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and miles to go before I sleep...
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Saturday 21st LSR: 11.3 miles in 2:16:54
I was mildly worried about this run for a few reasons, mostly because getting into double figures is a little daunting. I don't run with headphones and haven't done for a good while but I thought I'd get a little bored of my own thoughts after the first hour so I downloaded lots of podcasts onto my mp3 player. I can report that Mark Kermode and Simon Mayos' film reviews on BBC Radio 5 is very good and so is Talking History on Newstalk. I picked the one where they were talking about Sparta because a discussion about a society who were the epitome of mental toughness seemed appropriate for a long run! Although maybe I should have saved that for my 18 or 20 miler
The run itself went well; the first third I was feeling great, enjoying being out early and every so often thinking about how beautiful the park looked and how wonderful the world was. Then after a couple of hills I started to feel a little bit tired and vaguely not great. I had just brought a few jellies so I had them which seemed to help although it might have been more psychological than physical. The last third was fine; when I got back, I honestly felt like I could have kept going (maybe not for too long now :pac:). Towards the end I became aware of a slight niggle in my left knee but it seemed to fade again.
So that's week 4 done; yay!
Edit: mileage for the week: 26 miles0 -
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Would like to but based on my last few LSRs, I'll most likely be going at a slow 12:00 pace rather than your 10:00/10:30. Will keep an eye out for ye as I'm going along
Ah here don't worry about pace - that's just a rough indicator. We aim to go at chatting pace, whatever that is for all of us. Try it and see how you go, honestly it will make the time go much quicker. No pressure tho
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Ah here don't worry about pace - that's just a rough indicator. We aim to go at chatting pace, whatever that is for all of us. Try it and see how you go, honestly it will make the time go much quicker. No pressure tho
You've convinced me! (put my name down on the group training thread for 10am) 0 -
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+1 on what the girls are saying; you looked grand and chatting away no bother to you.sunflowerRo wrote: »Well I'm glad you wernt bullied into 20 more when I left. Those girls are a bad influence
When you start to ramp the miles up I find you do start to feel niggles in the knees/hips but no harm checking it out. Good luck!
:eek: I assume you are referring to jcsmum there Ro...couldn't agree more. She bullied me into a last mile in the driving rain...was thankful to her after 0 -
sunflowerRo wrote: »Well I'm glad you wernt bullied into 20 more when I left. Those girls are a bad influence
When you start to ramp the miles up I find you do start to feel niggles in the knees/hips but no harm checking it out. Good luck!
Yeah I'm sure you're right about niggles and mileage, but just want to be sure. No danger of me being bullied into 20 miles just yetYou were well able to chat and run on Saturday. Definitely easier with a group alright.+1 on what the girls are saying; you looked grand and chatting away no bother to you.
Cheers ladies, I thought I'd find it much more difficult running these distances so the company definitely helped.
Monday 30th July 3 miles
Such a gorgeous day today. Was very envious of all the people in the park at lunchtime, would love to have skipped work for the afternoon and just sat in the sun.0 -
Tuesday 31st July 6.4 miles 59:37
I awoke this morning feeling vaguely hungover; headache and very tired. Which was odd because I haven't been drinking alcohol at all this month! So I decided to postpone my run till the evening. Because I was still tired, I was thinking of just doing a slowish run rather than PMP but somehow when I started, I felt like going a little faster. I found this run easier than the last week or the week before, I wonder if it was because I don't eat before my morning runs. I'd prefer to believe it's because I'm getting fitter of course 0 -
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Plan for this week:
Plan: Week 7/18
Monday 4 miles
Tuesday 7 miles pace
Wednesday 4 miles
Thursday Swim?/rest
Friday gym
Saturday LSR 14 miles
Sunday Rest
Monday 6th: ~3 miles 33:01
Tuesday 7th: 7 miles 1:10:59
I was over in the West for the weekend and did a few hours of hill walking on Saturday and Sunday. I really enjoyed it but clearly I overdid it and my legs are in bits since
I had a bath last night to help the muscle soreness but was still very stiff in the office today. I went to bed late last night so there was no chance of me doing my run this morning before work so ran this evening instead. I thought I'd be struggling a little with the pace run but found it no problem at all and my legs were fine. Yesterday was 3 miles instead of 4 because I was away and a bit stuck for time so just picked a loop I knew was just over 3. Definitely need to do 4 tomorrow though. 0 -
Wednesday 8th August: ~4 miles 39:41
Saturday 11th August: LSR 14.23 miles 2:44:25
I ran at lunchtime on Wednesday and it was very hot. Today I had stuff to do later in the morning, so for that reason but also because it would be cooler, I headed out for my run very early. A poor start where I felt really low in energy worried me a little but and the 14 miles seemed a huge task at that point. But after 30 minutes or so I felt better and it went smoothly from there (not that I wasn't getting tired by the time I got to 10 miles or so but it was managable rather than a struggle). Parts of the park were very sheltered and warm even though it was early so I was glad whenever I turned a corner and felt a cool breeze.
