is that for real?

Week ending 19^th January

Monday was a mundane start to the week. No running as such but a nice brisk 3 mile walk with my wife in the evening around Charleville. Served as a nice recovery  walk and a good way to catch up on the days events. Tuesday was a different story. 8 mile with the middle 5 at tempo pace. As always a tough workout. Did the usual 2 mile warmup running the middle 5 at 7.14 average followed by a 1.5 mile cooldown. This was the fastest tempo I have run since the start of this training cycle. Splits were 7.11, 7.16, 7.22, 7.09, 7.11. I was glad to be able to pick it up after the drop in mile 3. This meant Wednesday in Mayfield was a more relaxed affair- 8 miles at 8.25 pace. Hr was encouraging too -148 in a hilly route.

Nevertheless by Thursday I was feeling tired when I met up with Mallow Ac for a training session. I don’t think this had anything to do with the running but more to do with events in the last few evenings – club Agm and work based activities. The workout was the usual 2 mile warm up with 6 X 3 minute hard efforts. I was in good form for the first 3 workouts hitting close to half a mile each time in around 6.15 pace. By the last 3 though I was cooked and thought better of pushing it too hard running a 6.25 pace covering 2.85 miles in 18 minutes. I finished off with a 1.2 mile cooldown.

Rest day Friday running 4 easy miles on Saturday. Sunday i was up and out the door by 8 am. Plan was a long slow run covering 2hrs30minutes in a low aerobic zone. I walked for the first 3 minutes just to make the heart rate wouldn’t spike too high and to also put a break on a fast run. After mile 1 the pace started to pick up too quickly for my liking so I walked for another 2 minutes. After that things progressed along nicely. The route i picked in Charleville was a couple of loops of the town- boring with lots of back and forths but a few nice hills too. I ran the first 8 miles in 74 minutes or so. The pace was increasing nicely in a steady sort of way and by the time I came back into town I had ran the second 8 miles in 71 minutes.I felt happy enough to run another mile in around 8.40 pace finishing with 17 miles in 2hr33mins18seconds/9.01minute pace. When i got home i couldn’t believe the Hr reading 127!!!  Is that for real? I presume it is as I have being  getting encouraging readings in the last few weeks. Happy days indeed. Now I wonder if I ran at a faster pace what would the outcome be?  Therefore I will start planning a few more faster marathon paced runs over the next few weeks.

Monday 3 miles, Tuesday 8.5 miles, Wednesday 8 miles, Thursday 6.2 miles, Saturday 4 miles, Sunday 17 miles.

Total mileage for the week 46 miles