Gone With The Wind

It was always going to happen, of course, and now the unexpectedly nice spell of weather we had at the beginning of November is well and truly over. The last few days, with the exception of Saturday, have all been marked by gale force winds and varying degrees of rain. On Monday a colleague asked me "you didn't go running in this weather, did you?", to which I could only reply "I've seen a lot worse". That pretty much says it all - it wasn't particularly bad and worse is undoubtedly yet to come, but it was the first hint of the winter storms.

I changed my weekend training in an attempt to avoid feeling like a ton on bricks for the first half of the week. Instead of doing a faster run on Saturday and then dragging myself over the mountain on heavy feet on Sunday I ventured into the mountain on Saturday. Following several days of rain the Kerry Way was waterlogged in many places but perfectly runnable (apart from the one spot where there had been some minor earth slide a couple of months ago) and I gave it a good, honest effort - but was VERY surprised to see a segment PB popping up for one climb when I uploaded the data into the computer afterwards. Make no mistake, this is still a soft segment, I am nowhere near top fitness and I ran nowhere near top effort. Running this on fresh legs for a change must have made quite some difference.

The legs did feel the effort on Sunday, of course, but it was the lousy weather that made me change my mind about running around the lake because I really did not fancy facing the high winds on higher ground. I chose the most boring option, namely running to Ard-na-Sidhe and back three times in a row, which is the only piece of road I know in the vicinity where the trees provide some sort of shelter against the worst of the winds. The time passed surprisingly quickly and the legs were okay - a little bit heave but it never got any worse, despite this being the longest run since Sparta by 3 miles.
Entirely by accident I reached a figure of 77.7 miles for the week. Neat!

The legs felt a lot better this Monday than on previous Mondays so I call the change in my training a success. Remember, this is still about recovery at the moment, not building fitness. The numbers on Monday were definitely encouraging, the best ones so far since Sparta, which is good. Tuesday's weren't quite as good but with the gale force winds I had to battle that's not overly surprising. But at least I do get the distinct impression that things are going into the right direction. Finally!

7 Nov

10.7 miles, 1:33:56, 8:47 pace, HR 152

   Windy Gap

8 Nov

15 miles, 2:02:19, 8:09 pace, HR 146

9 Nov

10 miles, 1:21:08, 8:07 pace, HR 143

10 Nov

10 miles, 1:21:04, 8:06 pace, HR 146