Monday, June 22, 2015

Still taking it easy

Only a few runs lately but they are starting to feel easier, so recovery is getting there bit by bit, I even
First time trying Montrail..
had a run this morning with some sub 6:50min miles.

I received two new pairs of runners last week, one for trail (Montrail Rogue Racer) and another for road ( Saucony Phoenix 7).

I was in very bad need of replacing the road shoes as the last pair had 1200+ miles in them at this stage.   I opted for new trail shoes because they were cheap and also I wanted a lighter non-gortex pair of trail shoes.

Why did I want non-gortex? Well, Thomas was right about encountering problems with them. While the first pair of trail shoes I bought are great for running through low streams, puddles etc.      Once water gets into them...it doesn't get out!  This can be seriously annoying if water gets into them early on in a run and you have miles and miles to go.

Last week I also picked up my first peice of running related stuff that I'm going to put on the wall in my house, I decided as Thames Path 100 was my first 100mile race that I'd frame the route map/t-shirt, race number and include the event and finish time on it.  Its due to take pride of place in my office at home.

Miles This Year: 959 miles

Thursday, June 4, 2015

It's time to start planning for Dublin

So, I've been thinking. What do I want to achieve out of Dublin this year...after all one way or another I'll be running it. (yes Cathal, I’m going to be training for Dublin)
Well, after abit of thought I've decided I'm going to try aim for sub 3.15 this year.

I figure its pretty do-able as I've managed a 1.31 half marathon in the Waterford half in December and I have the endurance built from Ultrarunning.

This means that I just need to work on speed work for the next few months as I'm my previous marathon PB is from 2013 and that was only 3:33.

Speed work however has never been my strong point, I've never enjoyed it much and I find it hard to do when running on my own when compared to running with a group of people.

Ironically though, anytime I have actually done speed work I've always noticed some improvements in pace so I certainly do benefit from it. Noticeably so in my past experience.

So with that in mind now I need to work on a training plan with the aim of starting into training in July, this will give me 12 weeks before Dublin Marathon.  Until July I'm taking it relatively easy and I'll just tick away at the miles.

Anyone suggest any good training plans with this time in mind?
Miles This Year: 895 miles

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Tullaroan Marathon Race Report 2015

As a last minute decision last week I opted to take part in the Tullaroan Marathon, partially because its the nearest marathon to where I live and I want to make sure to support it and partially because I just wanted to do some long'ish miles at a leisurely pace and see how my body is since the Thames Path 100.

This is the second year that the marathon is being held in Tullaroan and as well as hosting a marathon they also hosted a 5km, 10km and a half marathon. All in all its well organised and its great to see so many races being available to people of all abilities.   Its a credit to all involved.

The marathon course is pretty straight forward as its 13.1mile loop, but it has plenty of hills on it to test you none the less. 

Elevation Profile

My rough plan was just to head out and take it pretty easy for the day, walking some of the hills and to just chat away for the way this was going to be very far from a race and my rough plan was to finish between 4:30-5:00hours.

JP & Myself
The morning didn't have a great start though as I headed out the door at 8:20am on Saturday and went to start the car and found the battery was flat.   I realised I didn't close the boot properly the night before (doh!).

A quick job with the jump leads from the other car and everything was sorted but the clocking was ticking away.

I made good time to start and met up with JP, Nicola and the lads. this time round only JP was running the marathon and he had roughly the same plan as myself so we headed out from the start together.

I must say that the first mile or two were abit challenging!  Not because of the hills though, but because I had spent the previous 3 days painting fences which involved standing up and kneeling down which caused abit of discomfort in my legs when going down stairs etc afterwards.   This also meant my legs didn't like the idea of running for the first few miles.

Eventually however they settled down and I could start to run along at an easy pace without any discomfort.   We ticked through the miles at a handy pace and basically spent the time talking about everything and anything.

As the miles ticked down to the finished we past a few people but continued to take it pretty easy by walking some of the hills, but for the last mile - mile half we kept up the running pace to finish in 4:33:06.

Overall I'm happy with how things went, it wasn't a race to me as I just wanted to stretch the legs for a few hours. I found afterwards that the legs were abit sore but by the next day they were fine.   

I feel that the body is bit by bit getting back to normality after Thames Path and being sick, its not 100% yet though.

Miles This Year: 890 miles