Week 11 was notable for two damn fine reasons, a great training run and a really enjoyable x-country race.  On Tuesday I ran a 60' mixed tempo of 3:34 / 3:49 paces that brought me through 10 miles comfortably under the hour, about 4 minutes less than my actual PB for the distance. What was even better (madder) was I somehow managed to scrape it together at 6:30am in the morning before work. I love these mix tempo runs, when you do a standard long run at any up-tempo pace part of the work is having the mental strength to hold the one pace, but when every 5' you are dropping or upping the speed it means there's always something going on and the time feels like it passes quicker.

The primary consequnce of the early start was a total lack of ability to function in work - as in 100% brain dead and I spent most of the day in a "huh?" state of mind.

I finished the week with a run out in the Leinster Novice XC (results here) which were held in glorious sunshine in Belvedere House in Mullingar. It was my first time running in the Leinster Novice race and I hoped the county was going to be able to put a good team out and I'd be able to sneak in on their coat tails and pick up a medal of some kind (but preferably gold). Unfortunately our clubs better runners are both injured and one of the harriers runners didn't show - so while we had a team it wasn't a competitive one. The course itself was very dry; almost like road running, and the 6k distance had plenty of up ands downs and twists and turns. The route involved a small lap, a medium lap and then two big laps to finish.

From the off I took it pretty easy, probably a little too easy in retrospect. I knew the endurance and strength from the marathon training (in particular from the hills)  would stand to me as long as I didn't burn it up over the first 2k. As we completed the first small and medium lap, I was feeling pretty good and was counted in 49 / 50th place (of about 85 runners). I kinda sussed i was cruising a bit too much and  put the foot down a little from there and in the next big lap i went by about 18 runners and was called at 32nd. On the last lap I pushed pretty hard and got through another 10 - but with a couple of hundred meters to go - two lads went flying by me and I had little left to respond. With a hundred metres to go a quick check over my shoulder revealed no-one near me and it was a cruise to the finish line in 24th place; 3rd runner on the county team and pretty happy with the performance overall. Thanks to the wonders of our motorway system i was back in Kilkenny in time to go out with Siobhan to the savourkilkenny festival, where we enjoyed a lovely local "fifty-mile" meal.

Week 12 had none of the heady heights of the previous week; the Tuesday session was a comfortable track session of 800/400 combinations at 5k/3k pace; with loads (90") of recovery between them so they felt very good. I read a good piece of advice on running during the week and that was never to stray too far from either your speed or your endurance; and one of the real benefit's of Jon's training has been a schedule that works all the systems that need adaptation consistently. I also really like going to the track, it makes you feel like a runner and its nice to be in that zone. The Friday session was a long slow tempo / marathon paceish run of 80' at 4:00 in the middle of a two hour run and then sundays run was 2hr45' of easy running that i did with a friend in the lashing rain covering just over 36K. 

Week 13 could well be my last big week before Florence; and the training schedule for the week includes a tempo run on Friday that will hopefully break my half marathon PB by a minute or so. Luckily I have two great guys from the club coming out on the run with me so together we should have a good run and hopefully we can push each-other on and all run it well.

My marathon runners arrived in the post today; lovely (!) yellow and white brooks st4's came with a pair of replacement glycerin 7's for training and i'm pretty happy to see the back of the mizuno which just did't suit me at all.

 

 

 

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. 

Lesson one I learned this week is that when a coach says its going to be a fun week, it maybe best not to take that too literally. I started the week with a total workout fail – the workout was a series of 8 continuous cycles of short 3k pace / marathon pace intervals – i ended up having to take recovery after 4 of them before finishing the session. I came away from a little gutted that I didn’t have the strength to just work through it – no excuses (and no fun) at all. 

 The rest of the week was pretty much easy running with a few strides thrown in ahead of the National Half Marathon on Sunday.  As my first national half marathon I didn’t really know what to expect from it. I had been through the results from the last two years and it had been won in 2009 in 65’ and in 2008 in 67’ - with runners at my pace coming in and around the 70th  – 80th place, so it was going to be a step up from previous half’s that I’d done with more club runners and fewer fun runners.  The race was hosted by St. Abbans in Carlow  - about 20 or so minutes drive away – so all very convenient and hassle free to get to. A quickly assembled start with a minutes silence for somebody recently deceased, and bang we were off.

