Taper Madness

Rest and Recovery

Mainly all easy runs last week, but a new issue has emerged. Prior to herself release from Hospital I had to clean the eve shoots as there were trees growing in them at this stage. Out with the ladder and and cleaned them down. Day after walking downstairs is causing me pain in my Right knee. Taper has truly began I thought to myself and put it to the back of my mind.

Sneak Preview

Paid a visit to Portumna on saturday to check out the 5K loop course for the Marathon. I had originally planned to do 4 laps at marathon pace and Warm up and Warm down section from Aldi Car Park. With last week's disaster of a run and my clicking knees from the ladder on Thursday, I decided to do an Easy 5K first and if everything held up do 2 laps at Marathon pace followed by a 5k cool down lap. From the outset I was very impressed with the running surface in the park, hats off to OPW and Coillte it is perfect, but as for the public road section from the Marina to the turnaround, its littered with potholes, not massive ones but they must be avoided at all costs. The course itself is for the most part very flat. There are two sections up and down, after the start its downhill for most of the First Kilometer and then uphill to the Second Kilometer mark, and from the Marina to the turnaround is uphill and down again back to the Marina. They are not major drags by any stretch but enough to make you work a bit harder. One section I found to be the toughest is the last Kilometer, it is one of those long stretches of road that never seems to be getting any closer, while it appears flat it is the only open section of road and on saturday it was into a stiff enough breeze. Only note of concern with this course is if its a fine/dry day like last saturday there will be a lot of visitors on the trails walking with dogs on leads and young children on bikes. This will causes congestion at times in some sections of the course during the race.

The madness begins

Set off first loop nice and easy then two loops at marathon pace where 24:42 and 24:36 respectively, while this is outside my goal pace the weather conditions (warm sunny evening) meant any faster would be too fast.
Warm down loop was cut short just hit the public road and knee went click and that was that. I could walk on it but running was causing pain. Walked back to the start not knowing for sure if I will even make the start in two weeks time. I had a pre booked visit to a PT for tomorrow and have been RICEing since Saturday so we'll just see what happens.

June 2nd 
        18K Marathon Pace 10K 49:43.2 @ 8:00 HR 157 with 5KWU 3K WD and 2K walk