Fame at Last

I checked out the Bantry Bay Half Marathon website the other day and lo-and-behold, they’ve got a trailer of their DVD online. And what do I see? Me! About two thirds into the video there are three second of a guy in a yellow singlet at the finish. Yup, you are looking at yours truly. My upper body is bouncing sideways like a dinghy in gale-force winds, but I was well and truly knackered at that point after desperately chasing a 1:30 finish. (blogline readers: the video doesn't display in bloglines. You'll have to come to my site to view it in all its glory)



Was that really only 2 months ago? It seems like ages since I have last raced. I’ve covered a lot of training miles since then, and there will be many more until the Loch Ness marathon.

After Wednesday’s strenuous run I was happy enough with 8 easy miles on Thursday. Just go out and get the miles in. The weather has been desperate during the last few weeks (I think we just had the wettest June since recordings began), but I have been generally lucky in the mornings, but not so over the last 2 days. It was raining heavily on Thursday, and for someone who’s wearing glasses this is a major nuisance. I should have left them at home, I would have seen a lot more. Strangely enough my knee acted up again. I didn’t expect that. Maybe it has something to do with the surface of the Caragh Lake road. It’s a road surface, alright, but somewhat rougher than a normal road. This shouldn’t really affect my knee, but maybe somehow it does. Anyway, I managed the required 8 miles just fine.

And today I finally got a 20 mile run under my belt. It has been quite a while since my last one. I originally planned 10 miles alongside Caragh Lake and two loops to Ard-na-Sidhe, but one look out of the window this morning was enough to change my mind. It was bucketing it down, and the trees were swaying in the wind, which almost always means a trip to Ard-na-Sidhe to get a little bit of shelter. 4 loops out-and-back it was, but that had the advantage that I could sneak back home after 5 miles to answer a call of nature and to change my shirt, which was soaked through. By now it had stopped raining and the next three loops were run in slightly more agreeable conditions. Check out the contrast for Mike’s long run this morning in Tucson, Arizona – 88F/31C at 4 am in the morning. Unimaginable to me! For running purposes I think I prefer the Irish rain. Anyway, the run went ok. It was a bit slower than expected but my resolve to be more relaxed about the pace held, I only accelerated a bit on the final loop which was the only one covered in less than 40 minutes. I was quite happy to have managed 3 runs of at least 2 hours this week. This should be just the thing I need to boost my endurance.

When I think about it, getting up at 4:50 am to go running is ridiculous. A car passed by a few minutes into the second loop, still before 6 am. The driver must have thought I was completely barmy. But what would he have thought had he known that I had already covered 6 miles by then? And to think that I’m planning to do this every week for a while. Maybe runners are a different breed.

5 Jul: 8 miles, 1:05:13. 8:09 pace, avg. HR 143
6 Jul: 20 miles, 2:45:27, 8:16 pace, avg. HR 143, 5-mile splits 43:03, 41:28, 41:01, 39:55 (8:36, 8:17, 8:12, 7:59 pace)