Running in the Real World

Thursday, April 14: Rest and a little bit of packing

Friday, April 15: Fly to Boston and walk to/from expo...
Lovely afternoon in Boston, sunny and warmer than we expected... Headed to the expo with D, FBOT and Mrs Mc... So many runners around already, the city is buzzing, the marathon is a really big event here. The lads stopped to savour the finish line and visualise themselves crossing it in triumph on Monday.

Pre-race panic #1... Missing passports, luckily found and handed in to hotel reception. Bright side was it meant we didn't spend too long at the expo or spend too much.

Saturday, April 16: 50 min easy
8k @ 6:28; 4.9 mi @ 10:24

Woke up at an ungodly hour local time, awake for hours before meeting fbot & Mrs Mc for a 6:00 am run before breakfast. Headed over to the Charles River esplanade and ran along the river... Lovely place to run, lots of runners about even at that hour on a Saturday morning. Was wishing I had a long sleeve top because there was a cold wind, but otherwise perfect. D & FBOT took off at their easy pace and Mrs Mc and myself had a relaxed easy run.

Pre-race panic #2... Toilet in our hotel room malfunctioned and flooded the bathroom at about 5am :eek: good news is that it got us moved to a slightly bigger tiny room

Time for an update, meagre though it is.

Week of April 18

Monday, April 18: Boston mar-a-THON (supporting role) -- 10-15k walking (I know it doesn't count)

I love the way Americans say mar-a-THON. It's all been said about this by now, tough day out for the lads, humbling really to see so many good runners undone on the day.

Mrs Mc and I positioned ourselves just before the 40k/25 mile marker... the appointed spot was chosen carefully by FBOT, who reminded us at least once or twice that he lived in Boston on a j1, xx years ago. It was warm and the sun was glaring from early on, we had some anxious moments tracking and watching all the targets disappear.

I've never seen a crowd like it... loud and energetic, even aquinn would not have made herself heard in Boston. They enthusiastically cheered for anyone with an American flag, or any runner whose name they could read, or country they could identify... Really they cheered for everyone.

To top off a tough day, the meet-up pub was closed, and the next pub wouldn't let us in without ID! We eventually found an Irish pub and made up for that. My American friend who was with us (a 2-time veteran of Boston marathon) was astounded... You guys go to the pub right after the maraTHON? Ahem, well, yes, it's a tradition.

Anyhow, great weekend, lovely city, great marathon buzz, pity about the weather on the day.

Wednesday, April 20: 40 minutes easy/jet lagged (not easyjet as an Internet wit suggested)
6.45 k @ 6:14; 4 mi @ 10:02

Afternoon run with D out the seafront to stretch the legs after the flight.

Sunday, April 24: Dublin Remembers 5k
8k total incl w/u and c/d

Did this as an easy run (around 30 mins). There was some grumbling about the change of the start to 8am, but for us it was an easy warmup mile to the start at Mountjoy Sq. Great atmosphere, everyone was wearing their blue shirts (I realised too late that it was the Dublin colours :eek:). The start was very slow and congested but we weren't bothered, loved running down O'Connell street, and the sight of thousands of runners in blue tshirts all the way down the south quays was impressive. The final hill into the Royal Hospital would have been tough if you were racing. Met up with PJD here and we laughed that it was the first time we'd been in a race where the finish was as congested as the start.

Walked back down to Heuston and got a lift home, I thought I might run home but was tempted by chocolate croissants into the car. Definitely didn't earn the croissant with that run. Good value race (more of an event than a race really) and great atmosphere.

Week of April 25

Weds, April 27: 45 min easy with 5 x strides
7.8k @ 5:58; 4.8 mi @ 9:35

Like Boston, it's all been said already around here about the weather this week. Sea front in the evening in spectacular light, strange and threatening cloud formations in all directions but sunshine overhead. Did some strides and felt good. Got home before the hailstones, which felt even better.

