Not Half Marathon Pace

I felt pretty much destroyed after Sunday's run and was more than a bit worried how my training was going in general as well as how I would recover from this one workout. The way I felt immediately after the run I wasn't sure if I would even be able to run properly the next morning, though it did improve during the day.

Well, at least I was in for a nice surprise on Monday morning. The legs, while tired, were not sore at all and a slow easy 5-mile recovery jog both felt good and made me feel better. I basically repeated the same on Tuesday, a little bit faster for the same subjective easy effort. On Wednesday I did 8 miles still very easy, and the heavy feeling in the legs had completely gone away by then.

The nicest surprise, though, was the heart rate for all of those runs. For the last few weeks, basically ever since I had picked up a bug in that third-rate hospital a month ago, the heart rate had been elevated by a worrying amount for every single run. Looking at the numbers alone you might have thought I was hammering all my runs but they were genuinely at an easy effort. Ever since Monday, that has changed. I have seen this several times before, sometimes one big workout can all of a sudden cause a noticeable drop in your heart rate (or, in other words, a jump in your VDOT). Usually that's a tempo run but on Sunday it was a long run, albeit one with a faster segment in the middle. With that new set of numbers and the legs feeling perfectly fine again, I felt reasonably optimistic that I was ready for another workout on Thursday morning. The plan said 4 miles easy, 4 x 2 miles at half-marathon effort, 4 miles easy again. Tough but manageable?

It was a freezing cold morning but no wind whatsoever, pretty good conditions - certainly better than what we've had to cope with over the last few months. The first few miles passed quickly, so quickly in fact that I almost forgot that I had to start a fast segment at that point.

What happened next was interesting.

I'm not sure what my half-marathon pace would be at the moment but I would hope for it to be around 6:30. My 2 recent 5k races would indicate that to be a realistic target, though the 10k was a bit slower. But this morning I found it absolutely impossible to run that pace. It is far better to run at a controlled effort than try to overreach just to hit an arbitrary pace goal (which I almost certainly would not have been able to hold for 4 segments), but my controlled pace sure was slower than I would have expected. I ended up with 6:47, 6:45, 6:36, 6:44. The positive signs are that the pace held up very well. The heart rate was very steady at about 160, which is definitely lower than a half marathon effort, and I basically had the feeling that I could have run much, much further at that effort (in fact, the recovery breaks felt unnecessary and just served to break my rhythm) but no faster.

The reasons? The cold temperatures might have something to with it, some lingering fatigue from Sunday, the fact that I haven't done much speed work at faster pace (then again, I had no problems with sub-6 pace at those 5ks), and I'm pretty sure MC would point to a lack of recovery and trying to do too much. I don't think it was a bad workout as such, I'm feeling pretty good and energised afterwards and if I had run 10 seconds per mile faster I would have been perfectly happy (albeit still thinking of a few years ago when I would have cruised through those segments at 6:20 or faster). I don't think I'll break any records in Ballycotton next week but I've had some time to come to terms with the fact that I'm not quite in the shape I would like to be in right now. Anyway, there's still plenty of time before Manchester*.

22 Feb

5 miles, 43:01, 8:36 pace, HR 132

23 Feb

5 miles, 41:48, 8:22 pace, HR 134

24 Feb

8 miles, 1:04:36, 8:04 pace, HR 137

25 Feb

17 miles, 2:07:19, 7:29 pace, HR 149

   4 x 2 miles @ 6:47, 6:45, 6:36, 6:44

* btw, fuck you, Damien Duff, Didi Hamann and Liam Brady.

Clarifications

Spartathlon is your B race? To a 24 hour track event? How is that possible? Anyhow, best of luck with all of those races!

The reason why I put Belfast as my main target is the fact that in 2017 the next world championship will take place and I want to make sure I am on the team! I am reasonably optimistic that I will be selected as only one single Austrian has run further than me in the last 7 years in 24 hours but a good run in Belfast would guarantee my selection no matter what. Spartathlon is a great race but a world championship would be greater still.

