Intense

Last  week was the start of the intense period in my marathon training. A total of 54 miles over 5 days of training. I have two more of these high intensity weeks, split by step down weeks, before the merciful tapering.

Monday I went out to the Mardyke track and ran 10 miles...thats 40 feckin loops of the track. My god I wont be doing that again in a hurry. To break the monotony I split it into 4 X 10 loops where I'd reverse direction every 10. Average pace 8:00 miles.

Tuesday I went to the CIT track for an informal Eagle speed session. 9X400, average pace 86 seconds per lap. A great session inspired by Hal Higdeon. Will try and get some more of this type of session in I think.
Did a 2 mile warm down afterwards.

Wednesday, 8 miles on the treadmill, 7:30 pace.

Thursday I did the Mahon loop. 8 @ 7:20 with 1 warmup and 1 warm down.

Saturday I did my first 20 miler of the "season". I metup with Grellan and another lad and we did 15 miles together out in Ballincollig. This route has a couple of nice hills. But I saved myself on this run. Knowing I had another bit to tag on after my fellow runners finished up. Back at the car park I took some water and set off on my own for another 5 miles. That was not easy. The sun had come up and it was getting really hot. Average pace 8:06. Not bad given the heat.