50 miles

Week ending 26^th July

Monday morning the legs were a bit stiff probably as a result of the fact that I was a bit out of practice running for  2hrs20min . I ran around Charleville covering the 7 mls at 8.36 pace. The slow pace over a longer distance did the trick as I was pretty fresh over the rest of the day. This meant by Tuesday morning I was able to go for a 60 minute tempo. The plan was to run around 7.30 pace as distinct from a faster sub 7.10 pace over 30 minutes. In other words a longer tempo over a slower distance. These Tuesday workouts will after August (fingers crossed)  become the key “quality” workout of the week alongside the long run on the Sunday. The shorter long run on Wednesday is important after those Q1 and Q 2 workouts. Races on Thursday or club sessions keeps the interest going and improves my ability to run at short harder paces. Monday and Saturday are slower recovery  runs.

The run went very well covering the 8 mile loop from my house, the railway road, Pikes Cross, Cooleens and back home again. I did 8.10 miles in the 60 minutes at 7.25 pace. It wasn’t easy but I was able to maintain a good control at all times. The splits were 7.48,7.25,7.27,7.23,7.15 (downhill),7.15,7.12,7.21 and 0.12 @ 7.24 around the estate for the rest.

By Wednesday I was surprisingly feeling ok. No heavy or dead legs or anything like that. I got the 85 minute run completed by 8.30 am that morning at around 8.30 pace. I was told to run these slower but it’s hard to run these any slower than what I am doing. If anything it’s doing all I can not to run these at a faster pace. I ran the Charleville/Railway Rd/Ballyhea / Charleville route. It’s bang on 10 miles to and from my house and it’s a well known path at this stage. Most of the route is on the hard shoulder of the N20 but it’s safe out. I headed up to Cork called into my Mum’s and met some of the lads for a bit of lunch in 14A on French Church st.

By Thursday morning I was feeling a bit groggy. I had a poor nights sleep and was in little form that evening making the 105 minute car journey down to Churchtown South in Ballycotton. What did stand to me by the time I headed down was the 2 hour nap from 1230 to 230 and getting the dinner out of the way early. Obviously I have a lot of (unpaid) time off during the summer so there are no reasons not to feel rested. With the correcting out of the way I have a lot more free time.

Anyway the race in Churchtown was reasonably ok. It was my first 5 mile race since last August. The last 1.5 miles were pretty intense and I was on my feet at the end coming in at 34mins.40secs which is my typical / solid run time. I would have liked to obviously run faster but at this stage I have might have reached my peak at achieving 33.08 in Midleton 2 years ago. It was good to get the 0.5 mile warm and 2 mile cooldown in as well. My cousin and many Mallow runners did very well. It’s success at the short distances that will aid the longer ones.

That was pretty much it until Sunday running for 2hrs40mins. I had no garmin running 3 miles with Liam Murphy at 8.30 am joining the main group for another 14.5 miles. I feel reasonably fresh for a car journey up to Cork to meet Derm and Tim to watch a disastrous defeat by the hurlers to Galway. I would have hoped to have got a run in on Saturday but no such luck

Anyway a downbeat end to a good block of training. 50.87 miles. Monday 7 miles, Tuesday 8.1 miles, Wednesday 10 miles, Thursday 7.37 with 5 mile race, Sunday 18.5 miles approx..