nov 20th – nov 26th
Mon: 40 min easy. Complete. 8.40km.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10252645222
Tue: 15 min WU, 8 x 800 @ 2:50 (60), 15 min CD. Treadmill. Felt great. 14km total. https://www.strava.com/activities/10257922454
Wed: 40 min easy Complete. 8.39km.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10263892554
Thur: 15 min WU, 3 x 10 min @ 4:05 km pace (60), 15 min CD. Complete. Treadmill. 13 total. https://www.strava.com/activities/10268068565
Fri: off. Gym closed because of riots. Ran 20 mins easy (4.04KM).
https://www.strava.com/activities/10274561129
Sat: 15 min WU, 12 x 30 sec hills (easy jog back), 15 min CD. Complete. Reps up the Furry Glen. 10.71km total.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10277753046
Sun: 80 min easy. Complete. 21k (97 mins). https://www.strava.com/activities/10283118161
weekly total: 79.54KM
Things are starting to come around – with the running at least. This was inadvertently the biggest week in terms of kilometres in a while. The Sunday long run was prescribed as 80 minutes easy but I stretched it to 21k to tie in with Barry. The route was an out and back from the Popes Cross to Sandymount strand. Save for the 2.5km climb from the Parkgate Street entrance to the Popes Cross, the route is very favourable and we ran very slow. A lovely morning, all things considered.
Monday and Wednesday were easy and in the park. Doing my best to not look at the watch at all on these runs and purely run to feel. The park is very dark now in the evenings so I look really cool with my beanie, head torch and spectacles. I’ve done some sessions in the park in the last few weeks and they are much more stressful than the easy runs but as I’ve been on the treadmill a fair bit for the faster stuff, it hasn’t been much of an issue thus far.
And onto the sessions. I had planned for both sessions to be outside this week (Tuesday in the park and Thursday on the quays) but life and work had other ideas. No real issue and you just have to adapt and move on. Tuesday 8 x 800m was a good turnover of the legs, with the pace being approximately 3:30 m/km. This is close enough to the kilometre rep pace I would normally be doing (if a little slower) and felt great to be able to get the legs turning over at that pace. I feel like kilometre repeats will be in my future soon and I look forward to seeing them appear in my plan soon. The quicker intervals are also timely as next week is the Jingle Bells 5k, one that Seán has described as being “a good one to blow off the cobwebs”. I think there are more than cobwebs forming on my 5k fitness but we’ll see how it goes.
On Thursday, I was taking my team in work out for the evening, with a pool tournament, some drinks and then dinner. I had cleared my schedule in work for the late morning to get my session done but due to a change in some calls, I was left cutting it a little thin and had to use the treadmill again. The session was good but I was up against the clock so instead of taking the 60 sec break before each rep, I did a 30 minute continuous effort. I had to also cut short my cool down to get back in time for my calls. It was a good session though and one I have been repeating for the last number of weeks. It is at the stage now where it is feeling easy and maybe even a little boring, which is exactly where I need to be in a phase where I am building back up.
I had no plans to get scuttered on Thursday night but was very much looking forward to a few beers with colleagues and friends. I was going to go into the office on Friday morning and do 30 minutes on the elliptical and then gym work, but Thursday in Dublin City went a way not many expected.
Of course I won the pool tournament, that much was never in doubt. I romped home to victory without ever being under any real or sustained pressure. The manner of victory in the final could be deemed flukey as I tried to play a safety on the black but ended up miscueing the white ball and hitting a worldie of a shot to clinch the win, but I see it as nothing more than just desserts for a flawless competition before that. The news during the day was dominated by a horrendous act of cruelty and violence where a man attacked three children and one of the staff from their school with a knife, with one of the girls (aged 5) sustaining very serious injuries. At the time of writing, this poor girl is still in a critical condition. Once it was revealed that the attacker was a foreign national, all hell in the City broke loose and a not insignificant number of people deemed this the moment to protect our city and country from all those bad foreigners by wreaking havoc in the capital. Unbeknownst to me or my colleagues, who were having pints and dinner on South William Street, a few hundred metres away there was a riotous mob burning buses, attacking the garda and looting stores. There is lots more to say on this, and perhaps this isn’t the time or the place, but the reason I do mention it is to thank Barry for collecting me from town and because of the unrest, the gym in the office was closed on Friday (the whole office was actually) so I did a 20 minute plod in the Phoenix Park instead to satiate the appetite for exercise.
Saturday morning was very cold and the plan called for hills and it was back to the Furry Glen I went. This is fast becoming my favourite session of the week and I am slowly getting used to running on Saturdays, something I haven’t ever really done consistently. Perhaps I will think differently when the mileage starts creeping up on Sundays and the sessions on Saturdays become longer and faster but, for now, viva la Saturday Hills.
Next week is a mini taper to get ready for Jingle Bels 5k. Although I haven’t done any 5k specific training, I still have some hope that I will be able to run at least to par. My last 5k race was on June 30th in Kilcock when I had an awful day and ran 16:43, going backwards from 2.5k all the way to the finish. I have no basis to expect a good time, or to even hope to be close to 16:43, but I am a dreamer. To live in hope is to die in despair. And it is in utter despair that I will go to my 5k race grave. I’ll put my credibility on the line here and say I will run close to 16:30. Do not ask me what I am basing that off as I do not want to lie.
Buckets of Rain 