Jelly Legs

Started off the week with a rest day on Monday (did get in a 1 km swim) so my legs were pretty fresh for my Tuesday base pace run of 8.6 miles which I covered in 01:05:51 at a steady pace, which I pushed over the last 2 miles to get under 01:07 and the last half mile to get under 01:06 (you could say a bit of play with the fartlek principle) – overall a pretty good run at 07:39 pace @ 134 HR.

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I topped Tuesday off with another steady 2.5 miles on the treadmill at the gym – again legs felt strong. . However the tide turned this morning as I faced my weekly nemesis, hill reps - today 8 x 90 second efforts were called for. To be quite honest while I was less apprehensive than last week, my legs were a bit tired and I was looking forward to getting them out of the way.

Reps 1 to 4 went reasonably smoothly. The pace slowed during the fifth rep as I did not get as far as the previous reps in the 90 seconds. I could feel the muscles of my legs turning to jelly over the last 30 seconds.

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I'll try one more and get to 6, no point in doing them for the sake of it. Rep 6 was similar to rep 5. I'll run down again, I can always cut rep 7 short if the effort is too much.

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Down again and up for rep 7, when I finished I hadn't much left and knew that attempting an 8th rep could be ugly so I called it a day and jogged back to the car.

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As it turned out I could not have afforded the extra minutes down and up to complete the 8th rep as when I got home I had an hour to shower, eat and get Saran (4) and Ani (8) up and out the door with their lunches and drop them off at neighbours to take them to school as I had to be on the road for work by 0800hrs. It's more a case of coaxing and cajoling when it comes to young ones at that time in the morning - no point in rushing them it's counter productive.

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During the two hour drive in the car each way to a meeting in Nenagh I could feel the aches along the backs of my legs - hopefully part of the process of building in "hill" memory that I can rely on in the future.

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Overall 6.7 Miles today in 59:48 (08:56 pace @ 133 HR) - certainly the legs and not the heart controlled events this morning.