Apologies for the lack of blogging recently, basically after Broad Street I took a bit of time off, safe to say despite a good Winter's training my Spring Road Race times were not what I had hoped for or expected, sub 3 in Dublin is probably wishful thinking at this point, based on Broad St I think 3.15 is doable which is far from shabby given I'll be almost 61 the day of Dublin so w/ that in mind it's time to knuckle down and train for the remaining 18 weeks
Of course having just celebrated "Summer Solstice" on Thursday it's no great surprise that "The Dog Days Of Summer" are upon us, I tried w/ the best will in the world last week to beat the heat and get up early and run.....the words epic fail spring to mind, I am not now a morning runner, nor have I ever been it just doesn't come naturally to me to get up at the crack of dawn, stretch, lace em up and be out the door, which sucks when the temps are in the 90s as they were for all of last week, heat and humidity have become my Kryptonite the last few years, one of the reasons I put in a body of work during the Winter in case I lost training in the Summer
After going a woeful 0 for 5 during the week I was determined to get out on the weekend and blow off some of the rust from the last 6 weeks, even at 6.50am on Saturday it was 75 degrees as I managed a 4 miler out and back along the Schuylkill River 35.51.3 off 8.58 mile pace thanks to splits of:8.32-8.17-9.30-9.32.....hardly earth shattering but I had to start somewhere, it's not lost on me that heading into the final 4 weeks of the Hurling season and 5 weeks of the Gaelic Football season in the GAA these players had to put in a huge body of work beginning in November to put themselves w/in touching distance of the Liam MacCarthy and Sam Maguire come the end of July.....granted I won't be going up the steps of the Hogan Stand at Croke Park in October{ unless I've veered way off course during the Marathon!} but the mindset is the same do the hard work and hopefully reap the rewards.
Sunday wasn't anything to write home about, 80 degrees at 7am this time, I could see droplets of sweat bouncing off of me as I ground out a 3 miler in 27.42.5 off 9.14 mile pace, my splits were: 8.35-9.26-9.40, hard to imagine running 26.2 miles in 18 weeks time when I could barely run 3 miles this morning but I'm not about to activate the panic button just yet......I know my S&C {strength & conditioning} will return as long as I'm will to keep pluggin' away, can't throw the toys out of the pram when things aren't where I's like to be right now but I know through hard work and perseverance I'll get there
I have 9 weeks to get into 10k shape for the Philly 10k, 3 weeks later it's the Philadelphia Distance Run and 6 weeks after that the Dublin Marathon, if I have to " go against type" for the next month or so and get up early to run so be it, low milage during the week and slowly increase my Saturday long runs so that come September post Philly 10k I'm doing 20 mile long runs I'll be happy
Hopefully for the next few weeks the mantra is "we ride at dawn"....
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