From “Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner” One of my first thoughts each day is “how many days are there left until the marathon”, which is quite normal behaviour for me during the taper. As of today, we are down to 13. Sometimes it feels like time is crawling, but in all honesty I have to admit that the magic number is going down pretty rapidly. From a household point of view, this was a bad month. We’ve had the car, the hoover and the washing machine all fail within a few days of each other, and since they are all rather important items for a family of six, we have been struggling to cover at times. At least by now they are all repaired, the bills didn’t entirely cripple us financially, and we have our fingers crossed that we’ve reached the end of that series.
My biggest worry, as far as the marathon is concerned, is getting sick. Two weeks ago the entire family apart from me had some cold; not too bad but it took Maia especially several days to get better. I’m taking heart from the fact that I didn’t get any symptoms whatsoever. If my immune system can ward off that particular bug then I guess it should be in decent shape. Just don’t let me catch a cold too close to race day, please please please!
If you read a few Irish running blogs you probably get the impression that we’re all obsessed with the weather. Maybe we are, but if you pursue an outdoor hobby in this country it tends to get challenging around this time of the year (not that we had a good summer). Yesterday’s 8 easy miles saw plenty of wind but no rain, today it was pretty much reversed, no wind but heavy rain. Niamh happened to be up at 6:40, the time I left for my run, and just took one look at the weather, one look at me, and went to bed shaking her head in disbelief. You’d think she’s used to it by now.
I had planned an easy tempo run, 2×2.5 miles, at roughly half-marathon pace. For some reason I had set my mind on 6:40 rather than 6:30, but maybe I’ve just learned my lesson from all the frustrating summer workouts. Mind, that’s still 25 seconds per mile faster than the pace I used for tempo runs before the Cork marathon. I had originally planned to use the racing shoes but for some reason didn’t want them to get soaked in all that rain and wore normal trainers instead. The first interval went pretty well, I felt good and the pace came without pushing much. The second interval started the same, but for some reasons not entirely clear to me I completely fell apart over the last mile. While it was slightly uphill, that should not have been sufficient reason to slow down all the way to 7:20. I got incredibly tense and never managed to relax at all. I can’t quite figure out why, but I won’t dwell on it. One botched mile is not worth worrying over.
13 Oct
8 miles, 1:03:01, 7:53 pace, HR 142
14 Oct
9.15 miles, 1:07:55, 7:25 pace, HR 154
incl. 2×2.5 miles @ 6:41, 6:58