Dec 18th-24th
Mon: 45 min easy. Complete. 9.75km. https://www.strava.com/activities/10399472857
Tue: 15 min WU, 8 x 800 @ 2:50 (60), 15 min CD. Complete. Treadmill. Tired. 12.6km total.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10404649040
Wed: 45 min easy. Complete. Treadmill. 9.66km.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10409696144
Thur: 15 min WU, 3 x 10 min @ 4:00 km pace (60), 15 min CD. Complete. Windy as. Reps good. 14.39km total.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10415844899
Fri: Off 20 mins shuffle. https://www.strava.com/activities/10419796235
Sat: 15 min WU, 10 @ 3:55 km pace (jog to hill) 6 x 1 min hills (easy jog back), 15 min CD. Complete. Windy again. Tempo was slow, hills slower again. Effort felt right. 14.13km total.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10423450945
Sun: 85 min. 75 mins easy. Weather shite, company worse. 16.10km.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10428722253
This week felt like a slog but the training doesn’t really reflect that. I was hoping for a quiet week in work but many things conspired against me so this was not the case. Coupled with this and the weather, and with time constraints, I did my Tuesday session on the treadmill and felt good. Usually I would make the reps a little quicker when I’m on the treadmill to account for it being easier but I didn’t this time and the workout felt pretty chilled in all cases. I had to shorten the cool down by 5 mins but this was very much just a box ticked for the week. Wednesday was also on the treadmill AND I forgot my earphones. 45 minutes. On the treadmill. With no earphones. The unbelievably tripe music I was subjected to does not warrant writing down. That’s what I get.
The weather has been awful this week in Ireland and Thursday seen another wind warning. Set on not doing 3 days on the treadmill in a row, I abandoned a lunchtime session in Stephens Green to do it later in the park, in the hope that the wind would have settled. Of course it hadn’t and of course I got thrown around the gaf from pillar to post, but again got the session boxed off without too much fuss (except my fussing now).
The wind hadn’t abated by Saturday morning and it was now comically bad. There were points during the tempo when I felt like the legs were turning over at a really fast pace, the breathing was working hard, only for me to look at my watch and see a miserable 4:15 pace staring right back at my anguished face. After the tempo, I jogged down to Khyber for the hill reps which were, predictably, right into a headwind. I focused on effort and form and just counted the reps until they were finished. I’m really enjoying the Saturday morning sessions and that’s something I used to really dislike. It’ll be interesting to see if they stay in the plan when a marathon build starts or if we revert back to the long Friday sessions. That isn’t for now, though.
Sunday should have been 85 minutes but I cut it short by 10 minutes to link in with Barry. It was his decision to end the run early but it was also a mercy for me; I felt pretty tired by the end of the week. Not that the training should be particularly onerous, as everything is building nice and gradually, but my work life, social life, diet and sleep have all been out of kilter this week so it all plays into me being a bit sluggish. I’ll be running the Tom Brennan 5K on New Years Day and really looking forward to that. It’ll hopefully be a good hard run out and it usually attracts a pretty deep field, ideally with a decent amount of folk around my pace to pull me along like the sad and tired man that I am.
This was a pretty moan filled post. It wasn’t supposed to be. As Todd Unctious said to the Garda Sergeant – “It was just going that way”.
Buckets of Rain 