Thank You

Even though it might sound like an Oscar speech, I’d like to thank you for the comments you left for my last entry. You guys are worth your weight in gold, every single one of you!

I had written most of that entry pretty much straight after Tuesday’s workout, but didn’t post it. On Wednesday I deleted the worst of the whiny passages, left others in, and that’s what you got to read.

Giving up was never on my mind; when I said I’m not going to run under 3 hours I never meant I wasn’t even going to try. It was more a resigned statement that even though I would try I could predict coming up short once more. On reflection, breaking three hours in Dingle was never likely anyway. The elevation profile of that race hasn’t changed. It’s just that the last 10k seemed to indicate that I was in better shape than I appear to be, and that’s why I was so frustrated on Tuesday.

I was thinking about adding some faster running, like mile repeats, but envisaged a gust of comments saying “why are you starting intervals 4 weeks before the marathon you idiot”, except that most of you are too polite to put the idiot bit into writing. Then Mike’s comment suggested doing just that, expect for 1000s rather than miles, and that’s what I ended up doing on Thursday.

It wouldn’t be me just to go out and do a straightforward set of intervals, so I checked JD’s book and copied a workout from on of his marathon plans with the same amount of time before the target race. 6x1000 at I pace (2 mins rest), followed by 4x400 at R pace (3 mins rest). A look into his tables gave my projected times as 3:41 and 82 respectively, which is 5:56 and 5:30 pace. Let’s all have a good laugh at that. One thing I have learned last year is that I am not one to hit projected paces in training and I decided not to worry about them, just do the best I could.

I guess jumping straight into such a workout isn’t what most coaches would recommend, but time is not on my side. I was not looking forward to it, though. My last thought before falling asleep the night before was a feeling of dread, which was repeated first thing in the morning.

After 2 miles of warm-up, the 1000s were upon me. Since I don’t have a track, I ran them on a reasonably straight piece of Caragh Lake road, though that has a little hill in the middle. Consistency on these workouts has never been my strong point, and predictably the numbers fluctuated like a seismograph at an earthquake.

3:58, 3:48, 3:53, 3:56, 3:59, 3:51 (pace between 6:10 and 6:27)

Not exactly brilliant. But I tried. The 400s went a bit better.

88, 88, 84, 87 (pace between 5:39 and 5:53)

I went home feeling I could have done one or two more, but that’s what you’re supposed be feeling. The hamstrings were aching for the rest of the day.

I followed this today with 10 easy miles. The legs were predictably sore, and I picked up the pace on several occasions, which generally helps. It was maybe a tad fast for a recovery run, but I felt reasonably comfortable. Funnily enough, the quads seemed to feel better at 7:45 pace than at 8:20, or maybe they were just better warmed up at that stage.

Tomorrow will be easy again, and on Sunday I’m heading up into the mountains. If I don’t break my leg, it should be fun.

13 Aug

10.5 miles, 1:21:30, 7:46 pace, HR 152
incl. 6x1000: 3:58,48,53,56,59,51 and 4x400: 88,88,84,87

14 Aug

10 miles, 1:19:11, 7:55 pace, HR 143

Stale

I’ve been whinging about this enough by now. Time and time again I have been unable to hit the prescribed pace for my workouts, and I should have faced reality long ago. My time from Killarney is not representative of my present level of running; all the other races have shown as much, and I should have altered my targets accordingly.

It became patently clear on Wednesday, when I tried to run 1k repeats once more. Last week’s session, in Valentia, had gone pretty well, and I was reasonably confident I would be able to do ok again. But the early signs were not very good. When the alarm clock went off my first thought was “Oh no! I’m still tired”. The second, a split-second later was “OH NO! SPEEDWORK!”. I warmed up for 1.5 miles on the road, and then got down to it. The road isn’t as flat as the Valentia Shore road was, but the majority of my repeats have been run on the same stretch. The first one was slow. Never mind; the same had happened last week. The second one felt already much harder than it should have – and it was just as slow. The third one was slightly better, but by then I was already knackered. I thought about bailing out – in fact, I had thought about bailing out early in the second repeat. I stuck to the task. The fourth repeat was the slowest yet. I bargained with myself – one more, then I’ll call it a day. I ran another slow one. And, for some reason I decided to add another one, to make it 6 after all. It was the slowest of all.

3:54, 3:53, 3:49, 4:01, 3:51, 4:02

That’s 11 seconds per repeat slower than last week. I’ve got plenty of excuses: I was tired from lack of sleep, I was tired from too much driving, I was not recovered from Sunday’s race, the road was not as flat as last week’s, yesterday's run had been in the evening, giving me half the normal recovery time; none of them are any good. Call it a bad day? There have been too many of those. Time to face the facts. I’m not as fast as I’d like to be.

I thought about it, and decided to take it a bit easier from now on. I feel stale. My racing times have held up ok through the training cycle, but they have not progressed either, and that’s not a very good sign. To be honest, I think there is too much speed training in this program. I feel stale and tired all the time, and have felt so for a number of weeks. The next workout was 5.5 miles at 10k race pace – a ridiculous suggestion if I’ve ever heard one. I can’t do that without a number on my chest, a runner in front of me, and Grellan chasing me.

