from “Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner” The apocalypse is upon us. What was never supposed to happen, has happened. Doom and Gloom. Unbelievable. The sky is falling. Kerry have lost the All-Ireland Football Final. How could that possibly happen? Everyone around here knows that Kerry have a God-given right to win the Football Final. There will be repercussions. I bet the manager won’t be sleeping easily for a while. Let’s concentrate on running, there is more fun to be had that way. Saturday was always going to be an easy run, after the very tough workouts on Thursday and Friday. I felt very stiff initially, but was surprised how quickly I managed to settle into some decent pace, and the miles passed by easily. I know that I tend to recover very quickly form the long runs, but this time I manage to surprise myself.
The one thing I haven’t done a lot is running at marathon pace, and I’ve started adding a few of those runs to my training recently. I decided to attempt that run again today. Two weeks ago I was happy enough to settle for 7:00 pace, but of course after last week’s race the expectations have changed, and I was aiming for 6:50. I managed just fine for the first half of the run, but started to struggle on the second half. Maybe I was asking too much from my legs, or maybe the fact that there was a 90 feet elevation gain over those miles had more impact than expected, but I wasn’t able to keep the pace going. I ended up running slower than on my last attempt, which is disappointing. I will probably try the same again next week and hope that by then the legs will have recovered from the race. That should give me a better view of where I’m standing right now.
This week has served more than one reminder why I hadn’t expected to run 1:25 in Blarney. My training paces never managed to emulate my race efforts, and the same is still holding true. It’s not for lack of trying, and it’s not for lack of confidence. I definitely expected better times before all of my workouts this week and ended up slightly disappointed each time. I guess there is just no replacement for race day adrenaline.
20 Sep
8 miles, 1:03:06, 7:52 pace, HR 140
21 Sep
12 miles, 1:25:41, 7:08 pace, HR 153
incl. 9 miles @ 6:59
Weekly mileage: 81
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