A Slow Journey to Faster Times

yaboya1 · 17-04-2016 1:07pm

Once again, thank you for all the goodwill and well wishes. I'm settled in, had an excellent night's sleep and will have absolutely no excuses tomorrow. Whatever I run is as good as I am (this time:) )

Thanks again.

laura_ac3 · 17-04-2016 6:31pm

Good luck tomorrow. I don't have the experience to comment on how your training compares to previous but one thing that has struck me of late is that you seem to have that determined mojo back. Keep that through the race and run as best as you're capable of. Have a good one

Pacing Mule · 17-04-2016 7:52pm

Let there be no cigar smoking finish for you either !

Hannibelle Smeeeth · 18-04-2016 7:13am

Best of luck P!

yaboya1 · 18-04-2016 7:33pm

You're only as good as your last performance.
I am a 3:44 marathon runner.
My body has cried enough.
I am finished with running & marathons for thee foreseeable future.

Over and out.

tang1 · 18-04-2016 7:38pm

Well done P, for what it's worth it was carnage out there for everyone, everybody missed targets by a serious margin cause of the weather. Enjoy your beers.

Firedance · 18-04-2016 8:04pm

Plus 1 to that Peter, you stuck it out and didn't throw in the towel, have a few beers & a chat and see how you feel in the next few days, I felt far sorrier for you guys today making the start line only to be handed those conditions.

aero2k · 18-04-2016 8:05pm

Peter, I'm really sorry to hear about how your race unfolded. You weren't alone - everyone seems to have suffered out there.

Sleep on it, rest up and recover, and then make a decision. I've been where you are now at least twice - the first time I almost did give up, the second time I realised that the time is irrelevant when you have a bad marathon - we all know you're a much better runner than that. Youth is on your side, I hope to see you back here soon with a different sentiment.

Pacing Mule · 18-04-2016 8:19pm

P. You ain't a quitter. That's the emotion talking now. Take a bit of time to reflect. Check out the other lads results. It was referred to as a zombie carnage out there. Bad luck but certainly not a definite marker of your ability. Chin up mate.

Gavlor · 18-04-2016 8:58pm

Give that training a chance to flourish...

http://www.corkcitymarathon.ie/

adrian522 · 18-04-2016 9:01pm

Sorry to hear things didn't go well but now is not the time to be making decisions like that. Have a few beers and think about things over the next few days.

The marathon isn't the only distance out there but I'm sure there's a great performance in the autmun there off the back of all your training if you want it.

Enjoy the rest of the trip in any case.

ger664 · 18-04-2016 9:08pm

Peter

Today was a tough day at the office. Boston is one of the harder course to race, the first 15 miles will really eat you up, throw in today's conditions and that only amplifies the outcome. Rehydration, rest, recovery and then reflect on today

Kennyg71 · 18-04-2016 9:20pm

Had 3 of yeh on tracker for full race and had knot in my stomach for you all
as I watched things going wrong, but glad you all got over the line intact, no
time for making decisions, rest up and enjoy rest of the trip.

Itziger · 18-04-2016 9:21pm

Ah, C'mere, that's a focking shocking time alright. Were ya walking bits or what??! And that's Boston like, mostly downhill an' all. Try a bit of basketball or rowing or something. Pilates maybe.

Slightly more serious, I think you need to step back and have a good think. A good one like. Try something different for the training for the next one. Don't mind beating yourself up, that gets ya nowhere except a few slaps on the back from....... well, I don't want to step on people's toes.

There's something gone wrong for you and I don't know what it is but you and maybe one or two others should be able to identify it. Would it be worth your while looking at 5k/10k for a year? You could make huge strides in shorter distances. Go back to the HR stuff? Go Ultra for a year?

There must be something and you seem to have got yourself into a bit of a rut. You need to get out of that one way or the other. But for now, go and have a dozen decent beers. Say Hello to Opus and Duke for me.

annapr · 18-04-2016 11:39pm

You forgot to mention you're never coming back to the US...

You were in good company today as you know.

Chivito550 · 19-04-2016 9:34am

Sorry it didn't work out.

But honestly, get over yourself. You had a bad race. Everyone does. Pick yourself up and go again. And for the love of God, stop picking marathons in the USA. The travel alone would take it out of you!

I'm not one for backslapping but you are going the opposite extreme. You can't control the weather. You have to take that into account. Run DCM. A good night's sleep in your own bed the night before, familiar roads, home support.

aero2k · 19-04-2016 9:52am

Definitely not to be underestimated, and worth a few min in my humble opinion.

