Doris And Ewen

Even though I'm running the risk of jinxing myself here, I have to say that February has been a great month. After months of rather limited progress the numbers are pointing upwards in a much steeper curve; my VDOT numbers went up by almost 3 points (I'd be world class by autumn if that kept going) and I'm generally feeling a lot better. While I had at least one family member feeling sick at any one time, my own immune system seems to have reached the stage where it can fight off those kind of infections without me even noticing.

"No more animals" I said. "No more stupid names" I said.
"Welcome Noodle" they said.

The evaluation on Wednesday wasn't great; how much of that was down to the wind and the slightly undulating road is open to question but I could tell straight away that the legs weren't quite right, so it definitely wasn't just down to external circumstances. On the plus side, and that's a big plus, this time there did not seem to be any soreness after that workout. I know the evaluation is a rather moderate workout (in fact, that's the very reason why I'm doing it weekly - I could not cope with strenuous workouts yet) but the previous 2 weeks I could definitely feel it in the legs subsequently. Not so this time, which I take as another great sign - my recovery is definitely improving.

On Saturday I ran the fastest "easy" run in a very long time. Thing is, I could have sworn I ran about 8-minute pace. Last Sunday I had run a bit fast but kind of knew that I was putting in a tad too much effort at times. Not so yesterday - this was a genuine easy effort all the way,

Ireland was visited by storm Doris on Thursday (the very reason why I had moved the evaluation to Wednesday), but that had mostly by-passed Kerry and what was visiting us was mostly gone already by the time I got up. It was a bit different on Sunday when storm Ewen made its way across the island, and this time I took the "gone old and soft" option and ran 9 miles on the treadmill instead. I think that was my longest treadmill run ever, though I can't be bothered to check back. And I managed to catch up on my downloaded episodes at the same time,

Anyway, the legs are definitely feeling good.

23 Feb

7 miles, 56:02, 8:00 pace, HR 147

24 Feb

8 miles, 1;03:46, 7:58 pace, HR 145

25 Feb

7 miles, 53:28, 7:38 pace, HR 151

26 Feb

9 miles, 1:12:30, 8:03 pace, HR 145

   treadmill