DOMS

Jesus, has it been 4 weeks already? I know time flies as you're getting older but this is going at hyperspeed.

The one thing I had genuinely forgotten about mountain runs is that your quads get shredded on the downhills and then you're in for a couple of days of pain. Which is, of course, exactly what happened to me after my first sojourn into the Wicklow mountains, tentative as it was. I repeated the same loop 2 weeks later, and while the DOMS struck again they were nowhere near as bad as the first time round, so I guess things are adapting already. Unfortunately the weather has turned again after a few days of nice sunshine, and there is not a hope in hell I'll go running in the mountains when there is a possibility of thunderstorms. Mind, my road runs are starting to accumulate a lot of elevation as well ever since I discovered a few new routes towards Enniskerry, which should hopefully help, but I know from personal experience that the only thing that properly trains you for a mountain run is a genuine mountain run.

Last week Niamh mentioned that this will be the first year in a very long time when I'm not doing any races, as the day of my cancelled Ironman passed, though I did remind her of the fact that I had done Donadea in February, so it's definitely not going to be a year of not racing at all. However, I did not hold out much hope for an autumn race, with DCM being cancelled long ago and the lockdown still in place. However, someone pointed out to me that the Ecotrail race was still on, at least for the time being. Initially I wasn't interested - I had done it last year and the pain of all those hours nursing my cramping legs across those mountains was still too fresh in my mind, and I sure thought I'd had enough of that kind of stupid masochism.

Then it was still on, and a few friends signed up, and then Norbert pretty much talked me into it, and so, eventually, I dug out my credit card and signed up. While there is no guarantee that it will indeed go ahead, I think there is a good chance that it will. Trail running makes it so much easier to enforce social distancing - hell, you'd be hard pressed to violate social distancing at times as you struggle across empty spaces far removed from civilisation for hours on your own. The only problem is, now I need to get fit for yet another 50 mile race, this time with mountains. I managed to drag my sorry arse across the Donadea loops in a sorry state, but there is no way you can fake your away across the mountains that way, so some serious training will have to be done. Let's hope the weather will improve. As I said, there's no way I'd head into the wilderness on my own in bad conditions. Growing up in the mountains does teach you a few things that won't leave you, even decades later.

And thanks for the shoutout this morning "how's the rubbish marathon going!". It's actually still nice to get recognised from time to time :)

River Deep Mountain High

Once more, it was time for something different. last Saturday I had met Gary at the parkrun, and afterwards he asked me if I wanted to join him on a trail run the following weekend where he could show me round the local trail options.

Of course I said yes immediately.

The only slight problem is, Gary is a 2:30 marathon runner. In fact, if you search for the Top Irish marathon performances for 2017 at the AAI website, you will see his name there as the 19th fastest Irish marathon runner that year. Which means that he would have to slow down for me to keep up - and even so, his easy pace is probably closer to my tempo pace, and at times I'm sure he wasn't even aware that I had to work to keep up with him when he was just jogging along.

Anyway, we met a 9:30 in Shankill and immediately went uphill, and uphill, and uphill, and the up a bit further. On the plus side, teh views were amazing. On the downside I was fairly quickly wondering how long I'd be able to keep going. My climbing legs have completely gone awol this year, undoubted related to a distinct lack of climbing after I moved away from the Windy Gap, which did not help.

However, eventually I managed to settle into the effort and we made decent progress, though I'm not sure how Gary would have seen it. Going through a wood past Enniskerry the footing became very tricky and we had to climb under-over fallen logs, cross a couple of streams and not mind too much the drop to our right on a tiny trail. All that was fine. The horror came on the road in form of teh climb up to Glencullen. I know a few cars that wouldn't make it up that hill, and for a while I wasn't sure if I would either.

Well, I did make it up there, but form then on my legs were gone, and on each following climb Gary ran away on his own and had to circle back at the top waiting for me to catch up. Also, his repeated announcements of "yet another lovely climb" started to sound a bit less lovely with each repeat. And as for the "all downhill from here ..."

Anyway, I survived the run, but was grateful for the lift home because I didn't particularly care for the additional 4 miles run home. I guess we'll do it again. I've always been a sucker for punishment.

