Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

Stormy Evaluation

2012-01-25T18:50:00.002Z

My legs felt quite sore all day after Sunday’s long run, something I haven’t really experienced in a while. Of course, I haven’t run 20 miles in a while (since the 30 miles in Sixmilebridge, in fact). I took it especially easy on Monday as a result, probably even more so than usual, which explains the lowest heart rate in a long time, but actually the pace wasn’t bad at all for such an easy effort.

Because the weather forecast had predicted high winds for Wednesday, I played with the idea of swapping round Tuesday’s hill drills and Wednesday’s evaluation run, because windy conditions really can play havoc with the evaluation’s figures. But when my legs were still sore on Monday afternoon I thought an evaluation the next morning might not be the best idea.

So it was back to the hill instead, doing the by now very familiar drills, 4 minutes each. This is the last week of the hills phase, and with good reason. The drills feel a lot easier than three weeks ago, which almost certainly means I don’t get as much bang for the buck any more.

Wednesday morning actually started with a nice surprise; I braced myself for the predicted wind and the heavy rain when I opened the door, but it wasn’t actually raining (that came later). But the gale force wind was there, and I therefore used a different stretch of road for my evaluation. It isn’t as flat as the one I usually use, but the trees provide a decent amount of shelter and I got on ok. The wind did have some influence, but not nearly as much as it would have out in the open.

When I checked the data later on, I saw that the paces had been a tad faster than 2 weeks ago, just the gradual improvement I like to see, but the HR was more uneven. With the windy conditions, that means you can’t read too much into the figures, but I still like what I see. The number in brackets is adjusted pace, 7 seconds for every 2 heart beats off the 161 target, though it looks like overcompensation to me.

       
        Mile 1    6:35   HR 160    (6:32)
        Mile 2    6:45   HR 159    (6:38)
        Mile 3    6:42   HR 162    (6:45)
        Mile 4    6:44   HR 163    (6:51)
        Recovery to HR: 35 seconds

The recovery afterwards was a bit strange, the HR remained at 160 for a long time, long enough for me to wonder if the Garmin was acting up, but then dropped like a stone. The shortened recovery time is something I take as a definite plus out of this session.

The last few weeks I have felt better virtually every day. The legs feel great, every single step is a joy and I can feel myself improving almost on a daily basis. The one thing worrying me is that Connemara is still over 10 weeks away. I don’t want to peak early and then go into the race on a downward slope. How Donadea will affect my legs is a completely different question of course. I’m clinging to the fact that I felt incredible in Sixmilebridge, just 3 weeks after the Dublin marathon, and I have 6 weeks of recovery between Donadea and Connemara.

23 Jan: 8 miles, 1:05:02, 8:08 pace, HR 132
24 Jan: 10.5 miles, 1:37:46, 9:19 pace, HR 140
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; high knees (4 mins); ankles (4 mins); thigh drive (4 mins)
25 Jan: 11 miles, 1:20:05, 7:17 pace, HR 148
4 miles eval

Heating Up

2012-01-22T14:29:00.002Z

The training, that is, not the temperatures per se. Having said that, this is the mildest winter we’ve had in years. Nobody can use the weather as an excuse for not training (not that I would).

Anyway, back to the training. I have now made it through 3 out of 4 weeks of hill training. After one week I thought this would become a real challenge and I started hating the drills, but actually came round to it. I can see some clear improvements; the hope now is that improvements in hill drills will lead to improvements in running.

Thursday was easy. So easy in fact that the HR was below the lowest number in the spreadsheet that I use to calculate my VDOT numbers. But considering what the next 3 days had in store, I was definitely in need of all the recovery I could get.

Friday was the third hill drills day of the week and the fifth in 8 days, something I’m sure I had never managed before. The level of consistency is probably the main reason why I can see such a clear improvement, though I am aware of the fact that doing a lot of drill primarily makes you good at doing drills. Nevertheless, I like the fact that I now can do all drills for 4 minutes without a break and without feeling like I’m about to collapse. There is still one week of drills left; I won’t extend the time but will try and keep an eye on my form instead.

Last Saturday I had changed the program, replacing a marathon paced effort because I thought that since I’m not going to run a marathon I don’t need as many marathon paced runs. It is still important to run a certain, reasonably small, percentage of your training faster than race pace, so they won’t drop out of my training completely and yesterday was one of these days. Sandwiched between the warm up and the cool down were 7 miles of marathon effort. The blustery wind made this a bit tricky; I ran most of the first half close to 6:30 pace with the wind at my back and the second half between 6:50 and 7:00, fighting against the wind as well as the mounting fatigue. The result was slightly conflicting; while the perceived effort seemed a bit higher than marathon effort, the HR of 160 was lower; in all likelihood I wasn’t too far off. Of course this makes me think about my present marathon PB, which was at an average pace of 6:51 – as much as I had to fight tooth and nail for it at the time, it feels a little bit soft now.

Anyway, Sunday’s long run marked the end of the week, and for once I didn’t have to put mental quotes around the word long, 20 miles always qualify. It’s the first 20 mile training run in quite some time. That feels a bit strange, I used to run 20 miles or more week after week after week, but with the marathons and ultra I ran towards the end of 2011, the need for long training runs was diminished (in fact, it would almost certainly have been counter-productive). Going into a long run with pre-fatigued legs is always a bit of a challenge and I started dragging around mile 12. For once I actually took the emergency gel that I usually carry in my pockets but normally bring back home. It may have helped me to get all the way around the lake still in decent shape. That’s good, because Donadea is only 4 weeks from now and while I won’t start that one with already tired legs, 50K is definitely a distance that demands respect.

I even resurrected one of Mystery Coach’s favourite torture instruments, the ice bath. As soon as I got in I remembered just exactly why I had been putting this off. It literally takes your breath away when you lower yourself into a tub of cold water. The muscles all tense up, you’re hyperventilating, and between my high-pitched screams I could hear Lola asking Niamh if Dad was alright. But once you survive the first minute, the rest is actually easy.

I definitely deserved the scones afterwards. Thank you, darling. Very much appreciated.

19 Jan: 8 miles, 1:05:13, 8:09 pace, HR 134
20 Jan: 10.75 miles, 1:38:06, 9:07 pace, HR 144
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; thigh drive (4 mins); ankles (4 mins); high knees (4 mins)
21 Jan: 10 miles, 1:10:04, 7:00 pace, HR 153
incl. 7 miles @ 6:44 pace, HR 160
22 Jan: 20 miles, 2:38:09, 7:54 pace, HR 144

Weekly Mileage: 76.75

Blog Post #1001

2012-01-18T19:46:00.000Z

Oh my, doesn’t time fly! Mentally, I still haven’t quite made the transition from base training, yet I'm more than halfway through the hills phase already. What I know is that I really enjoyed putting in a bit more effort into Sunday’s long run and that, so far, I am very much looking forward to the tempo runs yet to come. I know I may come to regret those words, of course.

Actually, maybe I have adapted to the hills after all. I remember stating at some point early on that I hated those drills, but that’s not really correct. While I’m not exactly looking forward to any of them, I do love the fact that I can clearly tell that I’m getting stronger and that real progress has been made. Of course, there’s always that little devil on my shoulder who keeps pointing out that getting good at doing drill is not the same as getting good at running, but I trust Mystery Coach enough to take his word for it.

Monday was of course an easy day; however, I did raise an eyebrow when I saw just how easy I had been taking it. I did the same thing I always do for these runs, I wear my Garmin but never look at it while running, so it caught me completely by surprise by how slow I had been running. It had felt absolutely right at the time.

I was back on the usual hill on Tuesday, the dirt road leading up to the Coillte site in Caragh Lake. I started with the toughest drill, high knees. It was at that point that I could definitely tell that my legs are getting better at this. 2x2 minutes had me breathing hard but not as close to the point of collapse as last week. In fact, I wondered if I should have gone longer. The second drill was ankles, always the easiest, so much so that I regard it as a bit of a breather between the harder workouts. That hard one was “driving with the thighs”, again I managed 2x2 minutes and again I wondered if I could have done more. In some ways, that’s a good place to be. The coach always told me to leave something in the tank.

In order to get all those drills done in time I had shortened the recovery period from 15 minutes to about 12 or 13. I’m pretty sure the coach would not have approved. The alternative would have been to either get up earlier or cut one drill, and neither option appealed to me, to be honest.

Mind, I was back on the very same hill this morning, Wednesday. I could feel during the initial sprints that the legs felt less than fresh, so this time I decided to indeed cut one drill from the program, which of course it meant I had time for the longer recovery. I started the hill drills with the thigh drive, and this time managed to keep it going for 4 full minutes. That felt tough. I won’t go any longer than that, any further improvements would be to concentrate more on form.

That alone was deemed sufficient as far as the hard work was concerned. I did ankles for my next drill and then went home. I think I got that one right at least.

