Playing catch up...in every sense!

Monday, 10th February 2014 – 11.9km Distance (4:58/km)

Very average Distance run this evening. Not a lot else to report.

Tuesday, 11th February 2014 – 6.5km Distance (5:26/km)

Got up early for this before work with the intention to loosen the legs in advance of a fast session tonight. However when night came I struggled for motivation and reneged on my quality run. Tut, tut!

Wednesday, 12th February 2014 – Rest Day

This was a forced rest day due to the fact that I had to go to Stockholm this morning on a 7:20am flight and only option for return was via Stansted where our 8:20pm flight was delayed until after 10:30pm due to crappy weather. After 12:30am when I finally got home. Even failed to catch the Arsenal v ManU match which was probably fortunate enough really!

Thursday, 13th February 2014 – 11.9km Distance (5:27/km)

With Saturday on the horizon I decided to forego my tempo session to save the legs and just did a Distance run instead.

Friday, 14th February 2014 – 7.4km Distance (5:30/km)

Just did close to the bare minimum this afternoon to keep me ticking over for tomorrow.

Saturday, 15th February 2014 – 35.3km Donadea 50k (5:13/km)

I arrived for this with 50 mins to spare and after chatting to several people (Philip / Anto / Colm / Dominic / Olwyn / Joe / Orna / Alan / Niall and a few others) we made our way to the start line. I’d not really devoted a huge amount of thought to this race but it was my intention to finish it for sure - There would be no marathon safe haven this year! I decided to join with Olwyn, Joe and Colm for the first few 5km laps. The plan for these was loosely stated as 8:15/mile which worked out at just under 5:10/km.

Just after the start.

Olwyn was pretty good at keeping the pace and was quick to announce if we were going too fast (as tended to be the case). At the end of the 4th lap I was beginning to feel the effects of the muddy conditions and was intending to ease off the group but I had drifted no further than 20m back when I noticed myself catching the up again and so by 2km later I was back with them again! At the end of this 5th lap however I stopped for a few moments not only to get some drink and nutrition into me, but also to allow a little bigger gap to develop as I knew I would struggle if I kept at that pace all the way.

(Photos courtesy of Peter Mooney, L-R)
'Cousin' Joe, Olwyn, Colm, myself and Joe D.

Usain Dunne!

The 6th lap was done solo and by the time I got to the last corner I decided to take off my runners and unclog all the dirt and pebbles that had built up in them. This turned out to be quite a lot! Only 300m later I met Philip at the finish area and he was done for the day having completed his 7 planned laps. I was chatting to him for over 2 minutes and this was indicative of my attitude to the race – I wasn't that bothered with it at all and never really zoned in to the event itself. I remember saying as much to Philip and so as I went around once more I started thinking and reassessing things before calling it a day after 7 laps (35km). 

Running solo towards the end.

I realised I had only really done 2 x 30km+ runs this year and in reality was nowhere near the shape to be doing a 50km race. I had assumed I’d just make it around in some way but really failed to give the distance the due respect. So, no surprise then that I was fading fast. The group I was running with earlier had all done plenty of long runs at this stage as Colm is training for Conn Ultra and Joe & Olwyn had been doing 18mile+ runs since early December. This slowly managed to sink in with me and it actually helped me make up my mind about Barcelona in that it would be foolish to push myself at this stage. Instead of trying to ‘jog to a PB’ and still run within myself I will now ease back further to 3:30 or so which would represent a decent training run. I’ll probably aim for a 1:50/1:40 negative split which would set me up nicely with 6 weeks to go to Dusseldorf.

Sunday, 16th February 2014 – Rest Day

Took a rest day for various reasons.

Week 6 Summary:

RTW: 5 from 7 days

DTW: 73.0km

DTY: 638.9km