The taper crazy

The countdown is on. It's less than a week until the big day and most of the actual training bit is over. A few short sessions left but nothing I would have considered worth wasting a clothes change on a few weeks ago. Perspective!

It's great to get a bit more free time but to be honest I think I might be losing the plot a bit! Up to this point I didn't have enough leftover energy to get too worked up about anything. Unless I was hungry if course.
In the last few days as I've freshened up I've found myself with renewed energy. Energy for housework, shopping and side errands I had been putting off. Energy for the odd bit of core work. And for better or worse energy for being a big grenade of emotion just waiting to go off. God help my friends, family and soon to be sainted SO...
I've managed to keep the unprompted and unprovoked fits of crying mostly to long stretches of motorway driving but if anyone spots me at a set of traffic lights crying like my heart is breaking...don't worry. I just have too much time and energy on my hands so it had to come out somehow.

Physically the legs are getting some bounce back. Parkrun quite close to my previous pb pace on Saturday felt fairly manageable. Sunday's final chunk of marathon pace miles felt effortless and I'll admit I wished the race was yesterday as I felt strong and ready. I just want to turn up next Saturday feeling as ready as I did after 8 yesterday and I'll be happy.

Life would be boring if I was consistent at everything!

So what can I say? I'm not very good at updating this which is a shame. When I look back at earlier posts it's great to be able to see progress, or on the flip-side it's useful to be able to reflect on a time when things seemed to be going badly as a reminder that things change.

I've managed to fail to document an entire marathon training cycle which is impressive! Taper started yesterday and I'm still in one piece (touch wood) and feeling strong. I'm registered for the first running of the Galway Bay Marathon (previously a half and 10k) on Saturday October 3rd.

Image borrowed with thanks from the event FB page

Should I talk about targets? I'm not particularly superstitious so I'm happy to document my A,B,C and D goals.

• D - Finish!
• C - Small PB (3:45-3:54)
• B - Large PB (3:30-3:45)
• A - Sub 3:30

Key sessions are pointing to being ready for my A goal. Goal marathon pace is 8:01 and I've been there or under for my marathon pace tempo runs. Can I do it for 26.2? Not a clue but I'll give it a go!

Dublin City Marathon Training: Taper week 1

I was quite relieved to hit the taper last weekend.........and so was understandably on the back foot when I figured out this week still had more than 50 miles in it. Feck! 

Oh well! I haven't followed the plan thus far just to throw it out the window when I'm near the end. 

The week went well after the initial shock and I must say even the small step down in miles has given me a fair bit of extra pep in my step. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, as I'm so accustomed to being on the go all the time I've used this extra energy to do pointless stuff like cleaning. I did all the usual bits and pieces but with a few added extras. 

I ironed. (Not a regular occurrence.) My freezer was even defrosted. I think this is the first time I've done this on purpose ever. Any other time it's been a consequence of either the door being left open overnight or an electrical outage. Both scenarios resulting in me throwing away large amounts of frozen food. This time I planned it and virtually no throwing away ensued (apart from the breaded calamari I was never going to eat.) I feel very grown up. Maybe I'll start making jam or something next? 

Today I had a grand total of 4 miles on my schedule. I can't remember the last time I ran that few miles. It was a glorious day too so I decided to go on a bit of an excursion with younger child to make the best of the good weather. 

Howth was the destination and it was glorious once we got out of the car. Next time I'll be getting the train as parking was an absolute nightmare. 

As I'm a tad on the financially embarrassed side just at the moment due to the glories of paying both a mortgage and rent (thanks Celtic Tiger!) and various school related expenses, we packed a lunch and had that on a bench in the lovely sunshine right beside three of the most gorgeous huskies I've ever seen. I wish I could have gotten a picture but they were with their humans so it probably would have looked strange!

After that we had a walk out to the lighthouse where younger did her best teenager impression hiding behind her hair as you can see. 

Then we had a rummage around a second-hand book place and went to the weekend market where we spent a combined total of about ten euro and that includes veggies for the week. Pretty happy with that! Nice to know you can have a day out in Dublin without spending a fortune. 

Tomorrow I have 12 miles at PMP planned so I hope to get that done relatively early. I hope the weather is like today, it's absolutely glorious running weather. Fingers crossed for this at the end of the month! 

The rest of tomorrow involves replenishing the aforementioned freezer and then babysitting for a friend. What I'm going to do with my time when the miles really drop I don't know!

Dublin Marathon Training: Taper time!!!

I'm sooooo excited to be tapering! This was the first week of training when I just felt "I'm ready to be done."
Despite that I had a solid rest of week's training.

