Party Time

Mick Rice recently pointed out that Connemara is only 3-and-a-bit months away. That's actually pretty close, certainly too close to start messing around now. Which is why I have to tread carefully when it come to this season's party time.

It started on Thursday with Cian's 8th birthday. This served as a reminder how quickly I'm getting old. It also provided Niamh with yet another opportunity to show off her mad cake decorating skills, creating a sweets guzzling monster – entirely appropriate for Cian, as everyone agreed. He duly loved it. As always, she bought far too much stuff for the party, which meant dinner that night consisted of chocolate, sweets, cake, crisps, buns and plenty of fizzy drinks; I actually had a sugar hangover an hour later, but that did not stop next morning's breakfast to consist of pretty much the same stuff.

And since one party is not enough, my office's Christmas do was on on Friday night. Since my usual bedtime is generally several hours before everybody else's, I tend to cry off halfway through the proceedings, but I surprised myself by staying strong until 2 o'clock in the morning, and the only reason I left then was that I had to drive to Cork the next morning and could not risk still being over the blood alcohol limit. There had not been any embarrassing scenes until that time; I suppose I should hear on Monday if they happened after I left.

In the midst of all the madness, only Saturday's run suffered when I stumbled through 5 miles with a hangover. I could have run more, neither the stomach nor the head felt any worse during the run itself, and neither improved after I stopped running. I'm getting too old for all that. My hangovers are lasting longer and longer.

Thankfully I felt pretty much recovered after 10 hours of sleep before Sunday (I had left Niamh in sole charge of the kids watching the X-Factor). After a long absence, I returned to the hills of the Caragh Lake loop. I expected the legs to suffer on the long 3-mile climb with almost 600 feet elevation gain, but in actual fact I managed to run up entirely on autopilot. The pace was pedestrian, which was probably a good thing. After several weeks of nothing but relaxed running I am starting to reach that stage where all the runs are starting to feel so easy that it feels like I'm not training any more, the miles are just flying by effortlessly. I got there last year under the coach's guidance, and now I've managed to get there by myself (ok, with a couple of gentle nudges from the coach who still keeps an eye on me). This happened pretty quickly, considering that 3 weeks ago I stormed through 30 miles in Sixmilebridge. Now I just have to keep myself from doing stupid things for a few more weeks, and then the next training phase can begin.

Congratulations to Grellan and everyone else who ran the Clonakilty marathon. Sorry I missed all the fun.

8 Dec

10 miles, 1:18:23, 7:50 pace, HR 146

9 Dec

10 miles, 1:18:10, 7:49 pace, HR 144

10 Dec

5 miles, 37:49, 7:34 pace, HR 147

11 Dec

15.1 miles, 1:58:51, 7:52 pace, HR 146

Weekly Mileage: 69+