I set off with no "must get" time goal - the plan of action was to run the first 15k steady at around marathon pace and then pick it up from there to the finish and see where that got me. The course was a tough two lapper, the elevation was all rises and falls without any significant flat sections and sections of it were buffeted by some nasty winds.  I ran with a club mate, Jimmy who was doing his first half marathon. Keeping our pace in check to the plan it basically felt like we were freewheeling for the entire first lap and our halfway time was called at 40:50;   Jimmy picked up the pace during this 3rd fast downhill 5k split and I lost about 30 yards on him. After we passed the 5k mark as we approached the bottom of the downhills and turned up the hill and into the wind -  i was able to pick it up a bit and finish ok.  In the second lap we passed loads of runners who were fading - it felt great to finish strongly and not have that holding on feeling – my split for  a slightly tougher second half was 39:35. Over all my 5k splits were  19:05   / 19:36 / 18:48 / 18:32 + 4:25 for the last bit

So the second lesson wot i learned this week was that patience plays a major part in pacing longer races  and it’s important to relax and have the focus and strength not to get caught up in racing too early.

Monday 30th: rest

6:34pm Tuesday 31st:  78' Steady /  16.54k / 4:40 pace

6:44am Wednesday 1st: 75' Steady / 16k / - no garmin 

6:41pm Thursday 2nd  62' Steady inc. 8 X Strides  / 13.70km / no garmin

7:05am Friday 3rd;  62' Steady / 12.46k / 4:46

7:31am Saturday 4th: 52:55 ' steady (not including 10 X Strides as per plan)  / 12.19km / 4:44 pace

9:14am Sunday 5th: 80’25” / 21.1K / 3:48
 
Week totals : 6hr17m / 84.63k  / 4'28" Average Pace

This last week was a straight continuation of the week before. I am still getting on well with being up early and getting my runs in before work. The only downside is a bit of an energy slump around 3pm, but I think that is just the increase in mileage and should pass.  My routine in the morning is pretty well established, fall out of bed half asleep, into running gear, grind ariosa coffee beans, drink coffee and eat two rice cakes with our yummy homemade natural energy spread, quick slurp of water and out the door. The pace is nice and slow, so i can run, breathe and think all at the same time! 

So all the days were good, except for the long run on Sunday - and I normally eat up long runs for fun. I hooked up with friends just home from Spain and Thailand and we ended up having a rather late night of it, left the car in town and got home at 3ish and after waking around 9, forced myself to run back into Kilkenny to pick up the car along the unopened motorway.  I started off feeling ok, but by the time I had gone half way through my marathon pace segment, i was parched, running into a headwind on a four lane motorway - it didn't feel great at all.

I arrived into Kilkenny City at the end of the marathon pace part of the run and then suprisingly only struggled a little through a 15'

at faster than marathon pace - because i was out of the wind and I knew the hard bit would soon end.  It just shows what an obstacle the wind can be. 

Monday 16th : rest 

7:04am Tuesday 17th:  77' Steady /  16.68k / 4:37 pace

6:36am Wednesday 18th: 93' Steady / 20.24 / 4:36 pace 

Listened to the MarathonTalk.com episode with the interview with Charlie Spedding. I have read his book in the past and it was interesting to hear about his training methods - especially those to simulate surges in racing - doing 1' - 5' hard surges through a long run with 5' rest between each one.

6:47am Thursday 19th:  71' Steady including 12 X Strides  / 14.76km / 4:43 pace

6:49am Friday 20th;  79' Steady / 16.51k / 4:43

7:31am Saturday 21st: 72' steady including 10 X Strides / 13.46km / 4:49 pace

This was the same 50' run as usual, I just stopped to take some photos of the countryside which was looking fab - and then forgot to restart the garmin so lost a K or so.

10:42am Sunday 22nd: 128' Steady with 60min at 4:00 and 15' at 3:48 / 27.61k / 4:20 pace 

Week totals : 109km / 8hr42'  / 4'36" Average Pace