All Hail The Kingdom

I had a very mixed Sunday Football afternoon. After a sickening 95th minute blow in the Manchester Derby I feared my day couldn’t be any worse, but Kerry compensated for that in the Gaelic version of the game, winning their 36th All-Ireland Football Championship (basically Ireland's equivalent of the Super Bowl), a fact made all the sweeter by beating our beloved neighbours from Cork, thus providing plenty of ammunition for a fun day at work tomorrow. I’m in two minds if that makes up for the earlier disappointment, not that I can do anything about it. The kids were very happy about Kerry's win and Maia enthusiastically joined the celebrations, as you can see.

Oh, I forgot, wrong sport. Since I’m no good at soccer and refuse to play Gaelic football because I don’t want my facial feature rearranged, I’m still a runner, albeit one in recovery mode. I did a few easy miles every morning, though both yesterday and today I was really surprised when I looked at the pace display of the Garmin. I didn’t feel like running at sub-8:00 pace, and normally I’d expect the legs to be far heavier than this the week after a marathon. While the pace tends to quicken during a low-mileage week, this isn’t normal straight after a marathon. It reinforces my plans for Dublin. If you guys are correct then I should be in the form of my life in five weeks’ time. Let’s hope it will happen.

Don’t say I never listen (hi Mike), I heard you loud and clearly about the Cork-to-Cobh race, which will now take part without me. Instead there is a 5K in Killarney on Sunday, 11 Oct, which should provide me with a short and sharp workout. While I don’t really like 5Ks, this year they have provided the majority of my races. I guess I can’t complain, I used to whinge about the lack of races in Kerry and now I have to be grateful that they are on, even if they are mostly short ones.

My weight has been acting funny this week. Straight after the Dingle marathon it went up by 5 pounds, only to came off again in the following days. I’ve heard from ultra runners that the body can keep fluids at cellular level after a race which will gradually be released again over the next few days, but haven’t noticed that on myself before after a marathon. Anyway, I’m back to slightly below 150 pounds, just where I was before Dingle.

I’m still in recovery mode this week and won’t rush things. This will be another easy week, with maybe a set of strides or two, but no workouts. In the meantime, I can think of more ways to wind up a few more Cork colleagues (I told you to take Monday off). This should be fun.

18 Sep

6 miles, 48:06, 8:01 pace, HR 144

19 Sep

8 miles, 1:02:07, 7:46 pace, HR 147

20 Sep

7 miles, 55:11, 7:53 pace, HR 146