A Good Run

I'm perfectly aware that this blog has sounded like a broken record in the last few weeks, at least to the oldies here who still remember what a broken record sounded like. With the recovery from Turin taking an absolutely ridiculous amount of time, things haven't looked all that great and my patience has been tested like never before.

Any time I did anything but a reasonably short and very slow run, my legs would protest for days. It was like I was starting running again from zero, any run would just take far too much out of the legs. While things did improve, it happened so slowly it seemed almost imperceptible at times.

But, finally, things seem to be gathering pace so to speak. I expected to be stiff and sore on Monday after Sunday's long-ish run but in actual fact I felt perfectly fine. I only did 8 miles but from the way the legs were feeling I certainly could have done more. It was Tuesday, however, that finally felt like a breakthrough. Once again I wasn't sure how the legs would behave because sometimes it takes 2 days for any stiffness to manifest itself but I felt better than on any day since Turin. I wasn't getting carried away and kept the effort to the same easy level as alway but ended up running a little bit faster anyway, almost 20 seconds per mile faster than the day before. The HR was still in the expected zone. Actually, I could already tell it was going to be a good run when I crested the first hill without the HR alarm going off and, if anything, things improved further from there on. I almost felt like a real runner again!

Wednesday wasn't quite so good with the legs being a bit heavy once more but even that day had its plus points by posting the lowest HR for several weeks.

With 3 easy days under the belt I felt encouraged to slightly push the effort once more. I know MC had advised me to stick to easy running but with Cork looming on the very near horizon I wanted to get a feel for 7:20 pace. Shortly after reaching the halfway point of my 10-mile run I started to accelerate. I got into the pace fairly quickly and the legs and lungs were all able to cope. If anything it started to feel easier after a few miles. I was probably working a bit harder than necessary because those faster miles were all against a headwind - not a strong one but noticeable all the same. Under those circumstances doing 7:25 or 7:30 pace would probably have done the trick effort-wise but I needed to see 7:20 on the watch for the head, and you know what? It worked! I feel a lot more confident about Cork now than I did 24 hours ago.

One slight area for concern is my left knee. I started feeling a tiny niggle on its outside a few weeks ago and it kept coming back. It was never bad, no worse than 1 or 2 out of 10, but one day this week, I'm not even sure which one, it felt worse, maybe 4 or 5 out of 10. Still not bad and if it doesn't get any worse then I don't have anything to worry about it. Indeed it went back to 1 or 2 the following day and most of the time I can't even feel it, so I won't be losing any sleep just yet. I know my run of not being injured for about 7 years is going to come to an end at some stage but I don't think this is that point just yet.

25 May

8 miles, 1:07:27, 8:26 pace, HR 137

26 May

12 miles, 1:37:46, 8:09 pace, HR 141

27 May

10 miles, 1:23:30, 8:21 pace, HR 136

28 May

10 miles, 1:18:38, 7:52 pace, HR 146

   incl. 4.5 miles @ 7:20 (HR 158)

Pacing Practise

When is Friday not a Friday? When it falls on a Thursday!

Admittedly, that doesn't make any sense. My thinking was that if I do my usual Fast Friday run on Friday there would only be one day of recovery before Sunday, so I moved it to Thursday instead. Wrong weekday aside, I tried to run more or less the same workout again, though I tried to keep the pace of the faster segment at about 7:10 pace, the pace I need to run in Dublin, and a little bit of practise doesn't do any harm. I managed well enough, though I could not fail but notice that the HR was higher than expected, and higher than last week, so that was a bit worrying. It fits in right with the same observations I made in the last post, as soon as I run faster or longer my HR immediately starts climbing much faster than it should.

Following on from that, two easy days followed, and true to form the legs were fairly heavy on Friday but felt better on Saturday, at least once the first two miles were out of the way.

With the Dublin marathon only one week away, I was wondering what I should do on Sunday. I'm not doing a taper as such, mostly because I have no training done that I would now need to taper from, but I still don't want to turn up tired and thoughts of another 15 mile run were quickly set aside.

In the end I decided to do another pace practise. Chances are that Mystery Coach won't like it, but that was a workout for my head, not for my body. I have never paced 3:10 before and I am fairly nervous about it. A little bit of reassurance would go a long way; at least I hoped it would.

Since in the marathon I will have to hit the right pace right from the start I did away with the usual 2 easy miles of warm up. Even so, the first mile was still way too slow (7:30) but then I managed to pick up the speed. Too much, as it turned out, because the next time I checked the Garmin, about 2 miles in, I was doing 6:40 pace and the average was almost down to 7. Oops. I guess that's why they use 3 pacers per band, that way we can keep an eye on each other. The wind made pacing rather tricky; I had it on my back for the first half, which is why I felt averaging 7:00 pace was just about right (no more 6:40 miles, though). Fighting the wind on the way back home was tricky and now that the effort had been established I tried to go by feel rather than watch, which was acting strangely anyway, I kept seeing paces ranging from 5:50 to 7:40 with neither one being right.

In the end I only used up half my cushion and came home about a minute earlier than planned. I'll need to pay a bit more attention in Dublin, I wouldn't want to burn out my pacees with a few fast early miles, but, as I said, there the responsibility will be shared. I do hope my body will cope; it certainly was a much-needed boost for the mind and I feel much more at ease with the thought of pacing 3:10 now. From that point of view, it was definitely a good workout, I suppose.

17 Oct

10 miles, 1:13:43, 7:22 pace, HR 150
   incl. 8 miles @ 7:09 pace (HR 154)

18 Oct

8 miles, 1:03:55, 7:59 pace, HR 138

19 Oct

8 miles, 1:02:37, 7:49 pace, HR 142

20 Oct

10 miles, 1:10:59, 7:05 pace, HR 153

Weekly Mileage: 56

Cautiously Tapering

Connemara is 18 days away, and just in time for the taper the legs are coming round. Things have been a bit up and down during the entire training cycle. I didn't feel great during base training, probably because I felt the effects of 3 marathons (ok, 2 marathons and 1 ultra) in quick succession in my legs. As soon as I started the hill phase, however, things improved spectacularly and I felt great, until the day I ran Donadea. I have been feeling the effects of that ever since, and the fact that I added the shock of 10 miles at 6:07 pace to an already compromised system didn't help. However, on Monday I felt like I was running on springs again. I suppose it took three weeks to recover from Donadea and now I'm over the worst of it. Since it's too close to Connemara to add significant training stress, I should arrive at the start line with a very fresh pair of legs.

Monday and Tuesday were very similar, eight easy miles in the beautiful Kerry spring morning alongside Caragh Lake, the peace only slightly disturbed by the presence of a million gnats. Some of them ended up in my stomach, some in my lungs and some drowned in my sweat. Gross. But the running itself was great.

In order to get efficient at a particular pace you have to run at that pace. It was for that reason that the coach had me do a lot of gruelling marathon-paced miles last year. This year the equivalent workouts have been slower and therefore easier, and I generally tried to extend the pace segment to make up for it. This morning saw another one of these workouts. I eased into it over the first 2 miles and then tried to cruise along at 7:15 pace. I have a tendency to drift into 7:00 pace and below on these runs if I don't pay attention, but I'm slowly starting to tune into it and didn't need too many corrections today. I was still a little bit fast but stuck to the plan pretty well, all said. With a little bit more of that and fresher legs, things are looking pretty good for Connemara.

12 Mar

8 miles, 1:02:37, 7:49 pace, HR 136

13 Mar

8 miles, 1:02:55, 7:51 pace, HR 135

14 Mar

12 miles, 1:26:21, 7:11 pace, HR 145