On being right, whether by accident or design.

Oh glory glory glory be! How lovely it is to be right!  Being the grandchild of a wonderful but notoriously contrary matriarch I really don't like being told what to do.  Furthermore being told what to do by a man (even if it's my coach) grinds my gears just a tad.  (Remind me again...Why am I single?)

Being told to rest til Monday didn't sit too well with me to put it mildly.  So what did I do instead?
Well I went for a 3 hour hike in the Wicklow mountains yesterday and then ran 10.5 glorious miles today. Huzzah!

Anyway I feel great now so who cares which of us was right (Me! Me me me! I care!)  
Yes I am 9 years old.

In fairness to the coach I was in such a state Thursday he was absolutely right to recommend rest.  And in my defense, if the hike yesterday had gone badly or I'd felt drained afterwards then I wouldn't have considered going out today.  Despite my underlying misgivings I do absorb information from those who know more than me. Anyone who thinks they always know best and has nothing to learn from others is omitting a lot from the learning process.

The hike was glorious though and I had so much energy when I came back I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom.  After a lovely relaxing evening and a great nights sleep I woke up to blue skies and a perfect view of the slightly snow dusted mountains in the distance.  Who wouldn't be inspired to get outside by that?  And in all fairness I really didn't have anything else to do so off I set giving myself full permission to run 10min/miles and to turn back at any point if I felt unwell.
I shouldn't have worried.  My legs were slightly heavy near the end but apart from that I ran consistant 9-9:30min/miles for the entire thing.  No unscheduled stops (except to fiddle with headphones and my visor) and no stomach issues.  No breathlessness and no nausea.

So hopefully this chapter has come to a close I can work towards getting back to where I was before and then onwards and upwards.

When hurts so good turns to sucks so bad

I'm officially going through a bad patch with running.  At least I hope it's a bad patch and not some awful new normal.  

As planned I headed up to the curragh camp Thursday night for a training run with the club.  Planned on being really conservative and doing about 4 miles total.  Of course secretly I was hoping I'd warm up, jog the first lap and feel so fantastic that I would end up only doing the 4 miles but know that I could have done more if I wanted.  Spoiler alert....That didn't happen!

What really happened is this.  I turned up, ran about 1.5 miles at what should have been an easy pace but felt ridiculously hard.  And then I died.  

Well not quite but I felt like I did.  Double vision, heart-rate through the roof, breathing uncontrolled, legs of lead.  I did a pathetic sobby little jog back the next mile to the car by which point I had calmed down a bit. At least I wasn't doing the "Woe is me! My running is broken!" wail by the time the coach spotted me so at I didn't look like as big of an eejit.  Anyway I was told to go home and not come back til Monday and see how I get on then.  Which is probably sensible advice so I'll ignore it and give it another go by myself on Sunday.  

Back to the grindstone

So I didn't die obviously.  Nasty dose of the flu though so I'm only feeling back to normal now. Went for a slow 2 miles yesterday and it was unnecessarily difficult.  I was sweaty throughout and slightly nauseous so the smart thing would be to rest today.

But I'm doing a race instead! 

Can't help myself!   It's the inaugural running of my hometown 10k and as I'm home for the weekend anyway it would be a shame to miss it.

I have no idea how this is going to go. I can't use my 5k in slane for comparison as it was on trail.  Also if it goes badly it might be due to the illness.

What I do know is I'm well trained for the distance and I know to expect pain and execute my race plan anyway. What I don't know is if the unquantifiable "it" will be there today. Judging by yesterday,  no.. But then when is there ever a correlation between a final training run and race day? Wait and see I suppose! 

I'm really excited though. Proper butterflies and everything!