Catching up

Week starting 27th January

Monday was a 4 mile recovery effort – 12 minute pace type of thing. I jogged 2 miles with my wife doing the other two under my own steam. Tuesday was 9 miles around Charleville at 8.16 pace, nothing extraordinary. A faster 8.2 mile effort in Mayfield on Wednesday on the hillier route at a good pace-8 minutes.  Thursday was 2 miles warm up with a planned 5 mile tempo and a one mile cooldown. The two mile warm up ended up being fast with a faster 5 mile tempo (7.10,7.06, 7.10, 7.14, 7.13) at 7.11 pace. I was feeling good at that stage and ran the warm up in 7.30 running 8.25 miles in total in a hour.  Saturday morning i jogged 2.5 miles with my wife and did 20 miles with the Mallow gang. I ran the 20 miles in 2hr54minutes @ 8.42 pace. Apart from the first 6 miles I was comfortable enough in that long run plodding kind of way. I would hope to cover the long runs at a faster pace in future.

Total mileage for the week – 52 miles

 

Week starting 3^rd February

Same as every other Monday, that is the usual 4 mile recovery jog in the company of my wife. Tuesday was a no show as the weather was pretty brutal – high gales and lashing rain. Wednesday I did 9 miles up in Mayfield at a solid enough pace – 8.17 per mile. Thursday was a pretty brutal/tough workout – 2 mile warm up with 5 X 1 miles repeats. Splits as follows were 6.38, 6.40, 6.41. By the 4^th mile the effort was beginning to tell with the split covered in 6.50. I should have quit at that stage but decided to do a 5^th repeat. The legs were very heavy and I ambled home in 6.58 per mile. I finished up with 5 X 0.20 mile sprints completed the mile total in 6.50. I finished off with a easy jog home. I probably should have run the tempos at 6.50 pace- next time.

Took the usual Friday off and had hoped to get a few easy miles up on the legs on Saturday but real life events made it impossible. At least by Sunday I had fresh enough legs for the long run with the club. The by now familiar storms had their presence felt along the route- flooded roads, lakes where fields once stood. I had it my head to run 13-15 miles at a marathon pace ideally sub 8 minute average. Started off well enough covering miles 1 to 11 in 1hr 29mins, not bad considering the first few miles were run in 8.10 pace. By mile 13 the legs were feeling the effort and I was happy to cut it short at 13.1 miles, a good half marathon workout. It was a good meeting with the lads. I covered the route in1hr.47mins or 8.10 pace. I walked the last mile to the car. It probably means in terms of a marathon running at a pace of around 8.30 per mile would be more sensible than running at a faster pace.

Mileage for the week 35 miles. Lower than last week but I missed a possible 9 mile workout because of the weather. That said Thursday’s and Saturday’s workout were very beneficial.