Djouce Mountain

My plan for this weekend was to spend as much time as possible in the mountains concentrating on ascending / descending rather than distance while carrying my race day kit. on Saturday I went to Glendalough and did my usual run on The Spink and although my climbing was strong I felt a lot of pain in my IT band while descending so I walked the down rather than increase my chance of injury and I cut the session short. I had planned on running it 3 times by reversing the route each time and avoiding the long flat stretches.

On Sunday I went as planned to Crone Wood in Wicklow with Tony and we went for a mixed run on road, trail and mountain peaking on Djouce mountain. The attached graph from my Polar HRM shows the profile of our run and yet again I climbed strong but was very slow while descending. Shortly after arriving home I felt fully recovered but the problem is still there so maybe I should take it easy over the next few days and leave the hills until race day. It's probably better to arrive at the start line slightly undertarined rather than injured.