Paying the price

My legs are certainly paying the price for last Sunday's run. Surprisingly (or maybe not) it is my left quad and calf that give the most pain when walking. Perhaps they were compensating for the under performing right calf for the last 17 miles of the race. Certainly as the race went on my legs began to stiffen up considerably, with the last 5 miles being a real drag. I know this is quite common in marathons but when I initially slowed down I thought that the overall trauma to my legs would reduce (apart from the right calf strain).

My 5k splits (adjusted for the difference of 44 seconds between clock and chip time) are:-

5 km - 00:21:20 10 km - 00:21:04 15 km - 00:21:22 20 km - 00:22:38 25 km - 00:22:51 30 km - 00:23:20 35 km - 00:23:22 40 km - 00:23:42 42.195 -00:10:49

My target 6:45 pace for the first 20 miles equated to 20:58 5ks. The opening 5K in 21:20 was a deliberate slow start that went on for a bit longer than anticipated. By 10k I was almost on target pace and feeling good. The 21:22 for the 3rd 5k included pulling up before the 15k mat to apply bio freeze to my calf and after that it was pretty much downhill.

Overall the Garmin recorded 26.54 miles which is a 1.2% error. While this appears small it is equivalent to 5 seconds per mile which could lull you into a false sense of security if relying solely on the Garmin for pacing. For example the average pace to mile 8 on the Garmin was 6:43 as opposed to the real pace of 6:48.

Well done to Gary (recent commenter on my blog) who pulled off a great time of 2:55:15. What's even more impressive is that his last 5k was his fastest. To answer your question(s) Gary/(Frank) I started in the 3-3:30 pen, but had no problem getting up to pace once I crossed the timing mat. I caught up with and passed the 3:15 pacers somewhere during the 2nd mile. I do indeed intend to run the Connemara ultra in just over 4 weeks time but don't know what shape i'll be in by then. The target pace was always going to be well down on MP - so hopefully my endurance will be enough to carry me through. However I have the small matter of the Ballycotton 10 on Sunday week, which I hope to run at an easy pace if my legs are recovered.

An easy swim on Monday helped alleviate the stiffness. I followed this up last night with an easy 20 minutes spinning on the turbo trainer. My left calf and quad continue to throb along with a slight discomfort in the right knee, which reared it's ugly head while on the bike. However i'm confident that these are temporary niggles. As I haven't run, and won't until after the weekend, I don't know how impacted my right calf is from the pull on Sunday.