Speed

In an effort to somewhat include a bit of speed or to get into the 80/20 trot, I started to include 6×1 minute faster intervals in my easy runs. I also cut today short so it was only 30 minutes. Hope that all works out!

Sunrise was lovely again and I’m looking forward to a nice long run tomorrow.

Theoretically I have another week of 44/88/132 in front of me and I feel like I’ve adapted quite well. We’ll see how easy tomorrow feels, but if it goes on like that I will increase to 50 minutes for my easy runs after recovery week. I want to thank unironedman, as he had made me aware that vacation includes running as well and I credit taking time off from daily running during August, for making me love running even more.

I also had a look at my fitness data and I can now really see how consistency and recovery trump speed.

I think I am finally getting the hang of it. Winter here I come!

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Who is this person?

Another 88 minute run done and it was easy … as easy as it should be by now. But while my body seems to have adjusted fine, my mind has not quite yet. I am lying to myself about the amount of time I run. Not really lying, but I am saying 88 minutes instead of 1 and a half hours. I am not really aware of who I have become by now and that’s probably a good thing. It somehow became my new normal that I run through the dark:

… watch the sun rise … … have huge amounts of energy and run … a lot. So while I feel as fantastic as I am, I guess I just keep ignoring any notion of my former self and what she would say and keep on running.

An easy run and a bit of sun

Easy 44 minutes run done at dawn. Tide is becoming much nicer these days and I’m contemplating if I should go out run in the dark at the sea tomorrow.

But then … I’m a gamer and as gamer you kinda learn that beach is bad, especially at night. Yes you can see far, but so can the monsters or other players. What speaks for running at the beach at night is that I have so far not seen any eyes glaring at me in the dark. I thought I did, but it always turned out to be trash that reflected my headlamp light. The beach would probably change that.

I know it’s all in my head and as soon as I ran there once it will be my new home. The beach is only the first hurdle though … after the beach comes the hill. Maybe I chicken out and run my 10k park loop – stay tuned!

Unstuck

Yesterday night, an angel named Alex appeared on my blog. OK he is not an angel, more a modern angel, and his job is “Happiness Engineer”. I imagine him still like an angel, but with geek glasses and a cowboy hat. Why the cowboy hat you ask? Well, it appears all Happiness Engineers from WordPress say “Howdy” and somehow I associate that with a cowboy hat. I digress … the important bit is that Angel Alex got my block unstuck!

This means, I can go back to my business of blogging about my daily runs and stop fiddling with code! Today I started in the dark again:

 

Ran 88 minutes slowly, but surely, around the park which is a nice 10k loop and over the hill to the beach where the sun didn’t show up.

I’ve been thinking about how funny it is that if I tell myself I only go 88 minutes, it’s much less than 1 hour and 28 minutes. Is that only me?

Rainy running

Today’s sunrise looked like this:

I still had a fabulous rainy 44 minutes. Tide was up, but had left a nice runnable sandy path. Other news are that I now raised a support ticket to help me figure out what’s wrong with reader and my blog disappearing.

Tomorrow I am looking forward to running in the dark again!

A wonderful Irish weekend kick-off

I nearly didn’t pack my rain gear, but sometimes you just have to trust in the Irish weather, meaning it will surely change and provide 4 seasons in a long run. I was a girl on a mission. The mission to find sheep. Which I didn’t … sorry to disappoint you. I tried hard though and really really wanted to find some and write a great post about it …

… instead I found this:

… and these, which I at first thought were sheep, but no … not everything that is white and spawns on an Irish grass tiles is a sheep apparently.

Abandoning the sheep mission, I quickly decided to go to plan B. Plan B is a secret, but as this post won’t appear in the wordpress reader I can share it freely: Plan B consists of running/mapping the whole Dublin Mountain Way and it will probably take me years! I’ve been along this path while discovering The Chimney and searching for the mountains, but didn’t dare to go further than THE SCALP! I mean really … that can’t be good right?

So today, disappointed by not finding sheep, I decided to go further on the Dublin Mountain Way than ever before!

I went past Puck’s Castle, left the Chimney behind me, passed through the enchanted forest …

… tested my gloves on those babies:

… enjoyed more of the forest – I just love running across those forest trails …

.. to arrive at THE SCALP!!!

At least I think that’s the scalp? This is were I wished I had brought something to drink or eat … I had overestimated the amount of berries that were left during this time of the year and went for the light option aka no fuel!

