Hey folks! This past week was a bit more promising and almost resembles what a typical marathon training week would normally look like for me. Have reduced the overall load and volume in order to be able to handle the long run and the effort that takes out of me. I was away down west in both Galway and Clare for 5 days in total last week so wasn’t able to complete any additional turbo trainer sessions on the bike but hope to compliment my training this week with them! What I was able to compliment my training with this week was probably too many pints of Guinness, which were very enjoyable but probably made the 20 mile run on Friday one of the hardest long runs I’ve completed to date!
Weekly Recap:
Monday: 4.1 miles 31.02
Tuesday: 2.3 mile WU – 6 mile Steady in 35.42 – 2 mile CD
Wednesday: 6 miles – 49.00
Thursday: Rest Day
Friday: 20 miles – 2.10.08 – 6.30 mile pace
Saturday: 5 miles – 41.30
Sunday: Rest Day
Tuesday’s session was completed with Paul my brother in Phoenix Park before we headed for Galway for a few nights! Paul was down for a 6 mile Tempo session so I decided to jump in on this as I haven’t done anything faster for the last few weeks. We started out at around 6.10 mile pace before picking it up as the run went on hitting some 5.4x mile splits averaging out at 5.56 pace for the whole run on a decent but challenging route. Really happy with this and tib post generally felt good! So from here I probably made the week difficult for myself with the aforementioned pints of Guinness but also with the travel down to Galway, then back to Dublin, then back down to Clare and then finally back up to Dublin yesterday evening, don’t make things easy for myself 😉
In the middle of all that travelling got a planned 20 mile run in on Friday morning in Phoenix Park. Plan was to go out easy before picking the pace up as the run went on. Also the big focus on this run was to practice fuelling during the run. Parked the car at the Polo Grounds and ran a 5 mile route at the top of Phoenix Park allowing me to take on water and a gel every 5 miles. The water situation was fine however made a mess of the gels and essentially only got 1 and a half gels in total out of a planned 3. This made the last 5 miles very tough mentally and I really suffered I have to say. I need to practice this quite a lot over the next few weeks. If its not something you’re practicing as you get ready for a marathon I’d strongly encourage you to start doing straight away, will make a difference on marathon day! After about 5 miles of the run on Friday picked the pace up and felt good but from about 13 miles was just about holding onto this pace and hadn’t really the energy to pick it up anymore. Maybe it was the lack of gels, the too many pints of Guinness, the long drives or maybe it was me feeling a bit too sorry for myself? When I woke up Friday morning I definitely felt as though this was something I was making myself do as opposed to me chomping at the bit to get stuck into the run. Not always easy to feel like this but you need to be going into these runs in a positive mindset as opposed to feeling sorry for yourself. The positive thing from Friday I suppose is I got the run in and sets me up for the weeks ahead.
Body was fairly battered after the run and managed a very slow 5 mile shuffle on Saturday before jumping into the sea at Spanish Point which seemed to help the body no end. After a rest day yesterday body feels ready to go again. This week will be about building things up a slight bit further without increasing too much!
Cheers for reading folks and have a great week 😊
Noel
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