This was just a short distance run as the past couple of evenings were pretty intense so glad of the chance to take it easy tonight. It probably helped that the Garmin was very low on battery (stupid thing switched on while it was meant to be charging and then instead of charging properly it actually drained the battery instead!) and so I ran with it as simply a stopwatch. ‘Lapped’ splits at known points but never really bothered with the pace, hence nice and relaxed 5:45/km!
Friday, 10th January 2014 – 14.5km Distance (5:30/km)
Only got out in the evening for this and wasn’t particularly in the mood for it! After yesterdays shorter than recommended run I decided to add a couple of extra kms to todays run. Could feel a little more life in the legs but still kept it easy for tomorrows run…
Saturday, 11th January 2014 – 10.2km St. Anne’s Parkrun (4:04/km) with WU & CD
A long threatening comes at last and after wanting to get a Parkrun in for nearly every of the past 4 weekends I eventually managed to get down for the St. Anne’s run this morning. A short warm-up found me at the starting line area with 5 mins to spare. The run itself was probably about 5 mins late getting started though. I lined up about 25-30 people from the front and in no time we were away!
I settled into a 3:55/km pace as I wasn’t quite so fresh as Wed night. The first lap went smoothly and there was little passing happening. I may have been passed by a couple of people but then passed a couple of others to maintain position. Kept it strong for the 900m avenue run before starting into the second lap. At this point I discarded my cap as I was beginning to overheat by now. The second lap was quite similar with the pace now closer to 4:10/km so things were slowing a bit but I was passing a few people now who were obviously suffering with maintaining to keep the speed til the line. The run-in saw me pass a couple of more people but with about 20m remaining some guy came thundering through to pass about 10 of us – not sure where he came out of but you’d have to think he was taking it handy for the remainder of the race!
Ended up with 20:35 – a course PB – and 27th position out of almost 320 runners/walkers. I reckon I’m not far off a sub 20 performance by now if I ran relatively fresh. Finished things off by going for a recovery run around the park. Even though the plan had included a set of Intervals for the week I replaced it with this race and the 3 mile race on Wed night. I think that was enough 5k paced stuff for the week!
Sunday, 12th January 2014 – 30.8km LSR (5:13/km)
Today called for a LSR of between 31-35km with the final 6km @ MTP (4:36/km). However, after a late night last night I was skeptical about the fast 6km to say the least. The nature of my route meant the final 10km would be into the breeze and net uphill most of the way. This allied with me being tired before I ever set off meant I’d already pretty much scrapped the faster section in my head.
The first 10km were net downhill and into the breeze, so I was relatively pleased to manage to keep the average pace close to 5:00/km around here. The middle 10km came along the coast road and the breeze was now on my back and the route flat. Early in this section I maintained my sub 5min pace but about halfway along here my energy levels were clearly beginning to suffer and the average lap pace was dropping by a few seconds, yet nothing dramatic.
Finally I was heading for home but this helped me nothing! Once I hit the Kilbarrack Road the effort required became so much tougher! The final 10km was like a death march. When I got to Coolock at 25km I had to do the unthinkable and pause for about a minute. My HR was remaining low but my breathing had become very shallow so a few deep breaths and stretches got me back on track a little bit but I was really running off fumes by now! Eventually I made it back to home having covered almost 31km which I was very accepting of, all things considered!
Pretty sure it was mainly down to very poor nutrition throughout the day – I was intending to go ‘any minute now’ for several hours so never planned/managed to eat a sufficient meal. A good reminder to prepare properly for all future LSRs!
Week 1 Summary:
RTW: 7 from 7 days
DTW: 97.9km
DTY: 180.7km
No comments:
Post a Comment