The legs felt really heavy on Thursday morning, so I decided to cut back the mileage for a couple of days. I still went ahead with the planned hill sprints that day but went home once I felt I had maybe two or three more repeats in me, and I kept the effort low for Friday. I also ruled out any second runs of the day on either occasion.

The hill sprints were very different to any other kind of training, pretty much all-out but only for about 10 seconds or so, and with long recoveries (walking back down the hill and a slow jog for a bit). It was a different day as well: when I opened the door I could see a myriad of stars in the clear night sky, something I hadn't seen in a very long time. With the clear sky came the cold temperatures but I was perfectly fine with that. Unfortunately it wasn't to last, by the time I was on my second hill sprint it was hailstoning; the combination of all-out hill sprints and hail stones made for an interesting multi-stimulus of pain! Still, it was all over very quickly and the legs felt fine for the rest of the day, something I cannot always say.

Friday's run was at the easiest effort in quite some time. I was quite pleased that the pace was still fairly close to 8-minute miles, something I had to work for a couple of months ago, now it is my recovery pace. The HR was exceptionally low. I can count the runs with a lower HR on the fingers of one hand, I think.

On Saturday it was time to rev it up again. I wanted to tweak the format of the fast day and instead of running 10 miles at a good effort I opted for 2 x 3 mile repeats at HM pace. The last two races indicated that the pace should be somewhere between 6:30 and 6:40, so that's what I aimed for. The weather has finally improved a bit, the wind has died down though we are still seeing the odd shower. It's also quite cold, about 3 degrees in the morning, but I like it cold anyway. All in all it makes for very decent running conditions. The first 3 mile segment went well but I probably ran just a tad too fast early on and started to struggle a bit towards the end. A rest interval did me some good and I managed the second segment better than expected and this one felt like I ran the correct effort.

The legs felt that effort the next day, of course, but it could have been worse. I gave myself the option of either 18 or 20 miles, depending on how I would feel towards the end. I started out reasonably well but towards the end of the big long climb I started labouring when at previous runs I had managed pretty much on autopilot, so I certainly wasn't firing on all cylinders. I managed just fine for the rest of the loop around the lake but I did opt for the 18 miles, in an effort not to overdo things.

When I was coached by MC he spent a lot of time stopping me from doing too much. In fact, I think I can feel strong vibes from across the Atlantic that I am indeed overdoing things already, so a little bit of holding back today was almost certainly a good thing. I am still in base building mode, though I've started the transition to the marathon training block, which will start in earnest early next month.

7 Jan

6.7 miles, 1:02:28, 9:19 pace, HR 131

   11 short&sharp hill sprints

8 Jan

10 miles, 1:21:50, 8:09 pace, HR 131

9 Jan

10 miles, 1:11:12, 7:06 pace, HR 152

   2 x 3 miles at 6:29 (HR 159), 6:33 (HR 161)

10 Jan

18+ miles, 2:21:38, 7:48 pace, HR 142

Weekly Mileage: 84

Progress

The ideal training scenario is to improve a little bit from week by week. In reality it's never a linear progression, some bad days are mixed with the good days, the conditions are never quite the same and real life might interfere, especially if you have small children.

But right now I'm in the enviable position of being able to look at my recent training log and see clear improvements week by week by week.

Wednesday's volume speed workout had felt great, but I did pay the price on Thursday with some heavy legs. Nothing too bad, but it was clearly noticeable. I responded by running very easily, both on Thursday and Friday. I did raise my eyebrows after Friday's run when I saw that the HR had been particularly low, and for once even wondered if this time I had taken it a bit too easy?

Silly me! Like Andrew said, that's definitely the right side to err on, and if you run your easy days very easy, you might just be able to run your hard days very hard.