16 Jan: 8 miles, 1:05:53, 8:14 pace, HR 137
17 Jan: 10.5 miles, 1:37:14, 9:16 pace, HR 138
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; high knees (2x2 mins); ankles (4 mins); thigh drive (2x2 mins)
18 Jan: 9.5 miles, 1:25:38, 9:01 pace, HR 139
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; thigh drive (4 mins); ankles (4 mins)

Revving Up

2012-01-15T14:35:00.006Z

All through winter I have noticed an elevated heart rate. Most of my runs produced a HR that was several beats higher than what I would have expected. My resting heart rate has shown the same effect, every time I measured it it was between 43 and 45 when I would usually expect it to to be around 40. I attribute this to the low-level cold that has been doggedly been affecting me for at least two months now. Were I not a runner I might not even have noticed it, but I am and I can tell the difference.
However, I did notice an improvement recently and indeed, when I measured my resting HR this morning, it was at 42. That's still a touch high, but it's the lowest value I have seen in months. Together with the improved numbers of Tuesday's evaluation, this is clearly moving the right way.

I had slightly heavy legs on Thursday, but running for an hour at about 8:00 pace did me a lot of good. I was back on the hill for more punishment on Friday. Not the one I usually go to, but a little back road in Ballintleave, because I needed a gradual downhill stretch for half a mile of downhill strides and the best place I can think of is the Ring of Kerry road between the Red Fox Inn and Caragh Bridge. At 6:30 in the morning that road is still quiet enough to feel safe; I wouldn't like to run on it during the day.

It wasn't entirely ideal; I need a steep road for the high knees drill and the one I found was very short and only gave me about 80 seconds. I tried to make up for it by doing it 3 times. The thigh drive worked better, on a more gradual piece of road, and I can tell a definite improvement in that drill.

The main worry was some discomfort in my left calf muscle during my cool down. It wasn't bad, maybe 3 out of 10 on the pain scale, but it was worrying. Lower leg injuries can easily happen during the hill phase.

Having said that, I did not feel any further discomfort for the rest of the day, so I did another hill workout on Saturday. Last year's program had a tempo run on the program but I changed it, reasoning that for an ultra I need any piece of leg strength I can get. In an attempt to be cautious I only did 2 hill drills, and of course no downhill strides, but I felt the calf again after the initial set of 30-second-sprints. Now I was definitely worried, but the rest of the workout went well, without any further pains.

I spiced up Sunday's long run with a fast finish. I made sure to take it very easy for the first miles, especially on the the big hills. I had a gel in my pocket, intending to take it at mile 12, to give me some fuel for the faster miles, but completely forgot to take it; not entirely surprising as I never take a gel during training. Anyway, I didn't need it. After 12.5 miles I accelerated from 8:00 pace to 7:00 pace and held it for the final 4.5 miles. I won't call it comfortable, that would be a lie. Maybe comfortably hard, whatever that oxymoron is supposed to mean? It felt great to be moving at a higher effort for once and I enjoyed every single step of these miles. In a way, I can't wait for some actual hard work next month.

12 Jan: 8 miles, 1:03:33, 7:56 pace, HR 137
13 Jan: 10.25 miles, 1:26:14, 8:24 pace, HR 145
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; high knees (3x80 sec); downhill strides; thigh drive (2x90 sec)
14 Jan: 9.25 miles, 1:23:31, 9:01 pace, HR 143
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; ankles (4 mins); thigh drive (2x90 sec, 1x70 sec)
15 Jan: 17 miles, 2:10:59, 7:42 pace, HR 146
12.5 miles @ 7:58 (HR 143), 4.5 miles @ 5:57 (HR 158)

Weekly Mileage: 74

The Opposite Of Lonely

2012-01-11T19:19:00.003Z

That’s what I am, according to Maia, now that the family has returned. Of course, there are times when, amidst all the fighting and screaming and shouting that comes with 4 children, loneliness seems to be an appealing alternative, but most of the time I’m not complaining.

Sunday’s run hadn’t been great and I was definitely worried about getting ahead of the recovery curve, as the coach used to call it. An easy run on Monday was always on the cards, but I was really surprised just how better I felt on Tuesday, the next hill drills day.

In an attempt not to overdo things I cut the number of drills by one; after the obligatory 4x30 seconds sprints I did a set of “driving with the thigh”. This usually feels rather tough, on previous attempts I usually managed 2x1 minute. This time I had 3 goes at it, lasting 80, 70 and 60 seconds respectively. I don’t set a target time for these – I stop whenever it starts to feel really tough. Actually, I noticed that the HR was a lot lower than last week for the same drill.

The second drill was ankles, which always feels much easier (and makes me wonder if I’m doing them correctly). I left it at that. It’s better to do too little than too much. Still, I did raise an eyebrow when I saw the average HR number back home. 139 for a workout that contained some sets of hill drills? I must have taken it seriously easy between sets (which, of course, is what I'm supposed to be doing).

Since last week’s evaluation workout had fallen victim to an idiot and his dog, I did another one this morning. Luckily the wind had died down just in time; I know from experience that the numbers get useless if it’s too windy. I set off towards my usual spot and for once I could actually see where I was going – Full Moon, I love you. Initially I had some troubles getting the HR up to the required level and then I had troubles keeping it there – it kept oscillating between 155 and 165 when it should have been stable at 161. Things finally started to improve halfway through the third mile. Remarkably, the Garmin recorded exactly the same HR for all four miles.


        Mile 1    6:36   HR 160
        Mile 2    6:46   HR 160
        Mile 3    6:51   HR 160
        Mile 4    6:51   HR 160
        Recovery to HR: 39 seconds

The significantly faster pace compared to earlier evaluations is probably down to some sharpening effect from last week’s race, which wouldn’t please the coach because it’s too early for that, but I had chosen to race knowing full well what might happen. Sometimes you need to have a bit of fun. As you can see, the pace dropped after the first 2 miles before stabilising. More important, to me at least, was the quicker recovery time afterwards. It’s not the best number I have ever seen, but it’s the best since October.

I think I have been fighting a cold all through November and December. It never bothered me much, but the blocked sinuses kept giving me the occasional headache and I'm sure it was at least partially responsible for some of the elevated HRs I’ve seen during that time. I think I’m finally getting over it; not only has the HR/pace correlation has improved significantly over the last few days, the constant, irritating pressure from inside my head seems to have gone as well. Things are definitely looking up.

9 Jan: 8 miles, 1:04:49, 8:06 pace, HR 136
10 Jan: 9.5 miles, 1:25:54, 9:00 pace, HR 139
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints, thigh drive (80, 70, 60 sec), ankles (4 mins)
11 Jan: 12 miles, 1:27:02, 7:15 pace, HR 149
4 miles eval

Hills

2012-01-08T17:00:00.005Z

At some stage soon I need to decide how to proceed with my training. So far I have mostly been following Mystery Coach's blueprint from last year's marathon training, and I can continue doing so for the rest of the hill phase. But the peak training phase was aimed to get me used to running at marathon pace. I won't be running 6:50 miles in Connemara; but running the same workouts slower won't get me as fit as I can be. I don't think simply extending the length of the workouts would be ideal either. And what about the workouts that oscillated between running faster and slower than race pace? A bit more thought will have to go into all that.

Friday saw me back on the hills. After the customary first set, 4x30 seconds sprints, I added three more drills. First high knees, which I found really tough. I managed to keep going for 2 minutes. The next drill were ankles, like last time round; they felt much easier and I did them for 4 minutes. I left "driving with the thighs" for last, probably the toughest drill or maybe it's just the fact that I did them last, on already tired legs. I managed only one minute, so I walked back down the hill for another minute. My heart rate shot up to 177 and was still over 170 after walking halfway down the hill.

When I checked the training program, I wasn't overly pleased to see yet another hill workout for Saturday. Isn't there supposed to be some time for recovery? Anyway, this time, after the initial sprints, I did thighs, followed by high knees and finally a set of downhill strides. Unfortunately, the downhill stretch I picked wasn't very downhill at all, so it ended up being half a mile at fast pace, not a hill workout. I'll choose a different road next time, the one I used last year. Unfortunately it's not near the hill I like to use for the "uphill" drills, requiring a compromise.

Adding up the miles for this week already gave me more than 60 miles up to Saturday, so I ran a shorter long run, just one lap around the lake. I started dragging halfway through the loop; the legs were becoming increasingly weary, which can undoubtedly be attributed to the successive hill workouts. Not that I had much choice - on a loop course, all you can do is continue on until you're home. I'm pretty sure I ran too fast, the last few miles were all faster than 7:30. I guess I just wanted this to be over. When I checked my logs I found that I had done exactly the same last year on the identical workout.

This better be worth it - it's pretty damn hard work.

