Monday, 22nd July - Friday, 26th July - Rest days.
The 24hr race took a lot more out of me than I had predicted and for the first few days of the week I was pretty stiff. I was also hugely fatigued, not only from running 100 miles but also from the 40hrs without sleep. Of course what I should have done was to get to bed early those first few evenings but what I actually did was stay up to my regular late time of midnight or later! As a result I was playing catchup all week and it was no real surprise that I failed to get out for a run. I did manage to join my work colleagues for the weekly game of 5 a side on Wednesday evening where I was grand for the first half hour but faded badly towards the end.
Saturday, 27th
July, 2013 – 12.1km Balla 10kRace
I travelled
down home on Saturday with the main goal of running the Balla 10k race. I
really hadn’t a clue how I was going to perform as it was the first bit of running since Belfast. An easy 1km warm-up beforehand and a short wait before the race began. I just ran by feel and the first couple of kms were grand (4:09/4:16). There was a bit of a hill in the second km and I made sure not to push it too much. The next 2 km had a couple of tougher hills (4:21/4:24) and by now I was beginning to feel the effort in the legs. Also, a slight niggle was developing behind my left knee.
By the halfway point my pace was dropping (4:27) so I just kept plugging away with the idea of possibly nabbing a sub 44 but definitely a sub 45. The niggle was getting more pronounced now though so I had to slightly adjust my stride to ease the pain. The next couple of kms also contained hills so 4:35/4:37 was fair enough. There was now 3km to go with it slightly downhill overall. I managed to finish off with 4:27/4:22 & 4:16 before 100m of 3:40/km to the finish line. Final result was 44:16 which was a course record for me by about 2.5 mins. The race was won in a record time by Freddie Kearon Sittuk who I got chatting to later on that night over a few pints in the local. Really nice guy and he'll be going all out in Athlone in September so the best of luck to him there!
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| Myself, Freddie and Damien. |
Sunday, 28th July - Rest day.
Took a rest day due to the impact of the race yesterday.
Week 30 Summary:
RTW: 1
from 7 days
DTW: 12.1km
DTY: 2462.7km
Jesus, what are you doing racing!
ReplyDeleteIt took me at least 4 weeks last year to feel somewhat recovered, and I wouldn't have entered a race in that time if they had paid me to! It took 4 months to feel fully recovered.
You can't short-cut your recovery. Take it easy and forget about racing for a few weeks or you are heading for an injury.
Sorry for the tone of that comment.