From minutes to miles

Catch up continued....

Week beginning 19/09

Monday - 45 mins easy: 4.33 miles @ 10:24

I'm told I ran today by the electronics

Tuesday - Rest

Wednesday - Football

Thursday - Pilates

Friday - 45 mins easy: 4.45 miles @ 10:06

Runmute into work

Saturday - St. Anne's parkun 29:27

Windy parkrun, flying solo today. Tired after a few drinks the night before

Sunday - 60 mins easy: 5.82 miles @ 10:19

Over at my dad's house early afternoon. Started this from the homestead and took in some of St Anne's before heading home direction.

17.69 miles for the week. All easy runs, decided it was best to get some consistency together and add in the ancillary stuff post holidays before including speedwork. Usual commute cycling, football and pilates all being added in this week. There may have been one gym trip before work, or it was the following week. Only one though so not exactly earth shattering either way!! Body feeling a bit tired adjusting to everything again and foot showing some occasional "awareness" after being out of routine but nothing major or unexpected.

Murph_D wrote: »

Jaysus it will take forever to get to your XC debut at this rate. :rolleyes:

There'll be a bulk data dump in the coming days

Week beginning 26/09

Monday: 4.79 miles inc 6x400m

Time for speedwork, new plan starting and Monday means session evening. It's very similar to what I was doing previously, nothing too drastically different. Some suggested paces are slightly faster and the structure of some sessions a bit different but all on the same wavelength.

Target pace for these was 107 seconds, as before not to get too hung up on it, recoveries were 400m after each interval.

10 minutes w/u @ 10:12
106s, 111s, 97s, 104s, 106s, 101s
11ish minutes c/d @ 10:45

As usual I found these tough, although not as tough as when I first started. Not sure what what happened on that third one.....

Tuesday: Rest

Wednesday: 30 mins easy - 2.85 miles @ 10:33

With weekly plans it suited best to do my second session on the Wednesday. Set out with that intention but the legs were very tired after Monday still, no pep in them at all. Listened to the body and kept it short, sweet and easy.

Thursday: Pilates

Friday: 4.77 miles inc fartlek intervals

What a difference two days make. Legs much better, felt very fresh for this.

Session was 3*(2 mins hard, 1 min jog, 1 min hard, 30 sec. jog, 30 sec. hard, 30 sec. jog) with the hard pace to be 7:37 and 5 minutes between sets

10 mins w/u @ 10:03
Hard paces
Set 1 - 7:32, 7:43, 7:17
Set 2 - 7:33, 7:30, 7:43
Set 3 - 7:21, 7:44, 7:14
10 mins c/d @ 10:27

Very manageable session although hard to judge the pace right with the short intervals, taking the garmin with a pinch of salt. The short recoveries are tough, hardly have time to really catch your breath. Suitably tired after and got absolutely drowned on the way home!!

Saturday: Parkrun - 29:13

Off to St. Anne's for their third birthday celebration. With one pair of runners drying out from the night before the other pair weren't long in following with some of the wettest conditions I've ever run in!!! Miserable, didn't even bother with the rainjacket as it was too sodden on the dash just from the car. Splashed around the course with annapr for this one. Probably not as easy as it should have been after the session but a fine spread of cakes and warm drinks were waiting at the finish!! Great morning with the usual suspects.

Sunday: 70 mins easy - 6.88 miles @ 10:11

This should have been a struggle. Out in Limerick the night before, slightly hungover, tired from not much sleep, a big fry for breakfast, few hours in the car, groggy after an afternoon nap - not the best preparation. Planned on 60 mins but miscalculated my route and had to tag on an extra ten. I could have added more, I felt great, the legs felt fresh and bouncy and it seemed like I could have gone on for ages more. Longest run since August before hols as well. Go figure!

22.37 miles for the week. Happy with that, back to consistency and speedwork added plus the cycling etc.

Ok, going to get up to XC in before MOTD.....

Ah my neglected log.

Things had been going great training wise until the last week of October and then I had a PF flare up. It was more than the ongoing manageable presence, it was back to how it was last summer where it would be sore walking around town for example. Unlike last summer I didn't ignore it, straight for a session on loosening out the calf etc and getting it looked at. Good news I was getting it sorted in good time and it was early days, and would need to stay on top of exercises etc. Bad news the advice was to take a week off and let it settle down and then spend another week easing back in. Well timed in that football was off for a couple of weeks too.

