For all kinds of reasons the truth is i'm probably not organised enough to keep an archive quality record of my training. Obviously I'd prefer to shoulder all of the blame for this. It would not be fair of me to let this post past with acknowledging Siobhan's worthy role in the rather messy affair of tracking my training - without her I'm fairly sure the Garmin would be fully charged and reset, ready to go each morning for another piece of meticulous recording taking and i wouldn't spend my evening trying to forensically unpick her GPS records from mine.  But while we are on the subject - with only 6 weeks to go now to her first ( and possibly only) marathon, her dedication to the cause has been fantastic, she's at that brilliant stage where every long run is longer than she has ever run before and with the next few weeks bringing two 19milers and a 22 miler she has lots to look forward to.

Anyway, I'd rather than fight my poor record taking i figure i'll embrace it instead and drop the minutae detail of the training week and limit it to a couple of highlights from the past few weeks. Overall there has been some pretty good mileage  (low 70's) without too much fuss or drama. Weeks 8,9 and 10 have now passed in the blink of an eye and we have maybe 4 weeks of proper training left.

The highight of week 8 was on the Friday a 90 minute run with  a 50' mixed paced tempo of 3:50 / 3:35 in continuous cycles of 5', it was a workouts that I had been dreading all week, but actually and rather surprisingly  it went ok and the recovery bits at 3:50 pace felt pretty comfortable, I was just doing my best to feel strong and in control of the run and not crumble and feel weak as we got to the end.  The lowlight of the week was the 6 X 5' at 3:30 pace with 1' recovery  that I ran early in the morning. It was tough going and was quickly reduced to a state of oxygen deprived stupidity and i got mixed up between the 6's and the 5's  and ended up only doing 5 repeats, only figuring it out as I jogged home whilst going through the splits on the garmin.  I think i need some kind of counting system for intervals - its not the first time its happened I'm sure. On the Saturday, i changed my shoes and got new mizuno wave rider 13, which feel pretty comfortable and on the Sunday i did a pretty hard 90' easy / 60' at 4:00 pace total of 35k in 2.5 hours, this felt solid the whole way, I didn't bring water or gels so was pretty dehydrated by the end of it.

Week 9 was pretty similar in structure, the speed work on the tuesday was 16 X 400's and they went well, Friday's workout was 90' in total with 60' @ 3:50 pace, this took a bit of work to the hold the pace towards the end - and might have looked and sounded a little messy for the final 5 - 10 minutes. Between the jigs and the reels (and the new runners) i ended up with a rather messy looking inflamed toe that necessitated a trip to the doctor for some difene and a bit of TLC at home after my long run on the Sunday.

Week 10 in contrast was an easy week with no sessions at all - just 5 lovely days of easy running and a long run on sunday that I ran in Kilkenny with a friend of mine who recently ran the Berlin Marathon in 2:54. It was a beautiful crisp morning - clear skies, countryside looking fresh and clean -  so we headed out into the hills towards Johnswell and we did 90' easy steady at 4:44 pace before i headed off and did 60' @ 3:57 on a loop around the city. Ok, so the country is in a jocker over the economy, we've a budget coming down the line that is probably going to tear the heart out of the country, and the media has us in a tail spin we ca't get out of - but on days like sunday - you realise there is no better place to live...(and then you turn the radio back on!)

This weekend I'll run the Leinster Novice Xcountry in Mullingar, we won't have a club team but I'm hoping to scrape onto the tail end of a county team if we can get enough people out. 

After the race last Friday, and the boozy BBQ that followed it, I was pretty wiped and cried off my LSR on the Sunday. Feedback from JB on the race performance was underwhelming (much like the run itself), and while he didn't say it directly the tone was clearly "could do better". With that in mind, I focused on doing good workouts this week, getting quality sleep and sticking to a healthier diet. Tuesday was the minor workout of the week with 12 x 30" light hills - a really nice workout that makes you work but is not too intense. I have a regular spot to hit on these now and don't even have to check the watch. Wednesday was a 75' run at steady pace (4:27) whileThursday was a simple 50' steady run plus strides, I managed to escape work during lunchtime and swopped the strides for 10 x diagonals of our local hurling pitches.

Friday was the big workout of the week, it comprised 3 sets of 4' x 5kpace + 8' of 10k pace with 2' recovery between each effort and set. I was pretty nervous as I hadn't combined 5k and 10k paces in a workout before, however with the help of a friend we got through it ok, and the paces weren't too bad at 3:37 / 3:25. The last set felt, looked and probably sounded pretty ugly. Saturday and Sunday were steady runs of 45' and 90' and with my garmin gone MIA they were run on feel. Sometimes its really nice just to get away from the numbers! We spent the weekend celebrating mum's 70th birthday en famille in a hotel in Wexford- and she seemed pretty happy with her gift of an iPad! Definitely now a glamourous granny.

So good week alround. The next race is a 10k on this Friday the 25th, its the Kilkenny10k road championships - hopefully I'll manage to pick up a few seconds on my PB and break 36min.