Running away

April 3rd - April 10th (Week 14 of 2023)

How are we 1/4 of the way through the year already 🤔

Monday: Usual easy with some strides thrown in, 2 sets of 6 * 30s.

Tuesday: Very easy 50mins or so.

Wednesday: Mona Fartlek. 2 * 90s @ 7:06, 7:02, 4 * 1' @ 7:07, 6:45, 6:55, 6:50, 4 * 30s @ 6:47, 6:33, 6:32, 6:39, 4 * 15s. All off equal recoveries.

I enjoyed this one and will probably do it again, it's a handy enough little session, just 10mins of hard running. The 4 * 15s were a bit annoying as the recovery was so short, it would be easier to run 1' hard than trying to gear up and down so sharply. I tried to run the recoveries at a floating pace rather than recovery but I sort of forgot this element as the session went on - something to improve on next time.

Thursday/Friday: No running

Saturday: 5k easy/warm-up + Narin Beach parkrun @ steady-threshold effort + very short cool down

This felt like everyone took off awfully fast, within 200m I felt like I was back of the pack as they all flew by me, to be honest I felt a bit overwhelmed just focussing on trying to lift my feet off the sand. I passed a good few on the way back, last 2 km, and in the end I finished 21/55 so obviously not everyone went past me but it certainly felt like it at the start. I couldn't believe the size of the crowd to be honest, definitely not the easiest parkrun and quite remote too. The volunteers were very nice, one lady in particular was spotting all the out of towners and making it her business to chat to them.

Sunday: 45mins easy - if you could call it easy going up all the hills!

25 miles in total

I've kind of lost my mojo a little bit, well I'm not sure if it's mojo really, I'm quite happy to get out and run but only up to a point! I have no appetite for pushing myself to do runs that don't take my fancy on a given day - I'd be a coaches nightmare at the moment!! I enjoyed the mona fartlek but probably should be trying to do closer to 20-25 mins of CV/5k effort but really happy with the short and sweet approach, hence the overall drop in volume also.

Apparently Steve Moneghetti! It popped up on my daily feed last week, I didn't quite manage the "float/recoveries" very well but it's definitely one I'll include again - Workout of the Week: The Mona Fartlek - the morning shakeout

Narin was fab. We had a lovely few days, quite therapeutic up there. It reminded me a lot of the Achill of my childhood - before it became a tourist hotspot. And yes I get the irony of that as I was a tourist in Narin but it is nice to go somewhere that is a little less popular but still with all the ingredients of a tourist hotspot - cake, cherry anyone 😂

The goal this year to tick off PBs at 5k & 10k. My last 5k race was June 2019 and a PB of 22:42. At the time I thought I'd be chasing 22 mins within the year but we all know what came next and as opportunities dwindled over the years since and the focus being elsewhere I've become less confident of it happening. When I saw the 5k series come up this year I thought it would be the perfect chance to go after that goal - dream big!

5k Race #1

I treated this first leg very much as a tune up race to get the feel for 5k again but I still felt quietly confident of a small PB. Tinman gives me 22:25 based on my 10k time from February. 

I felt quite calm in the run up to this. Arrived a small bit later than I'd have liked, collected the number, used the facilities, short warm-up. While queueing for the facilities I chatted to a lady who informed me it was a nice course with just one hill at 4km and a nice downhill finish. Nice enough evening, cold standing around but dry and not much wind. The start was delayed by over 10 mins and I got pretty cold waiting around. The ole raynauds kicked in which lately has progressed to effecting my toes as well as my fingers so I was really feeling that during the waiting around period, I tried to keep moving on the spot but it's not the same. 

Eventually we were off. I had converted my watch to km and loosely had 4:25-4:30 in my head as target pace. The first km was all downhill - happy days! Unfortunately it was very congested and I had started too far back so I had a bit of manoeuvring to do. I nearly got mowed to the ground when the road narrowed without a warning due to cars parked on one side. In hindsight I'm not sure if the congestion and slow start was a good thing or a bad thing, it certainly forced me to control my pace and not take off like a lunatic. I noticed my watched beeped consistently about 20-30m before each of the km markers and I wondered if it just normal GPS variance or had I run a bit extra in the opening km while going around peeps. Anyways, the first 3km ticked by awful fast, I was feeling very comfortable especially once I got past the congestion after about 1200m. It seemed to be all downhill and the target pace was grand - 4:24, 4:28, 4:24. 

