February 26th – March 3rd
Mon: 50 min easy + 5 x 15 sec strides + 5 min. Complete. 12.01km.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10841996364
Tue: 15 min WU, 5 x 400 @ 90 (30/60 after last) 8 x 1k @ 3:30 (60), 15 min CD. Complete. 400s in 89, 88, 88, 86 and 88 and Ks in 3:27, 3:24, 3:23, 3:23, 3:24, 3:26, 3:26 and 3:23. 17.20km.
https://www.strava.com/activities/10849462392
Wed: 70 min. Complete. 14.90km. https://www.strava.com/activities/10856372835
Thur: 15 min WU, 2 x 16 min @ 3:55 km pace (60), 15 min CD. Complete. Reps at Grangegorman. 14.74km. https://www.strava.com/activities/10863227126
Fri: Off
Sat: 15 min WU, 6 x 600m hills + 3 x 30 sec hill (easy jog back) get after it on the 30 sec hills, 15 min CD. Complete. Reps felt hard – slower than last week. 14.54km. https://www.strava.com/activities/10872048415
Sun: 1 hour 45 min easy. Complete. 23.28km. https://www.strava.com/activities/10879839966
Seville is now a distant memory and Dunboyne 10K is slowly coming into focus. This was probably one of the best weeks of training in a while and I hit (mostly) all of the workouts and paces as prescribed and how I would have liked.
Monday was easy with strides and Tuesday was back to the usual KM repeats on the Furze Road. For the next few weeks, Seán has added in 5 400s before the KM repeats and they serve as a great primer to get the legs ready for a workout. I usually do a couple of strides before starting KM repeats but I still always feel the first rep as being quite hard. With the 400s before, it eases you in and I found that my HR doesn’t just spike straight away and the body feels more controlled. Important to note that the 400s are slower than the pace of the KMs but they still work well. I ticked off the reps pretty consistently and trotted home – the extra 400s bring the volume up nicely, too.
Wednesday was easy again, this time with 70 minutes. I can sometimes struggle to get out the door for an easy run over 60 minutes during the week; it feels like more of a slog than a session for some reason. For me, it’s because I’m just not as tuned in as I would be for a workout so I really feel the minutes go by. Thursday was 2 x 16 mins and I got home from work late. I was in a precarious position of having to do half the workout in the light and then half in the dark. Not wanting to look like a plonker with a head torch on when the sun was out, I went down to DIT Grangegorman and did the reps there. The approx 1km loop is perfect for, as Barry describes, turning the head off and the legs on. Session banked and moving forward.
Saturday was hills and I jogged down to Khyber to start the session. From the jog down, I felt pretty tired in the legs and knew it would be a bit more of a struggle than last week. I didn’t anticipate the hill being flooded, however, owing to the snow and heavy rain from Friday morning and afternoon (it was a physics anomaly that there was a 3 inch deep pool of water that was static on the hill). Having got myself to the hill, I pretty soon became comfortable with having wet socks and feet and started the session. Immediately the tired legs came into play and the reps were a bit of a struggle. I was slower than most of the 600m reps last week and particularly slow on the 5th (2:10). I jogged back to the bottom of the hill very slowly to get fully recovered for the final rep and hit 2:01, which I was pretty stoked on. To finish, I had 3 x 30 second reps with the instruction from Seán to “get after it”. Not to be accused of not getting after it, I gave the 30 second reps a fair rattle with 2:47, 2:50 and 2:47 pace. I felt pretty good after these but I’m not sure if that was because the sprints opened up my legs or because the session was over. Guess we’ll never know.
Sunday was the longest run in a while with 1 hour 45 minutes easy. I jogged down to the Pope’s Cross to meet Barry who was joining for most of the run. We ran the outer perimeter at the park easy the whole way and I left him back at the Pope’s Cross. I had another 30 minutes so I looped the 15 acres and then back home. It was one of the nicest Sundays this year and the weather was perfect with the sun providing just the right amount of heat for a long run. It finished off the week very nicely for me – feeling as fit as I have in a long time and completing the largest weekly volume since prior to Berlin. I have said here before that building volume and building fitness week on week, uninterrupted, suits me best and finishing off this week feeling good makes me believe that even more. 3 weeks to Dunboyne.
Buckets of Rain 