Chapter 2 - Finding Nemo

skyblue46

Swashbuckler wrote: »

As with most race days of late I'm very caught for time so will need to keep the weeks update short in favor of a fine hefty race report. Haha.

Monday Easy 7M
Tuesday 6x3min at 10k effort off 2/2/2/1/1 on Grass
Wednesday Easy 7M
Thursday 3M AM and 7M PM
Friday Easy 7M
Saturday 3M shakeout with strides
Sunday County XC Novice and Masters

Felt good this week. Mileage maintained but intensity slightly reduced with the race in mind. Session went well but was as tough as I've come to expect from these grass sessions. Used the Mungret loop again and hit as many hills as possible. In terms of the rest of the week no complaints. Life is back to normal again. Back at work. Back in routine.

Glad you got that out of the way...now get on to the good stuff!!

Swashbuckler

Limerick County Novice and Masters XC

Mike Tyson once said "Eveyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".........

I always find it funny. I tend to do a lot of visualization when I'm sitting on the couch or on an easy run. I visualize an upcoming race and what might happen, what I want to happen, what I'd do in certain scenarios. That's all great. Then on race day I get moving and once the suffering kicks in I pretty much forget about all these wonderful scenarios I dreamed up in my head on the comfort of my couch. Haha. XC is a different beast to the road. But a great beast. And one I'll be embracing from now on for sure.

I think back to a year ago and reading Duaningtons reports was probably the turning point for me deciding I wanted to dabble in this. The sheer grit that was shown in those reports was something I wanted to emulate. I figured it would really stand to me when hitting the roads again and especially long term. So here I am...

I don't have much XC specific stuff done at this stage. A good HM block in the bag and a few weeks of grass specific stuff. I invested in some spikes a few weeks ago. Not those fancy colorful Cristiano Ronaldo ones that Duanington was recommending. That kind of flashiness doesn't go down well in these parts. So a nice pair of subtle black Adidas spikes. Didn't need the actual spikes today but the runners work well without the spikes too. Very lightweight.

Headed out to Bilbao AC grounds and met up with the lads from the club. First time meeting a good few of them. Sound bunch of lads and very welcoming. A good turnout from the club. Everyone hopping on the bandwagon after last week's clean sweep of the senior and intermediate team event. Haha. Looking around at the start line I figured it would take something special for the lads not to at least win the novice. A good chunk of the best runners the club has to offer all present. We had to hang around for ages but eventually we got off. The course was a 1500m lap of the ground with a mix of farmers field, some gravel and the grassy area outside the Bilbao clubhouse. A nasty hill in the middle. Four laps. 6000m. Not mucky atall. Very solid all the way round. Probably not true cross country given the zig zaggy nature of it and the mix of gravel and grass. I had the watch but intended to pay no attention to it.

We took off on the first lap. It was a hot lap for sure. A bit too hot probably but I'm here to learn and given this is my first XC race it was essentially a freebie. The groups quickly formed. The first group of six or seven, five of which were limerick ac lads shot on ahead. I was in a little group further back. Those lads would also pull away in the first lap. Not much else to say about the first lap. Each lap finished with that nasty hill. At the end of lap 1 I was feeling it. The lads that were ahead of me were mostly lads I'd expect to be ahead. One thing that did surprise me was, given it was a 6k race I somehow expected to have an advantage over the marathon lads. That wasn't the case. They went off fast and faded less than I did. Interesting to see. It's not a speed race like on the roads. It's a test of endurance. Something I'd have never associated with such a short distance. I guess I stupidly thought most of the lads in marathon training would lack speed. They didn't.