Around 3k it started to get a bit harder, this was when I could finally feel my fingers again too. My breathing changed, it definitely got heavier but people still seemed to be coming back to me, the odd hill/drag appeared but I felt reasonably strong on them trying to focus on not slowing too much and with that 4:30 pace still in my sights the 4th km ticked in at 4:31. Delighted with that at the time as usually the 3rd/4th kms are when I fall apart. I had been psyching myself up for the hill in the last km but honestly when it came I still felt reasonably strong although I was overtaken by a SGAC runner here. Not long over the crest of the hill and I passed SGAC back again with a shout encouraging her to stick with me to which she grunted that she couldn't, I told her of course she could but she didn't come with me, I didn't take it personally! The 5th km clicked at 4:35 and then nearly 8 extra seconds for the extra 25 odd metres which was indeed a nice downhill finish. 

Gun time 22:42, Chip time 22:31. 

Over the line and over to the side where I spent a minute or two catching my breath. I was initially a bit disappointed with this. I felt i hadn't really put myself on the line. I was working hard in the last km or two but I was still upright catching my breathe at the end and notably I didn't have to engage the usual self talk and mind games that goes on in a 5k. But I got over it the following day, in fairness a PB is a good result and it's a race experience with learnings chalked up. Onward we go.  

5k Race #2

I'll keep this one a bit briefer! Chatting to a few after last week's race I got the impression this one was a toughie. Got off to a bad start and arrived quite late - actually just couldn't find the start, it was a bit random in the middle of a housing estate with no base/clubhouse as such, those who hadn't collected their race numbers last week were queuing up to get them from the boot of a car. Anyhow, made the start after a very short warm-up but actually didn't feel as cold starting off as last week as there was a lot less waiting around as this started on time. Made sure to start in a better position and I got this bang on this week. Like last week the first 3 km ticked by fairly quickly (4:28, 4:19, 4:33), the difference being this week my watch beeped bang on each of the km signs. The climbing which had started at 2.5km seemed to just go on and on and the 4th km was when it all unravelled, the continuous gradual climbing caught up with me, 5:03 for the this km. Got back on track with a nice downhill for the last 800m giving me a fast 4:18 5th km and a 22:41 finish time. I recovered for my warm-down fairly quickly, I walked for a minute or two and then picked up the feet into a gentle jog. 

Overall so far I feel I can get closer to 22mins but not as confident I can dip under it as I may have been a few weeks ago. 30-40 seconds is a lot of ground in a 5k but I'll keep trying to chip away at it all the same, hopefully a more favourable course awaits.

I spent June doing predominantly easy interval method based training and my intention is to stick to that approach for the rest of the year. There are plans in the book for different distances but I haven't fallen into a specific plan yet, I'm just using it as an approach. The main bread and butter aerobic base run is 1k easy intervals repeats with long slow recoveries, for now I have converted these into 4min reps which is closer to 800m at my easy interval pace (effort) but over time I will extend these to 5min/1km. I've also converted the 200m and 400m reps to time - 50s & 1:40 - I'll convert these to distance soon enough too - this was more to do with being able to plan the duration of my runs when squeezed for time etc.

The most recent 2 weeks were all holiday runs which I totally thrived on. I found myself waking naturallyy every morning so got out and got a run done and was back at base armed with lovely freshly baked produce before the rest of the family even noticed my absence. I enjoy running new routes and new terrain though I don't have a great sense of direction so I am a little nervous with exploring and tend to stick to safe enough out and back routes. Paces were all over the place for most of these runs, I was running significantly more elevation than I am used too, also different terraine sometimes sandy and also eating and drinking were out of the usual which I imagine impacted on my HR.

July 3rd - 9th

Mon: 6 * 4' reps @ 5:11, 5:10, 5:09, 5:25, 5:14, 5:36

Tues: 6 * 4' reps @ 5:15, 4:54, 5:17, 5:14, 5:37, 5:23

Thurs: 6 * 4' reps @ 5:11, 4:55, 5:17, 5:22, 5:14, 5:02

Fri: 12 * 50s @ 4:48, :33, :41, :12, :09, :08, :19, :34, :11, :22, :10, :41

Sun: Easy 10k with surges - felt awful for this and cut it short around 8km

Week: 46.7km/29miles

July 10th - 16th

Mon: 6 * 4' reps @ 5:38, 5:14, 4:53, 5:03, 5:11, 5:10

Wed: 14km Easy/Mod with 1min surges every KM - complete opposite to previous Sunday, I felt amazing on this run and could have run on!

