Energy from nowhere

I had to postpone my weekend long run until Sunday morning as I spent a wet and windy Saturday morning doing a recce of the Lough Ine Tri bike route with Pete, Connie, Brian and Dixie (poor Dixie got dropped, I wasn't far off getting dropped myself).

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I was up too late on Sunday morning to join the MacCotter Glounthane run (would you like some hills with that?) so with a cup of coffee swiftly dispatched I went to the farm for a flat barefoot run on grass. I joined Joe Roche, Austin Brown, Pat Twomey & (forgot his name - I keep doing that, although in my defence I had just been introduced to him) for the last few miles of their run. The pace was around 7:30 so by the time they had finished I was set on 2 hours @7:30 pace average, which would give me 16 miles (a bit more than last weeks 14.8 mile 2 hr run). Shortly after I was joined by Pat Murphy for a few laps and over the course of those few miles the pace seemed to gradually increase towards 7:00. I passed the first hour with 8:14 miles on the clock (7:22 pace average) well on target for my 16 miles and feet feeling great. I kept the pace pretty close to 7:00 for the remainder of the run finishing with 16.77 miles in total - 8.63 for the second hour (6:57 pace average) the only niggle caused by being careless passing through a gap next to a gate where I managed to hit my 2nd smallest toe on my right foot off a stone ditch. I didn't know until I had finished 3 miles later which toe was hit and by that stage it had turned black and blue. Apart for the incident with my toe I was very pleased with the run and how relatively comfortable I felt throughout, particularly as my pre-run nutrition was limited to a cup of coffee.

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A 3 mile recovery run on Monday evening showed that my toe was unlikely to be broken but there was some pain which was enough to dictate the pace - 8:27.

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I took Tuesday off work and brought the 2 young ones and 4 of their friends to Killarney for the day where we trekked to the summit of Torc Mountain (535m). I dipped my feet in a mountain stream for a few minutes on our return, the cool water easing the inflammation/discomfort in my toe.

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My evening track session called for sets of 4 to 5 minutes (1,200m to 1 mile) at Interval (I) pace with 3 to 4 minute recoveries. As Daniels recommends that Intervals shouldn't last longer than 5 minutes, and 5 minute miles are not my Interval pace I settled for 5 x 1,200m in 4:24 (88 second laps) with 3 minute recoveries. I had to add 3 seconds per lap as I was running in lane 3 - so 4:33 was the target for the 3 laps (4:30 sounded better). Following a few laps warmup which revealed no discomfort in my toe I settled into the work at hand, taking my eye off the ball for the first interval but hitting the target for the remaining 4 -

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4:33/29/30/29/28.

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The intervals felt reassuringly more manageable than the similarly paced 6 x 800's a few weeks ago - so a step in the right direction I think.

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