"We can rebuild her!"

Raheny 5 today...

I can honestly say that if I hadn't been pre-registered I probably wouldn't have raced today. I hate running in the rain at the best of times... It really didn't help my mood either when I turned my Garmin on at the start line and got the Battery Low message before it died just before the start of the race. I did my usual thing of starting way too far back again, so spent roughly the first mile of the race passing loads of people, despite feeling pretty crap the whole time. Heard the steward at the first mile marker call out 8:08, which made me think for a minute "crap, I've fluffed this already". Started to settle into things a bit more after that, had a relatively quick 2nd mile because the steward at the 2nd mile marker called 15:2something, and the one at the third mile marker called out 23:11. Given that I reckon it took me less than 49 seconds to cover the next 160m, particularly because it was downhill, I think there was a 5k PB to be had there too... Tried to hold pace as well as I could, despite wanting to puke my guts up going up the hill at Watermill Road, and kicked on a little bit at the end.

Crossed the line with 38:30 on the clock, for a massive, massive PB (previous was a chip time of 40:13 from the same race in 2010 - reckon the chip time is going to be low-38). So happy right now you wouldn't believe it.

37:42 chip time. GET IN.

And back on the road today - plan was 40-45 minutes at recovery pace or 1 hour easy, depending on how the legs were - it ended up being a recovery run. Legs still very much recovering from their exertions on Sunday afternoon. Glad to get out though, needed to get moving again. 6.4km covered, average pace 6.35/km, average HR 139 / max 165.

Have had problems with my connection for a few days, so didn't get to update.

Thursday - rescheduled my easy run because I was going to Dara O'Briain with friends. That was feckin' great

Friday - 10km-ish easy (plan was for 1 hour easy).

Saturday - session (1 mile easy, 15x(1 min 10k pace, 45 sec recovery), 1 mile easy). This was hard - legs felt pretty dead. Still a bit of Raheny in my legs, I think.

Sunday - 10 miles easy

This evening - 1 mile easy, 40 mins @ MP, 1 mile easy. Decided to see how I got on this evening with treating something faster than 9 min/mile as MP - turned out it was fine Total distance covered for the session 10.4km, average overall pace 5.33/km, average HR 161 / max 182. Not the easiest of runs, but I got through it anyway, and was pretty happy with it overall.

It was also pretty damn great to be able to tuck into a post-run recovery dinner of steak, salad and spicy jalapeno houmous afterwards

Saturday - total of 17.6km covered, most of it with the group. Average pace 5.44/km, average HR 156 / max 168. Enjoyed that, it's nice to have some company on the longer runs and I hadn't been on a group run for a while.

Sunday - intended on heading out for yesterday's scheduled hill reps, but cut the run back to roughly 5km easy because my stomach was a bit dodgy. Average pace 5.55/km.