Home Sweet Home

We had a hectic Sunday after the race; Cian will be 3 on Friday, and guess who was all of a sudden roped in to buy presents for him from Nana and Gaga as well as some aunties? His favourite things are Lunar Jim, Cars and helicopters in general. The one toy I couldn’t find was the Cars one. You would expect the merchandise from a Disney film to be available just about everywhere, wouldn’t you? “Come on, let me waste my money on your overpriced merchandise!” I shouted to no avail. But of course he was happy anyway. In fact, he spent the last two nights cuddling his Lunar Jim toy.

Back to running. I managed 5.5 miles in Dublin on Monday before we set off on our journey back to Kerry. Like the other Dublin runs this weekend it was windy but didn’t rain. I was quite surprised how easy it felt, I expected at least some soreness from the race, but no, I seem to have absorbed that without troubles. The only problem was that I went out at around 8:30 am, which meant of course that I ran in the middle of rush hour. I usually don’t have that problem in Kerry, and I hadn’t even thought of it. It shows how much I’ve forgotten about city live since we turned back into country pumpkins three years ago.

The journey back was uneventful but tiring, and I wasn’t sure how many miles I would feel up to this morning. I eventually settled on an easy 7, and set the alarm accordingly. I didn’t need it, 5 minutes before it was time to get up I woke up hearing the wind and rain howling outside the window. That’s just great, isn’t it? Despite being tempted to snuggle back into my blanket I got up, got ready and went out, to be surprised by a calm morning with a brilliant moon shining brightly just above the horizon. It was so bright that I left the lamp behind. The nice scenery didn’t last, of course, the wind was very strong as soon as I was out of the woods, and within 2 miles the rain was back. Two sections of the road were flooded, one up to an inch and the other one ankle deep, and Good God was that water cold! Since this was an out-and-back course I had the dubious pleasure of running through both sections twice; no wonder my toes were frozen. I eventually returned home to a silent and peaceful house, even the boys were still asleep, almost unheard of at 7:45 am. It’s always nice to know that nobody missed me; I feel guilty when I come back from my run to find that Niamh had to prepare breakfast for all the kids on her own.

After some humming and hawing I came up with a schedule for this week. I moved the long run back to Friday, because that’s the day of the week that’s earmarked as the long one, just like last time. The mileage for the other days doesn’t really matter much yet. I keep increasing the weekly mileage by 5 miles, 2 of which are used to increase the duration of the long run. Eventually I want to end up at around 80 miles with one long run of 20 and another one around 15, though I should be running by time, not distance. I’ll get there in January, but I do hope the weather will be more benign by then. I don’t remember it being so bad 12 months ago.

4 Dec: ~5.5 miles, 45:30, ~8.16 pace, avg. HR 158, very windy
5 Dec: 7 miles, 58:41, 8:23 pace, avg. HR 155, very wet and windy