Weekly Training Blog: Quest Glendalough and the Push for a Half Marathon PB... plus Ring of Kerry Cycle

Since my last workout blog a day before Quest Glendalough, a little over a week ago, A LOT of training has gone down. As there are a lot of events coming up soon, trying to manage the time to train towards them has been fun!

First, I would highly recommend Quest Glendalough. A really well-organised event and a great mix of cycling, running and kayaking. While it was roughly 5 hours for the 59k to complete, the time flew by. The long runs over the past few months along with the 4x4x48 challenges have really helped me build up my mental toughness to keep going at these events. I felt I had another hour or two in me when I crossed the finish line.

For more details on how I got on at Quest Glendalough, check out the Any Given Runday Podcast episode we did on it on Apple Podcasts HERE or Spotify HERE.

After Quest, the legs felt a little sore on the Sunday morning. And, completely forgetting to air out the runners after jumping into the lake for the Kayak, I decided to cut the run a lot shorter than my usual 10 mile run to just a little over 7k. A 20 minute stretch session that afternoon in the gym and I was able to complete a 14k that afternoon in Clane. That would conclude the running until Wednesday.

Monday, April 4th and Tuesday April 5th
Monday was upper body day so I had no issues from the weekend going hard on that. And I felt mostly recovered by Tuesday to hit a lower body session. Although I did pull back a little on the exercises, particularly the deadlifts, where I made sure I had two reps in the tank after every set. It also allowed me to push a little more on the backwards sled drags! A long, slow evening run helped loosen out the legs and prepare me for the rest of the week’s training.

Wednesday, April 6th
Wednesday was another PB day for me. Another ‘fuck it’ moment. A few months earlier, I struggled and failed to lift the 35kg DBs up for a DB bench press. Even though I was comfortable on 32.5kg for 8-10 reps. On this day, I managed to get them comfortable for 3-4 reps before deciding to go for the 40s. I managed 8 reps with a pause at the bottom for them. One of my long term fitness goals is to show that you can go hard and be strong in the gym, while balancing it with long distance running. I’ve messed up in this quest a few times but am getting closer now where I am seeing results on the road and in the gym as I discussed in a recent Any Given Training Day post HERE.

Wednesday intervals in the rain and wind were not fun that night! And the numbers were not as good as the previous week. But getting out there and finding a way to get it done was a win in its self.

Thursday, April 7th
Thursday was right back to a lower body day. Longer warm up with the intervals the night before before easing into some rear foot elevated split squats. As painful as they are, I am definitely in the minority in preferring them over regular goblet squats! Which were an AMRAP finisher at the end of the sessions.

Friday, April 8th
Pull up day Friday. Where everything else rests. The previous Friday I hit an EMOM for the hour with 4 reps every minute. 240 in an hour was definitely a record for me! On this day, I was aiming for 70 minutes. Had to pause for a few conversations in the gym at the 20 minute mark so I decided to do 5 reps for 40 minutes after. Not the strictest of pull ups and the word “kipping” was thrown about during my last 10 minutes. That bruised the ego!

Saturday, April 9th
With the Ring of Kerry on the way, a 80k cycle was in store with one of my friends, Amy. What I assumed was a relatively flat course turned pretty damn hilly in the last 10k! The legs didn’t feel too bad and even had to get a 4 mile run in with a dog (nope, not explaining why) before the 40k back. Between that and a 7k run that morning, 80k cycle and 13k running was pretty similar to the output a week before at Quest.

Sunday, April 10th
With the training yesterday, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that the watch claimed I was “unproductive” after an early 10 mile run. But I felt great! The original plan for the year had me doing two runs on a Sunday as I needed to build up A LOT of miles in the legs for an event planned for the Summer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that event is going to go ahead, so I’m looking into a plan B…

Legs got a little stiff on a 14k that afternoon so maybe the watch was on to something!