Niamh and the kids are back in Kerry - my monkish existence has come to an abrupt end. Now I have to get used again to all the screaming, fighting, and shouting (that's the kids I'm talking about, not me. Honestly.)

6 Jan: 10.5 miles, 1:37:14, 9:15 pace, HR 141
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints, high knees (2 mins), ankles (4 mins), thighs (2x1 min)
7 Jan: 10 miles, 1:21:24, 8:08 pace, HR 151
Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints, high knees (2 mins), thigh drive (2x1 min), downhill strides
8 Jan: 15 miles, 1:55:25, 7:42 pace, HR 152

Weekly Mileage: 76.5

Hills and Drills

2012-01-05T18:05:00.000Z

I'm unashamedly copying Mystery Coach's training plan that brought me a sub-3 marathon last year, even though I am training for an Ultra. At least I'm trying to - I can't help but notice that last year my pace/HR progression was significantly better than this time round. I'm not sure if I can blame it all on the marathons and ultras I did towards the end of 2011, or my lack of understanding.

Anyway, I'm now in the next phase, which is primarily filled with hill drills. That's not the same "bounding" drills Lydiard originally prescribed to his runners, but a set of things that are supposed to strengthen particular areas, like the ankles or thighs.

Every hill workout start with a 15 minutes warm up, then 4x30 second sprint efforts, which are then followed by the actual hill drills; 15 minutes of easy running between each set, and the same again for your cool down.

My first drill consisted of slowly springing up the hill primarily using the ankles. That felt surprisingly easy, and I got to 4 minutes without trying too hard.

The second set was "driving from the thighs", which turned out to be significantly harder. I did 90 seconds on the first try, walked back down and added 60 seconds for the second go. Neither time was pre-determined; I simply stopped when it started to feel rather hard. It's always better to do too little than too much, especially at the beginning.

I checked my training logs (and emails) from last year, and found that back then the ankle drills had felt easy enough and the others much harder - at least that particular aspect seems to work the same way as last year.

In an attempt to take it easy, I was only planning on 8 miles this morning. However, by 6 o'clock in the morning my good lady wife, who is still in Dublin, could obviously stand it no longer and texted me to give me an update on the status of her sister's progress in labour. Thanks, darling. Going back to sleep didn't work so I got up early and did 10 miles instead of 8, just to pass the time. Stupid? Maybe. But that's me, you should know by now.

I got another update at the more reasonable time of 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and I have a new baby niece called Maria, everyone is healthy and happy and congratulations to her parents and (now) big sister.

4 Jan: 9+ miles, 1:19:30, 8:46 pace, HR 145
Hill workout: 1: 4x30sec sprints, 2: ankles (4 mins), 3: thighs (1x90 sec, 1x60 sec)
5 Jan: 10 miles, 1:19:31, 7:57 pace, HR 145

Dog Days

2012-01-03T13:33:00.006Z

Following Sunday's race, Monday was of course an easy day. I ran towards UCD/Belfield because I had read somewhere that they have created a few nice running trails within the university grounds and I spent the best part of 6 miles trying to find them. What I found were a few disjointed pieces of trail, all of whom very nice on their own but never more than half a mile in length, most of them significantly shorter. Ah well.

This morning I thought I'd use my last day in Dublin to do an evaluation workout the way it was originally intended, namely on a track. There is a dirt track in Kilbogget Park, 4 miles from Stillorgan, perfect for a good warm/up and cool/down.

The blustery wind meant this was never going to be ideal, but the idea of doing 4 even miles without all those sharp 180 degree turns every half mile was too good to miss. Once I started it was immediately clear that the wind would have some major influence and the numbers might be meaningless as a result, but I persevered. All went ok for 11 laps. Than I heard some effing and blinding, obviously coming from the owner of that dog heading my way at full speed. I wasn't concerned - dog encounters are frequent enough when you're a runner. I can tell if a dog is aggressive or wants to play and I have no problems with it jumping up on my side; it's been happening countless times before. What doesn't usually happen is that the dog crosses right in front of me, tripping me up. He even had the perfect size to be a real hazard like that, and he came back for a repeat again and again. After very nearly faceplanting three times in less than 50 meters, I shoved the dog to the side with my leg, which gave me some space. When I saw the dog's owner running towards me, I fully expected him to apologize, which just shows how naive I am in the daily battle between jogger and dog owner in Ireland's capital.

He was handicapped by the fact that he was several stone overweight, which meant he was completely out of breath when he caught up to me. It took him 2 tries to say something, and I was rather taken aback when instead of an apology he screamed at me for kicking his dog. I could of course have explained to him that I had merely shoved the dog aside in a reasonable gentle way, an explanation that was supported by the fact that the dog hadn't yelped or made any other noise, but I was still trying to run my evaluation at sub-7 pace and the other guy didn't give the impression that he was overly interested in a calm, collected conversation, so I just mumbled something about trying not to get bitten, which was really lame, I admit, as I fully knew the dog was only playing. By then the guy had already reached the end of his anaerobic capabilities and the conversation ended fairly promptly.

Unfortunately, the encounter had been sufficient to drive my HR up by 10 beats, and when you happen to be in the middle of a workout that's based on running at an even heart rate, that's it for said workout. I kept going for the last mile, trying to keep the effort at the same level it had been for the first 3 miles, but the HR never came back, and it also meant my recovery to 130 after the workout was totally out as well as it took over 50 seconds. I was seriously pissed off. Pumped up as I was with adrenaline I was highly tempted to chase after the fat wanker and give him a piece of mind, but as he had gone the opposite way I instead turned back towards Stillorgan, eventually calming down after a few more miles, which saved the world from yet another, entirely useless and unproductive encounter.

I can't even be bothered to look at the individual mile splits from the evaluation. To be honest, the blustery wind might have made them useless anyway. Isn't it ironic that of all the places I had been running in, the one where I had been hampered the most was an actual running track!

2 Jan: 10 miles, 1:20:03, 8:00 pace, HR 141
3 Jan: 12 miles, 1:27:17, 7:16 pace, HR 153
botched eval, 4 miles @ 6:59, 50 sec recovery

Blowing Off The Cobwebs

2012-01-01T18:12:00.005Z

There is no doubt about it, 2011 has been a terrific year for me, running-wise. I put all my eggs into one basket at the start, deciding that the sub-3 marathon would be the only goal worth pursuing, and Thank Goodness that came through when I crossed the finish line in Vienna.

I faced two immediate problems, one that now I had 8 months left of the year without a stated goal, and two that I felt rather burned out after preparing for 6 months for one single race. I therefore decided to take it easy over the summer, race just for fun, and wait for the mojo to return.

I could not have predicted what followed. I set new PBs in the 5k, 10K, half marathon and 15 miles, following the earlier marathon and 10 miles PBs. In addition to that, I picked up age-group prize money in the Killarney 15 mile race, won my age group in the Valentia half marathon, and as if all of that had not been enough yet I ended my season with an outright win at the 30-mile race in Sixmilebridge.

As I said, terrific. It will be hard to match that in 2012. I still haven't got much of an appetite for another fast marathon, despite the conviction that I should have run 2:55 in Vienna and that my best time is still ahead of me. However, until I feel that I really want to put myself through that mill again I will once again concentrate on the Ultra distances, and I do have a few ambitious targets in mind, the first of which will be to go sub-5 in Connemara.

And just to start the new year with a bit of fun, I raced a 5k this morning. I'm sure Mystery Coach would not have approved, but I did it anyway.

The most stressful part was the car journey through Dublin city centre, but once I had made it to Phoenix Park I was very much looking forward to 15 minutes of suffering (because the first 3 minutes don't hurt yet). There are always some top elite runners at this race and I immediately recognised Fionnuala Britton, back in Dublin after her astonishing run to secure the Gold medal in the European XC a few weeks ago.

The course consists of almost two laps of a virtually flat triangular course and is very fast, but the wind wasn't ideal. Still, no excuses today. I set off at about 5:35 pace, which is what I always tend to do in 5ks, but then managed not to look at the Garmin for the rest of the race, definitely a good thing. Even though I was running faster than what I would be able to hold myself, I found myself surrounded by a few runners who looked distinctly out of place with a few stone extra on the hips. Unsurprisingly they fell back soon enough and if that sounds a bit harsh then I apologize but it was perfectly predictable; I have yet to see a heavy guy running a sub-6 mile.

They weren't the only ones starting at Kamikaze pace. Despite my own fast start, I soon started to slowly make my way through the field, something that would go on for the rest of the race.

A lady called out the splits at the 1K mark, which I passed in 3:36. "Great, almost a third done" I thought, until I realised that this was 1 k, not 1 mile (wouldn't it be great to be able to run a mile in 3:36?). Never mind, just keep going. Somewhere near the 2K marker I started wheezing/moaning/breathing heavily, whatever you want to call it (actually, it has been likened to giving birth by at least 2 somewhat unkind fellow runners). It's what I sound like when I run a 5K, and if I don't sound like that then I'm not nearly working hard enough. 5Ks are for suffering.