I wore a water belt, not the most comfortable thing although better than holding a bottle in my hand, and I didn't feel the need of anything beyond water, not even the jellies I brought. I had intended to try the gel which I had with me as I've never taken them before but by the time I remembered, I was nearly home so I didn't think there was much point.
Very pleased with how it went as I was apprehensive during the week, and I can say that today I ran the furthest I have ever run 0 -
Plan: Week 8/18
Monday 4 miles
Tuesday 7 miles
Wednesday 4 miles
Thursday rest
Friday gym
Saturday LSR 15 miles
Sunday Rest
Monday 13th: 4 miles ~39 mins
Tuesday 14th: 7 miles 1:14:56
Wednesday 15th: 4 miles 42:16
Pace for Monday's run was a bit fast, especially with the sun blazing down but I let my running companion set the pace (which was too fast for him too!). Learned my lesson and I set the pace for us today and set off more slowly. The promised storm wasn't too bad at lunchtime; it was raining rather heavily but not windy so although we had to dodge plenty of puddles, it was grand running weather
Tuesday's run was a little tougher; as well as finding the running itself touch, I was in very grumpy form as well and spent portions of it complaining in my head about all the traffic speeding way too fast through the Phoenix Park. So not the most zen morning for me; I need to make an effort to rise above these petty irritations and enjoy being outdoors in nature exercising. I gave a blood donation on Sunday so that might account for a little bit of a drain in energy.
15 mile LSR coming up this weekend, having done 14 last weekend without too much difficulty has given me a bit of confidence in doing the increased mileage. Hope that doesn't jinx it now :pac:0 -
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Sat 18/8 LSR: 15.5 miles 3:14:15
If I was to pick out one thing from this run to mention, it would be that running on the grass is really really irritating :mad:. It was actually a relief when I had an excuse to run on the path in the parts where there was no grass. This was because although parts of the Phoenix Park, like Acres Road, have nice short grass and very flat terrain, in other parts it was bumpy and muddy and the grass was long and in short it made me very fed-up :P I know, how whingy I sound! I'm not complaining about how they keep the grass; if anything I like the wilder parts of the Park where it's not immaculately groomed. I will just have to try to pick my route better in future.
My knees did feel a little sore at times; they seem good today and yesterday I made sure to do my stretches including 3 reps of a wall squat that is pretty tough by the third rep.
On Friday night, instead of a normal size healthy dinner, I turned into a bit of a glutton which no doubt accounts for the fact that I didn't need anything but water for the run and wasn't particularly hungry when I got back home either. For the route, because some parts of the Park were closed for the motor races, I decided to do 2 repeats of a loop. I didn't think I liked running the same stretches of road twice but actually it felt good psychologically. I see that I was a good bit slower than last week, I suppose running on the grass partly accounts for that. I've decided finally to get a GPS running watch because at this stage, I think I'd benefit from knowing my pace as well as getting a more accurate measure of the distance I'm running. 0 -
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Monday: 4 miles
Tuesday: 7.1 miles
Wednesday: ~ 4 miles
This will all sound very trivial and silly but I indulged in a huge slice of self pity yesterday after my trip to the physio. I asked him about doing the Frank Duffy 10 mile on Saturday and he said I should only do it if I jog it slowly and definitely not race it, or alternatively avoid the race and do a slow training run over the weekend. He's happy with my progress so that's good; right knee is doing very well but the left still needs work. On the way home, I started thinking about how I'd really wanted to do the race (not least to get an idea of my progress but also because I feel quite prepared for the distance) and that jogging around with people passing all the time (even starting at the back of the field, that would surely happen) would be a disheartening experience. And I thought about what a slow runner I am and how anxious it makes me that my knees aren't better and how I hate having to run on the grass. And so on...
