Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

I had planned another 10 miler in the morning. The timing is easy: get up at 6, out of the door at 6:20, and back around 7:40. You would thi...

I got up at 5:40am and got ready for my run – 13 miles, basically a half-marathon before breakfast. I was looking forward to wearing my bran...

It is really cold out there (though Zeke would probably disagree), and I’m glad today is an off day. Unfortunately, the present arctic cond...

Isn’t it funny? Only last week the good lady wife called me completely mad for running 10 miles to deliver a letter, and what did she tell ...

I went shopping to Tralee yesterday and bought myself some track-suit bottoms. I figured with the temperatures dropping below freezing point...

The Yoga teacher last night made me work my abs muscles, I can really feel them today. It’s unbelievable how taxing a few funny postures can...

I finally managed a decent recovery run. My main problem on those runs is that I haven’t got any flat sections of road, so the best I can do...

I did another hill run today (we're talking about 150m elevation here). When I was huffing and puffing up the hill in a slight drizzle a...

I think I should explain some of the things I said in my last entry. Firstly, allright, 8:23 pace isn’t that bad, and maybe I shouldn’t have...

The weather forecast predicts gale force winds and heavy rain for tomorrow, so, understandably, I decided to go running today and have a res...

A few people asked me about my headlamp, so here are some details: it’s called “Petzl Tikka Plus”. You can google for it, and amazon.com ha...

I got the chance to try out my new headlamp for the first time this morning. It took a bit of getting used to. At first it felt weird to hav...

Well, I was quite pleased with myself on how I had conquered the hilly loop on Thursday, and then on the following days the hills fought bac...

You know those funny scenes in comedy films when someone walks in the attic and then breaks through the ceiling? Well, that was me last nigh...

I never have problems getting up early. From childhood on I was out of bed at first light, and, while I have kicked that particular habit (n...

My stomach still isn’t quite back to normal, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I got up at 6.20 and had a peek out of the window. It wa...

The stomach bug is slowly retreating from my body (and into the bodies of other bloggers it seems), and I’m slowly coming round to the ide...

After reading in Susan’s and Yvonne’s blog about them feeling like poop, it was obviously my turn (you can’t catch an illness from reading...

Tomorrow there is a 10k in Killarney, just 20 minutes drive from home. I was undecided if I should run, seeing as it is only 20 days after t...

I started a new kind of cross training yesterday: Yoga. Yoga uses the weight of your own body in a very clever way to make the muscles work,...