Going through the finish banner for the first time felt a bit cruel as we're still not even at halfway at that point. It did not help that we were facing the wind pretty much head on at that point. I heard a few shouts of encouragement, including a few for "Tom", and decided that they were meant for me, no matter the actual realities. At one point "Tom" got the advice to stretch the legs properly, which I followed up by promptly overtaking a group of three.

Periods of feeling good and bad kept following each other in quick succession. I always tried to make up yet another place when I felt second wind and then to hang on for dear life to the back of the runner in front during the next low. I did not count how many runners I caught from 1K onwards, but it was well over a dozen. I, in turn, got passed exactly once, and by trying to hang on to that runner I gained another few places.

Turning into Chesterfield Avenue for the second time, with maybe 1K left to go, I passed another 2 or 3 runners, one of whom wondered out loud how anyone breathing so hard would be able to run fast enough to overtake him. Next time save your breath, mate, and it might help.

I kept chasing runners right to the end, one of which passed me back on the final sprint, but I managed to hold off the rest of them. I felt a twinge of disappointment when I saw the 18:2x on the clock, but eventually came round to the fact that since I hadn't done any speedwork and ran up a mountain the day before, this was the best I could have hoped for, realistically. I sure had no regrets about not working hard enough, I can't think of a single stretch of the race where I didn't push with all I had, and that's all I could have asked for.

As I said, I'm sure the coach would have his misgivings, but it was definitely a great way to start the new year. Happy 2012, everyone.

Race Photo courtesy of Peter Mooney.

1 Jan: 9 miles, including:
Tom Brennan 5K, 18:22, 5:54 pace, HR 176

Weekly Mileage: 61.5

Year's End

2011-12-31T13:08:00.004Z

I felt surprisingly sore after Tuesday's sprints, which really surprised me; after all there had not been a lot of sprinting. I guess I'm just not adapted to that kind of running. I therefore took it easy on Wednesday, just 10 miles at very relaxed pace before we all got into the car and made it to Dublin to visit the grandparents. For some reason the kids had been really good during the journey itself but went completely off the rails once we reached our destination. I half expected to be asked to turn around again and take the misbehaving brood with us. I wouldn't have blamed them.

Anyway, after being treated leniently and being allowed to stay, I did a few hill sprints on Thursday morning in Deer Park. I expected the hill to be a bit steeper. I tried one repeat on grass, but that was too slippery so I did the others on road. I don't remember them being so tough - after 5 repeats I almost threw up, despite my empty stomach, so it left it at that and only did 6 miles in all. That was a lot harder than expected.

Having said that, the hill sprints were a lot better on the legs than Tuesday's sprints on the flat; I wasn't really sore the next day. I did 8 rather boring miles in Stillorgan, made up of loops just under half a mile in length. I find running short loops mentally much harder than out-and-backs or long loops. At least when I'm running on my own; the 30 1-mile loops in Sixmilebridge were fine, probably because of the 100 other runners keeping each other company.

I ended the year with a run from our house in Stillorgan to Ticknock and then up the mountain towards Three Rock. That's as far as I had intended to go, but when I saw that nice trail going up further I could not resist and went all the way up to the top, where a big cairn awaited me; Fairycastle, according to some hill friendly walkers I met on the way. The wind was quite strong and there was no view to be had thanks to the clouds, but that's not what I had come for anyway. The elevation gain from Stillorgan was about 1500 feet, but it was only just over 6 miles each way, which made this not really a long run, but a fun run instead. Still, I decided I had already sufficiently sabotaged any chances of a good race tomorrow, so I went straight back home.

It was a great run to end a great year! Happy 2012, everyone!

28 Dec: 10 miles, 1:19:11, 7:55 pace, HR 144
29 Dec: 6 miles, 48:48, 8:07 pace, HR 147
incl. 5x15 sec all-out hill sprints
30 Dec: 8 miles, 1:03:23, 7:55 pace, HR 140
31 Dec: 12.5 miles, 1:50:03,8:49 pace, HR 145
mountain run to Fairycastle

Catching Up On Sleep

2011-12-27T20:11:00.004Z

One of the best perks of Christmas, and holidays in general, is the fact that I can sleep in every single morning and still get my normal mileage. When I say sleep in, I mean until 8 o'clock, that is. Any later than that requires an unreasonable amount of staring at the ceiling and is just not my thing.

Having said that, my mileage this week is actually going to dip, for two reasons. One, I took it easy so far to let the legs recover from the weekend; Monday was especially slow. Two, I'm gradually transitioning into the next training phase, and it's better to take it a bit easier. No need to overdo things when your body has to adapt to a different kind of work.

As I said, Monday was very easy. I ran as slowly as I could without letting it affecting form. The pace turned out to be 8:09, still decent enough, and the HR was the lowest in a long, long time. The fact that I am able to run for an hour at such an easy effort actually pleases me as much as a tough tempo run. It's a mental thing.

Today started out in very similar fashion. I thought about adding a couple of miles but decided against it. After 7 easy miles, I changed things for the last mile, alternating not-quite all-out sprints and walking recoveries until the breathing and HR were back to normal. I did about 6 of these, but I find it challenging to count past 2 when doing repeats like that, so the actual number might be out (not that it matters). The idea is to start activating the "other" muscle fibres that don't do any work during a normal endurance run. You need to activate them before you can train them, and fast sprinting is one way of reaching them (hill sprints work even better).

The weather was slightly more reasonable today, less wind and just a bit of mist rather than rain, but that was just the calm before the storm which is just starting to build as I write this. Tomorrow's run might get interesting.

We're off to Dublin for a few days. I'll probably take in a race while I'm there, though I do feel guilty for missing the 10K in Beaufort yet again. Niamh needs to see her family - and there's another imminent arrival and she fully intends to be there when it happens. New babies are just the best, aren't they? Especially other people's babies that you can hand back for a nappy change and night-time feeds after cooing over them.

26 Dec: 8 miles, 1:05:13, 8:09 pace, HR 134
27 Dec: 8 miles, 1:04:05, 8:01 pace, HR 142
actually 7 miles in 7:52 and 1 mile alternating sprinting/walking

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T18:59:00.003Z

I used to hate Christmas. Not in the indifferent, Scrooge kind of way; I utterly detested the commercialism, greedy materialism and blank greed that went with it. People haven't changed, but my feelings for Christmas have. Why? There are four reasons and they are by now aged 10, 10, 8 and 4. It's so different with children, for them the magic is still very much alive and the excitement built every single day. For the sake of these shining eyes, it's all worth it.

But of course I keep running. It keeps me sane. I heard an interview with Mo Farah the other day; they asked him, what's in store for Christmas day? “A 10 mile run”.

Slacker!

After a disappointing set of numbers from Tuesday's evaluation, by Wednesday the legs all of a sudden felt great; probably due to recovery from the weekend. I kept things easy, and again on Thursday.

Because I felt so good I resurrected Fast Friday and did 10 strong miles on the reasonably flat Killorglin loop. I made sure to keep the HR in check, apart from one stretch when I got a few cat calls from a couple of drunks. Not sure what they were doing at that time of day, usually it's a safe bet that they're asleep by the time I come along. Anyway, I always get a smile on my face when the pace on these runs averages less than 7 minutes per mile, and Friday was no exception.

I pretty much followed the coach's original weekend plan, where he had a fast run followed by two longer runs. My long training runs never built up to much this autumn, courtesy of the marathons and ultras I did in Dingle, Dublin and Sixmilebridge, and I never reached 20 miles in training outside of these. Saturday's 16.5 mile loop around Caragh Lake was my longest training run in a while. The gale force wind added a bit to the challenge. The weather forecast seems to have missed that and apparently the rest of the country was calm enough but out on the hills it was pretty bad and I had to work through it. At least I got plenty in return on the way home, I did a few miles pretty close to 7 minutes without straining. In fact, after crossing the worst of the hills I spent much of my time repeatedly slowing myself down. I had an eye on Sunday.

Sunday, Christmas day, was slightly easier as it only had 15 miles, but of course how easy that would feel depended very much on the recovery from the previous two days. I'm glad to say that the legs felt great. The wind was even stronger than the day before and the occasional heavy rain shower added to the fun, but what else would I want to do on Christmas day? Actually, I had spent the previous few hours with the kids, first unwrapping Santa's massive heap of presents and then helping them assemble various bits and pieces, putting in batteries, reading manuals, the things dads do on Christmas day. I left behind 4 blissfully happy children; they were still playing happily when I came back, and Niamh even managed to get some rest; we'd only gotten 5 hours of sleep between ~~arranging the presents~~ preparing for Santa and the kids unleashing their force.

