End of week August 27 2011

This is the end of the first week back after a terrible flu I had. 23 days after coming down with a bad cough and flu like symptoms, having 4 full days off work, and 4 full days where I had a fever and aches etc, I STILL have remnants of a cough.

I did an acceptable 28km run last Sunday, but that left me with really sore calf muscles. I had to deal with that all week pretty much, so clearly the pace I did that day and the distance was just a little too much to recover properly from.

The next run I had scheduled was (2x1200 2min RI) X 3 for Tuesday. I delayed it until Wednesday, but even then the calf muscles were not too good at all. I did it anyway, a bit of a mixed up run, I did not use my watch correctly and stuffed up the timing of the Intervals. The results are not really worth linking to Garmin Connect here. Pretty slow!!


I attempted a 16km Marathon Race Pace run yesterday morning. 23 days after doing a brilliant 10km MP pace run on 4th August, I could not handle 4min30/km pace for more than 6km or so. I pulled up and got water, toilet and continued a little slower for another 2km. This week I have been 'on call' pager duty for my work. Two nights in row I had alerts paging just about all night, each time recovering within ten minutes. So I was severely sleep deprived.

In all I did about 10km including warmup. The overall pace was slow and I did not feel at all good, the poor fitness and the hrd runs all contributed to me feeling pretty down in the morning.

The warmup:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/109588605

The first 6km:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/109588610

The last 2km:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/109588616

A pathetic warm down:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/109588622

After a really tough busy day at work, where I was still sleep deproved and rather irritated by the fact that we have an alert system that seems to serve the sole purpose of torturing any poor bastard that is 'on call' I felt the need to cheer myself up.

We have a rental property at Cleveland and it has just been re-tenanted so we visited to drop off a 'welcome' pack. I got dressed for a run and had Christine drop me off a little distance from home. I did an unplanned night run just for the hck of it, at a more comfortable pace than I have been doing recently. It ended up being only 8km, but it was not too bad at all considering I had done about 10km on the morning of the same day.

This has woken me up to something I had sort of considered before but discounted. I find that I really need recovery time - full days off where I don't do any distance runs. But I also need to get my mileage up so that I hve some sort of fitness basis to buil on for running a good marathon race. Having three running days a week makes it difficult to get the mileage up, so perhaps running twice a day on ome days will be ok.

So, depending on how I feel, I may get home on the afternoon of a hard interval or tempo run and do a recovery run at a comfortable pace like I did last night. Here is the run:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/109588629

After doing this run I fel whole lot better about my running. It was slightly tough run, but it may well be beneficial. I don't feel too bad at all the day after.

I have a 24km run for Sunday ( Tomorrow ) at a pace of 4min42/km. That is a pace I have proven I can do many times. My first ever HM race I managed sub 4min40 pace!! I did a 30km race last year at sub 4min40 as well so I have the capability to do it.. But I just may not be fit enough tomorrow. I will give it a go though. You never know I my well be on the up and start hitting the training paces I have planned next week.

My marathon race pace is certainly going to be about 4min40 on October 9. The exact pace depends on how I feel and the how the day pans out.