Thurs: 6 * 4' reps @ 5:09, 4:44, 4:59, 5:01, 5:08, 5:07

Fri: 7k recovery run @ 6:15min/km

Week: 43.8km/27.2m

Was hoping to get one more run in at the weekend but a long journey home and then family visiting put paid to it. The bar is set at 4 runs per week though for now, if i get 5 it's a bonus - ideally I'd like to be getting 9 in a fortnight, hopefully achieveable for the rest of the Summer, along with the strength - which is going to be torture this week after a 3 week hiatus, I can feel the DOMS already 🙄🤪

Plan to update more regularly going forward.

Ah no the paces aren't 5k at all. The shorter reps like 200m are 1500m-3k pace alright and the 400m reps are 5k pace but you'd only be doing those once per week at most and the recoveries are very generous. The 1k reps which are the bread and butter are done at 92-95% of LTHR, which means you are well below threshold all the time, significantly slower than 5k pace and long very slow recoveries between reps too with 10 seconds walking each end of the recovery also (though i tend to forget to do the 2nd walk bit).

You should definitely try it. I've been dabbling with it since late last year, I just haven't been very consistent so I'm determined now to stick to it for the rest of this year and give it a proper chance to work. I think it's very promising for base/aerobic training anyways. I'm not quite convinced about race specificity (yet), not really a concern for me at the moment even though I plan to throw in a few races in the Autumn but they will be off base fitness.

I was in France for 2 weeks and didn't get into the sea either! I was in Portugal last year for a weekend with the same sea swimming friends as last weekend and I got in every day over there too so it is definitely their influence on me!! I don't think it's any harm to have some fear of the sea, you are right it is unpredictable - I'm that mum who makes her kids wear life jackets playing in the sea on holidays 😅 I grew up near the sea and I was lucky enough to get a few sea swimming lessons as a teenager but I still wouldn't be at all confident, every year I threaten to do a beach to buoy course that Swim Ireland run but it's a bit out of the way for me now where I'm living so it would be a full evening comittement. The panic getting in the other day was unreal, conquering that panic was so empowering though, I am still buzzing a little bit 😂

Thanks 😊

July 31st - Aug 6th

Mon: EIM 15 * 200s (49-51seconds) early before work, I can't remember much about this.

Tues: 5k recovery run @ 6:37min/k - was a bit tired and hot, didn't really enjoy.

Wed: 4 * 1k @ 5:19, 5:10: 5:07, 5:08 - another morning run, purposefully tried to keep these very easy.

Thurs: Rest

Fri: more EIM, 1 * 2k @ 5:15, 5 * 1k @ 5:07, 5:05, 5:05, 5:02, 5:08

Covered 9m in this run which constitutes a long run for me these days! Good to get it done early.

Sat: Rest

Sun: Easy with 5 * 100m

Week: 29m/48km

Aug 14th-20th

Monday: 15 * 200m EIM intervals. Nothing memorable about this, it's always a fairly enjoyable run so I assume it was again!

Tuesday: No running

Wed: 5 * 1k EIM reps. Again I don't remember much about this, fairly bog standard morning run presumably.

Thurs: A bit weary this morning, didn't feel like running at all but did an easy 10k with 6 * 40seconds surges throw in, picked up after a few km and was really enjoying it by the end.

Friday: No running

Saturday: 10 * 400m EIM intervals. A bit blustery out but felt good this morning, enjoyed these intervals, lovely feeling of pop in the legs without straining.

Sunday: A really easy long run, threw in some easy surges again just enough to keep it from getting too ploddy. 10m @ 6:20min/k - slowest long run in a while but focussed on keeping HR low despite the swirly conditions. Finished the day out watcing my young lad come back from his defeat last week to win the shield final and score a sweet goal from midfield too, proud Mum day and great excitement, his 1st time to play in county grounds too so a big occasion for him. Onward to my last week of morning running, I'll miss getting it done before the day starts.

Week: 57km/35.7miles