Photos and Splits and Thoughts

There is not an awful lot to be learnt from my mile splits that I didn’t already know. When I went through them I basically went like “yes, here where I felt good, here’s where the trouble started, here’s where I blew up”. The one thing I noticed was the high heart rate despite the slow pace. My time clearly didn’t come from lack of trying.

For completeness sake, here are the splits, average heart rate readings and a few thoughts. The miles are from the Garmin, so the actual miles from the official measurements would be about 4 seconds per mile slower on average.

 1 7:30 172 
 2 6:59 170
 3 7:30 173
 4 7:14 173 I had no idea the HR was so high early on
 5 7:20 170
 6 7:42 168
 7 7:19 166
 8 6:42 168 That’s where I took off
 9 6:55 170 Interestingly, the HR is lower than early on
10 7:23 170 Still, in hindsight, I paid for those later on
11 7:01 170 Mais je ne regrette rien
12 7:17 169
13 7:26 168
14 7:22 168
15 7:12 168
16 7:41 167 That’s where I blew, but the HR didn't really drop
17 7:48 164
18 7:24 168
19 7:53 169 And that’s where I really blew!
20 9:29 160 Including a walk break, this was surprisingly fast
21 8:40 164 The last climb up to Fosters Avenue
22 8:38 160
23 8:59 160 Oh the pain!
24 9:29 158 OH THE PAIN!!!
25 8:40 164 picking it up again … well, it’s all relative
26 7:47 171
rest (7:26 pace) 178 going all out

As for photos, despite there being thousands of photos from the marathon on the flickr, I only managed to find those of myself. The first one with me in the background includes my dreadlocked pacer from miles 9-15. He finished in 3:10, sporting an impressive negative split. Well done that man, and I hope he didn’t mind me being close to his shoulder for over 6 miles. Late Update: Thanks go to Private for the photos.



Considering how much pain I went through during the marathon and the hours afterwards I have been recovering amazingly quickly. I can walk down the staircase in Nana and Gaga’s house without wincing by now, and there is only a small residue of soreness left. Despite bringing a second set of running gear (just in case) I won’t be running until after we have travelled back home to Dublin. We’re in Cork on Saturday morning and I have to collect my Mum from Kerry airport in the afternoon, so it looks like I’ll be heading out no sooner than Sunday.

The near future will bring a little bit of running at slow recovery paces.

The further future will bring a lot of running at slow paces. I’m done with marathons for the time being. 2010 is the year of the Ultras, and I mean more than one. First I’ll get my revenge in Connemara then I’ll train for a slightly longer one. Since the other race (or races?) are not official yet, I won’t shout it out too loudly just yet.