Events conspired against running early yesterday (Saturday) or early today.
Yesterday we had the normal Satuday taxi service - dropping kids here and there, and we also had a very important trip to Smyths Toy Store to get my daughter K a bike, in celebration of her being 1 year diagnosed with diabetes (might sound weird to celebrate same, but we are looking at it from the point of view of how sick she was and we didnt know why - 2 days of insulin and she was back to herself).
Anyway, this morning J decided he wanted to join the local rugby team (they dropped flyers into the school), so that cancelled running this morning (would have gone earlier but Ireland were playing USA in the World Cup, so couldnt miss that...)
Anyway short story long I got out tonight at 9:15p.m. I needed to up the distance to 26k (16 miles). It was a miserable wet night but enjoyable. I did 2 loops of one of my usual routes - Raheny, down the Howth Road to Fairview, then along the Coast Road to Blackbanks and back up the Howth Road to Raheny.
The blow by blow is as follows; first 3k were sore enough, as is becoming usual. The ankles were twingy. They warmed up and i felt pretty comfortable for quite a while.
During most runs i spend a lot of time negotiating with myself, tonight this took the form of telling myself not to turn for home at 10k, then at 13k, while running thru Raheny village on the first loop. I then spent about ten minutes calculating how far i needed to run to be able to turn back & still have complete the 26k. I find during runs that the simplest maths leaves me stumped - i figured wrong, and had i turned back in line with my calcs i'd have only done 24k.
The 2n time running the Coast Road was much windier (at least it seemed that way) but dry. My ave time per km was moving from about 6min30sec to 7mins (it was 7mins30sec by the end of the run). However i was still feeling okay, if tired.
My calf cramped up at about 19k and stayed cramped for a while. I had been to a talk earlier in the week by an Irish Ultra Runner, John O'Regan, and he mentioned having a sachet of salt to take with water to fight cramp thru rebalancing your electrolytes.
I did this and it seemed to help, whether by placebo effect or not, who cares.....but as i sit here typing the calf is still pretty tender.
I reached the Bull Wall at 20.5km, which meant if i ran straight home i'd only do 24.5k, so negotiations started afresh; but there was only one real outcome likely - i didnt want to be out here running this far and this late to feel like a failure, so i passed the shortcut home and continued on the loop.
At this stage i was pretty much doing an old man shuffle but, no matter how slow, i wanted to keep as close to an impression of running as i could muster. I did concede on one thing, i was going to stop at 26k and walk the last .3k home (i feel this helps loosen the legs a little as well as being able to finally STOP).
I did this and my time was pretty much bang on 3hours - very slow for 16 miles but i'm pretty proud of myself for getting thru it, especially late at night in such crappy weather.
The only downside is getting out of the bath at 12.45am, quite late with work in the morning.
And while am i still up blogging at 1:30am? Cause i'm on the 2am glucose check, and i know if i close my eyes now they'd need a nuclear explosion to get them open again.....
Happy running,
Yesterday we had the normal Satuday taxi service - dropping kids here and there, and we also had a very important trip to Smyths Toy Store to get my daughter K a bike, in celebration of her being 1 year diagnosed with diabetes (might sound weird to celebrate same, but we are looking at it from the point of view of how sick she was and we didnt know why - 2 days of insulin and she was back to herself).
Anyway, this morning J decided he wanted to join the local rugby team (they dropped flyers into the school), so that cancelled running this morning (would have gone earlier but Ireland were playing USA in the World Cup, so couldnt miss that...)
Anyway short story long I got out tonight at 9:15p.m. I needed to up the distance to 26k (16 miles). It was a miserable wet night but enjoyable. I did 2 loops of one of my usual routes - Raheny, down the Howth Road to Fairview, then along the Coast Road to Blackbanks and back up the Howth Road to Raheny.
The blow by blow is as follows; first 3k were sore enough, as is becoming usual. The ankles were twingy. They warmed up and i felt pretty comfortable for quite a while.
During most runs i spend a lot of time negotiating with myself, tonight this took the form of telling myself not to turn for home at 10k, then at 13k, while running thru Raheny village on the first loop. I then spent about ten minutes calculating how far i needed to run to be able to turn back & still have complete the 26k. I find during runs that the simplest maths leaves me stumped - i figured wrong, and had i turned back in line with my calcs i'd have only done 24k.
The 2n time running the Coast Road was much windier (at least it seemed that way) but dry. My ave time per km was moving from about 6min30sec to 7mins (it was 7mins30sec by the end of the run). However i was still feeling okay, if tired.
My calf cramped up at about 19k and stayed cramped for a while. I had been to a talk earlier in the week by an Irish Ultra Runner, John O'Regan, and he mentioned having a sachet of salt to take with water to fight cramp thru rebalancing your electrolytes.
I did this and it seemed to help, whether by placebo effect or not, who cares.....but as i sit here typing the calf is still pretty tender.
I reached the Bull Wall at 20.5km, which meant if i ran straight home i'd only do 24.5k, so negotiations started afresh; but there was only one real outcome likely - i didnt want to be out here running this far and this late to feel like a failure, so i passed the shortcut home and continued on the loop.
At this stage i was pretty much doing an old man shuffle but, no matter how slow, i wanted to keep as close to an impression of running as i could muster. I did concede on one thing, i was going to stop at 26k and walk the last .3k home (i feel this helps loosen the legs a little as well as being able to finally STOP).
I did this and my time was pretty much bang on 3hours - very slow for 16 miles but i'm pretty proud of myself for getting thru it, especially late at night in such crappy weather.
The only downside is getting out of the bath at 12.45am, quite late with work in the morning.
And while am i still up blogging at 1:30am? Cause i'm on the 2am glucose check, and i know if i close my eyes now they'd need a nuclear explosion to get them open again.....
Happy running,
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