Training Log Archive: TortoiseTam

Not enough toilets by at least an order of magnitude. Personally, I nailed it though.

Barcelona Half Marathon

Entered this in January as I was looking for a race to do and having a bash at a half seemed like it might be interesting. Plus a couple of different people recommended the event/route to me, and when I saw the entry fee was significantly more reasonable than I'd anticipated, I figured why not. Running has been going pretty well up until the last couple of weeks, but I know I'm in pretty good shape and I felt pretty determined to grind it out, although this still made for a slightly nervy last few days.

Started off way too far back, but found a good rhythm and stuck to it well for the first half. Had a bit of a crisis after halfway with thoughts of 'oh dear, I have to do this whole thing again' but managed to do an okay job distracting myself for a couple of kilometres until things picked up again. Suddenly got hit by an absolutely killer stitch at around 14km. Eased off slightly and got passed by several people, but thankfully it eased off by 15km and I got about reeling them back in. Coming back along the beach was a struggle but legs felt surprisingly strong still, but I also got hit again by two painful spells of stitch pain at around 17.5km and 19.5km, both times utilising he easing off, getting past and recovering after a couple of minutes routine. Gave it a red hot go for the sub-71 in the (disgustingly long) finish straight but just missed out.

Obviously getting blindsided by a repeated agonising stitch is pretty annoying, and in the moment having to slow down even a little feels like you're basically stopping to walk, but ultimately I think it was probably only around 20 seconds total really. I will say too that the legs did feel unexpectedly good towards the end, and maybe without the pains I could have kicked on a little more, but this is a lot of speculation and I'm sure sub-70 was already way off the cards anyway at this point. Also worth mentioning that my shin (and primary worry going in) felt weird for about eh first 2km and then I didn't think about it again, which is drastically better than I thought it would be if you'd asked me a few days ago. You win some, you lose some I guess.

Considering my pacing strategy for this was exclusively spur-of-the-moment guesswork and vibes, I think I nailed it. Shouldn't be too hard to do another one with a bit more training and knowledge and tick off the sub-70, but exactly going to be in a rush to do so. Anyway, all things considered not a bad outing and a genuinely very enjoyable morning's work.

Stood around for a long time afterwards but did eventually do this, although primarily as an effort to try and find couple of people I knew had ran. No dice sadly.

First day of summer apparently. Running easy in a straight line feels pretty much fine, much more and things begin to feel more ropey.

Cautiously optimistic.

Shin feeling more uncomfortable than painful I would say, but it's hard to tell really. Certainly not feeling amazing at any rate.

Things pretty painful again. Very nearly ran, but decided there probably wasn't anything be gained from doing so.

10, 5, 3x 1 [2] around La Fira.
Very similar to last week in many respects: running well and feeling good, but things dropped off sharp with a couple of reps to go. Honestly thought this was likely going to be the case beforehand anyway, but for several reasons I wanted to run hard at least once more before Sunday so rolled the dice. Hopefully I don't pay for it too much.

Painful.

Pushed the boat out. Again things feeling mostly okay, but it's always hard to not spend the whole run thinking about it and over-analysing ever little twinge.

Things feeling mostly okay so went for some cautious miles, but stayed close to home so as to have a bail option. Promising stuff though.