20 Nov

4.67 miles, 37:52, 8:06 pace, HR 145

21 Nov

10.21 miles, 1:28:32, 8:40 pace, HR 142

22 Nov

7.2 miles, 1:05:07, 9:02 pace, HR 134

23 Nov

10.2 miles, 1:27:03, 8:32 pace, HR 144

24 Nov

8.5 miles, 1:13:20, 8:37 pace, HR 141

25 Nov

15.87 miles, 2:33:39, 9:40 pace, HR 143

   mountain run with Gary

26 Nov

6.33 miles, 59:37, 9:25 pace, HR 128

   VERY easy recovery run

Stunned!

It doesn’t happen often that I am completely stunned but that’s exactly what happened a few days ago. I opened Facebook and the very first entry I saw had my jaw dropping as I was staring at the screen in utter disbelief, barely being able to grasp the reality of what I was reading.

The 2019 World Championships in Austria have been cancelled!

Had I known that was to happen, I would have done things very differently this year. I sensed a long time ago that I most likely should take a break instead of training ever harder in order to get back to international standards. To make the 2019 team I would have to run 2 quality races: one to qualify, and then the championships themselves. It was always a tough assignment but I had managed exactly that in 2014/2015, but admittedly on fresher legs.

Since I never managed to get back properly, the championships themselves have become moot as far as my personal running is concerned. However, there was still that little devil sitting on my shoulder, daring me to jump into another race, either in Tooting Bec, or in Listowel, or in Barcelona, or in whatever place I would find. I knew odds would have been against me to say the least. But a world championship in my home country would have been a unique opportunity and I may well have tried to grasp at straws, no matter how unlikely.

That has now definitely become moot. As was always the most sensible thing to do, I will definitely take it easy.

That has been surprisingly easy. My mileage is less than half of what I used to do week in week out. I used to run over 300 days in a row, and now I have taken a rest day whenever running wouldn’t easily fit into real life, even twice in a row (gasp!). I haven’t got any goals, no races planned, and definitely no pressure.

I can see Little Sugarloaf from my garden. On Sunday I ran up – though running was limited to the bottom half of the mountain, closer to the top it was hiking and scrambling on all fours at times. The views were fantastic though.

On bank holiday Monday I did a very similar run, but up to Bray Head. That was much more runnable and might do as a replacement for Windy Gap. And the views were equally as good. It’s nice to have those climbs so close to home. Maybe I won’t be missing Caragh Lake quite as much as I though I would.

2 Aug

4.12 miles, 33:13, 8:03 pace, HR 149

3 Aug

4.07 miles, 33:27, 8:13 pace, HR 147

4 Aug

5.55 miles, 47:41, 8:35 pace, HR 145

5 Aug

6.33 miles, 1:13:23, 11:35 pace, HR 139

   Little Sugarloaf

6 Aug

5.03 miles, 49:30, 9:50 pace, HR 141

   Bray Head

Oops I Did It Again

I used my weekend in Kerry to get a couple of nice runs in.

The first one, on Saturday, was an evaluation workout, back at the road where I used to do them before running laps in a Dublin Park. It was a very calm day - I felt a bit of headwind going both directions, so I guess it wasn't really wind. The workout was alright - getting the HR up to 160 was easier than it felt in Dublin, but that might have been because my pace was a tad slower than last time round. Basically, it felt a tad easier but it also was a tad slower. I presume I still had last week's marathon in the legs, despite the fact that the legs feel absolutely fine.

I awoke on Sunday to a gloriously sunny morning, so I ditched the usual long run and headed up into the mountains instead. It meant fewer miles but it still took close to 2 hours, and it definitely provided a new stimulus to the muscles. I was actually very pleased by how (relatively) easy the big long steep climbs felt. I did two climbs up to Windy Gap, once each from each side, and was tempted to do at least one more but decided that 2 climbs would be enough for a first outing.

Good call.

On Monday I was really surprised to feel a little bit of DOMS, but it wasn't particularly bad and I did my usual 10 miles, albeit at a slow, easy pace. However, throughout the day the aches got progressively worse and by evening I had long come round to the idea of doing an easy week. I had already planned on doing a bit of a mini-taper before Sunday's race but now I'm extending it from 3 to 5 days.

