Training Log Archive: ColmM

Took a while, but have backdated the last week now.
Rough review:
- was in madrid for a few days last weekend, that was fun.
- went running in the highlands and got some lovely snow-peaked mountains with Dan. These entries are a little longer but if you are only going to read one entry for this week, I would make Tuesday the priority.
- had the senior squad physical training weekend, that was fun, but also very tough.

6 x 600m with the squad on Donore's 300m track. Also a fast 300m to start as a test, which I did in an unimpressive 47sec.
This was a good session to have on the agenda but I must admit it was not helped by the fact that most the senior squad decided to go on the piss last night, maybe most surprising was that I would not even consider myself one of the main instigators.
Anyway, session was 10 x 600m reps with the first 300m quick, and the final 300m very quick.
Josh paced us through in a nice 60sec, and then when he ran off for his 50sec remaining 300m I generally stuck in behind and settled for a nice flat 2min rep. Good times.

Times: 1:58, 2:00, 1:58, 2:00, 2:00, 2:02.
Not very fast at all, but given the chunky asics and extenuating circumstances I was happy with what I got done.
Quads and legs in general feeling worked over the weekend so called it there and didn't do all 10 reps.

2 x 10min tempos in phoenix park. Back to the old lovely spot. Good squad vibes for this one, feeling good, running well with others. Enjoyable, and even got some taps aff on the second rep.
A good weekend all round.

Marlay parkrun with a crew.
Started quite quickly which maybe wasn't the best idea, but like to think I got away with it. Had to slow down to steer a kid off the road at the first corner, and almost got clipped at the second bend, but made it through unscathed.
By the time we got to the top of the hill, we had past the parkrun punters and Niall & I settled nicely into 4th & 5th with Taggart & Micheal way off in front, and Conall in no-man's land.
I was right up Niall's arse for a long while but we were moving respectably. Ticked off the kms and was happy to still be with Niall, but he started to open a gap as we went through 3km. I closed it again a couple hundred metres later after the second 180, but he really opened it again after 3.6km or so back uphill, and I just tried to hold on from there.
Struggling, but managing, I got to watch Niall chase Conall down, checked on the 2nd last corner to see Conor wasn't too close, which put those fears aside. Made a bit of effort on the run-in and overall pretty content to go sub-17 and not really notice my calves. All good off not-so-rested legs.

Plyometrics with senior squad. Really enjoyed anton's exercises and pretty keen to implement them into my gym routine. Generally lots of useful information.
Followed with 10mins or so of core, but I probably didn't get in quite 10mins.
Enough to feel my abs on Sunday though! Same for quads, could really feel them on Sunday post-plyo.

Joined the guys fro an easy run along the dodder for the start of the squad weekend. Skipped the session part as my calves were still a little tight, although they felt a lot better when running.

We woke up 90mins after our alarm, but decided we still had a reasonable chance at getting Ben Alder done and still making the 12:30 train, so at about 08:25 we set off for the big summit.
We slogged up the big re-entrant, but going wasn't too bad due to a lack of snow. This soon changed and once we left the "path" the snow got very deep on the way to the summit. This took a while, but today was just sooo much nicer than yesterday with sun, blue skies and minimal wind, the deep snow didn't seem to matter as much.
We eventually hit the false summit, skirted a little wide around the top to avoid any potential snow overhangs and hit the summit before 10. We both agreed we were looking pretty comfy for this 12:30 train.
Some moments admiring the views, a couple photos, and we set off down trough the deep stuff towards corrour. The descent went by quickly enough and Daniel was now in fact so conifdent we would make the train he proclaimed we would be an hour early. Given we now had 1hr50 till the train, and what turned out to be over 14km, half of it kind of terrain bashing, this seemed unlikely to me.

We settled into a nice run along the river, almost snotted ourselves on some icy bits (well dan did snot himself once), and time went by quite quickly. Making conversation with Dan is easy, you can just run and agree every few minutes while he chats about everyone he knows' training for the guts of an hour.

We hit the loch and both agreed that the sign must be wrong when it said 5 more miles. Turns out it was more like 7.4km, so not as far off as we'd hoped. We bashed out some nice sub-6 min ks which really were starting to feel like quite a bit of work. Anyway, we made it in the end and got into the station shortly after 12:20 which was quite a relief, because waiting for the 18:30 train in that cold may have darn near killed us. We picked up our
shoes and jeans we'd stashed behind the ticket machine in the station and next thing we were on the semi-warm train home.

A most pleasant 2 days.

to the train, via tesco.
Supplies included wraps, houmous, carrots, raisins, and some pot noodles. Enough to last 2 days.

After a reasonable train journey up to corrour, Dan and I left the station looking to most bystanders like a couple of idiots who had underestimated the hills. And in fairness, this was probably very accurate.
While 1km in and still very much on the road, I naively proclaimed this weather was "the jackpot", since all we had really was a bit of rain, and it wasn't outrageously cold.
Sure enough after climbing Carn Dearg for quite a while, the snow was getting a lot heavier, the wind was driving into our faces, and the windchill had it down to -20C. Good times. We got to the summit and decided we should put on our bigger jackets, which was a sensible decision as the sleet had numbed my left elbow (wind was coming from our left). We took a few moments to analyse our online OS printed screenshots which we had tactically arranged in the library at midnight the evening before, and decided since they were certain to disintegrate in the conditions, we best leave them in the tesco shopping bags and go on map memory. So, North-east of Carn Dearg to start.

We debated whether the conditions warranted the term "white out", but since I could only see 30m or so, and could not make out the difference between mountain and sky, I decided we would declare it a white out.
The first descent had been fairly smooth. It took rather a while but we eventually appeared to be on a ridge, and we were now climbing something so felt good that it was Sgor Gabhaire, and we did hit a summit.
So, north of this one. This one was less smooth, but we zig-zagged our way down until we were confident we were on a ridge. Success still.
Uphill isn't such tricky navigation, so Sgor Coinnich went fine, but again coming off we debated the direction a bit and in the end decided to plunge our heads back into the tesco shopping bag, and upon further inspection opted for a more easterly descent and we found a ridge.
It actually cleared a little here, and by the time we got onto the summit of this we could see more mountains. We did briefly get worried when none of them seemed to fit / we were missing our next mountain. In the end we realised our angle just merged the two mountains in front, and there was actually a valley before Ben Alder as we'd hoped.

So, we got up that final one, scared a hare half to death - don't know how they survive in that snow, and then finally made our way down to the bothy with the thought of a potential fire strong motivation. And we even had 4 other humans for company.