Stress and Recovery

Don't Break it

I had originally planned to Race the Marathon in Charleville next Sunday October 12th with a good block of training laid out for September but I correctly choose to let me body recover from the 3 consecutive Marathons in August as well as the half baked race in Doonbeg. So the last 3 weeks there has be no hard or long runs done with the exception of pacing the Half Marathon in both Charleville and The Human Race in Limerick. Outside of this I have just 4-5 Mile recovery runs with some stretching and foam rolling thrown in. This has brought my legs back to life so last Wednesday night I decided to do a short interval session 16 * 200m @ 1 Mile Pace with 200m jog recovery. I was worried at how the legs may hold up to this or more particularly the lungs as speed sessions normally entail me needing a brown paper bag. Well the session went extremely well I hit 44 seconds per 200 no problem and I even managed to tack on an extra 4 * 200m which came in under 44 seconds with the last one @ 41. This just shows that recovery is probably the most overlooked session in any training plan and I feel that I am ready to tackle some 5K workouts with a view to racing all the Clare Athletics Winter 5K/4 mile series.  I will tack on another 3-4 Marathons before the year end but these will be spread apart by 3-4 weeks and done at a very easy pace.

The World Jog

I have been following Tony Mangan’s World jog on and off since he started it in October 2010 and on Thursday evening I had the pleasure of running 0.0002% (10K) of his 50,000K journey. I ran out to Crusheen after work and met up with him. Really enjoyed the run in to Ennis and we where soon joined by Keith Wythe as well. So here I was in the company of two of Irelands Ultra Running legends sharing thoughts, jokes and memories. You could not have asked for any better company on an evenings run. On Friday I accompanied Tony to the outskirts of Ennis on a wet morning until we meet up with some runners from Newmarket-on-Fergus and I bid farewell to him as he travelled closer to the finish of his journey in Dublin on the Bank Holiday Monday Marathon. If any runners want to run with him please contact Siobhan Clifford on siobhan.theworldjog@gmail.com and details of his run are on his blog.