The blooming Heather
Posted by on 23 November 2019
Dublin 2019 As the years fly by (and the miles) and with the Annual DCM looming in the background, I knew some changes had to be made to my previous plans to eke out a few more minutes. After some reflection I made two main changes to my usual training.
Firstly I consider the Tuesday and Thursday evening club sessions as the cornerstone of my year round training as I am not great at watching the clock. I find my fellow clubmates hold me more accountable than any watch. And the little chats before and after give me a mental boost, but there is always room for improvement. I changed my approach to these sessions in that I followed Ciaran’s plans, concentrating on the pace he instructed. Whereas before I would start strong, hang on and eventually fade, this time I held a more consistent pace and finished strong. This made a huge mental difference to me.
My recovery runs remained the same, in the fields as much as possible, and always ready for a chat with runner I bumped into. Secondly, I looked at my long run. Previously, I would have just got the miles done with no real structure to them. This time each long run had a plan within it. There was marathon race pace sections, negative splits, built the long runs up over a longer period of time with smaller increases in mileage over a longer timeline to get me to race day. I am very lucky that all my training runs were done with a great bunch of clubmates. I am so lucky to be part of this great club and on the day itself their support both on and off the course spurred me on to a brand new PB of 3:33.