Followed the advice and eased back in with run a bit, walk a bit up to 3 miles and repeated that a few times. Didn't do any speedwork until 18/11 when I did 6x400m before work. Found them tough but it was also about 6:45am and baltic so I'd say I was barely awake or warm!! Had kept active with the usual cycle commuting, kept up the gym visits and pilates, went to football when it started back and went swimming a couple of times. Felt a bit disappointed that I was doing this again similar to this time last year so wasn't bothered recording it in the log to be honest.

Jingle Bells 5k - 03/12/16

I had been planning for ages to do Jingle Bells and the last couple of weeks of November seemed promising enough to still give it a go. I did a tempo run the weekend before and while it was tougher than they had been it was still doable. Despite the interrupted training, with the JB course I felt reasonably confident to give the PB (24:49) a rattle.

Met up with some friendly faces beforehand and set off on a warm up to the starting area and to find a toilet. Started lining up in the start area with Bungy Girl, picked my spot where it looked right and let her continue on ahead. Minimum target was a PB, B goal was anything around 24:30 and due to some friendly banter the A goal was 24:17.

Gun went and we were off. With my research on the course I had decided to aim for an 8 minute first mile and then picking it up for the last two with the profile should be enough for a PB. I had gotten a slagging before the race for having splits written on my hand. I keep the watch in miles even for the 5k but these were the km ones for the A goal. I figured that with the course I didn't have to worry about the first few, that even if I hit the 4th one on target I'd be good. The slagging I was getting was just to run like hell and hang on but that really doesn't work as a mindset for me!!!! I find if I do that this hell is a pace I can't hold for more than a mile and then it just ends up a horror-fest slowing down. I went for the prepared approach!

Set off reminding myself not to hare off and was settling into my groove when two friends pulled up alongside. I'd been so in my zone I missed them waving while running alongside me. Felt very rude as I was just not in the mood to chat as I didn't want to waste energy or ruin my race by trying to set off too fast with them so I let them pull away.

Doubts started creeping in on the first mile....feels tough already....that's ok, it's supposed to.....this is the hard part......but seeing it hit exactly 8:00 on the watch gave me confidence. I was really having to work to bring the pace down on the second mile and not let myself take it easier with the 8 m/m pace. My friends were still just ahead so knowing they tend to be slightly faster gave me good incentive to stick and keep the distance as it was. Hit the second km mark and as expected I was about behind target but gradually into the second mile the average pace for the run was creeping down. Second mile was 7:53 on the watch so it was improving but I knew there was plenty more work to be done but I passed the third km marker with the gap to the target split reduced. Heading to the turns to the proper downhill I was beginning to feel the benefit, the pace seemed to be increasing for the same effort. I saw Annie up ahead so focused on getting alongside her, offering a grunted encouragement. We stuck together for a couple of hundred metres before she told me to push on. I pulled up alongside my friends around here and went by trying to kick on a bit so I could continue to run my own race. I really let the pace pick up for the downhill and concentrated on the fact this was karma payback for slogging up the Upper Glen in all those previous outings!! The 4th km was on target and looking at the watch I saw the average pace had finally dropped to where it needed to be. I knew I just had to keep this up and I was in with chance for the A goal. Took the bend for the finish, felt like a real leg sapper as the profile changed, it was like a speed bump for the energy as all of a sudden I had to work much harder to keep any sort of pace. Saw the clock tick past 24 and tried to put everything into booting for the finish, I couldn't tell you whether I actually caught anyone here, it was all a blur. 7:34 for the third mile and 37s for the extra bit.

I was shocked to see low 24:xx on the watch after I stopped. I hadn't glanced at it as I went for the finish so a part of me was gutted I had come so close - sure we're never happy!!! 24:05 for the chip time in the end so I was absolutely delighted with that. Felt the race went exactly as planned and I got the approach for me right. After having good results from following the pacers in Docklands 5k and BG pacing me through 2 miles in August I felt I needed a good outing from just my own pacing and mental battles. Caught up with lots of friendly faces after including BG, Annie, Nop, Denis, spacylou, annapr and plenty others with lots of race happy people and PB's to report.

No reaction from the foot so starting back into more structured training again and keeping up to date with the log.