Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Various Ups and Downs

Andrew tagged me, but I’ve been tagged before. If you still want to know what rocks my world, you can look it up here.

I got a slight shock when I checked my blog this morning and it was turned into gibberish. After regaining my composure I saw that my template was basically gone. I had tried to edit it yesterday, but when I pressed the save button, blogger disconnected on me. I didn’t think much of it, and certainly didn’t expect my blog to be shot to pieces. With an old version of my template on my hard drive and some help of my Firefox cache, I managed to restore it within a few minutes, and I don’t think I lost anything. I wouldn’t think too much about it, but the same thing happened to Robb just a few days ago. I hope it won’t be a recurring event now.

As for running, the training is revving up again after last week’s 55-mile slackerdom. On Monday I managed to crawl out of bed at 5:40 for a quick 13 miles, and today I slept for 8 glorious hours, topped up by a 5-mile recovery run. Not much else to report I’m afraid, apart from the fact that I expected to feel well rested after that sleep, but instead still feel tired. According to Rob, that’s what I’m supposed to feel, so I better stop whining.

I signed up for two races over the weekend. The first one is a half marathon in Blarney, Co. Cork, on September 10. That’s 7 weeks before the Dublin marathon. Ideally I’d prefer a half a bit closer to the marathon, but what can you do. It will still do as race preparation. The second race is next year’s Connemara. It’s not until April 2007, but they expect it to sell out early, and I thought I’d better registrate while there's still time. Thing is, I didn’t sign up for the marathon. No, I didn’t sign up for the half either. I’ll probably bitterly regret this 8 months from now, but I signed up for the 39.3 miles ultra. I didn’t decide on the spur of the moment, I had decided to do this the second I crossed the finish line of the Connemara marathon in March. I just didn’t tell anyone about it, and now it’s too late to turn back. But I still reserve the right to bitterly curse Rob, Olga and Jack from mile 30 onwards.

24 Jul: 13 miles, 1:45, 8:04 pace
25 Jul: 5 miles, 45:58, 9:11 pace

10 comments:

  1. Nice one. What changes will you need to make to your training for the Ultra?

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  2. The Ultra.
    Wow!
    You never cease to amaze me!!
    Rock on Thomas!

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  3. the ultra!
    but Thomas - I was looking forward to seeing how your training would pay off in a marathon!

    well, it'll be even more interesting for us to follow your progress now I guess!

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  4. Good to see that you are back in the blogsphere. I got a bit nervous yesterday when your blog turned into a random symbol generator.

    Congratulations on signing up for an ultra ... I'll enjoy watching your training for that one!

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  5. Oh Thomas - you've got to stop hanging around with the likes of Rob! Actually, I think it's cool you signed up! Now, rather than cursing them in those extra miles, bless them for throwing a "challenging adventure" your way.

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  6. Arrrhh, Ultra Thomas! I'll never catch up to you. That's great!!

    And, very strange about your blog disappearing...it's frustrating. The exact same thing happened to me as you describe. There's a bug in there somewhere.

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  7. *jaw dropping*

    you're coming over to the dark side!!!

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  8. Curse away, you'll love the ultra and you know it!! I was actually talking about that ultra with the dude from Cork that was here last week. He said if I decided to run it sometime let him know, he'll have a cold pint for me at the finish.

    Blogspot blew my blog up twice in a year, which is why I moved to breaking thetape.

    I love how you consider 55 miles to be slacking - I must be truly lazy, I only managed 52 miles last week.

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  9. It's all Jack's fault. He's a bad influence on us all.

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  10. I think it's Rob's fault. Looking forward to reading your 1st Ultra report!

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