Holiday Time

While most people tend to struggle to get runs in over the holiday period, I am the opposite. The time that the Donohue clan don't hit the Algarve means a stay at home vacation. This normally involves at some point me running a marathon. I had managed to convince the clan this year to head for West Cork namely Clonakility and by chance it coincided with the Keith Whyte Ultra. The cat was let out of the bag about four days before hand when one of the offspring came across one of the many Team Hoyt posts on Facebook. Anyway a beautiful day, in a beautiful location surrounded by beautiful people. Marathon number 36 in 3:50 with two miles cool down one pushing a chair.

It was great to see Fozzy win the 100K much deserved and his club mate David had a great race coming back from a close DNF to get second. Loads of Marathon club Members got their medals and the highlight been Leo on his 100th as well as the Cake.

Afterwards while waiting 20 minutes for a plate of chips after the race in the Courtmacsherry Hotel, I noticed Team Hoyt in a side room out of the glare of the media. Dick was changing, feeding and generally looking after Rick. Personally I think Eimear Hurley summed this up correctly when she called him a remarkable Father.

Next phase

I have been loosely following a program form Italian coach Renato Canova. There is really no set program like HH or P&D and most of his online posts on sessions relate to elite runners with not very good English. So looking at various internet resources I have based them against time. A Two hour session for an elite is a Two hour session for me, mileage and paces will vary. My recent 5K time puts me able to at least train at sub 3:10 pace for an Autumn Marathon. Hopefully the gods will shine on me and that will be the result but I won't say no to a sub 3:15 if that's what pans out. So I downloaded an excel spread sheet courtesy  of T_Runner on Boards or whatever he is called now. My aim for the next Six weeks is to do a mix of shorter faster session midweek with the longer slower ones on the weekend. In between will be 5 mile or 4 & 7 Mile recovery days.

First up in Clon on the Wednesday was 7* 1K @ 6:35 pace with 1K recovery @ 8 minute pace. All Recovery intervals in this phase will be ran at 8 minute pace. On paper this looked hard but I nailed it and was really pleased that this was done given the race on Saturday. The following Saturday I did 3 * 5K @ 21:49 with 1K recovery again at 8 minute pace. Horrible wet and windy day but nailed it again. These 2 sessions really gave me confidence about the remaining sessions in the coming weeks. 22:00 was my 5K PB only 3 years ago now I was stringing 3 of them together in a session. Tougher ones to come but I feel I have step up to the plate and will get through them.