Lap 2 was equally painful. It's funny. If you're tuned into your body you can feel and sense all the things your body does when it is getting fatigued. For me, my arms and shoulders tighten in a bit, elbows start to tuck into my sides, I start to rotate my trunk slightly. Fighting it is almost impossible once I tire. This wasn't This much different to previous races in the sense you have the same doubts and fight the same demons. One thing that helped was the encouragement from the non running club lads. Hearing "keep going you're on track for team masters" really helps. I had one lad ahead of me that  I had my eye on and a couple of lads being me keeping me honest. My personal goal going into this was to score for the team. But looking ahead of me there was a good five or six club lads. So that was more or less out of the question.

Lap 3 and 4 were mainly survival, trying to catch the lad ahead and stay ahead of the lads behind. I managed both. When I hit the hill for the last time I managed to almost level with the lad ahead but he gave a little push and surged to the line. I was fairly wrecked. Lungs were on fire. Shook hands with a bunch of the runners. One of the best parts of this was meeting so many local lads. Had some good chats at the finish line when I was able to speak.

Mile splits were 5.47 /6.07 /6.15 and  5.58 pace for the last 0.8. A big fade with slight recovery on the last mile. Went out a little quick but why not. Nothing to lose and I'll learn.

It's pretty humbling to be honest. You get notions of yourself and where you are and where you think you want to be. Then you show up to one of these races and you see just how much quality there is in Limerick alone, nevermind in Munster or nationally.

We won the Novice and Masters. I didn't score for the team but no biggie. That was just a little personal goal. Collected our medals and trophy. Clean sweep for the club in all four categories in the last two weeks. On to Munster we go although I'll only make two of them. No harm. I'd like to prioritise the training over the races.

So there we have it. I loved it. It's very different. It's a great way to meet a lot of local runners and socialize a bit. It's tough. It's painful. It's exactly what I want to be doing right now. You can almost feel the long term gains as you struggle around that grass. And that's all this is for me. Long term goals are clear and haven't changed. Anything that compliments that is what I want to be doing. Roll on more pain on the grass. A good day.

Swashbuckler

skyblue46 wrote:

Glad you got that out of the way...now get on to the good stuff!!

I prewrote it. Haha

MY BAD

Well done and a great outlook

skyblue46

A very different report from the usual.... not what I expected for some reason. I I was waiting for knee deep muck, quicksand like conditions and a gale of wind! Well done on having the balls to try it if not having the balls to wear neon coloured shoes :pac:

Duanington

Great stuff, P - you'll come out of this winter a tougher and fitter runner with a few more strong races like that. Priceless stuff really.
Delighted to see you embracing it.

P.S. - if you think the yokes I wear are CR7 style, you'd wanna see the state of them after a couple of races ....a beautiful shade of mud :pac:

Swashbuckler

skyblue46 wrote:

A very different report from the usual.... not what I expected for some reason. I I was waiting for knee deep muck, quicksand like conditions and a gale of wind! Well done on having the balls to try it if not having the balls to wear neon coloured shoes

Haha. The muck will come. Today was a glorious day of sunshine. Solid ground. It's still a lot tougher running on grass at that pace. But definitely not "true XC" yet

Baby75

Fantastic and did not disappoint well done again it sounds hard but very rewarding

Swashbuckler

Duanington wrote:

Great stuff, P - you'll come out of this winter a tougher and fitter runner with a few more strong races like that. Priceless stuff really. Delighted to see you embracing it.

Cheers D. It really is a tough one to judge effort wise. And strange not having something to measure against. You get used to running a road race and comparing mile splits to previous races. That just doesn't apply here. Great to not have to think about pbs or times for a change

OOnegative

Well done P, XC is something i’ll leave to ye sadists, i’ll stick to marathons thanks!!

Wubble Wubble

Great XC debut (and report), plenty more to follow I'm sure.

From another (much slower) "sadist"

eyrie

Only getting to read your report now but I had a feeling it was going to be a good one and it didn't disappoint. Fascinating to read about the different approach to such a different kind of running/racing, and really interesting to hear your reflections on it as you ran and after. The idea of running a race where time isn't really the focus is so different to what a lot of us are used to doing. More of a mental thing I wonder, since you don't have the same markers to tell you how you're going?
I was chatting to a former cross country runner recently and made some very naive comment about thinking it looked like good craic. That was not his word for it... :pac:
Anyway well done on a great debut. I agree with skyblue though, we need more muck next time to add to the glory!

