Back out this evening with Anto again for the now customary Monday night run. Anto had ran a 10km race yesterday so was a little low on energy so we kept the pace pretty light. However, seeing as I was feeling fine (knee pain was gone) and energetic I invited him to join me in a fe kms further than usual. So it was that we went down towards the Clontarf seafront before realising just how many extra kms we were likely to do and taking a more direct route home. Ended up with almost 21km and could easily have continued on for many more. Anto though was feeling it in the last few kms and was beginning to curse me given that this is the week of Conn Ultra! Hoping that run won’t adversely affect his time on Sunday!
Tuesday, 1st April 2014 – 12.7km Tempo: 10k @ MTP (4:24/km)
Back down the local park for this. Now that it’s April the park is now open til 8pm rather than 6pm yesterday. I took advantage of this to get some faster stuff in this evening. Again the Garmin was struggling to locate my trail properly resulting in dodgy readings for the first mile before copping itself on! By that stage I was motoring nicely though so I decided to keep to MP pace and use this as my Tempo session for the week (of course this means I will now have to do my LSR tomorrow evening!).
During the first km the inside of my right knee was back to being sore again but the pain eased off soon after that. The MP pace was feeling alright and indeed many of the splits were coming in at 4:20/km. Looking at the data shows I was hitting a couple of beats below my Marathon HR of 150bpm for most of the faster stuff so that was highly promising. This makes me believe that sub 3:10 should be my goal in Dusseldorf now. I’d be very pleased to hit that goal but I think I’d not be giving myself a chance to run to my current potential if I only aimed for 3:15. Time will tell!
Wednesday, 2nd April 2014 – 34.0km LSR (4:59/km)
I approached this run as part two of my LSR. The legs weren’t quite as tired as last week but I wasn’t complaining. A quick nap after work meant I was out running by 6:30pm. I decided I’d head to the local park to do several 1 mile laps in the bank before going outside and doing one large loop for the remainder.
So it was while lapping around the park that I calculated 6 laps would equate to approx 13km by the time I left. In a big change from yesterday the thick drizzle meant there were very few others around to share the park with. For the first 10km or so I could feel the knee giving me jib again and I was becoming wary of doing extra damage to whatever the issue is. Thankfully though it subsided and I didn’t really feel it again after that.
Last night’s run certainly didn’t affect me nearly as much as last weeks which meant from the start I eased into 5:00/km as the average pace. I put all thoughts of struggling later in the run to the back of my mind and kicked on. Eventually I was done with the park and the boredom of laps. Now I was out on the big lap and had a destination to get to which made things somewhat easier from a mental aspect. The flipside meant I now had to contend with road traffic and junctions on a very miserable evening. My saving grace was that it wasn’t too cold or windy, but my clothes were saturated quite early on.
I kept the pace steady at just under 5:00/km all the way to the seafront and when I got on the coastal path it was time to kick into MP action. I’m never great at changing pace in a run (apart from involuntarily slowing down!) so was thankful that the 30secs/km step-up came without too much pain and before I knew it I was 3 down with 2 remaining. The latter sections found me giving an increased effort but still quite manageable. The 5k was done and dusted in 4:28/km pace so I was quite happy with that. The av HR was slightly higher than ideal but that could easily be down to running in the dark while wearing heavily saturated clothing – neither of which I hope to encounter in Düsseldorf!
The remaining 9km were just about getting home and once the big MP effort was completed my mentality changed to taking it easier with the pace drifting out a bit. However, a quick final km still got the full run in at sub 5min pace so I was very happy with that. Also, I never really got tired apart from the final 4km where I was mainly going uphill wih 30km already in the legs. This was much improved on last week.
So, a very productive training run (which is probably the toughest in the plan) successfully negotiated. Easy paced running for the remainder of the week and then Belcarra 8km race on Sunday.
Week 11 Summary (so far):
RTW: 3 from 3 days
DTW: 67.4km
DTY: 1,303.1km
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