Going...going..

And still going.

Training has actually been going pretty well. 

I have not been running six or seven days a week, mostly is just five, and sometimes even a four, but that seems to be suiting me.

Still with the keeping the long run at the weekend, and starting to push the speed sessions a little harder. When I was getting some consistent training in with Gary a few years ago, I remember how tough the speed sessions were, but not very long duration, I have gone back to that. 

I have been pushing the mile repeats to 6:00 minute miles, and everything else between 5:30 and 5:50, from 400's to 800 repeats. The only problem is that I have not been getting my tempo runs in.

I ran the recent Dunleer 4 mile race. It was a tough day, with quite a stiff wind on the back straight for over a mile. I finished in 24:22, which was well off a hoped for 24:00 result, but when I compared myself against my peers whom I would place myself against at other races, I did well, finishing 17th out of a field of over 300.

Last Sunday was the Fingal 10k. The weather was actually quite nice, and the race was early in the morning. I set a 6:10 pace on the watch, but had hoped to bank a few seconds per mile to finish at 38:00, or a few seconds below. 6:03, 6:00, 6:09, 6:14, 6:08, 6:12 and a bit to finish. The problem was the watch measured 6:29 miles, and when I rounded the last corner I had nothing left to sprint it out, finishing on a chip time of 38:16. On the plus side, that is only 18 seconds of my PB, but while I was running the race, the pace felt comfortable enough. But being such a slave to the watch, I am usually maxed out just at the right time, the end, when the pace is set right.

After the race, I drove the 20 minutes home, and headed out for some more, easy, miles. I did another 10, and with the warmup a etc, I had 17 miles for the day.

I did however take the Monday off for a rest day. On Tuesday I was still quite tender as I headed out, and I was also breaking in some new trainers. 10.5 easy miles.

Yesterday I was a bit unsure as to what the plan would be. As I had done some extra speed workouts the week before, I want to get a higher mileage week this week, so another 10 miles easy was done. I also wore a heart rate monitor, and kept the HR below 150, avg 146. It felt really slow, and I find it almost harder to run so slow than it is to run faster.

I will stick with it for the longer runs. This is a fairly good spell of training, and hopefully I can manage to build on it.

Next is another 10 in two weeks, which will be used as a tempo run for the Frank Duffy 10 mile in the park.

Catch up

It has been quite a few weeks since I have made an entry, for various reasons.

The main one is that nothing much has been happening, but I know next year I will want to know what I did this time this year, if that even makes any sense.

One recent thought which I had, was remarking on how fortunate I was. In the space of two weeks, I had run along the west coast of America, beautiful Seattle, the following week along the beach in beautiful Ireland, and in the same week, the south coast of Spain. I was away on the holidays in Spain, and I got up at 5am, something I would never do at home, and primarily because I was a 5 course meal for a few mosquitos which I could not kill. Out along the sea front promenade, I had forgotten my garmin, and my watch, so not only was I just running to feel, I had no idea how long I was running for. What a beautiful sunrise it was, and it was really one of the nicest runs I have had in along time.

When I got back to reality, I ran a local 10k, and on a flat course did 38:24. I was happy and disappointed at the same time.
Mile 1 was 5:55, and although I knew it was too fast, it felt easy enough. I pulled back to the watch, 6:11, 6:20, knowing from experience that it can all go horribly wrong in the last two miles. The horribly wrong never arrived, and at mile 5 I knew I had been too conservative. Mile 6 was 5:58, and I finished strongly. So while I was happy with the time, I should have pushed it in the middle.

I am still trying to get the long runs in at the weekend, and they are varying from 12 to 16 miles. The 12 mile day was preceded by a 9 mile, and average weekly mileage is between 45 and 50, although last week was a bad week at only 35, but I got some really quality hill runs and a hard hill session in, so I didn't feel too bad.

There are a few races coming up over a short period shortly. Dunleer 4 mile this Sunday, the fingal 10k later, Duleek 10k in early August and then the marathon race series 10 mile.
Marathon training will start in earnest in Early August, but with descent mirage maintained at the moment, it shouldn't be too much of a push to get up  to higher distances easily enough.