A message to Mr. McGee

Sunday 27^th October

 On Thursday I headed out in Mayfield the second day in the row, the weather conditions were a bit hostile to say the least. However given the fact  that running is bad weather is the best mental  training possible I took my chances. Legs were heavy so i decided to run 5 miles as a recovery run. Essentially run each mile slow and walk for a minute. The idea was to loosen the legs up and lower the heart rate down to 140. Anyway fighting htrough the gales and rain splatter from cars I did the job.5 miles at 9.46 pace. Hr was 140 so happy enough.

 

That evening headed to Mallow to sit in on a very instructive talk by Steve Macklin, AAI instructor, on endurance running and  training. Excellent seminar and I was happy to get a lot of tips from it as well act as a excellent motivational tool for me. Frday evening did a 5 miler in Charleville running at 8.30 average. In fact the splits didn’t vary a lot between 8.33 and 8.27. I felt very relaxed and very happy. Even more when i saw that the HR was 144. HR on the whole is looking very positive these days but the desire to run is also very strong. As November to January is a quiet time on the road racing front I hope these months will prove a excellent base to future improvements later next year.

Saturday morning was more of the same – a relaxed 8 miler. Again I didn’t look at the garmin until after the run and I was delighted to the see pace drop from a 8.50 down to a 8.25 for the last mile. I didn’t have the HR strap on for this one but I felt very relaxed all the way through. I was amused to see a nanny goat run around the estate I was jogging through. Average pace for the run was 8.37. As a result I reckon I will be starting any future MP runs at probably 8.20 pace hoping of course to get that pace down over the next few months. Easy steps though. Sunday was rounded off with a relaxed 2.5 mile walk with Aoiffe.

It was only when I added up the mileage accumulated this week did I realise how well I had got on.30 miles running with 5 miles of recovery walking – a sizeable jump on last week. I have now increased frequency and distance. Eventually I hope to increase speed. Delighted with that but I will be careful all the same. That said I will be away for most of next week so I mightn’t get the same amount of mileage up on my legs. At the very worst next week will be a cut back week.

In regard to speed I did toy with starting with mile intervals but I could be risking injury again. Maybe 1 minute intervals for the first few weeks and then build up to a tempo workout.

Anyway all the best to everyone running the Dublin marathon. Aidan McGee you know that will be us next year!!!!!