A Little Bit Different

Like almost every other runner, I usually do my long run on Sunday, though with DCM only 2 weeks ago that's not of utmost importance right now, so when I got a message from Anto to be at St. Stephens Green at 10 o'clock, I had no hesitation to agree.

He is starting a new venture, organising running tours through Dublin, and this was a dummy run, with a few foreigners like myself as mock tourists.

If you've ever been at one of Anto's races, the
most famous of them all being the Donadea 50k, you know that he knows how to talk to a crowd; in fact, his race briefings are legendary. With this being not yet an official tour we got the non-PC version including some if his own TMI personal history. Great stuff. And we saw plenty of Dublin City centre, with plenty of local history, both old and more recent. I know the area pretty well, especially since working there for a couple of months at the start of the year, but plenty of the stuff was new to me.

Obviously it wasn't a training run, with a fairly slow pace and plenty of stop/start running. In the end I had accumulated 4 miles, and Anto had 4.8 miles, the difference being he kept his watch running and kept stopping it at each walking break.

All photos by Anthony Lee

This was great fun, and if you're visiting Dublin you should do yourself a favour and do something like that yourself (they are planning a Phoenix Park and a pub option as well). We also go treated to coffee and donuts, which I can't promise to all future visitors, but it prompted me to run another couple of miles afterwards.

Apart from that group run, I didn't do much noteworthy this week. But it was so wet on Wednesday that apparently it was enough to kill my headlamp, because when I tried to use it the next time on Friday morning, it would not turn on. It's the fancy, expensive headlamp that I bought three years ago for the Spartathlon, which cost about 15 times as much as the Lidl/Aldi headlamps that I had used up to then, and as it turns out it didn't last any longer than the cheap ones had. What a waste of money! Okay, it was significantly brighter at the highest setting, but at the price of burning through your batteries in 3 hours, which had almost cost me that very Spartathlon race I had bought it for. Ah well. Back to the cheap ones when I see them next time, I guess.

But anyway, if you want to see Dublin City Centre and hear some great stories and have fun all at the same time, have a look at Running Tours Dublin. Don't wear compression socks while doing so, and Anne and Anto will look after you.

6 Nov

4.46 miles, 38:00, no watch

7 Nov

6.71 miles, 57:24, 8:33 pace, HR 142

8 Nov

10.16 miles, 1:26:30, 8:30 pace, HR 144

9 Nov

6.32 miles, 53:19, 8:26 pace, HR 142

10 Nov

9.68 miles, 1:22:11, 8:29 pace, HR 142

11 Nov

4 miles, 38:56, 9:43 pace, Running Tours Ireland

2 miles, 16:57, 8:20 pace, Donut Burn