Swashbuckler

eyrie wrote:

Only getting to read your report now but I had a feeling it was going to be a good one and it didn't disappoint. Fascinating to read about the different approach to such a different kind of running/racing, and really interesting to hear your reflections on it as you ran and after. The idea of running a race where time isn't really the focus is so different to what a lot of us are used to doing. More of a mental thing I wonder, since you don't have the same markers to tell you how you're going? I was chatting to a former cross country runner recently and made some very naive comment about thinking it looked like good craic. That was not his word for it... Anyway well done on a great debut. I agree with skyblue though, we need more muck next time to add to the glory!

It's definitely good craic in some ways. Haha. I run on my own so much. I really enjoyed the social aspect of meeting people beforehand. Hanging around after for the medals. The race itself is tough but short.

I think a lot of us spend so much time thinking about paces and pbs and splits that we forget at the end of the day it's mostly down to effort level. We've discussed it a lot on here that you can become a slave to the watch. One of the benefits I hope to get from XC, amongst many others, is learning how to dial in to effort level. As Luke puts it, it will add another quiver to the bow. I must say I enjoyed not having to think about times or pb. One of the beauties of XC. You see the results, there are no times. Just a name, your placement and your club. Doesn't get much simpler than that!

Swashbuckler

No ill effects after the race. Felt fine on Monday.

Monday, Wednesday and Thursday easy 7 milers. Nothing major to report. Been very pushed for time this week so nutrition suffered a bit. Missed lunch on a couple of days.

Tuesday - 5x3min at race effort off 90s. 3min jog. 5x30s Hard off 60s.
On the grass in Mungret again for this and more of those lumpy hills. Getting a little better at dialing into effort level. I must say the grass sessions are tough. I think its a combination of the grass but also the lumps and bumps. I've gotten into the habit of running most of my road sessions on a flat loop around the industrial estate. These lumpy sessions are tough and very tricky to dial into effort. On the plus side the Adidas XCS runners are a dream although I haven't needed spikes yet. Tough session and misprogrammed the watch so ended up running 6x30s hard.
Pace splits for the 3mins were;
5.58 /6.10 /6.09 /5.58/ 5.53
The hards were;
5.14/5.14/5.18/5.18/5.31/5.37

A good honest session with jellyish legs at the end.

Fridays session was 4x6min off 2min at 10k effort. Nothing fancy. Just simple progression on these sessions which gives me a nice break from programming my Garmin. Think I've been running the 10k effort a little hard over the last few weeks. This was better.
Splits were 6.16/6.07/6.13/6.05
Another toughie and definitely a test of endurance. Was glad to get it done.

Saturday - Easy 12M a bit later in the day than usual. Had a few relaxing drinks with the missus on Friday night. Woke Saturday with a scratchy throat. Wasn't looking forward to this one but as is always the case with running, it was totally the opposite of what I expected and I really enjoyed it. Nice buzz around the city after the match so was nice to have some scenery and atmosphere for a change rather than my usual 7am start.

Total mileage for the week was around 48.5. Solid week and scratchy throat is gone so all good.

Looking forward to next weekend. Heading up to Dublin to support a buddy of mine. Planning out my route with the help of skyblue so I'm hoping to be at a few spots along the course. Hoping to see some more Boardsies too although I'll only recognize a few. Planning to hit McGrattans after too. Fingers crossed L doesn't mind a few extra miles on Sunday as I run to the various spots. Haha.

OH and all going well I might just pass 2000 miles for the year this week.

