Friday, March 09, 2018

Time Travel

I know the blog updates are starting to slip. It used to be about every 3 days, then 4, then 5, and now 6. It’s a reflection of how busy I have been the last couple of weeks. My new job is still very new and there is still a ton of stuff to learn. I’m not stressed – you don’t feel stressed if you love what you’re doing - and I’m not working crazy hours but it all just adds up. Frequent blog updates are not the highest priority right now.

Things should calm down soon enough. I managed to figure out where to park the bike and where the showers are, and I might soon have a locker for my stuff as well, so things are clicking into place. At the moment I’m running very early in the morning, before heading into work, which works reasonably well as long as I keep going to bed early enough, which I’m getting better at. I’ll start running into work soon, which would mean 90 minutes longer in bed – that’s a massive difference.

The mileage has been slightly lower ever since Donadea. I haven’t hit 80 mpw yet. That’s fine of course, with all the stuff going on I wouldn’t want to overdo things. The most important thing is that I’m feeling good and the numbers are improving, so I’m definitely doing something right.

I had arranged to meet up with Julio on Sunday to go for a run, but since he intended to run 26k I did an early 5 miles jog, both to boost my mileage for my long run (albeit split in 2) and to check out what the conditions were like. The latter was definitely a good move as the park turned out to be unusable but I managed to find some ice-free and reasonably quiet roads, so once Julio arrived we headed via Cabinteely towards Leopoardstown, with a little bit of back and forward to get some extra distance. We were still 2k short when we got back home but Julio declined the suggestion of an extra loop, which was fine by me as the legs were definitely starting to feel tired after almost 20 miles for the day and plenty of hills, with a few snow-filled bits to boot.

I then took it very easy on Monday and still pretty easy on Tuesday, by which time the park finally started to become mostly clear of snow. I expected Wednesday to suck big time with a hangover but miraculously I didn’t suffer from any headache – quite the opposite, I felt really good and the miles just flew by totally effortlessly. I love it when that happens – I’m sure it used to happen a lot more frequently (the effortless run I mean, not the potential hangover).

I followed that up with another evaluation on Thursday. The park paths were almost entirely clear by now and there was very little wind, good conditions. The thing is, the evaluation always used to be a very moderate workout, not very hard and over quite quickly. That was then. These days it sure feels like a proper workout. After one mile I considered dropping out but couldn’t come up with any valid excuses so I soldiered on. Actually, it became easier once I finally managed to tune into the effort, though I was still glad to be done once it was over. Once I saw the numbers, however, I was pretty happy:

6:29, 6:40, 6:38, 6:36; 40 seconds recovery to HR 130

Improving numbers are always a good thing! Plus, they come from my Suunto watch. I used to wear both the Garmin and the Suunto on those workouts and noticed that the Garmin always was about 5 seconds per mile faster than the Suunto. I have no way of telling which one is more accurate, but that’s not my point. The thing is, had I worn the Garmin on Thursday it would most likely have shown a faster pace once again, in which case the numbers would be right up there with the best numbers I have ever produced – I’m several years older now so I take huge encouragement from that. I might just be able to catch up with my younger self again!
4 Mar
am: 5 miles, 43:00, 8:35 pace, HR 136
pm: 14.84 miles, 2:11:19, 8:50 pace, HR 129, with Julio
5 Mar
9.2 miles, 1:15:50, 8:14 pace, HR 132
6 Mar
10.25 miles, 1:21:16, 7:55 pace, HR 133
7 Mar
10.3 miles, 1:19:50, 7:45 pace, HR 137
8 Mar
10.15 miles, 1:16:13, 7:30 pace, HR 142
   eval in 6:29, 6:40, 6:38, 6:36; 40 seconds recovery
9 Mar
8 miles, 1:04:56, 8:07 pace, HR 135
   carrying a big parcel the last 2.5 miles

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