Thursday was a 7 miler with a friend a bit faster than it should have been (8:30 average) but happened by accident as we were chatting away nineteen to the dozen. Friday was a rest day which was good as I had a million real-life things to catch up on and then my parents paid us a surprise visit.
Which was lovely but I had planned on staying off the vino and the dinner out put paid to that. (They forced my mouth open and poured wine down my throat obviously. Those assholes!!)

The ensuing mild hangover and the fact that they didn't leave until after lunch on Saturday meant my 10 miler at PMP was later than planned but I'm guessing this just enhanced the handicapping effect it's supposed to have on my 21 miler today. Which is the point really so extra bonus points...I win at making things harder for myself! A fact that everyone who knows me well is already very aware of.

The 21 miler went amazing. I had planned 10 easy pace and then the rest at a comfortable cruising pace that felt like I could still have chatted at and I could eat and drink at. I wore the same shorts, socks and shoes I intend to wear on race day and took 3 gels. One as I was leaving the house, one at 5-6 miles (takes me ages to drink the buggers!) and one from 12-15(seriously...ages!)

I also took two of these guys as GI issues have caused me to avoid gels in the past. I still brought TP just in case.

God bless modern medicine!

Anyway all was well on the gut front so will be repeating that on race day and bringing a couple of extra for good measure.

Splits were:
9:49
9:46
9:46
9:03
9:12
9:20
9:00
9:23
9:13
8:47
8:30
8:38
8:32
8:26
8:39
8:19
8:25
8:21
8:24
8:22
8:16

I felt really good throughout and was quite impressed with myself that I ran around the car park a few times at the end to make it 21. If I had felt tired I would certainly have called 20.7 good enough and dodged inside to tackle the three flights of stairs to the apartment. I could definitely have done another 5.2 miles. Could I have done them if my first few miles weren't easy? I don't know.

For that reason and from information I've gotten on boards.ie I'm planning on going out with the 3:50 pacers and sticking with them the first 10 miles.....so that's 8.47 pace (but I'd say they will be more like 8:40 to allow a bit of a cushion for extra distance etc.)

Then I'm hoping to get onto 8:30 pace if all is well and push that in to mile 22. After 22 most of the hills are over and I can try to take advantage of the downhills to maintain/increase my speed.

Well that's the plan anyway. Today. Ask me again tomorrow!

Ooops!

So I sort of forgot to write anything for the last few weeks...a combination of laziness and lack of access to a computer. My phone is banjaxed too and that has been my backup. Must try harder young(ish) lady! Training for the marathon continues and I'm now officially on taper. Yay! So so delighted about this as the last few weeks of running have been quite tough, just never really felt rested on a run and my longer races have been really really tough to the point where I questioned my level of fitness. Anyway it's done now so no point worrying too much about it until race day. Time to recuperate and focus on shorter quality sessions and staying healthy. Now is not the time to catch a cold! In other running news I have another new pb over 10k! 47:40 which is also a full 5 minutes faster than I ran the same race last year. Absolutely delighted with that. This is even more impressive when you consider that we ended up in the pub Friday night for more beers than was a good idea at any time and definitely not the night before a race. Not very clever at all! Anyway it all worked out ok in the end so no harm done. Next big goal is sub 45 but I'm not holding my breath for that for a while. It took me so long to get under 50 minutes that I can't believe I'm actually considering sub 45 at all. I'm starting to feel like I might have some real speed in my legs (relatively speaking!)

Last solo!

I'm very excited to say that I did my last solo long run for quite a while last week!  Next weekend I have a kilomarathon (26.2km) and after that a 3/4 marathon (30ish km.)  I'm lucky in that I quite enjoy the time by myself that I get while running and I have no desire to run with groups regularly but it will be nice to have that energy for the next few weeks.  Does that make me seem really antisocial?

Will have to fit one more long run in after that and then it's taper time....otherwise known as Breaking Bad binge watch and Italian food eating frenzy time.  Can't wait!

In other news I had my first sports massage last week.  Naively I booked this on my birthday for a little treat for myself?  This was the opposite of relaxing.  50 minutes of undignified screeching later and I was officially feeling very sorry for myself indeed.....oh well!  Get over it you big jessie!

Happily the physio said I don't have any obvious problem areas and am surprisingly ok for a first marathon training cycle so that's good.  I'm wondering how painful the massage would be if I was having problems?

Speaking of birthday presents I did get a lovely surprise from the BF..... a garmin 210 with a hr strap.  What a guy!  He knows it's something I would never have gotten around to buying for myself (cos I'm not a real runner people!) but I'm delighted with it...and him the big handsome devil :)  Brought it out for a spin that very day.

Look at me adding pictures and everything!

Really sad to hear about the death of one of the half marathon runners in the Phoenix Park today.  I know that statistically these things do happen every now and again but it's always a terrible shock when it does and stats are very little help to the friends and family of this young man. Hopefully every young healthy person who is lost brings us one step closer to getting to the bottom of these syndromes.