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.