Running in the Real World

Bungy Girl wrote: »

Anna, I think you can call that a good day at the office. The sub 40 is there for the taking sooner rather than later. Marathon first though :eek:

Was I really jumping up and down ? I get waaaaaayyy too excited at these things....:o

yes you were! It was inspiring really...

Sunday, Jun 28: 6K Recovery in 37:42

Left the car in Cabinteely overnight after an evening of wine and chat with old friends, with the noble intention of doing my LSR out to get it on Sunday (approx 10 mi). I was very relieved when Murph told me I would be mad and should only do a recovery run after racing, drinking and late night. As I always do what I'm told (;)), I reluctantly agreed to abandon the plan, so we drove out to get the car and did a couple of circuits of national beer mile park as it will forever be known. Felt tired, but the legs were grand.

Weekly summary:
WTD: 40Km/ 25 Mi
MTD: 162 Km/ 101 Mi
YTD: 840 KM/522 Mi

So I didn't get near the minimum mileage of 35 miles for week 1 of the plan... but a 5 mile race and decent 5k session made it a reasonable week.

Dubgal72 wrote: »

Great report. If the hills got you - Donegal Hill Training Person - then you know it was a toughie. I wouldn't worry too much about the water stop, on a day like that the stop might have gained you 13 seconds... But I'll agree with hilly, the first mile might have been a bit too fast. It's a learning curve...
Had a chuckle at your paging reaction, brilliant. Well done and great to see you after

Thanks, you too. And I forgot to give due credit to the restorative power of your flapjacks!

Probably did start too fast, but I quite enjoyed my sub-24 minute 3 miles!

Tuesday, 30 June: 8.6 Km easy @ 6:01/km
Hot, hot, hot… headed for the seafront but wished I had picked a route with shade at a time other than noon. Oh well, easy and sweaty.

Followed by an afternoon on Dollyer, where it was very windy and cool... sprinting after kids and stuff blowing all over the beach

Wednesday, 1st July: Progression Run

My first time doing one of these, I set it all up on Garmin — it was so hot yesterday that I gave myself a pretty wide range of pace for each interval. Before I left the house, I was feeling knackered, really would have preferred to go back to bed… so I told myself I would be sensible and abandon the session if I still felt that way after the warmup. Of course, after a couple of miles I felt much better… the joy of running!

The guidance on this run was not to overdo the first 2 sections, or the last 2 would be too hard... I was very happy to follow that guidance.

Warmup: 2 miles easy... out the coast into a nice refreshing breeze, but knowing that would make things much warmer on the way back.

First 8 minutes (steady/MP+3-4%): Still felt easy, because it pretty much was easy pace. My MP is almost the same as easy, have to revisit all these paces as training progresses.

Second 8 minutes (MP): also still felt easy. Possibly too close to the slow end of the range for this one, partly because I had to navigate road works around the Causeway and the uneven path from the wooden bridge.

I had the watch set up for a range for each 8 minutes and it beeps if you get outside the range... I found that at the start of each 8 minutes, I sped up too much and was way faster than target, took a good minute of scolding before the watch told me I was in the right zone. Once I got to the right pace, I had no problem maintaining it. Interesting to note that for two reasons... first, faster paces are not feeling as fast to me as they used to (it's all relative of course, I'm still very slow) and second, it's hard for me to gauge pace at the beginning...

3rd (HMP): This one felt good, I felt like I was running, but very comfortable, starting to feel really hot now though.

4th (Hard/10k): Again, felt good, not all out as the plan called for: ‘as fast as you can’. I didn’t push it to as fast as I can, partly because the watch kept beeping at me for going below the 5:10 I had programmed in. I was ready for the 8 minutes to be over but not desperately so, tried to really push for the last 30-40 seconds.

Cooldown: this was by far the hardest part of the whole run, it was a slow, sweaty slog home.

And let's throw in a table just because I can and for my own future reference, if I ever do a progression run again...

8 Min Rep||Target pace |Actual Pace |MP+3-4%|5:50-6:10|6:05 (9:48) |MP|5:40-6:00|5:57 (9:35) |HMP|5:25-5:40|5:27 (8:47) |10K|5:10-5:30|5:08 (8:16)

Total: 12Km/7.5 Mi in 1:12.

Amazing facts learned while running… listening to a podcast about the discovery of the typhus vaccine... which involved scientists injecting the virus into the anuses of millions of lice… I'm pretty sure I was the only person on the sea front this morning considering the anus of a louse! :eek:

chickey2 wrote: »

Looks like you nailed that session. Great to hit those paces considering the heat.

Interesting listening material! It makes me feel less nerdy about spending part of my run today thinking about mitochondria...

It was an arts program!! Fascinating story though, a polish scientist created the vaccine and was co-opted by the nazis during the war, but managed to smuggle vaccine into the warsaw ghetto... millions of lice were harmed though

Bungy Girl wrote: »

Great session! Agree, you're definitely going to have to revise that MP. What does VDOT say based on Cork ?

pffft... i don't even know what VDOT is... please, don't tell me. My buddy Greg (McMillan) says MP of 5:45/Km (4:02 marathon :eek:)

so, yeah MP on the session was soft... but HMP and 10k were spot on.

Thursday, 2nd July: 50 Minutes Recovery
5 miles @ 10:04; 8.1 K @ 6:15

This is another one of the mandated runs in the plan... I thought that session yesterday was grand, but I was feeling every muscle in my legs today when I set out. Probably didn't help that I drove 3.5 hours to Donegal after running yesterday, all the muscles went into rigor mortis or something. So the recovery hurt today! And possibly a little too fast but with an undulating loop the pace varied a lot and I kept it very easy.

I struggled up one hill near the end, turned right at the top to see the lovely vista of Benbulben across Donegal Bay... makes it all worthwhile

FBOT01 wrote: »

.........all that plus keep you honest and help you reach your full potential :pac::pac:



way too fast......you don't need us to tell you hard days hard, easy days easy and recovery days should be the easiest of all.

yeah, just looked at McM paces and recovery should be 6:20-6:49... I wasn't too far off, but I think I'm going to start programming the watch to give out to me on these.