The run? It went very well, despite the weather. I still held back a lot during the first half and finally let it loose on the last few miles. Whatever the evaluation said, right now I fell pretty damn good.

Happy Christmas everyone.

22 Dec: 10 miles, 1:18:01, 7:48 pace, HR 144
23 Dec: 10 miles, 1:09:40, 6:58 pace, HR 153
24 Dec: 16.5 miles, 2:08:16, 7:46 pace, HR 149
25 Dec: 15+ miles, 1:55:26, 7:40 pace, HR 150

Weekly Mileage: 81.5

Battered and Bruised

2011-12-21T19:29:00.004Z

I have a work colleagues who insists that bad things always happen in threes. For example, every time there are two aeroplane incidents in quick succession, he confidentially predicts a further, imminent one. I hope he’s wrong. I might not have been involved in a plane crash, but according to him I'm just waiting to be hit again.

It started on Sunday evening when I put a lot of things up the attic. I have been up and down that ladder countless times before, but somehow this time I managed to bump my head. Badly. Lying on the floor moaning for a minute badly. A 2-inch gash in the head badly. Blood on your hands badly. Niamh urged me not to run on Monday; she feared I might be suffering from concussion. I ran anyway, under the assumption that I don’t have a brain to get damaged in the first place, and the fact that I ran with a possible concussion only goes to prove the previous point.

The second incident happened when cycling home from work on Tuesday. It was pitch dark, I had a car coming the other way, completely blinding me, I had a lorry behind me and before I knew it I had a big pothole underneath me which I did not see because said car shone his headlights straight into my face in the best tradition of a Stasi interrogator. A short, unsuccessful fight against the pull of gravity was immediately followed by a rather desperate scramble to get off the road courtesy of the aforementioned lorry featuring rather heavily on my mind. I ended up with a bang on my right elbow, a pain in my right knee and some more pain radiating from my left side. Nothing serious, I was just a bit shaken. Apart from some very minor grazes on my elbow there is no visible damage, but the fact that I coughed up blood this morning was slightly alarming.

Inbetween these occurrences I managed not to miss my morning runs, especially my evaluation run on Tuesday. I had played with the idea of postponing this to Wednesday due to some fatigue from the weekend’s back-to-back long runs, but decided against it. Good decision, as Tuesday was a nice calm morning and Wednesday was ... not. Despite having some troubles keeping the heart rate at 161 (it oscillated rather more than I would have liked to see), the average values were ok. The pace, however, was slower than 2 weeks ago, very consistently 3-4 seconds slower on each mile, and the recovery period afterwards was identically long:

           6:46, HR 161
           6:50, HR 162
           6:55, HR 161
           6:59, HR 160
           41 sec to HR 130

I'm not exactly happy with these numbers. Sure, there was always going to be some fatigue from the weekend but considering that the last evaluation had been only 2 weeks after Sixmilebridge, this does not spell progression. If that means that I should move onto the next phase (because I’m not progressing) or extend the base building (because my legs are not ready for more work), I’m not entirely sure.

Actually, the evaluation didn’t really show me anything I did not already know. I have been running at an easy effort on basically all my runs for the last few weeks, but the HR has consistently been 5-10 bpm higher than what I would normally expect. It may be down to fatigue from too many marathons and ultras (Dingle, Dublin and Sixmilebridge in quick succession) or that damn cold that I can’t seem to shake or the stress at work or some other issues, but the bottom line is that right now I'm not in the shape I was hoping to be in.

I managed to get through a different kind of endurance workout as well: sitting through three sets of school Christmas plays in one week. It’s perfectly obvious to me that my own children are much more talented, interesting and better looking than other people’s children. I wonder if their parents can see it too, though.

19 Dec: 8 miles, 1:02:45, 7:51 pace, HR 145
20 Dec: 12 miles, 1:26:37, 7:13 pace, HR 152
incl 4 miles evaluation
21 Dec: 10 miles, 1:19:26, 7:57 pace, HR 145

Back-To-Back Again

2011-12-18T20:13:00.004Z

One the features of the training system I got introduced to by Mystery Coach a year ago was that base phase should not really feel like training. When things went the way they should I kept sending emails saying “it feels so easy, am I really training?”. It's fair to say that I went off the rails a bit after Dublin this year, but managed to correct course after Sixmilebridge. In fact, ever since that marvellous day, I have felt good every single day.

So maybe this weekend was a mistake. Not having the coach makes training feel like a tightrope walk without a net at times. Am I doing the right things or am I falling off? Am I doing too little or too much? Are the runs too slow or too fast? My mileage is a bit lower than at the same time last year, but of course I had to recover from those 30 miles at a strong pace 4 weeks ago. That was fine, until I remembered that last year I was working to being able to run 10 miles fast/20 miles/15 miles over Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and decided to up things a bit this weekend.

Friday's fast pace was shelved because I had inadvertently run that on Wednesday already. In fact, the legs felt a bit heavy early on, but came round very quickly. It was over the weekend that I upped to ant a bit, not 20/15, but 15/15, both times on the very hilly loop around Caragh Lake.

Saturday went very well indeed. I expected the legs to struggle on the big climbs during the first half, but I went up totally on autopilot, always a good sign. It had been raining and hail stoning over the first 5 miles but then the weather changed and I really enjoyed the beautiful sunny, calm day for the final 10 miles.

Sunday was always going to be more of a struggle. The legs might have felt fine after Saturday's run, but you never recover fully after only one day. I had to get up early, at 6:30, and was out of the door before 7 o'clock; the early start probably did not help. I still felt fine on the big hills but the legs definitely started dragging during the second half and while I got home still in fine shape, it was unquestionably a lot harder than all the runs since Sixmilebridge. They felt a bit sore for the rest of the day, which makes me wonder if the whole thing had been a bad idea.

Then again, the second leg of a back-to-back run is always tough. That's just the way it is. Anyway, what's done is done. I'll take it easy again early next week.

The reason for the early start today had been a trip to Dingle's climbing wall. Shea has been a regular recently, and today the entire family made the journey, including little Maia. There is some pedigree in that regard in my family, and all four of them kept climbing up and down for almost 90 minutes, Shea entirely without fear and the others with increasing confidence. It was great to see.

I just realised, I passed the 5000k mark this morning for 2011. I'll leave the champagne in the fridge, though.

16 Dec: 10 miles, 1:18:39, 7:52 pace, HR 141
17Dec: 15+ miles, 1:56:40, 7:45 pace, HR 149
18 Dec: 15+ miles, 1:59:41, 7:57 pace, HR 144

Weekly Mileage: 78+

Ouch!

2011-12-15T13:28:00.002Z

I thought I’d experienced just about every kind of weather that we get here in Kerry (often all of them within the same run), but Tuesday’s combination of gale force winds and hail stones was a new one, and a particularly nasty one at that. It had me howling in pain at one stage, getting pelted in the side of the face by a million needles just isn’t that great a feeling. After running through this, if there is any justice in the world I will have a great race in Connemara to make up for it.

Despite feeling great after Sunday’s 15 mile run, I had some pain in my left quads on Monday. I didn’t think too much of it, but when it was still there on Tuesday, I decided to be sensible and shortened the run to 8 miles (yes, that passes as sensible in my books). With the weather being as it was, that was more than enough.

Wednesday was different again, after a day and night of constantly being pelted by hails stones we awoke to a winter wonderland scene. I’m pretty sure it hadn’t been snowing at all and all the white stuff was indeed hail, but it didn’t stop the kids from throwing “snow balls” at each other, and Maia was satisfied that this was now winter (at the age of 4, she has now seen “snow” in Kerry every single winter. She obviously thinks that’s normal). But it was also the day of her Christmas play from pre-school, and I was told in no uncertain terms to take the day off work, so I would be able to attend – and since I have a whole load of untaken holidays left, I was in no position to argue (as if I had ever been!).

The play was mercifully short and I managed to run at lunch time. By then the rain had mostly cleared the slush off the road, but I made the same mistake I always do when running during the day. My perceived rate of effort is totally off and it took me 4 miles to realise that I had been running over half a minute per mile faster than planned, all the while blissfully unaware. To make sure that I would not push the recovery out more than necessary I cut the run short by a couple of miles for the second time in a row. I also heard very scary, loud, rolling thunder on two occasions, but never saw any lightning. I was about 3 miles away from home at the time but (correctly) figured that the storm would have passed by the time I would have made it back home, even if I had turned around there and then, so I kept running despite feeling rather anxious.

Today it was back to hail stones, but with the absence of gale force winds, it felt entirely tolerable. It’s amazing how quickly you adapt.

Life is very busy at the moment. I used to hate Christmas, mostly because of the rampant commercialism and cheap materialism, but with 4 young kids in the house there is still a bit of magic left.