Singer

Swashbuckler wrote: »

Looking forward to next weekend. Heading up to Dublin to support a buddy of mine. Planning out my route with the help of skyblue so I'm hoping to be at a few spots along the course. Hoping to see some more Boardsies too although I'll only recognize a few. Planning to hit McGrattans after too. Fingers crossed L doesn't mind a few extra miles on Sunday as I run to the various spots. Haha.

OH and all going well I might just pass 2000 miles for the year this week.

Might get to meet you next week so! I'll be wearing a Crusaders singlet (though not in the pub) so giz a shout, though an acknowledgment may not be possible at the time

I'll also pass the magical 2k mile mark this week, though yours were a lot faster than mine.

healy1835

What time is your buddy aiming for?

Swashbuckler

Singer wrote:

Might get to meet you next week so! I'll be wearing a Crusaders singlet (though not in the pub) so giz a shout, though an acknowledgment may not be possible at the time

I'll be keeping an eye out for the people I know from Strava pics. Not sure how well I'll make people out with the crowds though. Hoping to be at mile 4, 11.5, 20ish and 25ish.

healy1835 wrote:

What time is your buddy aiming for?

Hes going for 3.40. It's his first marathon and he's not going aggressive.. Or at least thats what we agreed until the marathon madness takes over. Haha

healy1835

Swashbuckler wrote: »

I'll be keeping an eye out for the people I know from Strava pics. Not sure how well I'll make people out with the crowds though. Hoping to be at mile 4, 11.5, 20ish and 25ish.



Hes going for 3.40. It's his first marathon and he's not going aggressive.. Or at least thats what we agreed until the marathon madness takes over. Haha

Hopefully will only see you at mile 4 so

Kellygirl

Swashbuckler wrote: »

I'll be keeping an eye out for the people I know from Strava pics. Not sure how well I'll make people out with the crowds though. Hoping to be at mile 4, 11.5, 20ish and 25ish.



Hes going for 3.40. It's his first marathon and he's not going aggressive.. Or at least thats what we agreed until the marathon madness takes over. Haha

You’ll probably be long gone to your next spot by the time I come through those points but hopefully see you in McGrattans.

Swashbuckler

Kellygirl wrote:

You’ll probably be long gone to your next spot by the time I come through those points but hopefully see you in McGrattans.

Theres a good hour for him to make it to 20 so I might be hanging around for a bit.

Swashbuckler

Every now and then I come across some interesting articles. If I could post a link in the God awful app I would. Until then I'll stick with copy and paste! Thought it was an interesting read. Credit to Magness.

"When it comes to performing at just about any task, what holds us back isn’t our coach or teacher. It’s not our training and practice. It’s often ourselves.

When we are in the middle of a performance, our mind almost always searches for an out. A rock to step on during a race, an excuse to utilize for why we are going to lose, or a story we can tell ourselves to explain why we got a D instead of a B. When it comes to measuring up, we have a really difficult time coming face to face with where the limits of our capabilities are.

It’s hard-wired in our minds and bodies. There’s a reason that your body doesn’t actually allow you to push until your heart is fully taxed and your muscles are at their limit. Your body needs to protect itself. It has much more to lose if we accidentally reach our limits than if we stay slightly under them. The same holds true for non-physical activities.

Trying to do anything well exposes your ego and self-esteem. It makes you vulnerable, open to seeing where your skill set truly lies. You have to confront reality, something that as humans, we actively avoid. It’s much easier to live in a world where we can tell ourselves that we are “good enough†at just about any activity we desire to do.

Think about the message that is sent if you fail at just about any task. I wasn’t good enough on this day to ace my test, perform the solo or give the big speech. If we confront that we actually aren’t good enough yet to solve the problem in front of us, it can leave us feeling dejected and demoralized. Our ego and self-esteem will plummet. Instead, we’ve evolved to deal with such “failure†in a multitude of ways.

According to recent research, there are four main ways that we protect our ego when failure is anticipated.

