Garmin Virtual Racer.

Today's Record is tomorrow's motivation.

Forced Rest

(very) Cross Training.

As you will see from the above photo I also train in Martial Arts although not as often as I would like to and last Tuesday during a MA session I broke 2 ribs and that has ended my training for this year with what I call forced rest.  It's unlikely that I'll be doing anything between now and Christmas so this is probably the time to review the year and think about my plans for next year.

I've had very little time off during 2010 having almost gone from race to race with very little rest and since coming back from my most recent race in Gibraltar I was more or less straight back into training and thinking about the next race.  Rather than worry about my ribs I look at this injury as a guilt free reason to do nothing and by finding the positive in a sometimes negative situation you stay mentally strong.  Maybe guilt free is the wrong term to use for taking a break but for me I always like to do what I can do and if  I feel up to training I train as you never know what the next day might bring.  My theory is rest days will happen rather than needing to plan them and I'm really glad I made the effort to run last Monday in the snow.

Lost in the woods.

On the road again

As planned, last week was an easy week with a slight increase in duration from the week before to ease myself back into a regular routine without over doing it.  I included a few cycling days using my commuting time to cross train and make the most of my free time or maybe it was creating training time?  My week went a little bit like this:

Monday

Easy Run over Hilly Course: 6K

Tuesday

Cycle to/from work: 38K

Easy Run: 10K

Wednesday

Cycle to/from work: 38K

Steady Run: 12.8K

Thursday

Cycle to/from work: 38K

Friday

Steady Run work/home 17.6K

Saturday

Running Drills 2K

Sunday

5K Race in Lucan 5K  (18min45sec)

Total for Week: 58K Running & 114K Cycling

The best training plan is one that fits around your life rather than trying to fit your life around the training plan! During last week all my cross training was done during my commuting time and my run home on Friday which took 1hr 22min was also a commute which got me home 30mins later than usual but for that extra 30 mins I managed an 11 mile run.  My steady pace 8 miler on Wednesday was done while my kids were at Kick boxing, the easy run on Tuesday was my way of getting to an athletics competition the kids were competing in and the running drills on Saturday were done with my daughter .  How do I find the time to train?

Sport, Sweat & Science.

Today as a guest athlete I took part in an incremental treadmill test in 'The Science Gallery"', Trinity College as part of an experiment to show the difference in fitness levels amongst athletes.   As part of the demonstration I ran on a treadmill beside Fiona Friel (one of the best sprinters in the country) in full view of  visitors and our test data was displayed on a screen for all to see.  The test started out with us running at 10 kph with the speed increased by 1 kph every 3 minutes until we had to stop.  Two minutes into every kph increase a small sample of blood was taken and this was analysed for lactate content.  This result along with speed and heart rate was plotted on a graph and the result shows essential information for maximising performance and making improvements in your chosen sport.

If this test was carried out in a lab we would also be wearing face masks to work out how much oxygen our lungs can absorb from each breath and this would then give us another important reading which is our VO2 Max.  

Tomorrow I start thinking about the London Marathon which is now only 24 days until I stand behind the start line.

Well done Tony!

I didn't race today due to other commitments but Tony was there to represent the club and finished in a very respectable 4th position so it's well done Tony.

My training has been a bit hit and miss since last week because of a stomach bug I picked up last Wednesday.  It's a far from ideal situation but I suppose I'm lucky that it happened 2 weeks before the race rather than during race week as I'm only now starting to recover and there's no way I could have ran the 100K yesterday.  

Yesterday (Saturday) I did a short but intense track session to make amends for the number of training days I've missed and it took a lot of effort to keep going.  

The session was 5 miles with a 1 mile warm up and cool down and 3* 1 mile efforts at 6:15 pace.

Today I went for an easy 10 miles at my planned race pace of between 8 min - 7:30 min mile using my Garmin 305 to stay on target.

Cross Training

I don't have a lot of free time and any I do have is taken up with the running so I've started to include some cycling as a sneaky way of keeping my legs ticking over when not running.   Using the bike to commute to and from work allows me to cross train without requiring any extra time.  

This has turned out to be a very mixed but successful week finishing with a 34 Mile run along the Royal Canal from Leixlip to Enfield.  Ran home from work a few times which is 10.5 - 11.5 miles depending on the route I take and also cycled either to or from work a couple of times.

As I'm planning on running the 100K race in Galway at close to 8min30 pace my commuting runs have all been slighty faster at 7min30 pace.  Also included  in my week was 1 Tempo session which was 5 miles at 6min 30 pace and my usual track interval session on Saturday which this week was 5* 800 M (twice around track) at 6min mile pace with Tony.

My Long Run was quite tough and although I didn't really enjoy it because I felt I had to do it, it was without doubt a great confidence booster. My average pace was just under 8:30 pace and when I stopped running I felt like I could have kept going.  It's still way off the race distance but I don't think i'll be running much further than this between now and the race. It's important not to do more than you can recover from.