from Diary of a “Rubbish Marathon Runner” Of course I still have Sunday’s race in the legs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll take it easy. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, that won’t come as much of a surprise to you. The legs felt stiff and heavy when I left the house Wednesday morning for my workout. Last week I had tried a 10k time trial and was less than pleased with the result. After some deliberation I decided to attempt 3×2 miles at roughly the same pace. I knew that Sunday’s race would have an impact on the legs, and I gave myself permission to bail out any time. During the warm-up I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the faster part, but when it started it actually felt ok. The first pace segment was with the wind at my back, and I managed 6:36 pace, which I was quite pleased with. The second was half with the wind and half against it and yielded 6:44. which actually came as a pleasant surprise because I had expected a lot worse. The third segment saw me battling the wind and mounting fatigue, and if there were such a thing as a helpline for abused legs they would have dialled the number at that point. I managed to complete it in 6:58, which meant that I had run those 6 miles a good bit faster than last week, albeit with half-mile breaks in-between. But with the race still in my legs, this was a much better workout than I had dared to hope for. I know I had gotten slower with each segment, but if you take the wind into account, it would explain a lot of the difference.
My training paces are always slower than you would predict from my race results. I prefer to look at it from the other side: my race results are better than my training paces would predict. That’s something I can definitely live with, I just have to learn not to have an eye on the training pace all the time.
Despite being sore all day yesterday I did notice a marked improvement in the legs for today’s easy run. It looks like I have recovered from the worst bits of fatigue from the race, despite my workouts. I think my heart rate has dropped slightly as well, which is a normal post-race effect.
I was hoping to run another race before Boston, but it’s not looking good. There is a 10k in Limerick next week, but I just found out that it’s on Saturday, which makes it impossible for me to attend because either Niamh or me will have to drive the twins to Cork that day and the other one has to mind Cian and Maia. The only other race within reach is in Cork on 5 April, but I don’t think running a 10k two weeks before the marathon would be a good idea. What do you think?
11 Mar
10 miles, 1:13:14, 7:19 pace, HR 158
incl. 3×2 miles @ 6:36, 6:44, 6:58
12 Mar
8 miles, 1:04:40, 8:05 pace, HR 139