Friday, August 10, 2012

Connemara Again

I only have a couple of minutes before I'm heading off for Connemara, so this will be short (hurrah says Ewen). The 100 mile race is on tomorrow, and I will be crewing for a friend of mine.

Anyway. It took 4 weeks and I was just about to really start whinging and whining about my lack of legs when all of a sudden the weariness lifted, almost from one day to the next, and since then I have felt better with each day.

I was back on the Kerry Way on Wednesday, but had learned two important lessons from last week's excursion: I left earlier to have enough time to climb up to Windy Gap twice rather than only once, and I wore my off-road running shoes, which performed so much better on the muddy track it was just no comparison. Niamh wasn't all too pleased to see me come home covered in mud, but hey, I've had my fun.

I find I always recover very quickly from these mountain runs. The legs might be rather sore for the rest of the day from all the climbing, but bounce back rapidly. I still took it easy on Thursday with only 8 miles at a very relaxed effort. It was on that run that it struck me how easy running had become again. That feeling of effortlessly gliding over the pavement isn't quite there yet, but it is definitely getting close.

Because I might not be able to run anything at all over the weekend because of my crewing duties, I decided to sneak in a longer run on Friday. It was a gorgeous morning; it looks like we might have some nice weather for Puck Fair for a change, the last couple of years have been rather desperate. I did my usual loop around the lake, with that little detour around the Devil's Elbow to add a couple of extra miles. Last week the 600 foot climb was a bit of a struggle. Today I went up entirely on autopilot and hardly noticed anything (I was probably still half asleep. It was only past 6 o'clock at the time).

My heart rate for the same effort keeps dropping steadily, the figures are a little bit better every day, but the consistent rise indicates that the HRM is working fine. It's sudden jumps in the data that keep me questioning the thing.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to a rather busy weekend in Connemara; the weather should be very nice for the crews, if a little but warm for the runners.
8 Aug
12.3 miles, 1:56:38, 9:29 pace, HR 146
   off-road on the Kerry Way
9 Aug
8 miles, 1:03:23, 7:55 pace, HR 139
10 Aug
16.7 miles, 2:10:44, 7:50 pace, HR 138

2 comments:

  1. Enjoy Connemara - Ill be crewing for a friend as well... hope they get lighter conditions than today.

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  2. Hi there, been following your blog for a bit now and have always wanted to say good job! you give me inspiration! I'm an amateur runner and have yet to do my first ultra distance run, but your posts always get me motivated!

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