Self-Handicapping– In this method, people intentionally limit their effort to give themselves an out. You might recognize this attitude from high school when a student would intentionally not study or do the assigned reading to give themselves a reason for why they performed poorly. Or in the running world, someone doesn’t give full effort, always telling others that they didn’t fully try. The logic goes like this: If they didn’t give their full effort, then the result doesn’t truly reflect their capabilities, therefore the result doesn’t mean much. So even if they perform poorly, they can discount the result.

Feedback Avoidance- To protect our positive sense of self we do what the name says, avoid feedback. We prefer to live in our own bubble and surround ourselves with individuals who will tell us how great we are and awesome are performance was. We avoid any negative or threatening information like the plague. Preferring to live in a distorted reality where anything we do is great.

Self-Serving Bias- In this method of protection we attribute anything that we have success at to internal factors. While anything we fail at, we attribute to external or situational factors. In other words, if we win, we think it’s all because of us. Our hard work, talent or skills. If we fail, we blame the coach, the weather, the refs, or any other external factor.

Downward Social Comparison– If instead of comparing ourselves to those who seem to be better off, we compare ourselves to those who are worse off, we can save our ego. How many times have we received a poor grade on a test but resorted to saying “Well, so and so did worse?†We do that to protect our ego, making ourselves feel better about the result. We do the same thing on the athletic field and in the office.

It’s not that these ego-protecting strategies are necessarily bad. They are ingrained responses for a reason. But, we should be aware of when we are distorting reality, deluding ourselves, and it is hurting us. Often, these strategies can help initially after a poor performance, but at some point, we have to gain enough perspective to evaluate what went wrong and how to get better. If we are constantly in ego protection mode, then that becomes the default response and goal, instead of the true goal: getting better at whatever it is we do.

And when it comes to performing to the best of your ability at any task, we have to be able to confront our own limits. We have to be able to find out that we aren’t as good as we thought. We have to accept the hit on our ego. Only when we drop our ego and allow ourselves to explore our limits, do we find out what we are truly capable of."

Testosterscone

Swashbuckler wrote: »

Every now and then I come across some interesting articles. If I could post a link in the God awful app I would. Until then I'll stick with copy and paste! Thought it was an interesting read. Credit to Magness.

"When it comes to performing at just about any task, what holds us back isn’t our coach or teacher. It’s not our training and practice. It’s often ourselves.

When we are in the middle of a performance, our mind almost always searches for an out. A rock to step on during a race, an excuse to utilize for why we are going to lose, or a story we can tell ourselves to explain why we got a D instead of a B. When it comes to measuring up, we have a really difficult time coming face to face with where the limits of our capabilities are.

It’s hard-wired in our minds and bodies. There’s a reason that your body doesn’t actually allow you to push until your heart is fully taxed and your muscles are at their limit. Your body needs to protect itself. It has much more to lose if we accidentally reach our limits than if we stay slightly under them. The same holds true for non-physical activities.

Trying to do anything well exposes your ego and self-esteem. It makes you vulnerable, open to seeing where your skill set truly lies. You have to confront reality, something that as humans, we actively avoid. It’s much easier to live in a world where we can tell ourselves that we are “good enough†at just about any activity we desire to do.

Think about the message that is sent if you fail at just about any task. I wasn’t good enough on this day to ace my test, perform the solo or give the big speech. If we confront that we actually aren’t good enough yet to solve the problem in front of us, it can leave us feeling dejected and demoralized. Our ego and self-esteem will plummet. Instead, we’ve evolved to deal with such “failure†in a multitude of ways.

According to recent research, there are four main ways that we protect our ego when failure is anticipated.

Self-Handicapping– In this method, people intentionally limit their effort to give themselves an out. You might recognize this attitude from high school when a student would intentionally not study or do the assigned reading to give themselves a reason for why they performed poorly. Or in the running world, someone doesn’t give full effort, always telling others that they didn’t fully try. The logic goes like this: If they didn’t give their full effort, then the result doesn’t truly reflect their capabilities, therefore the result doesn’t mean much. So even if they perform poorly, they can discount the result.