74 km/46 mi for April, continuing my consistently pathetic mileage

Sunday, May 1: 90 mins easy (ish)
14.5km @ 6:11; 9 mi @ 9:58

Back in Donegal for the weekend, headed out into the hills with D, a bit of sun, a bit of cloud, humid and warm enough. Did an out and back, ascending through the Croagh caravan park... Near the top of the hill, there's a big sign painted on the road... SLOW... Yep, that's right. Struggled up the hill, but got over it. Turned back at 45 min, leaving D to head on a bit further...

Back up the hill, feeling stronger and then loved the rest of the run home into a lovely cooling breeze and a bit of drizzle, felt like I had a rhythm, visualised myself crossing the line at Terenure (in the absence of consistent training, I'm hoping visualisation might work), really enjoyed the run. I even heard the first cuckoo about a mile from home... Hoping the damn thing stays at least a mile away and doesn't visit us at dawn!

I also nearly stepped on a hen pheasant last night... I thought it was dead, it finally roused itself and decided I might be a threat, flying off in its ungainly way. Beats me how people think it's sport to shoot those birds, you could nearly pick it up and take it home.

So a new month, time for some new resolutions....goal number 1 is to do some consistent training, starting this week (and yes, I have been saying that for weeks).

Firedance wrote: »

it does it does!!! tell me it does.....



g'wan, fill in the blanks :pac: bet they weren't partying like it was 1999!!!



ha ha brilliant! sounds like it was a nice run anyway, heard lots of good things about it.

Best of luck with the training between now and Terenure, can't believe I"m going to miss this again FFS, have never run it - will be out cheering I'd say though with Ms Quinn I hope.

Can't possibly tell tales from fbot's youth....

...and great, if the visualisation doesn't work, you and aquinn cheerleading might!!

Mrs Mc wrote: »

Did M work in Boston on his J1 I must have missed that conversation !!!! It's a pity we didn't know we could have walked aimlessly around trying to find where he worked or lived all those years ago !!!!

:pac: :pac:

At least you got to have some donuts!!!

Wednesday: 5k easy on trails
5K @ 6:21; 3.1 mi @ 10:08

Lovely run around the trails of Mount Stewart estate on the windy shores of Strangford Lough. Took us a while to find the trail but when we did it was well signposted. Didn't have much time (darn work :rolleyes:) but this felt like a decent workout, with uneven terrain and a hill or two.

Through the woods with their carpet of bluebells... I was humming 'tiptoe through the... ' oh no, that was tulips. I'm sure there's a song about bluebells... There should be.

Ososlo wrote: »

Yes there should definitely be a song, or at least a poem about bluebells! You could always write one

Remind me Anna, are you DCM'ing this year?

Hell nooooooooo

Thursday: Evening run through d5 with Laura_ac3.
11 k @ 6:13; 6.8 mi @ 10:00

Rushed home from work, rushed up to Artane to meet Laura... Never felt like this run settled down to easy at all, didn't feel energetic, sometimes you have days like that. Apart from that nice run around d5 in good company, taking in the avenue in a very busy St Anne's and home down the Howth road through Marino. A bit longer than intended but no harm done.

Stopped at our local spar on the way home where I was cornered by another customer who told me that I looked very fit (!) and that he used to run himself back in the day... Claimed he did 100m in 11 seconds... And still does a mile on the seafront, but very slow, takes him about 10 minutes... He was 71! .

I backed away as he moved on to telling me how everyone he went to school with is an alcoholic and nobody has any manners these days, he went to Belvedere when it was really Belvedere.... etc, etc...

Saturday, May 7: 5 miles easy/tempo/fartlek/sort of
8.2k @ 5:56; 5 mi @ 9:34

Intended to do St Anne's parkrun this morning as a session, or a tester ahead of Terenure next week, but volunteered instead.... A cop out maybe, but the volunteer roster looked light. Anyhow, headed off with fellow volunteers aquinn and D into pissing rain. I had a token disaster (hope Killerz or FBOT don't read this or I will be banished to the furthest corner of marshalling next time), managing to fling tokens 1-50 all over the avenue in the path of runners on their first lap. Oops. Morto. . Some super quick token sorting by aquinn and others saved the day, although aquinn did find token 22 up her sleeve in the coffee shop later :eek: As always, enjoyed the volunteering and the coffee after.

