Taper Week

Even if I hadn't started the taper a bit earlier than planned, by now it would be upon me. The run on Monday was easy again, easier even than Sunday. The only remarkable thing was that I pressed the "stop" button exactly 1 hour after starting, on the dot and not by design. I guess if you do enough one hour runs you'll eventually end up with one that is exactly one hour.

I awoke Tuesday with a slightly sore throat, very similar to a couple of weeks ago and because back then I had continued running without any issues I saw no reason to change this time. Good call, when I was running I could not feel any soreness in the throat and completely forgot about it. The workout I did was a set of half-mile repeats, just like last week, and since last week had gone well I wasn't too apprehensive this time round either.

With my former coach's warnings ringing in my ears to be taking it easy in training in order to be able to race well I cut the number of repeats down by one to five, but the target (2:50-3:00) and the rest (2 minutes) all remained the same. Nature provided a spectacular background as I ran my repeats back- and forwards on the Caragh Lake road with the moonset in one direction and sunrise in the other, though I could only admire that during the rest intervals, certainly not during the fast segments. It went even better than last week with slightly faster pace feeling a little bit easier at a slightly lower heart rate - just the kind of progress you want to see.

2:54 (HR 150), 2:54 (152), 2:51 (158), 2:51 (166), 2:51 (163)

Unfortunately, my werewolf genes came to the fore again that night as I was unable to get to sleep. I get that fairly regularly, and always at or close to Full Moon. It has nothing to do with light in our bedroom as we have perfectly good blackout curtains, but something is stopping me from falling asleep those nights, and staring at the ceiling until 3 am really doesn't do it for me. Thankfully the lack of sleep does not seem to affect me. After the previous day's intervals it was an easy day again, and the sore throat had cleared already. It was one of those effortlessly-floating-along-the-road kind of runs where everything comes so easily. The former coach has this axiom that he likes to throw at me at regular intervals:

"When you get toward peak shape your brain ignores fatigue, this is good for racing but bad for training".

Up to now I had always denied that I was in that state - workouts had left me tired and sore often enough to conclude that my brain was not ignoring fatigue, but now I think I might have indeed reached that state. And with Tralee less than 3 weeks away, that's exactly where I want to be.

With an eye on Sunday's race in Ballycotton I did another little workout this morning, namely a set of hill sprints in an attempt to sharpen up the legs. I did a few of those earlier in my training cycle on the same hill. The main difference this time round was that it is now much brighter in the morning and I could actually see the road I was running on, which does indeed have its advantages. I stopped once the sprints started feeling a little bit tough, which was pretty soon to be honest, but it was never meant to be an exhausting workout.

There will be more easy days, then Ballycotton, then recovery from that, followed by maybe one or two mellow workouts and next thing I'll be at the Tralee startline.

25 Feb

8 miles, 1:00:00, 7:30 pace, HR 135

26 Feb

7 miles, 50:21, 7:11 pace, HR 151
   5 x half mile in 2:54, 2:54, 2:51, 2:51, 2:51

27 Feb

8 miles, 58:33, 7:19 pace, HR 138

28 Feb

6+ miles, 47:48, 7:42 pace, HR 148
   hill sprints

Hard and Easy

I have found in the past that I can easily string together two tough workouts in a row as long as they are different, e.g. a hill workout and a long run the next day, or, as it happened this week, an interval workout and a long run. On past evidence I need only one recovery day after those to feel good again, and I guess I’ll know by tomorrow if that still stands.

This is the last week of the kids’ summer holidays, and once they're going back to school I will have to get back home earlier after my runs to help get them ready. This will mean getting up earlier, and therefore I chose this week for one last 22 mile run, while I still have the luxury of sleeping in until 4:45 and still get the workout done. I wasn’t sure how the legs would hold up after Tuesday’s half-mile repeats, so I gave myself permission to bail out after 17 miles (1 loop around Caragh Lake).

The legs felt much better than expected initially, but while I wasn’t nearly as tired as I thought I would be, the first 3 miles were very slow, just a tad faster than 9:00 pace. I did manage to pick it up after that, but crossed Blackstones Bridge (~8 miles) in 1:08, which is as slow as I was a few weeks ago during my sleepwalking run. However, I felt pretty good and the running got stronger the more I got into it. Nature produced a few interesting effects to take my mind off the running, first I ran into a flock of bats; they circled around my head so close that I think I could have touched them had I extended my arm, and then the nearly full moon came out to provide an eerie light to the surroundings. I saw a huge ominous dark cloud around Seefin mountain, which didn’t bode too well because that was the direction I was heading for, but by the time I got there the road was glistening wet (which looked cool in the moonlight), but the rain had already moved on.

I reached our driveway in 2:20, which isn’t particularly fast, but the legs felt as fresh as daisies, and I decided not only to add the 5 miles to Ard-na-Sidhe, I also wanted to run them at marathon pace. I set out strongly, and reached the turnaround point 18 mins and 20 secs later, just a little bit slower than MP. But on the return leg I definitely reached the edge of what I was capable of. I had to slow down, and while I had the feeling that I could run for another 10 miles if only I slowed down a lot more, I found it impossible to keep the old pace going. Mind you, I still managed about 7:35 pace on the way back, which isn’t too shabby for miles 20-22, especially considering the tough workout from the previous day. When I got home I was quite happy with the run, but I was also happy to stop, in all honesty. I had reached my ceiling.

After those two days, today's was always going to be a slow recovery run. The legs were at their heaviest I can remember, and even after the usual three warm-up miles I was still feeling the effects of the previous workouts. I had originally planned 10 miles, but since progress was pretty slow and I had left the house a few minutes late, I turned around after 4.5 miles instead of 5 to make it 9 miles.

