Saturday 21st June 2014
Running (03:01:04 / 21.00 Miles / 00:08:37 per mile / HRZ
2)
Long Run
It’s Saturday so it must be long run time again. After
putting out a note on Facebook to see if anyone else wanted to join me, my only
taker was The Man, The Legend, The Earl of Tullynacross, Mr Awesome – Stanley
Edgar.
This scared the crap out of me a bit as Stanley is a hell of
a runner and I thought I was going to be in for a bit of a pasting today,
especially over the longer distance. He doesn’t have three Marathon des
Sables under his belt for nothing!
As soon as we started out I mentioned to him again that this
was going to be slow. I hoped he heard.
After mile one I reckon he had heard me as we went through
in about 8.45, which was pretty much about where I wanted to be. Sadly
the next three of four miles were a bit quicker and this saw Stanley pull away
from me and maintain a gap of about 15 metres and it looked like he was
effortlessly cruising along.
Then something strange happened at 7 miles. He
stopped. Just stopped!
It was reminiscent of the scene in Forrest Gump, when
Forrest just stops running and announces to his gathered followers, “I think
I’ll go home now.”
Not that Stanley is Forrest, although…..
Turns out he had a bit of a recurrence of his Quad injury
and it had briefly got the better of him.
He sent me on and assured me that he would catch me up at
the Garage around 11 miles. When I got to the Garage, sure enough after a
few minutes Stanley rolls up to me and was looking in slightly better shape.
Rather than take the projected 10 miles home on my initial
route, he decided to take the marginally shorter 8 mile route home. So we
went our separate ways.
(As it turns out, he has a torn hamstring - ouch!)
I felt pretty strong the whole way through the run and by
the 11 mile point was averaging 8.28 per mile.
The rest of the run went really well for me and I could feel
that pace was steady and I felt strong.
The last mile up the hill home is always a bit of a slog at
the end of a long run and this was no different, however I was delighted to
come in with 21 miles done and a terrific (for me) average pace of 8.37 per
mile.
I had a daft thought about carrying on for a 5 mile loop to
make up the marathon distance as I was pretty confident of brining it in around
3H 50 Mins, just for the hell of it but I decided against it as I don’t need
those miles now but I will on 27th of July.
All in all a great run.
Sunday 22nd June 2014
Cycling (06:34:04 / 108.10 Miles / 16.50 MPH / HRZ 2 /
Cadence 75)
Long Ride – Century no.4 in
this training cycle
Another Sunday, another Century ride planned and it looked like this one was going to be another nice day. I certainly could get used to this nice weather.
Brendan was joining me for the ride today and this would be his longest ride ever. Impressive, given that less than two months ago his longest ride was 25 miles.
Due to the fact that I was out the night before and had more than one beer, we opted for a 10 o'clock start time.
I picked a route that I haven't done before that would be relatively challenging and a bit of a different scene to remove the boredom.
Out through Portadown and Armagh and then on to Newry we were pushing along at a decent pace and Brendan was looking strong and pushing on well. At the half way point in Warrenpoint we were over 17mph average speed.
Next up was Rostrevor for a quick sandwich stop which was well needed.
It's always hard to get going again once you have stopped, even for a short time and it took me a few miles to get the legs back in to action again.
Brendan found it harder to get going again and the run through to Kilkeel and then onwards to Newcastle proved to be a tough spell for him but he worked through it and kept the head down.
A quick stop in Newcastle to get a drink and Brendan was back in great form again. There must have been some EPO in his drinks bottle because for the next few miles he was off like a rocket.
Maybe it was the promise I had made to buy him an ice cream from Brennans on the way home.
Anyway we settled down a bit and got in to a nice pace for the next few miles and despite having to stop for a passing Orange Order parade in Clough we made it to Brennans and treated ourselves to a large cone which would sustain us for the last 20 miles home.
Finally when we got through Ballynahinch, I took the front for the run home and we made great progress along the undulating road.
By the time I got back up home I had just tripped over 108 miles on the clock. Well done Brendan on his maiden Century.
I must admit I felt fantastic through the whole ride. I felt strong and focussed on staying steady and keeping control of the heart rate. This all went perfectly to plan and I'm pretty pleased with the average speed of 16.5 MPH, although in hindsight I would now have liked to see it at 17 MPH but that can wait for another day.
The only thing that needs sorted still is the nutrition on the bike. Snickers Bars and Ice Cream are just not going to cut it in Zurich!
Just one more long ride over 100 miles planned before tapering in to Zurich.
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