Mrs Mc · 19-04-2016 1:34pm

Hope the few pints last night have gotten rid of all that negativity it was a bad day at the office for everyone so no more of this I'm never running a marathon again and I'm never going to the US to run a marathon again !!! While you asked that I would be honest and say "you did a sh*te run" I think why kick a man when he's down! You made the best of a bad situation like everyone else did and maybe after a days reflection on the event .... Is there any positives ??? Americans telling you that you are awesome ? Me and AnnaP cheering you on ? At least it wasn't raining ? You got a bit of sun and sightseeing done ???? Everyone had a crap day and are also never doing marathons again or coming to the US to do one ???

WithCheesePlease · 19-04-2016 10:24pm

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you Peter. On your day you'd cruise it. And you know this because you have done in the past. Chin up. Hope to see you out and about around Clontarf or some place further afield again some time soon.

Chivito550 · 20-04-2016 12:11am

You need to watch this video. It is a post race interview with Ciaran O'Lionaird with RTE immediatey after having a disaster of a race at the London Olympics. He practically announced he was retiring from the sport. Having a camera pointed in his face 30 seconds after such crushing disappointment doesn't exactly lend itself to sensible talk. Have a watch of this, and understand that how ridiculous you find his comments is exactly how we are viewing your post race remarks.

Once O'Lionaird calmed down, he didn't book a flight home. He stayed around the Olympic village and had a bit of craic. He then moved on, and 6 months later won a bronze in the European Indoor Championships. He's been cursed with injury on and off since, but his reaction to it has been a lot more mature since.

Hope this helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIA8BJqFgHs

yaboya1 · 20-04-2016 5:24pm

Although I appreciate all the sentiments here the past few days, I feel the need to explain my own reasoning and opinion on my race.

Boston (timewise and performance wise) was the worst race I've ever run in my life. When things weren't going my way, I gave up. This is the second marathon in a row where I've done this. I don't feel I deserve any kudos for 'finishing'. That is just not an achievement in my eyes (for me anyway). I didn't DNF because I didn't want to get into a bad habit that could be repeated. But it seems I've picked up a pretty similar one.

Yes, it was a very tough day and yes, everyone struggled, but I'd bet that most of the other lads got the best they could out of themselves on the day (even if it wasn't close to the time they were originally targeting). If I'd done that and run 3:44, I wouldn't be as annoyed with myself. But I didn't.

I entered the Dublin Marathon in 2010 after deciding only 12 weeks previously to start running/training, having done nothing like that since a couple of cross-country races in school 12 years earlier. Back then I was even more clueless than I am now (probably hard to believe, I know!), and injured my hamstring playing 5-a-side football in the astro park the day after I raced the Athlone 3/4 Marathon. I rested up for two weeks and ran the Dublin Marathon in 3:39:36. I was in immense pain a long way out there, but I never stopped to a walk, never gave up and tried my heart out all the way to the finish line. For that reason, even though it was the slowest marathon I'd run until last Sunday, I rank it amongst my top three performances over the 26.2 miles (ahead of my 2015 Hamburg pb). So you must understand, this is more about the manner of my performance rather than the time.

Boston & New York are the worst performances I've ever put up in any races, ever. I walked in both of those, having resisted the urge to do the same when I was hurting a lot worse during races in the past. Even though I've been disappointed with results in other races, when I've asked myself did I try my best, the answer has always been a resounding yes. I didn't even have to ask myself that question this time, (or in New York) because when you're walking and you're not injured you already know you've quit. One of my mile splits on Sunday was 13:52. I've walked faster than that to the train station going to work some mornings.

I need to go away now and do a bit of thinking.

No sympathy please.
The above is to explain my thoughts and nothing else. I don't want any counselling.

p.s. Anyone looking for a good laugh?

Here's my Garmin trace: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1133295602

Chivito550 · 20-04-2016 11:43pm

I wouldn't be offering sympathy. And it's an insult to your intelligence and ability to say "well done for toughing it out and finishing". People mean well but it doesn't help. The honest truth is you had a shocker of a race. But what is also true is that it happens to everyone. No need to pull a Conor McGregor stunt and go quitting the sport now. Maybe try your hand at shorter distances. Maybe even a track race, or cross country or something you don't usually do. No pressure on results. Just get back to enjoying it as it is painfully obvious you are not right now. There's so much variety in athletics that if you fall out of love with one distance or discipline, there's so much more to choose from (just don't go do ultras

)

Best of luck anyway.

ultrapercy · 21-04-2016 1:25am

Go and have a good wallow for yourself. Don't listen to people telling you not to feel sorry for yourself, that's exactly what you should do for the next week. After that forget about it. By then you will be feeling fat anyway so you will run out of necessity. Bad days happen but some people can put positive spins on them 'brave' or nonsense like that other people know they were just ****e. You I think are firmly in the latter category. You have most of the parts to build the ikea marathon but like most people you can't figure out how to put it together. The fact that the instructions are in Arabic translated through sweetish makes it very difficult so you end up with a very unmarathon like result and a load of parts left over. Maybe look at the parts left over and see if you can make something out of them.

