I still went running, of course. In fact, I ran a lot.
After two tempo-style workouts a recovery run was the only option for Saturday, and I got up bright and early for my 6 mile run. The rest of the day was mainly spent on chores and looking after Cian and Maia while Niamh was in Cork with the twins. This is at least a tiring as a tough run.
Somehow Sunday has become my traditional speed day. I had done the last of the 60/60 workouts last week, and following this article I moved on to 180/180. I quickly found out that this is a completely different workout. The thing about 60/60s is the short recovery time, and the HR goes up and up. 3 minutes of recovery, on the other hand, unfailingly brought my heart rate down below 140 each time. Unsurprisingly I was not able to run at the same pace, and the entire workout turned out to be a set of half-mile repeats. The average pace was 6:01, but if you left out the first one it would have been 5:57. Maybe I should add more strides to my warm-up routine, because I generally tend to feel stiff and awkward on the first repeat.
Since it was a nice sunny day (the last one for a while, apparently) we went for yet another family hike, this time a shorter trip up to the top of the Devil’s Elbow. This happens to be the place where my header photo had been taken; you should be familiar enough with it by now. We were back at the car within an hour, and I hoped my legs hadn’t taken much extra fatigue onboard.
Last week I had a great 22 mile run, and today called for the last really long run of the schedule, 24 miles. The distance didn’t worry me, after all this was just a bit longer than last week. What I was not looking forward to was the ridiculously early time I had to be out of bed. As it turned out, things were a lot worse than imagined; I was unable to sleep most night, and didn’t even need the alarm at 4:20. I was up 5 minutes early to make a bottle for Maia who didn’t have the best of nights herself. I had gotten less than 3 hours of sleep at that stage, and even those had been interrupted several times. It was so early that I needed the headlamp again for the first time in a few weeks. Once the sky brightened up a little bit I could see a few ominously dark clouds, and the wind was at gale force strength at times. Last week I had started slowly and gotten faster gradually. Today I was merely slow. I think the mental fatigue from lack of sleep was just as much responsible for that as the actual fatigue in my legs. I just kept plodding on, barely awake at times. I did manage to work out that with the slow pace I would have to cut the run short, or I would have been seriously late for work. I reset my expectations to 23 miles. Eventually, after over 13 miles, I finally started to shake myself awake, threw in a few surges and generally upped the pace. Believe it or not, the run felt easier from then on; finally I had something to focus the mind on rather then crawling along on autopilot. Not that I started flying, but at least the pace finally dropped under 8:00 minutes per mile.
I eventually returned home weary and tried after over 190 minutes. I had just spent more time running than I had slept during the entire night, and I remarked to Niamh that finally I might have overdone things. One lesson I learned is that running 22 miles on fresh legs is a completely different task to running 23 miles on tired ones. Starting long runs with heavy legs after a preceding speed or tempo workout is a good way to build your endurance. However, once the distance goes beyond 20 miles I’m better off recovering first.
I have done some savage training over the last 5 days, and the hardest block of training is definitely behind me now. With 4 weeks to go I hopefully have left enough time for the body to absorb the work. I have one more tough long workout in the schedule; next week I’ll try and run 20 miles with 10 miles at 7:30(ish) pace and 10 miles at marathon goal pace. But I’ll slightly re-jig my schedule and make sure to have an easy recovery day prior to that. Don’t say I never learn.
- 21 Mar
- 6 miles, 49:53, 8:19 pace, HR 135
- 22 Mar
- 8 miles, 1:00:38, 7:36 pace, HR 155
incl. 5x180/180 @ 6:18, 5:57, 5:55, 6:07, 5:50 (6:01 avg) - 23 Mar
- 23 miles, 3:11:03, 8:18 pace, HR 140
Weekly mileage: 81.5