Anyway after wallowing in that for a while, I started to focus on the practical and figured that since I've entered and have to do a run at the weekend anyway that I may as well do it. And sure I might as well get the goody bag (hopefully they won't have run out by the time I get there!). I'll admit that I did briefly think of ignoring the advice and racing it but then reminded myself that it's a bit stupid to waste money on going to a physio if I'm not going to listen to him. Of course I know I'm lucky as I just have a very minor injury and from reading other threads, there are lots of far more serious injuries about and I'm still allowed to run. It was just a bad evening.
Ok I feel better now 0 -
Frank Duffy 10 mile 01:45:07
My main learning from this race is that it's very difficult to run a race as a training run or possibly I'm not disciplined enough But in any case, here's my account of the race:
Normally as I head to a race in the Phoenix Park, the sight of runners everywhere, stretching, warming up, talking animatedly, queuing endlessly for the portaloos or ducking in amongst the trees would add to my pre-race nervousness. However since I was under instructions to jog this slowly, my main focus today was going to be on keeping a slow steady pace like I do in training, and to try not to be influenced by the pace of other runners around me. So I had no pressure on myself which was nice in a way.
I started at the back of wave 3, expecting that some people would be running at my planned pace (around 11:30 min/mile) but everyone seemed to take off like a bullet and I had to force myself to slow down. As I'd expected, it proved difficult not to unconsciously speed up and consequently my pace was a bit all over the place. Eventually though I found a sort of a rhythm that was comfortable and I was breathing comfortably. I thought I'd been on all the roads in the Park but as we went up behind the zoo it was unfamiliar territory and several of us got a good laugh when some animals started making noises like cheering (well maybe we just wanted it to sound like cheering!).
I got chatting to a girl who had started the race late when all the crowds were gone and we ran together for some of the race and chatted about running, which was good for helping to make the time pass. As we did the u-turn at Castleknock Gate to head back up Chesterfield Avenue, I heard a girl behind me say to her companion "we've definitely done 4 miles, we must have missed the marker". I could see from my watch that we hadn't hit 4 yet and felt a bit bad for them as they were clearly finding it a bit tough at that stage but I didn't think it would be helpful to correct them either. As we passed the bootcamp truck, the guy was encouraging everyone and said it was 5 miles, which was also incorrect which I'm sure everyone realised when the 5 mile marker appeared much further up Chesterfield. The lead runners passed around that time; we were on the road and they were on the path to our right. It was funny how deceptive running can be; they didn't look like they were going all that fast but were of course flying along because the winner was announced shortly afterwards at 55 mins I think.
I think from then on, without increasing pace, we were passing people at regular intervals and were rarely being overtaken which was good psychologically. It was particularly good on the hills when a lot of people had stopped to walk. I inadvertently misled my running companion about the number of hills because I'd forgotten about the uphill stretch on Upper Glen Road but I still think once you have Military Road out of the way, the rest isn't too bad.
At mile 9 I decided to speed up a bit for the last mile, figuring that one mile at race pace wouldn't be so bad. Hopefully I won't live to regret that but at the time it was fun to be running with a bit of speed and overtaking people. My watch says I ran it in 8:04 and I won't lie, I didn't find that pace easy but nice to know I can run at that pace, even if it's only for a mile. I didn't think there would be any small t-shirts left at that stage, and sure enough there weren't so I changed into the medium one I got and jogged slowly home.
It is a bit of an indictment of my previous attempts at running this race that today was a PB for me! But I'm happy to have done it, even if I really didn't run it as slowly as I should have. From my lap times, I see I didn't even manage a single 11:30min/mile and actually went under 11 after mile 3 So what I'd take from this is that if it's a choice between running a race as a LSR or not doing the race and just running myself at some other time, I should go with the latter.
Lap times:
11:19:78
11:05:00
11:11:00
10:40:00
10:22:00
10:28:00
10:32:00
10:07:00
10:50:00
8:04:00
With a warm-up jog to the start line of 2.2 miles and a similar distance cool-down, that brings me to a little over 14 miles for today 0 -
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