My fitness is coming along really well, as shown by yesterday's run, but there is a cloud on the horizon as well. Since Wednesday last week my right shin hurts. It started out as a faint pain, but has grown more pronounced since then. I think it's a mild case of shin splints, and my main worry is not to let it develop into anything more. I know what caused it. My old shoes had almost 600 miles on them (the most I've ever put on a pair), and I had worn my lightweight trainers twice a week for the speed workouts. The increased strain from the lessened cushioning obviously was enough to cause my shin to act up. I've retired the old pair, and I've put the fast shoes back to the back of the wardrobe; all of the faster runs, including Tuesday's 800s were done in heavier trainers. I'm also icing several times a day. There are two-and-a-half weeks of heavy training left before the taper. I think I'll be able to hold off the worst of the shin splints until then, and from then on the reduced mileage should help. At least that's the plan. With 38 days until the marathon I really don't want to get a bad injury, and if the pain gets any worse, I'll cut my mileage.

29 Aug

22 miles, 2:59:22, 8:09 pace, avg. HR 140
last 5 in 37:18 (7:27 pace)

30 Aug

9 miles, 1:17:31, 8:36 pace, avg. HR 132

Contrasts

It’s business as usual, the weather changes from day to day, and every good day has to be paid off with a bad one. The contrast was never so stark as in Wednesday and Thursday.

I went to bed with some trepidation on Tuesday night because the storm outside was getting worse and worse. But when the alarm went off at 5:30 on Wednesday morning and I looked out of the window, I could not have been more surprised. A perfect night sky with a brilliant moon awaited me. It was like once of those runs under the moon light I enjoyed so much last year, and which I really treasure in my memory. I definitely missed those this winter, and I very much enjoyed it. Even the running effort seemed easier. I repeated the same workout I had done 7 days earlier with 2 loops around the devil’s elbow, which should be around 14 miles. I checked the map website and it came up with 14.2, but let’s not be too nerdy about the distance. I ran at an easy effort, but upped the pace a bit over the last 3 miles. It was a really enjoyable run.

But boy did I have to pay for it today. The weather had turned once more, and the weather warnings of “gale force winds and severe gale force winds” were certainly no exaggeration. Apart from severely hampering my ability to run a good workout the storms also knocked out electricity all over the country, caused plenty of local flooding and sunk a fishing boat off the Wexford coast, tragically killing all 5 crew members (those fishing accidents seem to be happening at an alarming frequency in the last 2 years. Or is that just my perception). Anyway, I tried to have a 3/4 effort tempo run, but once more didn’t quite succeed. Running against the wind and rain was as hard as running up a steep hill, and it completely killed my pace. After fighting the elements for what had seemed a very long time I turned around to have the storms blow me home, but I didn’t quite succeed in getting the effort up to the desired level. These tempo efforts are a bit hit-and-miss from me, but I do usually get one good tempo run per week, just not always on the day I had planned. When I got home I was thoroughly frustrated, not only because the weather had interfered with my running, the wind had kept blowing the earphone from my ears. This really pissed my off so much that not even swearing loudly helped to vent my frustration.

The weather forecast for tomorrow isn’t exactly great, but at least the worst of the storm is behind us. It will still be very gusty, but I’m planning to do 20 miles no matter what, and I’m looking forward to a proper long run. I haven’t run more than about 17.5 miles since the marathon, and it is high time to get into the 20s. After all, that’s just half the distance of the ultra in April. Blimey, that’s only 11-and-a-half weeks away. Better get going!

10 Jan: 14 miles, 2:02, 8:42 pace, avg. HR 144
11 Jan: 8.25 miles, 1:01, 7:23 pace, avg. HR 159

Tapering

I’ve started the taper, and I can already tell that the intensity has decreased. The usual 15 mile midweek run has been reduced to a mere 12, and there is only one of those medium length runs, rather than two.

I still had to get up early yesterday. It had been raining heavily earlier on, but it stopped at some stage, and the sky was once again brilliantly illuminated by a crescent moon, and once again I left my headlamp behind. I chose to run alongside Caragh Lake. After 5 miles the road climbs quite steeply away from the lake towards the mountains, and one mile into that climb I turned around and headed back, As there are two hill on the way, which I had to cross twice, this made for 5 decent climbs, plus a few more smaller ones. I have long lost count of how often I have run on this road, but it’s still my favourite running route, and in the moonlight it is just magic. Maybe one day I’ll be able to shoot a decent photo, but I doubt it. Some things just cannot be captured in a still picture.

Anyway, I took 50 minutes for the 6 miles on the way out, but only 45 minutes on the way back, and felt quite good afterwards, even though I got caught by the rain over the last mile. Niamh questioned how I could get motivated to get up on such a lousy morning, and didn’t really believe me when I told her how wonderful the first 11 miles of the run had been.

Today I just ran 7 easy miles. I should have included a few strides into the run, but I completely forgot. Ah well, next time. I originally intended to run to Ard-na-Sidhe, and run the 1 mile stretch between the hotel and the main road twice in each direction, but it was so dark on that stretch of road, and I did hear a few strange noises (at least one of them was from a bird-of-prey, and that definitely was unnerving, even though I knew it wouldn’t perceive me as breakfast) that I got freaked out, and instead ran the 2 extra miles on the open road. I still encountered only one car.

Since I ran 20 miles on Monday, I won’t do another long run this week. This just feels wrong. I look at the schedule and wonder where the hard days have gone. I guess I’d better get used to that taper thingy again.

The kids all have a slight cold at the moment. I’ve been waiting for a few days to get it myself, but so far I’ve managed to escape. We’ll see.

11 Oct: 12 miles, 1:35, 7:55 pace
12 Oct: 7 miles, 1:02, 8:51 pace