 143

24 Jun

5 miles, 50:00, 10:00 pace, HR 126

   heat adaptation run

25 Jun

7 miles, 1:01:34, 8:47 pace, HR 129