I decided that anything below 6:50 pace would do me for that run. This would still be a progression from the last training cycle – back then I had found it impossible to go under 7:00 for tempo runs. Whether that means that I should do more of those runs or if there’s some attitude problem is up for discussion. In the end, I wasn’t able to run under 6:50 either. I managed it for the first half of the run, but got increasingly tired and slower an the return leg, and ended up with 6:55 pace. Not exactly brilliant, and not even the pace required for a sub-3 marathon. It’s time to adjust my targets, I guess. I’m reasonably confident of a new PR in Dublin, but it might not be by as much as originally hoped for. The next race is 2 weeks away, the half marathon in Blarney. This will give me a much clearer picture where I’m really standing.

27 Aug

8 miles, 1:03:25, 7:56 pace, HR155
6x1000 in 3:54, 3:53, 3:49, 4:01, 3:51, 4:02

28 Aug

8 miles, 1:04:08, 8:01 pace, HR 143

29 Aug

9.55 miles, 1:11:29, 7:29 pace, HR 157
incl. 5.5 miles in 38:02 (6:55 pace)

Two more Workouts

The holidays have slightly messed up my schedule, but with a little bit of good will I can work around that. The biggest annoyance is the commute this week, it takes almost an hour each way to get from door to door, and obviously cycling to work is out of the question. I also found that I’m too tired to do my usual strengthening exercises in the evening – not a problem for a week or two, as long as I pick up the slack again next week.

Anyway, Niamh dropped me off to work on Monday morning, I ran home to Caragh Lake in the evening, cycled into work on Tuesday morning and got picked up by Niamh again in the evening. That way I could get some extra sleep on Tuesday, and Niamh had the car for those two days; otherwise she and the kids would have been more or less confined to the house (which they are now, for the rest of the week). I jiggled around my schedules and did my long run on Tuesday, which meant getting up at 5:20 (it would have been well before 5am had I slept in Valentia). The plan was to run 11 miles at steady pace, 6 miles at marathon pace and one last mile at half marathon pace. I noticed early on that the legs felt quite sluggish. Steady pace should be around 8:00 for me, but again and again I found myself slacking off and dropping down to 8:30. I did try and pick it up a bit and by mile 11 put the accelerator down. The next question was, what should marathon pace be? Following the book’s charts, it should be 6:40 according to my 5k time. The pace I need to beat 3 hours in Dublin is 6:52. I thought I would do well to run 7:00, and that’s what I initially aimed for. To my dismay, the legs would not follow. After about two miles the average pace was around 7:10, the legs seemed to work as hard as they could, but a look at the HRM told me that at 150 bpm I should be able to run a good bit faster. I also felt far too comfortable (apart from the legs, that is). I tried to pick it up a few times, which certainly increased the heart rate but did not do much for the pace. Worse was to come at the turnaround point, when I realised that I had been running with the wind on my back; the return leg would not only be slightly uphill but also against the wind. Of course the pace dropped after that. In the end I ended up with 7:12 pace for that segment. I put all I had into the last mile, and managed to squeeze out a 6:41 mile; then I was well and truly finished.

I did rationalise afterwards; I had run more than 20 miles on Friday and more than 15 on Sunday, both of them hilly. No wonder the legs felt dead on Tuesday. I’ll try and get some more rest for future workouts; as I’ve said the holidays have messed up my schedule. A return to my normal week might bring some sanity back to my training.

I made sure to take it really easy on Wednesday. I even cut a mile off the intended mileage, to ensure that I would have plenty of time and would not feel the need to speed up to get to work on time.

I started a new training phase this week, which replaces the 400s with 1000s and the mile repeats with tempo runs. I did 4x1000 today. According to the book the intended pace was my 5k pace, 5:55, which translates into about 3:41 for a km, but after the humbling experience of last week’s mile repeats I did not expect to hit that pace. The legs felt very sluggish initially; maybe this was because I had not run a fast workout for a week, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, my times for the 4 repeats were 3:49, 3:46, 3:42 and 3:41. I’m pretty sure I have never done a repeat session where I managed to speed up with every interval, not that I’m complaining. In the end I even managed to hit the prescribed pace, which was rather pleasing. All in all I’m happy enough with that workout. I think the 3 minutes recovery interval helped a lot, compared to the 2 minutes I was given for the mile repeats. This made a massive difference. Maybe I would have been better off with the longer breaks for the mile repeats as well, but that’s something to think about for the next training cycle.

19 Aug

18 miles, 2:19:53, 7:46 pace, HR 144
miles 11-17 @ 7:12, mile 17-18 @ 6:41

20 Aug

7 miles, 1:00:18, 8:37 pace, HR 134

21 Aug

7 miles, 54:53, 7:50 pace, HR 151
4x1000 in 3:49, 3:46, 3:42, 3:41