Once Again, After The Marathon

There are always things that slip out of your mind when you write a race report, but I'm not quite sure how I managed to forget about him:


He started right with us but went ahead. At the 2 mile mark I noticed that the spectators were cheering particularly enthusiastically, until I noticed him again. He fell behind quickly, despite the crowd's support. Some people try and slip by unnoticed. Others might have to deal with interesting chafing problems.

Thanks to Ray for a good video, from right at the bottom of Fosters Avenue (mile 21.5 or so). My balloon comes into view at about 1:20 and slowly draws closer to pass the camera a minute later, with the other balloons about 10 seconds apart each (excellent formation, guys!). What really strikes me is the size of the group. No wonder I got tripped on a couple of occasions.



What will stay with me is the crowd support we received. I was not the only one to notice that the spectators seemed even more enthusiastic than usual. Dublin calls itself the friendly marathon, and it sure lived up to that. I feel sorry for anyone who ran with an ipod. You really missed out, and you probably don't even know it.

Recovery is going very well. I had not planned on going running the next day, but the weather was so nice that I eventually donned my shoes and went out for a 5 mile recovery jog, which incidentally matched the marathon pace from the day before. Tuesday's run was the same, except in lousy weather. That didn't change for today; I ran to Mount Merrion and circled Deer Park 5 times, which gave me 7 miles today, the second half in a downpour that left me drenched to the bones, but happy enough that the soreness in the quads is almost gone.

I'm not planning ahead and will take every day as it comes. Recovery is paramount. While last year's training for Dingle has shown that I can run a marathon per week fairly comfortably, this does not build me up and has me running significantly slower. My next long run is in 3 weeks (ok, 2-and-a-half weeks by now), and I'm planning on running roughly the same pace as on Monday. If that goes well, I'll sign up for Clonakilty, another 3 weeks later.

That would bring my marathons for 2011 to 6 and slowly it's dawning on me that I'm building up quite a sizeable number. It's probably time to officially sign up to the 100 marathon club; the bronze medal only needs 25 marathons and I can get it in Connemara.

1 Nov

5 miles, 39:52, 7:58 pace, HR 142

2 Nov

5 miles, 39:21, 7:52 pace, HR 143

3 Nov

7 miles, 57:07, 8:09 pace, HR 144