10 days out LT test.

Monday, 25th November, 2013 - 7.4km Easy Run (5:03/km)

This was initially very relaxed and when I saw it hit 5:5x by the end of the first km it jumped me into action and up the effort. Second km was around 5:13/km and felt grand so I maintained it around the 5:00/km Easy pace for the rest of the run and ended up with about 4 sets of strides. I’m going to add this aspect into all easy and recovery runs in future to see if it helps with my running economy/form.

Tuesday, 26th November, 2013 – 11.9km Easy Run (5:16/km)

Met up with Anto and his mate Tom after work for this run. They were looking for an hour long run so that tied in with my 11.9km loop perfectly. Fairly handy run that went by pretty quickly due to the company. Anto seemed to speed things up towards the end but it was still grand.

All done and dusted in plenty of time to have dinner before settling down to watch the Gunners easily beat Marseille. Nice!

Wednesday, 27th November, 2013 - 7.4km Recovery Run (5:35/km)

I was seriously tempted to head to Raheny and do the inaugural race in their Winter Series – a 3 mile race of 3 x 1mile laps – but had originally planned a Tempo run on Thurs evening. So, rather than put the tempo run in jeopardy I decided to stay local and do a recovery run instead. Threw in about 7 strides at the end but kept them easy enough that I would still be fresh for tomorrow.

I used my blue Kayanos for this run and could feel little niggles throughout the gentle run so when I got home I checked the soles and sure enough they were well worn. So, straight to the ‘I may need them sometime, but not now’ pile with them. I am now left to my orange pair (with probably just 200km left on them) and a pair I got off Philip which have plenty of running left yet. Probably soon time to start looking again for a new pair when the sales start.

Thursday, 28th November, 2013 – 10.5km with 9.2km @ LT (4:20/km)
I was advised by Stephen yesterday to ignore the 3 mile race in Raheny in order to focus on this LT test. The objective was to hit 4:20/km for 40 mins. This would suggest that I was back in shape for a decent attempt next weekend. The important factor to monitor was the average HR to see if it went stratospheric like last Saturday. I was pretty confident that wouldn’t happen but I was still eager to see what the numbers were like.

I drove to the Coast Road so as to do the session along the bike/pedestrian lane which is perfect for this sort of run – dead flat, good surface, decent lighting and not too busy. I started with a 1km warm-up and before I knew it I was off doing the faster stuff. The first few kms were grand with my HR taking a little time to hit the mid 150’s which was the expected range. After 3.6km I reached the end of the path and had to turn around. I was a little faster than required to this point and the turnaround gave me a 4:13/km split which in part was due to the GPS getting confused as it always does when doing a 180 degree turn. There was now a decent breeze in my face but thankfully it wasn’t too strong. If anything it was useful to keep me at a nice cool temperature as it was an unseasonably mild evening.

Greyed section is the LT segment.

The next couple of kms were dropping closer to the late 4:2x’s, so I reckon the breeze was costing me about 5 seconds per km. Soon I was back in a bit of shelter and the pace upped again. Around this time I found myself getting lazy mentally so had to change it up a gear for the last 15mins. The final couple of kms were back again to the earlier splits and when it came to stopping the watch I was back on the goal pace of 4:20/km.

It was only when I got home that I checked the HR properly and I was very happy to see it average out at 154bpm with a max of 161bpm which was only hit for a very short period of time.

So, according to Jack Daniels I was right in at the correct pace with a HR on the very low end of the range…test passed with flying colours!

Week 47 Summary (so far):

RTW: 4 from 4 days

DTW: 37.2 km

DTY: 3,618.2 km

Mallow 10 miler

Monday, 18^th March – 16.2km Mallow 10 Miler (4:25/km)

After going against plan and enjoying my Paddy’s Day in the pubs of Killarney I still managed to wake early Monday morning in lots of time for getting to Mallow. Thankfully the legs were still good so it looked like recovery was top notch from both the marathon as well as the drinking!

Bohermeen Half Marathon

Sunday, 3rd March – 21.1km HM Race with 2km w/u
Last night I was in Croker to watch a pretty good game as the Dubs (boo!) beat Mayo. During the course of the evening I was prepared to allow myself 2-3 drinks but as is the way on these occasions this eventually stretched out to 5 pints of Guinness. However, seeing that I was home by just a little after 10pm I was ok with my excesses as I was still 14 hours from race start.