The proof was to come over the weekend with its back-to-back workouts. I had to drive Cian to Cork again and did my workout while he was in class. The plan was to do 7 miles at half-marathon pace, maybe a bit slower, for 10 miles in total.

Like the week before, I felt very good from the start and the pace kept dropping as the run went on, without me forcing the issue. I did sneak a few peeks at the Garmin and liked what I saw, but also eased up on a couple of occasions when I seemed to run a little bit too hard. The result was much faster than I had expected, 6:16 pace, and I can honestly say that it was nowhere near a race effort, this was a controlled training run, finishing with plenty left in the tank.

The Sunday run will always show if you overdid it on Saturday, every second too fast on Saturday makes you suffer a little bit more on Sunday. The idea this time was to run entirely at 7:15 pace; I want to get efficient at that pace, and you do that by running at that same effort in training. I eased into the effort over the first few miles, let the pace come naturally and then pretty much tuned into autopilot for the next 2 hours. There was never any question of not being able to finish and I didn't take either of the two gels I carried with me just in case.

Again, the legs got a little bit faster as the run went on and I finished a few seconds ahead of target, with an average pace of 7:10.

Please excuse my language, but fuck me, I'm in awesome shape. So much for my fear of slowing down once I hit 40. If I were training for a marathon right now, 2:55 would be my minimum target, and I would even eye a more ambitious time. What could I achieve on a good day? 2:52? 2:50 even?

The biggest worry right now is not to peak too early. Connemara is still 7 weeks off and I don't want to stand on the start line feeling exhausted and worn out.

Anyway, I'm not training for a marathon, Connemara is an even better target. Next week is Donadea, which will be my one and only really long training run and I need to show plenty of resolve and discipline not to race it. The most important aspect will be to recover from it. It's a bit risky, but with big potential benefits; I'll find out, I guess.

9 Feb

10 miles, 1:19:50, 7:59 pace, HR 135

10 Feb

10 miles, 1:20:21, 8:02 pace, HR 131

11 Feb

10 miles, 1:04:33, 6:26 pace, HR 159
   incl. 7 miles @ 6:16 (HR 167)

12 Feb

20 miles, 2:23:29, 7:10 pace, HR 147

Taking Stock

4 days to go. Less than 4 days to go, actually. It’s getting close.

I’m in the third week of my taper. After finishing the training with two 90-mile weeks, I ran under 50 miles during my first taper week and under 40 during the next one. This week will see hardly any mileage before the race. In theory, I should be well rested, recovered and fresh by now. Am I?

Am I f***! My right achilles, which has been acting up at times, is sending a few dodgy signals. However, my right knee feels worse. I can’t put any weight on it when kneeling down, and when I flex and straighten it, it responds with a very noticeable and ever so slightly disconcerting plop. I seem to have overcome the worst of the allergy attack from 2 weeks ago, but I still have some scars from that incident and now the skin on my hands has started peeling, which may or may not be related to that incident. I have measured my resting HR 3 times over the last 10 days. Before my allergy, it had been 41. Last week it was 46, at the beginning of this week it was 46 again and this morning it was 49!

This isn’t quite the standard taper-induced phantom pain, but I’m still hopeful it won’t impact on my race. My knee, which stared acting up Saturday evening, seems to be on the mend and kneeling down is not required during a 50 miler anyway. My heart rate is a bit more worrying, but since I expect the most limiting factor to be muscle breakdown rather than cardiovascular limitations, it may not be factor. When running, the knee is mostly fine but the achilles feels slightly worse, but I’m still hopeful this will all just magically disappear between now and then.

Monday was another rest day and today called for merely 6 miles, albeit with 3 at half-marathon effort. This seems a bit aggressive, 4 days before an ultra, but I’m working under the assumption that whoever created the schedule knows more about ultra running than I do and I followed it to the letter. Apparently the taper seems to have had some positive effect as I ran the 3 miles at 6:22 pace, but the last mile was slightly downhill and gave me a few seconds that way. To be honest I was not bothered about the pace at all, a tempo run at this stage does not seem to have much in common with Saturday’s race.