12 Dec: 10 miles, 1:19:09, 7:55 pace, HR 142
13 Dec: 8 miles, 1:03:28, 7:56 pace, HR 146
14 Dec: 10 miles, 1:13:20, 7:20 pace, HR 150
15 Dec: 10 miles, 1:19:06, 7:55 pace, HR 141

Ireland Runs For Charity

2011-12-13T13:30:00.004Z

As a first for me, I recently received a query if I would allow a guest post on my blog. I thought, why not, and as a result Jackie wrote an article about running and raising charity money, especially for cancer charities. If you have any questions, she has provided her email address and would be delighted to answer any queries you might have. It is probably unnecessary to add, but all views are entirely her own, of course. Enjoy.

By: Jackie Clark (jclarkmca@gmail.com)

Wellbeing and happiness are important to any person, and proper nutrition and exercise are key factors in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. For centuries, people have engaged in the activity of running for a variety of reasons; whether to escape danger or for pure enjoyment, it has served a purpose in human nature. Competitive running has been recorded as a contest of endurance in the Tailteann Games of Ireland in 1829 BC. The tradition continues under the sponsorship of Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI), which governs all athletic events from recreational running to professional competitions. Additionally, many novice and skilled runners participate in local, regional and national races for charitable causes.

Every year, Ireland hosts a number of philanthropic events to raise awareness and financially fund research efforts in the advancement of cures for many disorders and illnesses, such as mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that affects the thin layer of tissue that covers a majority of the internal organs. This rare cancer is aggressive and deadly leaving many of its victims without successful treatment options. Mesothelioma life expectancy of patients receiving a late diagnosis is short because symptoms usually are not detected until decades after exposure. Though there is no cure, there are medicines and therapies to assist in extending the life of the patient burdened with this disease. Mesothelioma sufferers will be challenged physically and mentally; however, nutrition and activity are crucial in maintaining a healthy weight. Research is vital to the success of discovering new and effective treatments for mesothelioma, as well as other cancers. Donations and fundraising events are key contributors to support the medical community’s efforts in reaching the goal of a cure.

Run4Life is a charitable group that raises monies for the Irish Cancer Society, the largest, single-most charitable sponsor in Ireland. The Society participates in Mini-Marathons benefiting cancer research, as well as completes Marathons and other active events. The Dingle Marathon and Half Marathon, both of which take place September 1, 2012 benefits a number of different charities, including BlueSeptember, Share A Dream Foundation, Bee for Battens, and Aware.

Charitable fundraising events are beneficial for all involved. The average and experienced athletes can use this passion of running to do something worthwhile. They not only are able to enjoy a social group activity, but they can use their enthusiasm for health and exercise to potentially advance the health of others.

Party Time

2011-12-11T15:27:00.006Z

Mick Rice recently pointed out that Connemara is only 3-and-a-bit months away. That's actually pretty close, certainly too close to start messing around now. Which is why I have to tread carefully when it come to this season's party time.

It started on Thursday with Cian's 8th birthday. This served as a reminder how quickly I'm getting old. It also provided Niamh with yet another opportunity to show off her mad cake decorating skills, creating a sweets guzzling monster – entirely appropriate for Cian, as everyone agreed. He duly loved it. As always, she bought far too much stuff for the party, which meant dinner that night consisted of chocolate, sweets, cake, crisps, buns and plenty of fizzy drinks; I actually had a sugar hangover an hour later, but that did not stop next morning's breakfast to consist of pretty much the same stuff.

And since one party is not enough, my office's Christmas do was on on Friday night. Since my usual bedtime is generally several hours before everybody else's, I tend to cry off halfway through the proceedings, but I surprised myself by staying strong until 2 o'clock in the morning, and the only reason I left then was that I had to drive to Cork the next morning and could not risk still being over the blood alcohol limit. There had not been any embarrassing scenes until that time; I suppose I should hear on Monday if they happened after I left.

In the midst of all the madness, only Saturday's run suffered when I stumbled through 5 miles with a hangover. I could have run more, neither the stomach nor the head felt any worse during the run itself, and neither improved after I stopped running. I'm getting too old for all that. My hangovers are lasting longer and longer.

Thankfully I felt pretty much recovered after 10 hours of sleep before Sunday (I had left Niamh in sole charge of the kids watching the X-Factor). After a long absence, I returned to the hills of the Caragh Lake loop. I expected the legs to suffer on the long 3-mile climb with almost 600 feet elevation gain, but in actual fact I managed to run up entirely on autopilot. The pace was pedestrian, which was probably a good thing. After several weeks of nothing but relaxed running I am starting to reach that stage where all the runs are starting to feel so easy that it feels like I'm not training any more, the miles are just flying by effortlessly. I got there last year under the coach's guidance, and now I've managed to get there by myself (ok, with a couple of gentle nudges from the coach who still keeps an eye on me). This happened pretty quickly, considering that 3 weeks ago I stormed through 30 miles in Sixmilebridge. Now I just have to keep myself from doing stupid things for a few more weeks, and then the next training phase can begin.

Congratulations to Grellan and everyone else who ran the Clonakilty marathon. Sorry I missed all the fun.

8 Dec: 10 miles, 1:18:23, 7:50 pace, HR 146
9 Dec: 10 miles, 1:18:10, 7:49 pace, HR 144
10 Dec: 5 miles, 37:49, 7:34 pace, HR 147
11 Dec: 15.1 miles, 1:58:51, 7:52 pace, HR 146

Weekly Mileage: 69+

Evaluation

2011-12-07T19:02:00.000Z

In marked contrast to the weeks following the Dublin marathon, I have taken it very easy following the race in Sixmilebridge and the legs have been thanking me for it. While the log after Dublin has a smattering of “heavy legs” entries, they have been feeling fine every morning of the last two weeks. With the sensible decision of giving Clonakilty a miss, I am hoping they will have recovered from the year’s racing by New Year to be in a position to soak up the training that is to come in 2012.

Sunday had been a good bit faster than planned (still not sure what happened there – it certainly did not feel fast at the time), so Monday was always going to be easy. Even though I did not keep an eye on the Garmin and the run did not really feel all that different, it was half a minute per mile slower. Make of that what you will, but it sure shows that my present pace judgement isn’t something I would want to rely on.

Subjective feeling is one thing, cold and hard figures are another, and the way I get those figures are by doing an evaluation run. I very nearly skipped this on Tuesday because I kept waking in the middle of the night listening to the storm outside, and one thing I have learned is that you don’t get meaningful figures in those conditions. I even re-set the alarm at some stage. However, I happened to wake up just before 6 o’clock, it was quiet outside and I decided to give it a go after all.

The last evaluation showed some real problems and I was a bit apprehensive what the figures would be like this time round. One early plus point was that I managed to stay out of the blackberry bushes this time, and then the figures weren’t too bad. In fact, they were better than expected.

I ran the 4 miles at a HR 161 in 6:42, 6:50, 6:54, 6:53 and then the HR took 41 seconds at standstill to drop down to 130. The pace from the second mile on was very stable, so that is a definite plus and an improvement to previous evaluations. The overall pace was ok, I have run a couple of faster ones but a lot more slower ones. The recovery time, however, was definitely high; I have seen it around 32 seconds before. There is still some serious amount of deep fatigue lingering in the system (but then again, it was 45 seconds 3 weeks ago). I will do another evaluation in 2 weeks’ time, after some more easy running. Let’s see.

I followed it up this morning with 9 easy miles. The weather keeps throwing some challenges my way, but I suppose I must have been toughening up lately. I used to run a different, slightly more sheltered, route in these windy conditions; now I just get on with it on the Caragh Lake road. Still, an end to the rain would be nice. I can’t remember the last time I came home dry.

5 Dec: 8 miles, 1:03:35, 7:57 pace, HR 137
6 Dec: 12 miles, 1:26:16, 7:11 pace, HR 151
4 mile eval: 6:42, 6:50, 6:54, 6:53 (normalised figures)
41 seconds to 130
7 Dec: 9 miles, 1:11:22, 7:56 pace, HR 139

Rallying

2011-12-04T20:45:00.003Z

As the days are passing by, the clouds in my mind are starting to clear; the ones in the sky seem to multiply. The weather has been pretty bad lately and I don't think there is much improvement in sight. Better dig out the long sleeves again. It might not get icy this winter, but rain at close to 0 degree is worse.

There was a vintage cars rally on Saturday, and just like the "real" event they chose Caragh Lake as one of the stages - pretty much the exact route as my favourite running option, in fact. It meant getting up early or I would have been trapped in our driveway, but I was awake at 6 o'clock and since by 6:30 staring at the ceiling had lost its fascination I was out of the door even sooner than planned. With so much time on my hands, I decided to add a bit to the run and upped it to 10 miles. A couple of cars were indeed out on the course, but obviously not at race pace.