RuMan · 21-04-2016 9:14am

Maybe your expectations are too high. Your training clearly wasn't good enough for the time you hoped for. Maybe you could have dug it out normally but the heat made this less likely.

Up to a certain level (where natural ability plays a part) marathon training is mostly about putting in the hours. We can over analyse these things IMO.
Either put in the hours or admit you cant and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Having said that a friend has a PB of 2:48 and sneaked under 3:30 on Monday.

(Your log is good, have been reading for a while , this is 1st post on it.)

yaboya1 · 21-04-2016 9:21am

I don't disagree.

El Caballo · 21-04-2016 11:59am

I'm sure you're sick to the teeth of exploring possibilities and frustrated but thought I might throw in a few thoughts. Do what you gotta do and if you do change your mind, I honestly think you would benefit from joining a club with a good coach and regular club meet ups, you're spoilt for choice in Dublin in that regard. I think you would gain hugely from just throwing out the generic plans which you are fiddling about with and have an actual coach tailor a plan for you which would include club workouts where you go out and meet up with other runners, fook all this going out running on your own the whole time, that gets old pretty quickly and is as boring as hell.

You'd get to run in a group which is competitive and filled with people faster than you and it's just better craic to be fair. This is a hobby to be fair and having a bit fun mixed in is the most important part in my opinion, I'm not saying that you shouldn't strive for improvement and be all happy clappy with everything but just creating an atmosphere that's a little more lighthearted and competitive like a training group. Racing shouldn't be your only competitive fuel and it is when you are going out running all your workouts and majority of your runs on your own.

Let's face it, you've only gone backwards in the last 18 months, what have you got to lose by changing it up and exploring a new route? I read back through your log this morning and although you had a few bad weeks, your overall training wasn't that far off what you had done in the past but what stuck out was, "didn't hit target pace". Target pace was where you were, not where your current shape was. It's easy to spot these things in hindsight but the pressure and frustration that you were feeling to run as fast as you werr leapt off the page instead of just focusing on making forward progress again. All the while trying, you were trying the figure out what was going wrong when admittedly, you have no idea about training.

Do what you wanna do but if/when you decide to lace up the shoes again, at least consider joining a club, coach and getting out on group runs. Apologies for the counselling session but when you close yourself off to other people's opinions, you also limit yourself to your own.

Chivito550 · 21-04-2016 12:08pm

Jaysus, You’re not in a club? I just assumed you were. You have to get yourself into a club and get a proper coach and training group if you want to make the next step as a runner. You will go nowhere if you keep running by yourself. You should be a club runner, not a relatively fast recreational runner.

+1000 to that post above.

Gavlor · 21-04-2016 12:29pm

Your just a rubbish athlete.

God I love the opportunity to kick someone when they are down

Seriously though join a club, share the burden of training and allow a good coach determine your abilities.

annapr · 21-04-2016 3:42pm

Question for you, P: do you think you would feel better now if you had adjusted your expectation/target on the day and ground out a sub 3:30, for example? (Or similar to PaulieY). Might you have been better targeting to improve on your NYC performance, but maybe not aiming for a sub-3?

P.S. Hope the brow beating above is not your race report...

Murph_D · 21-04-2016 3:56pm

Here's an excerpt from a prominent Dublin running club's report on the race, before we all get caught up in overthinking what happened out there, or what being in a club does for hitting your marathon target.

__________________

Early on, [Runner A] and [Runner B] were looking good for their sub-3 targets, but had to settle for 3:08:42 and 3:32:17, respectively. [Runner C] was also looking good for a low time just over 3 hours but fell back in the second half to come in with 3:28:52 (with fiancée [Runner D] running 3:32:39). [Runner E] ran 3:44:24, having been looking good for a 3:22 for some time. If there was a bright light in there it was shining on [Runner F], in her second marathon, who ran an extremely steady race, with almost even splits, coming home in a PB time of 3:44:47, a more than 3 minute improvement over Dublin last year. Well done to all. It must have been really tough.

A Slow Journey to Faster Times

Comments