Only two days ago the various weather forecast websites could not have been more different in the prediction, but they seem to have converged. The met office is predicting widespread rain for Saturday and both wunderground and metcheck are not far off that forecast, at least for the morning. In marked contrast to last year it looks like we won’t have to worry about unseasonably high temperatures this time round, to put a positive spin on that. Then again, experience shows that with 4 days to go, these things are still very much open to change.

31 Aug

6+ miles, 42:48, 7:04 pace, HR 157
incl. 3+ miles @ 6:22 pace

Puck Fair

Considering how much I ran over the weekend, I felt amazingly good this week. There was no muscle soreness to speak of; even the quads seemed in perfect condition. My one problem was my right achilles, which was really sore Monday evening. When I started moaning about it, Niamh cut me short, stating that she would be surprised if I had no troubles after all those miles. Maybe she knows more about running than me, because I was indeed surprised. Of course, this is the same achilles that had acted up a few weeks ago, but I thought I was over that as there had been no beep from it since.

Anyway, I iced it on Monday and resolved not to go running if it was still as sore Tuesday morning. Immediately after getting up it felt perfectly fine so I put on my gear, including an ankle wrap just to be on the safe side, and went out for a very easy 5-miler. The soreness was almost completely gone for the rest of the day and I thought I’d cracked it.

Imagine my surprise when it felt worse again on Wednesday, after another easy run, this time over 8 miles, but it was still nowhere near as bad as on Monday. Stubborn (read stupid) as I am, it didn’t stop me from doing my one faster session this week on Thursday, 10 miles with 2x3.5 miles at HMP. This went reasonably well. If I were training for a marathon I would be a bit unhappy about paces of 6:44 and 6:47, but I’m training for an ultra instead and I’m fine with that.

That tempo run brought me into Killorglin, which even at 7 o’clock was much busier than usual. There were several traders already putting up their stands for the last day of Puck Fair and I passed King Puck the 467th, looking very content and relaxed 3 stories up. We have already done our thing there, bringing the kids to the Fun Fair on Tuesday evening. With 4 children, each ride costing a minimum of 2 Euro each and lasting for maybe 2 minutes, the money was flying out of our wallets, unbelievable. There is always a great buzz in town when Puck is on and it puts Killorglin on the map, but the downside can be seen as well with people lying in the gutter passed out from drink on a regular basis. Allegedly it is the festival in Ireland where the most Guinness per head is consumed, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that statement (looking around, it sounds believable, alright). Obviously that kind of stuff isn’t compatible with training and I tend to stay away as the evening progresses.

There is just one more big weekend in store, then it’s already tapering time. I can’t believe Dingle is only 3 weeks away! I’m confident I’m in shape and I have trust in my training; bring it on.

10 Aug

5 miles, 44:06, 8:47 pace, HR 128

11 Aug

8 miles, 1:06:36, 8:20 pace, HR 133

12 Aug

10 miles, 1:11:29, 7:09 pace, HR 154
incl. 2x3.5 miles @ 6:44, 6:47

Not so Good

With 4 weeks to go, I’m in the last stages of heavy training for Dublin. I’ve still got one race to go, next week, and after that the taper awaits. I’m in two minds about that. On one hand, I can’t wait to get to Dublin and put into practice what I have been training for all those months. On the other hand, I wish I could come up with some magic formula that would hand me the 5-10 seconds per mile improvement that I would need to break 3 hours. Alas, no such formula exists. Now I’m unsure if I should accept that the 3 hours might be just outside my grasp this time round, or if that is merely a defeatist, self-fulfilling attitude. One thing is pretty clear; if I don’t expect to break 3 hours, I won’t manage it. The mindset would be all wrong.

