Week 17 of 18

Tuesday 5km Recovery Run
Just plodded along feeling really flat today. It was reassuring to find out from Eagle’s blog that this is not unusual in the taper, and I guess it wasn’t helped by long days incorporating long periods of standing and walking around during the Ironman weekend.


Wednesday 13km Tempo Run
I was a bit wary of how I’d go after yesterday’s effort. Most of the run felt like a plod, and the efforts just felt like a slightly faster plod! Today I did 3 x 10 minute tempo efforts with 4 minute jog recoveries. It felt like I was lucky to get close to 5 minute kms at any stage, so I was surprised when I got home and found that the average pace of each interval was 4:45, 5:10 and 5:00 minutes/km. I think I faded in the middle one more so because I was resigned to a slow pace at that stage, but was feeling better by the last effort.

Came away from the run feeling pretty good though, and I felt sure that I’d pick up over the next few days seeing that as well as the rest of this day, 3 out of the next 5 days were rest days.

At this point my hamstring was fairly good, but I could still feel it now and then. Given that I’d neglected it over the past few days I decided I should give it some more therapy in an effort to get it back to 100% over the next week or so. No issues with the hip or achilles at all over the past few days.


Friday 9km with 8x400m VO2 Intervals
In a recurring theme my hamstring was still a little sore. I drove down to Wayne Richards Park and headed out on a couple of local streets as a warm up. By the time I got back to the park there was no discomfort and I started off on the intervals. I was scheduled to do 10 but figured beforehand that 6 would be more sensible, but felt pretty good after 5 so I compromised on 8.
The grass was very slick after some rain, which probably assisted in reducing the strain on my legs as I seemed to be sliding around a little. Due to a miscalculation I thought at the time that I was doing the 400’s at roughly 4:00 min/km pace which I guessed was a sensible pace and about right, but later realised that they were actually around 3:30 – 3:40 min/km, so I was pretty pleased with that. Not quite sure how I’d manage to sustain that sort of pace for an entire marathon (or even a half or 10km), but perhaps if I were 20 or 30kg lighter it wouldn’t seem so tough!


Sunday 14km Run
I was mindful to keep this run “nice and easy, even if you feel good”. That wasn’t an issue for most of the run, as it often takes me the better part of an hour to warm into the long runs by the time I do an easy warm up and make it through the half hour hump. But for the later part of the run I was feeling fine yet still taking it nice and easy. Still, rather than ease up I opted to maintain my pace up a few short hills with seemingly little effort.
I ran into town and back on as flat a route as I could manage. All was quiet on the roads seeing as it was early on Easter Sunday.

My legs are responding well to the reduced distances of the last couple of weeks. With only three light runs this week I hope to have them fully tamed and ready to go for next Sunday - gah, only six days to go. The massage I had this morning should assist with that as well. Plus, it’s always good to be on holidays for three weeks!

Still haven't got around to putting up anything on the Ironman last weekend, and it might have to wait some more as I need to get around to some blog reading rather than writing tonight. Just writing this up quickly before the kids wake up from their afternoon nap.