Feedback Avoidance- To protect our positive sense of self we do what the name says, avoid feedback. We prefer to live in our own bubble and surround ourselves with individuals who will tell us how great we are and awesome are performance was. We avoid any negative or threatening information like the plague. Preferring to live in a distorted reality where anything we do is great.

Self-Serving Bias- In this method of protection we attribute anything that we have success at to internal factors. While anything we fail at, we attribute to external or situational factors. In other words, if we win, we think it’s all because of us. Our hard work, talent or skills. If we fail, we blame the coach, the weather, the refs, or any other external factor.

Downward Social Comparison– If instead of comparing ourselves to those who seem to be better off, we compare ourselves to those who are worse off, we can save our ego. How many times have we received a poor grade on a test but resorted to saying “Well, so and so did worse?†We do that to protect our ego, making ourselves feel better about the result. We do the same thing on the athletic field and in the office.

It’s not that these ego-protecting strategies are necessarily bad. They are ingrained responses for a reason. But, we should be aware of when we are distorting reality, deluding ourselves, and it is hurting us. Often, these strategies can help initially after a poor performance, but at some point, we have to gain enough perspective to evaluate what went wrong and how to get better. If we are constantly in ego protection mode, then that becomes the default response and goal, instead of the true goal: getting better at whatever it is we do.

And when it comes to performing to the best of your ability at any task, we have to be able to confront our own limits. We have to be able to find out that we aren’t as good as we thought. We have to accept the hit on our ego. Only when we drop our ego and allow ourselves to explore our limits, do we find out what we are truly capable of."

Only listened to the podcast this was taken from today particularly good one. Well worth a listen to old episodes truly is one of the best running podcasts around

Swashbuckler

Testosterscone wrote:

Only listened to the podcast this was taken from today particularly good one. Well worth a listen to old episodes truly is one of the best running podcasts around

Theres a really good "how do you define success in races and workouts" podcast I like the look of. I need to get into listening to podcasts.

AuldManKing

Testosterscone wrote: »

Only listened to the podcast this was taken from today particularly good one. Well worth a listen to old episodes truly is one of the best running podcasts around

I've tried so many times to listen to it, but their style is so labourious and they take too many tangents.
So many times I've stopped mid run to turn them off!

Thank God I have a coach who loves all this stuff and can interpret it all and make it specific to me.

Duanington

What spots are you planning on cheering from on Sunday, P?

skyblue46

Swashbuckler wrote: »

I'll be keeping an eye out for the people I know from Strava pics. Not sure how well I'll make people out with the crowds though. Hoping to be at mile 4, 11.5, 20ish and 25ish.

Duanington wrote: »

What spots are you planning on cheering from on Sunday, P?

I suggested that he starts at Chesterfield Road/ Lords Walk area, out Islandbridge gates to go up to Kilmainham/SCR. From there he can run down the Canal and turn right out to Clonskeagh Rd/ Milltown Rd junction and then take the short route to Merrion Road.

Duanington

skyblue46 wrote: »

I suggested that he starts at Chesterfield Road/ Lords Walk area, out Islandbridge gates to go up to Kilmainham/SCR. From there he can run down the Canal and turn right out to Clonskeagh Rd/ Milltown Rd junction and then take the short route to Merrion Road.

Super - I'll be around the 25 mile mark so might catch him there

AuldManKing

Duanington wrote: »

Super - I'll be around the 25 mile mark so might catch him there

You be in McGrattans later?

Swashbuckler

Duanington wrote:

What spots are you planning on cheering from on Sunday, P?

What S said haha. Im clueless with Dublin but plan on having the phone in hand to guide me. I'll keep an eye out for you.

Duanington

AuldManKing wrote: »

You be in McGrattans later?

Yep - I'll be there for a bit