Today was the coldest day yet, the thermometer got stuck at 3C, the icy wind did not help and neither did the couple of rain showers, but thankfully neither lasted more than a few minutes. Maybe it was the crispy conditions that made me run faster. I did not even notice it, I never check the Garmin on those easy runs any more; it was until after I got back home that I realised that I had inadvertently gone under 7:30 pace. It had felt very easy, but the HR was a bit higher than the previous days. Had I paid more attention I would have noticed the higher effort, I suppose, but then again easy runs like that are my form of meditation, I just run while my brain is basically switched off.

3 Dec: 10 miles, 1:16:46, 7:40 pace, HR 148
4 Dec: 12 miles, 1:29:57, 7:29 pace, HR 149

Weekly Mileage: 62

Checking Progress

2011-12-02T13:19:00.003Z

Some runners love their Garmins, others, usually older folk, hate them. Personally I’m firmly on the love side, but with reservations. I use it to monitor my workouts, not dictate them. As such, I find it a very helpful tool and one thing I always keep an eye out is the pace/HR ratio. I have a spreadsheet that spits out a VDOT number for virtually any pace/HR combination. The higher the VDOT the better, and as I get fitter during base training, the number gradually moves up (or, at least, that’s what it’s supposed to do).

In my previous blog entry I mentioned how that ratio had suddenly jumped up by a significant amount. Sadly, that did not last and the last few days have all yielded a much lower VDOT number. The outside factors were all fairly similar, plenty of rain, wind and cold as I ran the exactly same 8 miles each morning.

I do have a bit of a cold at the moment; I think it’s finally on its way out, but there are still some lingering effects. Nothing major, but it’s certainly a possible factor for the higher than expected HR.

Life goes on and training goes on. I have been taking it very easy since Sixmilebridge and as a result have not had any issues with heavy, tired legs that felt like a pair of concrete pillars, in contrast to the post-Dublin weeks. I would like to increase the mileage again, but right now the HR data keeps me from doing so. It’s already December, the next training phase is only a few weeks away and I want to make sure that I'm not tired at the very start of it.

All other 4-year olds I know, including my (now older) own ones, have to be coerced into eating vegetables by playing silly games. You know, pretending to be an aeroplane and landing in the mouth, that kind of caper. Maia, on the other hand, only got to be persuaded to eat her broccoli when mummy pointed out that they look just like alveoli. And if you just had to check wikipedia then I know a 4-year old who is smarter than you (and, admittedly, has an unusual obsession with the human body).

30 Nov: 8 miles, 1:02:30, 7:49 pace, HR 145
1 Dec: 8 miles, 1:02:14, 7:47 pace, HR 145
2 Dec: 8 miles, 1:02:59, 7:52 pace, HR 144

Copy/Paste

2011-11-29T15:44:00.003Z

As it happens, Mick Rice just posted a very appropriate picture on his blog. I'm going to “borrow” it unashamedly.

Sometimes life gets tough. There are bumps in the road. You learn to deal with it. You adapt. You don’t forget, but you may learn from it all, let the wounds heal and come out stronger. Life goes on.

I took Monday off work, had a stressful day but nevertheless managed to run for an hour at lunch time. I never looked at the Garmin, just ran easily, and was totally blown away when I realised what pace I had just averaged; 4 days earlier I had run at the same HR 30 seconds per mile slower. I have seen jumps in HR before on plenty of occasions, always following a race, but never to such an extend in so short a time.

The HR/pace connection continued this morning. I never looked at the Garmin when running. At home, I was at first dismayed with the slow pace, but then realised how low the HR had been. I'm now wondering if I should run a bit faster or not. Last year the coach had told me to keep the HR mostly to the lower 140s (though he’s not that keen on HR in general); running at a rate of 135 is a fair amount below that level, but the legs felt no different, really.

The low HR was all the more surprising considering today’s conditions. Icy wind coupled with heavy rain and flooded roads made for some hardcore miles in the dark, which I would normally expect to drive the HR up by a few beats. Anyway, for the time being I’ll keep running at an easy effort and see how things develop. I might increase the mileage at some stage, but nothing crazy. I only ran 25 miles last week, following the off days after Sixmilebridge, and that’s obviously going to increase straight away.

Maia has her future planned already. When she’s big, Mummy and her brothers and sister will have to vacate the house, as she needs it for her own children. I'm allowed to stay – she needs a daddy to look after her kids, apparently. The gerbil can stay too – we’re both very grateful.

28 Nov: 8 miles, 59:12, 7:24 pace, HR 143
29 Nov: 8 miles, 1:03:18, 7:55 pace, HR 135

Running Is My Therapy

2011-11-27T11:58:00.006Z

We had a couple a traumatic days. I'm not sure if I would be able to cope had I not running as my valve to let of steam. Got very emotional at times.

It was very windy yesterday, a couple of hours before the real storm was supposed to hit. In marked contrast, today was stunningly beautiful, sunshine and little wind, and entirely unexpected. I probably ran too fast, but this one was entirely for the head, trying to get rid of some of the trauma.

Can't say too much - sorry. Normal service will resume. Let's just say I'm immensely grateful that running gives me something to hold on to.

Maia drew a couple of pictures on tissues, apparently THE arty thing to do when you're 4 years old. Apparently that's me in the background, running while being chased by the neighbours' dog. In the foreground that's her playing with her toys (ah sure, it's obvious, just look at it). Having a happy, enthusiastic and innocent 4 year old around helps as well.

24 Nov: 5 miles, 39:36, 7:55 pace, HR 143
25 Nov: 5 miles, 38:36, 7:43 pace, HR 146
26 Nov: 7 miles, 55:39, 7:57 pace, HR 145
27 Nov: 8 miles, 1:00:34, 7:34 pace, HR 143

Looking Back, Looking Forward

2011-11-23T13:25:00.003Z

When I looked at the official results page I realised I made a mistake in my race report; since I stopped the Garmin several seconds after crossing the finish line, the last mile was actually a good bit faster than the 7:13 I reported – it was closer to 7:00, which comfortably makes it my fastest mile of the day. Being able to pull off a 7:00 mile without even pushing the pace at the end of a 30 mile race is a good place to be.

Despite the fact that I let my competitive instincts get the better of me, I don’t regret a single thing. Given the chance I’d do it again, without a second thought. Winning feels great, even in a non-competitive event like Sunday’s. Of course it goes without saying that a) if it had been a competitive event I would not have won and even so, b) the single most important factor in me winning the 30 mile race was the fact that Mick Rice had decided to “only” run the marathon.

I had not mentioned it, but in Dublin quite a few people told me that I looked a lot younger in real life than in the pictures from my blog. I got the same comments again on Sunday, with the clear suggestion to change my profile picture. The funny thing is, right at this moment I am actually 3.5 years OLDER than my profile picture, which was taken around mile 15 in the 2008 Cork marathon. I guess the 15 miles have added a few years to my face. Problem is, this is a running blog and I'm struggling to find a photo of me running where I don’t look like Quasimodo’s less handsome older brother. Just like that one from Sunday:

I also need a haircut.

I remember standing in the pub in Sixmilebridge before the prize ceremony, when they brought out a few plates of sandwiches. They made the mistake of putting one right in front of me. Without thinking and without noticing what I was doing, I gobbled up almost the entire plate on my own. I was genuinely embarrassed when I realised what I had done – not embarrassed enough to not grab yet another sandwich from another plate on my way out, though. I must have been craving that food after the race, and I firmly believe that the time immediately after such a run you should give in to those cravings; your body knows what it needs. Apologies to all the other runners who might have been left starving after my binge are in order, though.

Let’s move on. Every time I got asked on Sunday if I would go to Clonakilty in 3 weeks, I responded with “if I get permission”, elegantly shifting the blame to my lovely wife should I be unable to make an appearance. Actually, and reluctantly, I have now decided to give this a miss and it has nothing to do with Niamh and all to do with me trying not to overtrain.

The evaluation I ran last Thursday clearly showed some deep fatigue lingering in my system, and that was even before I added 30 miles at 7:23 pace on top of it. As much fun as I had on Sunday, my goal remains Connemara and I want to get there in the best possible shape and right now that means stepping back a bit and giving the legs a break. It’s not just the evaluation, ever since Dublin my running log has been filled with comments “fine”, “bad”, “good”, “legs like concrete pilars”, “fine again”, and so on, a complete mix of good and bad days without any noticeable pattern, and I can’t go into the next training phase like that. Sixmilebridge was a magic day, but I don’t want it to be a once-off, and for that I need to step back and relax for a while.

Following that, and in marked contrast to my days post Dublin, I have not run a single step yet this week, despite not feeling tired and not feeling sore at all; even walking down a staircase does not provide any discomfort whatsoever. That’s good, but I prefer erring on the side of caution for once, and my former coach, who still has an eye on my training, is very much in agreement.

Still, easy running will resume shortly and I'm looking forward to it.