Headed out the seafront in the afternoon with the vague idea of doing a tempo run or an interval session, or... In the end it was a bit of a fartlek but probably not really. Breathing felt laboured and not much energy but managed a bit of pace for some of it.

I had a near miss with a cyclist on the way back... coming toward Alfie Byrne road where the pedestrian path merges with the cycle path and I was crossing back to Clontarf Rd... I'm usually really careful to look out for bikes but maybe didn't fully look this time, anyhow a cyclist speeding past from behind brushed against me and roared abuse back... "You f***ing eejit, what were you thinking!" ... I responded "Sorry, and you should be too", but he was going so fast I'm sure he didn't hear me. Could have been a disaster for either or both of us... Good thing I wasn't going at my super-speedy pace

Spent Sunday morning running along the canal in MEATH :eek: with a bunch of Internet strangers... Did a 2 mile race in wind and rain tonight after work... This is what I do for fun these days .

Sunday, May 8: Boardsies Royal Canal Run
10K @ 6:43; 6.2 mi @ 10:49

Picked up SpaceyLou en route and made our way to Fureys pub on the old n4... Lovely run along the canal on a sunny morning in good company. Well done to Tang for organising. Followed by a nice chatty breakfast in a busy cafe in downtown Enfield. Very enjoyable outing and lovely to meet new Boardsies and catch up with familiar ones.

And... 26.3 miles for the week . This may have been my biggest week this year :eek:

Tuesday, May 10: Clonliffe Harriers 2 mile RACE
3.25 k @ 5:04; 2 mi @ 8:09

Laura_ac3 casually suggested doing this... Near home and all that. We started fretting last night... Considering the possibility that we could come last with all the serious runners around... We were reassured by a look at last year's results that we might achieve 'last 10' status.

Collected Laura on the way up, parked and got out of the car to miserable weather... Wet, windy and cool. Ugh. We actually discussed just abandoning, nobody would ever know... But aquinn and BG were on their way up to support so we were trapped (we knew aquinn would check the results ). And then during our warmup met D and the boys on the way into the stadium so the stakes were raised again.

Our A goal was sub 16 minutes, B and C goals were not to be last. As we were warming up, we made a pact that if it looked like either of us were going to be last we would cross the line together hand in hand :pac:

Registration was relaxed and quick. After hanging around for ages, eyeing up other runners to see if any of them looked as slow as us, the 150 runners were summonsed to the track. We had avoided the track during our warmup, feeling like imposters. There were lots of elite looking people running very fast and throwing things around (javelins?), all very intimidating.

We lined up in front of our very noisy supporters who at least were in out of the rain in the stand. And we were off... Round the famous track, out onto the Sword Rd, back into Northwood, first Km beeped here I think... 5:00... Bang on target.

Back into the park (known locally as Ososlo Demesne) and up what felt like a massive incline, working very hard now, the usual negative self talk coming to the fore.... Laura beside me, saying you push on if you want to... Eh, that wasn't happening at this point. Next km 5:13... Oops, there goes the target.

Around the park, passing people... Nobody passing us, this was reassuring. Laura: you go on. Me: I can't. (Thinking, thank fook she can't either). 600m to go... The entrance back to the finishing lap of the track is in sight, I push on a bit, confident that last place is not ours. 3rd K: 5:03

It was pissing rain now, I briefly thought I might have a strong finish on the track, dashed by strong wind and torrential rain! Last bit: 4:44/km

2 miles in 16:25 approx

Splits
KM: 5:00, 5:13, 5:03 (4:44)
Mi: 8:09, 8:08
This was a tester ahead of Terenure... Another 3 miles at that pace... ? :eek:

BG tried to reassure us afterwards... In better conditions, the sub-16 was there... Yeah, better conditions and way more training

Great fun and mercifully short. Got home wet and freezing... Brrr.

That really was so much fun... Not during the two miles, obviously, but deadly buzz!