After Thursday’s and Friday’s hefty dose of back-to-back workouts I was in dire need of some rest and recovery. Alas, neither was to be had in the required amounts, and I only have myself to blame. I spent all of Friday evening trying to add a few video clips of Maia into one sequence, and since this was the first time I had been doing anything like that it took much longer than it should have. It was well past midnight when I finally made it to bed, and with Maia waking screaming well before 7 am, I did not get much sleep.

Saturday’s run was strange too, but this time it wasn’t my fault for a change. I went for 8 miles along Caragh Lake, 4 miles out and 4 miles back. To my surprise I passed not just one but two crews of workers on my way out, and by the time I was on the way home they had started re-surfacing the road, and I could not pass. At least there was an alternative route back home, but that meant crossing the saddle between Seefin Mountain and the Water Witch, and a 300 feet climb within a mile was not exactly what I’d had in mind on my recovery day. It was my only option of getting home, though, short of a swim across the lake in my running gear.

I went to bed 2 hours earlier last night, but with Maia waking before 6am I still didn’t get the right amount of sleep. After a bottle, some cuddles and a nappy change I brought her into our bed, where she promptly fell asleep again. Alas, no such luck for me. After staring at the ceiling for a long time the boys eventually woke, and after their breakfast Niamh got up herself, and I got ready to go out.

As I was putting the Garmin on my wrist, Niamh, out of the blue, commented “Are you running half-marathon pace today?” I was stunned. “How did you know that?” “You have the look in your face of somebody who is about to be tortured!” Up to now I had assumed she had never even heard the term “half-marathon pace”, but I was wrong, obviously.

Well, the plan was indeed 2x4.25 miles at HMP, with half a mile recovery in the middle. I had tried to come up with an alternative route that would not feature all those hills on my way to Cromane, but failed. The road is very similar to the second half of the Bantry half marathon. No big hills but steadily up and down, and all the climbs are longer than you’d wish. I didn’t feel too good from the start. I’ve obviously not completely recovered from the rather strenuous double header, and yesterday’s unexpected mountain stage didn’t help either. I managed to somehow resemble half-marathon pace on the first interval with an average pace of 6:42 and avg/max heart rates of 165 and 171 respectively. Things fell apart completely on the way home, though. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but initially I could not even get under 7:00 pace. Salvation of some kind came in the form of two dogs who started chasing me a mile into that effort. I managed to shake them, and all of my sudden my heart rate was in the correct zone and my speed had increased. But I was still struggling to get under 6:45, and when the hills started again on the last mile I was at the end of my strength, underlined by the fact that I was wheezing badly. That’s something I always do once I pass a certain threshold, and I’m wondering if I’ve got a mild form of exercise-induced asthma. It doesn’t really bother me though; I still manage to get sufficient amounts of oxygen, even though it might not sound like that. Anyway, I seriously contemplated calling it quits a mile early, but I knew that if I kept going the torture would be over within 7 minutes. If I dropped out, on the other hand, I’d hate myself for the rest of the day. So on I went, but the shocking truth is that I didn’t even manage marathon pace over those miles, never mind HMP. The heart rates were almost identical to the first interval (164 avg/171 max), but the pace was 12 seconds per mile slower.

Numbers don’t lie. I did ask too much from myself today, and I’m obviously not getting enough recovery between workouts. There’s no need to comment any further on that. Next week will be slightly lighter with the race in mind, and then we’re entering taper time. That’s probably a good thing, because I might be tempted to overdo things even more otherwise.

I hesitated to embed my video from Friday night because it’s probably mind-bogglingly boring to anyone but family, but I’d probably get requests anyway if I didn’t post it. Watch it if you want, but don’t complain if it won’t provide the 4 most riveting moment of your life.

27 Sep

8 miles, 1:03:40, 7:57 pace, HR 143

28 Sep

13 miles, 1:35:30, 7:20 pace, HR 155
2 x 4.25 miles @ 6:42 (HR 165/171) and 6:54 (HR 164/171)

Weekly mileage: 75