21 Nov: 0 miles
22 Nov: 0 miles
23 Nov: 0 miles

More Than A Feeling

2011-11-20T21:24:00.009Z

(If only Boston had gone as well).

I did not know Eddie very well, but I had met him on one or two occasions and I was shocked when hearing of his death last April. I all the more appreciated Tom Enright's plan of putting on a race in Eddie's memory, and all the proceedings went to the hospital charity nominated by Eddie's brothers. It was a wonderful gesture. Today was that day.

Of course this was not supposed to be a "race" race. The setting did not suit it and anyway, I am in the early phases of my training for Connemara. I have messed up my recovery from Dublin, I had not slept well the last couple of days, I had not tapered and I was treating this strictly as a long training run. I could not mess this one up even more, could I?

Though as Mike pointed out correctly, once you pin a number onto your shirt, all bets are off. I guess I should have known.

After some truly wild condition during the week, the weather forecast for Sunday had been ideal, no rain and 10C, not too much wind. It felt pretty cool when waiting at the start and I noticed I was the only competitor amongst 15 who was wearing a singlet, but I knew I would warm up as soon as we set off.

The plan was to start at around 8-minute pace, drop it to 7:45 or so once I warmed up and then see how it goes. You know what they say about plans. Mine didn't even last to the first corner.

Usually there is at least one fast guy running any race, which means the rest of us don't have to worry about winning. In this case though, the one fast guy around, the incomparable Mick Rice, had opted for the marathon, leaving the Ultra to us plodders.

There was also a double-marathon going on at the same time. The guys had started 3 hours ahead of us and looked weary already. I'm sure they were fed with us during our first few loops, when we were all bright, fresh and excited, in marked contrast to their own weary style.

The race course was a one mile loop, with a nice little hill in the middle, not too long and not steep at all, though sufficient to solicit plenty of moaning over the next few hours. There was a cone at the end of the start/finish area that created a short out-and-back section and required a very tight 180 degree turn. The rest of the loop went through the delights of Sixmilebridge. I never thought I'd ever study Sixmilebridge in such great detail

I might have been able to live with the fact that same other guy was running faster than me. Maybe. But when Deirdre Finn (who I think won the Belfast 24 hour race last July) took the lead, my fragile male ego could not take it. Idiocy triumphed over reason, testosterone won over grey matter, logic went out of the window, you name it. She was running about 7:30 pace, and I followed in her wake. Together with another guy, Declan, we formed the leading group.

Miles 1-5: 7:26, 7:26, 7:26, 7:25, 7:35

The first few miles were impressively even, which was absolutely not down to me. I was running right behind Declan and Deirdre most of the time, admiring the very, very even effort. I even commented on it.

We passed the start/finish area every mile and one of my targets was to spend very little time there. It is very tempting to stop every time and grab a drink, a gel, a
biscuit and/or whatever else springs to mind each time, but 30 stops can quickly add up to a lot of wasted time.

By mile 8, I took over the lead once more, expecting the others to stay right behind. I did not up the pace, just kept going at the same effort. I was a couple of seconds ahead at mile 9, and all of a sudden I was 30 seconds ahead at mile 10. That wasn't in the plan.

Miles 6-10: 7:43, 7:29, 7:23, 7:29, 7:27

Mind, I was feeling so comfortable I could have thought I was out for an easy Sunday jog. I decided to keep going at exactly the same effort level and see how things would develop. I was not worried about hitting the wall. I was feeling too good to worry about anything right now.

The marathon had started an hour after our Ultra, and the tenth and eleventh lap were rather congested, but then the field spread out and from then on there was always plenty of company around.

I can always test my levels of fatigue in the manner I treat runners when I overtake them. This also works very well in Connemara where you catch up the with the marathon and later the half marathon runners. It works even better on a loop course like this, where you meet the same runners several times and soon get very familiar with them. If I feel ok, I greet all of them, maybe just a quick hello, or some little motivation, "getting there", "looking good". As I get more fatigued, this changes into just a little "hi". And when things get bad, I become silent. Sorry, nothing personal. It's a surprisingly effective gauge.

Miles 11-15: 7:15, 7:15, 7:14, 7:10, 7:15

I was still at the chirpy stage. The miles were flying, the hill seemed flatter every time, I had a little chat with almost everyone on the course, high-fiving kids and volunteers and so on. I realised I was speeding up a little, but still felt so comfortable I just let it go on.

At that stage I had tuned totally into the effort and it becomes difficult to remember at which part of the race certain things happened. Mick Rice passed me, looking as comfortable running 6:25 miles as I was doing 7:25.

I was getting a thrill out being in front while knowing I had loads in reserve. I knew I was going to win today.

Miles 16-20: 7:19, 7:22, 7:21, 7:25, 7:19

Around mile 18, a little bit of fatigue slowly started creeping into the legs, but since I was already closer to the finish than the start, I was not worried at all. I tried to decide what to do if the pace started suffering. Should I accept it or should I increase the effort in an attempt to keep the pace even? As it turns out, since I did not keep an eye on the individual mile splits, I was never really aware when the pace did indeed slow down a little bit, so I never had to make that decision.

Miles 21-25: 7:37, 7:33, 7:24, 7:33, 7:32

I was getting closer to the marathon point and still feeling fresh as a daisy. Most of the other runners had become increasingly quiet by now. I noticed I wasn't quite as chirpy myself, but still had a few words for just about everyone on the road. I was enjoying myself so much, I cannot put it into words. I live for days like that.

I was almost sorry when I entered the last few miles because I did not want this to end.

Still, I got really excited towards the end, telling all the volunteers and a lot of the other runners that I was on my last lap, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Mick Rice caught me one more time and rightfully called my a sissy when I responded "not this year" to his question if I was going to do the Connemara 100. You can always count on Mick to keep things in perspective.

Miles 26-30: 7:34, 7:24, 7:27, 7:27, 7:13

On the final climb I wondered why I was busting a gut, chasing after Mick when I could soak in the atmosphere and enjoy the glory stretch instead, so I eased up a little bit, but I still produced my second fastest lap of the day. I could not wipe that grin off my face and breaking the tape gave me a big thrill. I just don't get a lot of wins.

I do not have the words to describe just how much I had enjoyed today's race. I have no idea where that performance came from. Not once did I push the pace all day, maybe apart from the very last hill. I could have run much, much further today, as well as faster, and if that had been Connemara the sub-5 would have fallen with plenty to spare. Coming into this race I had every intention of running 20 minutes slower, but I do not regret a thing. Days like today don't come very often, and when they come, you should grab them. Live's too short. Eddie would have agreed, I'm sure.

20 Nov: Sixmilebridge 30 mile Ultra
3:41:34, 7:23 pace, avg. HR 157

Thank you to Tom Enright for putting on a great race with excellent organisation, to all the volunteers and all the other runners. This really is a true runners' race, and I could not enjoyed it more.

Pretend Taper, Pretend Carbo Loading

2011-11-19T14:26:00.003Z

I think we can take one thing for granted; if I managed to run through the conditions of the last few days then there won't be any problems running through the winter. The weather has been absolutely atrocious. Caragh Lake and Caragh River's water are at the highest levels I have ever seen them. When Niamh went walking yesterday morning she remarked that the lake had changed its shape, all the flood plains surrounding it had become part of it. On Friday I ran through a piece of road that was a least one foot under water; there is a little wall at the side of the road, normally separating the road from the lake, which was entirely submerged. I had to run through that twice, on the way out as well as on the way back. Trail runners might be used to river crossings, I am not. Maybe the impromptu ice bath for the lower limbs was beneficial, you never know.

Running wise, I felt reasonably good, trying to forget the numbers from Wednesday's evaluation. I ran virtually the same run on Thursday and Friday and noticed a significant drop in HR between the two. Saturday's run was a mere 5 easy miles which basically makes up my taper for tomorrow's 30 mile race in Sixmilebridge, but of course that will only be a training effort for me, not a race as such. Nevertheless I am very much looking forward to it.

Niamh is in Cork all day today, the twins are out and I am tasked with minding the two little ones. The good thing about sitting around on your own the day before a long race is that you don't have to worry about carbo loading, the carbs seem to find their way into my mouth all by themselves. The bad thing about sitting around on your own the day before a long race is that you take the race as an excuse to totally pig out on anything that's sweet. I must have take more calories onboard that I will burn in tomorrow's race already, and it's not even three o'clock yet and City are going to be on the telly soon.

Well, I suppose the good thing about the recent weather was that it seems to have gotten it all out of the system. It's a lovely day today and the forecast for tomorrow is pretty benign. I don't think we will let get anything in the way of a serious day of good fun. I'll let you know how it went, of course.

17 Nov: 8 miles, 1:01:19, 7:40 pace, HR 146
18 Nov: 8 miles, 1:01:09, 7:39 pace, HR 143
19 Nov: 5 miles, 38:38, 7:44 pace, HR 141