Time to crank it up

Monday, 25th February – 11.8km Recovery Run with 10 x strides
A very easy recovery run this evening. Felt great for first couple of kms but slowly I started feeling the weekend’s running hit me as the run progressed. It’s only now that I’m learning the real worth of a properly slow (5:4x/km) recovery run and not a 5:15/km ‘easy’ run!
I was feeling like it was a read plod for the middle section so I threw in 10 sets of strides towards the end just to change things up and to ward off the boredom. It seemed to work well so I think I’ll do similarly for future runs.

Chicago here I come!

Monday, 18th February – 11.5km Progression run
My legs were still a little achy from Saturday but not wanting to be too lazy I decided to throw 9 sets of strides at them after 1km of this run. Rather than measure distance or time on the watch I simply counted my way through ‘one 1000, two 1000, three 1000…’ all the way to ‘twenty 1000’. This roughly equates to 20 seconds and avoids me having to keep looking at my watch in the dark (helping me to avoid tripping and falling…again!).

Treading water

Mon, Feb 11th - 8.9km Recovery Run
Another recovery run just to ease the legs back into it after the CPHT. Felt like I was plodding a fair bit in parts. Beginning to think the issue with right groin is causing the tenderness in left quad by over-compensating during footfall.

Analysis – LT Interval

So, last night was my third LT intervals night and that threw up a chance at comparing sessions to see how I’m coming along.

Faster, longer, better.

Mon, 21st Jan – 8.0km Recovery Run
This started out as a recovery run but as the kms passed by I was feeling fresh so kept upping the pace until I hit ‘Easy pace’ for the last 1.5km. I had to hold myself back in the end as I knew the LT intervals were up tomorrow.

Tue, 22nd Jan – 27.1km LT Intervals with 5 x 2km
I was dreading this for most of the day. I had decided to up the number of reps from four to five x 2km intervals so I knew it was going to be pretty tough. After a few kms of warm-up I started into the first rep. Once again the main issue was getting the HR up to the correct range of 155bpm. These cold evenings help keep the HR lower than normal as the body doesn’t need to process as much excess heat as on a balmy summer’s evening (not that we’d ever have the problem either!).

Parklife.

Sat, 19th Jan – Malahide Parkrun 5k 

The weather this morning was only a little better so when I turned up in Malahide I was expecting plenty of flooded pathways. I managed a nice easy 2.8km warm-up en-route to the race start and within a few minutes we were off for the race proper. 

More LT intervals

Tue, 15th Jan – 21.1km LT Intervals with 4 x 2km

LT interval session #2 was due this evening and a chance to stretch the legs properly with a bit of speed. The plan was 18km with 5 w/u – 4 x 2km @ LT – 5 c/d. As the evening was bitterly cold again I went with the leggings to help keep me warm during the first 5km of a warm-up. Bit of a misnomer there really as to stay warm I ended up running quicker than I really ought to have. 

London Calling.

Off to London for the weekend so fitting in a few runs was going to be a challenge...

Fri, 11th Jan - 8.0km Recovery Run
In between leaving work and boarding a flight to London for the weekend I managed to sneak a recovery 8km around the block. A nice easy run with nothing much exciting to report.

Sat, 12th Jan - 21.7km LSR
While my mate Ronan was managing his football team to only their second win of the season (which moved them off the bottom of their league and into safety!) I was off on a trail run along the Thames.

Regaining belief.

Monday, 7th January  - 17.7km LT Intervals with 8 x 1km.
The new week began with bringing Tuesday's LT run forward a day seeing as I was feeling significantly fresher than Sunday. A couple of easy kms and then I started into the interval sessions. I had decided on 8 intervals of 1,000m as a purely arbitrary number with a similarly arbitrary 500m recovery in between.

Scraping away the rust.

Wednesday, 2nd January  - 8.0km recovery run.
I failed to get out on New Year's Day due to being tired and a little hungover from the night before in Galway. So my 2013 running started back on the 2nd - still a day earlier than last year so already I'm up! Just managed a recovery paced run as I wanted to ease gently back into it. For some unknown reason the run failed to save onto the Garmin correctly...not a good omen for the new year!