What I did was not set the alarm at all, and if I sleep in then I would ditch the run and get some much-needed sleep instead, but as it almost always happens I wake up early and go for a run after all. However, I left it at 4 miles, and very, very slow ones at that, but the pain in the quads is quite noticeable today, 2 days after the mountain run. Cassic DOMS. So now I find myself with rather achy legs, 5 days before an ultra.

Oops.

24 Mar

12 miles, 1:27:22, 7:16 pace, HR 147

   4 miles eval in 6:36, 6:39, 6:43, 6:50, 40 sec rest to 130

25 Mar

12+ miles, 1:50:05, 9:03 pace, HR 139

   Windy Gap x 2

26 Mar

10 miles, 1:25:30, 8:30 pace, HR 128

27 Mar

4+ miles, 37:17, 8:59 pace, HR 123

Carauntoohil

I shouldn't have said that the curve is always pointing upwards I guess, because it did get a kink on Friday. Looks like I jinxed myself. Not that 7 miles at 7:06 pace is a particularly bad workout but with the HR stuck at 159 it wasn't quite what I wanted to see.

It had all started so well with me ticking off 6:50 miles while feeling exceptionally relaxed, until I turned sharply left twice and now had that wind right in my face! To make matters worse, the way the loop was shaped meant I had the wind at my back for about 2 miles and against my face closer to 4, which didn't do the average much good. Once I turned into the wind I found it next to impossible to get the HR down. I felt like I was crawling and I still had the HR alarm beeping relentlessly. I was doing about 7:20, which wasn't all that slow into a headwind but after the 6:50 miles it felt like almost standing still.

Ah well, so the numbers are worse than last week. How much that is due to the wind and how much to latent fatigue from the weekend or the Windy Gap I'm not entirely sure. What I do know is that I did something COMPLETELY different on Saturday.

You see, I have been living here for 13 year and I can see Carauntoohil right from my front door. However, to my eternal shame, I have never climbed it. I must have said something to Niamh because she bought me a voucher for a guided tour, which meant now I had to quit talking about it and go and do it instead. I guess that was the main reason why I had never gone up there before: having grown up in the mountains (different mountains altogether) I have way too much respect for them to go up there on my own on a first attempt, so it was always going to be a guided tour and it took Niamh to break the inertia and just go ahead and book something.

Originally I was planning on going on Friday but one look at the weather forecast earlier this week made me change it to Saturday. That made it worse for Niamh as she had to taxi the kids on a busy day all on her own but it was definitely the right choice. Friday was a miserable wet day without any views and Saturday turned out much better than I could have hoped for. We had some non-athletes in our group, so we took our sweet time. It meant 7 hours on my legs, which should actually be surprisingly good ultra training - a way of training that is definitely under-utilised, not just by me but most runners. Last year I spent a weekend in Wicklow soaking up Barry Murray's wisdom and I know he would have enthusiastically recommended it. MC was all for it as well. Anyway, the clouds all lifted when we got to the top and the views are just to die for (Caher, btw, looking by far the best) and I even had a good view at our house but just couldn't see them waving back.

It's definitely something I can warmly recommend and going with an extremely knowledgeable tour guide was great too. Not only did he point out all kinds of landmarks that I would have missed otherwise, he also told us plenty of stories from the mountains and we got a lot of education about how to treat the mountain with respect and how to minimise our impact, all delivered by a man who lives and breaths the mountains.

Anyway, Sunday's easy run was rather mundane in comparison, yet another easy 7 miler like I have done so many times before. The legs were definitely feeling the mountain and I would have sworn I was plodding ahead at a very slow pace. The numbers on the watch did surprise me when I got back home.

13 Apr

7 miles, 55:52, 7:59 pace, HR 136

14 Apr

10 miles, 1:13:08, 7:18 pace, HR 154

   incl 7 @ 7:06 (HR 159)

15 Apr

Carauntoohil, 7:30, 9.5 miles

16 Apr

7 miles, 53:48, 7:41 pace, HR 143