On the way back I kind of got lost in the moment, it started raining and I didn’t know where I was until I saw the sea down below and my beloved little Dalkey island. At this point I knew I had experienced an adventure, getting lost is the biggest sign you are experiencing an adventure!

Drenched and happy I ran home in the rain, glad to be alive and healthy, glad to be able to experience adventures and glad for an gas aid station and a credit card that bought me just the right amount of fuel when I needed it!

… in the morning

As you know, I’m a big fan of getting out there in the morning. As I now leveled up and got new items (aka headlamp) I can start my runs in the dark. That only makes sense for my medium runs, runs over an hour.

Today, as every Friday, was a short run. This means I enjoyed 44 minutes of slow running and it was so lovely.

Words can’t express how amazing it is to wake up and run to the rising sun. Right now the air is cold and it wakes me up while I do my first steps outside. When I get to run, it cools me. When I’m done, it has risen high enough so that I am not too cool when I walk home. The tide was also nice to me and had left just the right amount of perfectly soft sand for me to run on.

SRG Gear Upgrade – Part 3

Finally – the long awaited night run has happened!

Today I woke up at 5 and was super excited as it was still dark out there and this meant I got to wear my newest gadget, a headlamp. I saw the moon and the stars. Here’s me (or the moon not sure) in the dark:

For the one that want to know the details, I got myself a Silva Pro Line MR110 Head Torch. Why? It’s waterproof and a lot of other nice gimmicks I thought are fun to have.

As you can see it created basically two circles. One I call “dogshitedetector” and the other one “evileyelookout”. It also has an intelligent light feature, whatever that means – clever marketing I suppose?

I could see perfectly fine, far and the different light settings were quite useful. It didn’t rain, so I couldn’t test if it really is waterproof!

Other than that I just loved it! This is pure magic and much more fun than I thought it would be. It’s like a whole other universe waiting to be explored. The sunrise was spectacular as well.

Now I know I can do this. With “this” I mean increase time/duration during winter. I truly enjoyed today’s 1.5 hours and got even back in time to make and have breakfast!

No evil eyes spotted though, but I’ll keep out looking for ’em.

The Reader

Not you my dear, although in a way it is. It has come to my attention that my posts are (once again) not showing up on the WordPress Reader.

This sometimes happens, not sure why and I never bothered investigating deeper than clicking around on my page. You see, my page slowrunnergirl.com is an external hosted wordpress website. The reason is simple, I like playing around with tech and this way I can show off my fancy recipes, as well as hide them in plain sight! Additionally I post a lot of photos and the free space on wp.com ran out.

The consequence of moving my blog was that my posts only show up in the reader, if someone has subscribed to my blog. That was fine with me. I like my tiny little family of roggers (running bloggers).

Now they don’t show up at all anymore and many of you have emailed me, being worried! Guys … I’m still alive, running and blogging and eating (yeah I’m posting my food photos on Instagram). I have no idea when the posts will show up again in the reader, one guess is the photos I am usually using. So today I test what happens if there are no photos.

I did run though. I loved it. 44 minutes of pure bliss. Cadence is as low as ever and my mood over the top as I’m so in love with my new gloves I had to run in them again today!

Oh yeah … just in case someone reads this and has a clue, I’m will to test any ideas you might have regarding my site showing up on the reader again.

SRG Gear Upgrade – Part 2

Today I wanted to tell you about my new headlamp and how I braved the dark, saw evil eyes and crested a hill at sunrise …

Good intentions right? It didn’t happen … I overslept and it was already past dawn and light outside.

So I took another new piece of equipment for a quick spin – my new gloves (aka Merrell Pace Gloves 3):

I meant to test them to the fullest and had super high expectations. Off we went to start at the beach with slippery tarmac to get there which they already braved with amazing stickiness!

I was also surprised how easy it was to run over the softer sand. Usually I need more energy to run through soft/deep sand.

I took them to the hill and no matter what terrain I threw at them the feeling just got better and better …

I mean seriously! I am upgraded to SuperSlowRunnerGirl now, as I can run up and down slippery roots and rocks!!!

I’m seriously in love with them and super happy that they meet my high expectations. They are replacing my existing inov8 mixed terrain shoes and I can’t stop telling you how amazing the vibram sole seems to stick to even the weirdest terrain. I even pseudo-climbed a rock just to test them …

Gotta go and work now, someone has to earn money to buy all those shoes.

Have fun playing!