Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

This was my sixth Dublin marathon, and my second time as a pacer. In the weeks and days before the race, I read plenty of musings from other...

I did a double take at the HR figure displayed on the Garmin after Wednesday’s run. Average pace 7:43 at a heart rate of only 137? This seem...

I must have fallen asleep at some stage on Sunday without realising, but ever since then I've had the most beautiful dream, and I haven...

Utterly Unrelated Quick Update: 6:1! 6:1!! 6:1!!! 6:1!!!! 6:1!!!!! 6:1!!!!!! 6:1!!!!!!! Friday morning, 6:00 am. The radio alarm goes off; v...

For once I was glad I had looked at the weather forecast. Monday had been a reasonable morning, Tuesday had been okay as well, except that I...

hi thomas. looking for a training plan specifically designed to cover the connemara ultra. doing dublin in 2 weeks (my 3rd) and hope to comm...

I should not have been surprised, but I was. The quads were rather sore on Monday, following my little mountain run, and the pace was fairly...

I was agonising all week if I should add yet another race to my already extended racing season, namely the Kerry Athletics cross country in ...

The numbers from the last 3 days shows a very straightforward recovery from the Valentia half marathon. Each run was at the same easy effort...

My shin hurt like hell on Saturday, felt fine for 5 easy miles on Sunday morning and was really painful again later that day. I pondered if ...

When Niamh dropped me off to the Valentia ferry on Friday night, I jokingly remarked that I was going to my running camp. There was nothing ...

I'm not sure if it’s time to get worried about my shin/foot problem or if I should just ignore it. For a while I thought it might be shi...

If you remember back a few days, I did have some troubles with my right foot/shin. The problem disappeared after 2 or 3 days, after I starte...

The legs felt surprisingly good on Monday. I expected them to be rather heavy after some hard running over the weekend, but was pleasantly s...

Now that was a topsy turvy weekend from a sporting point of view, with Ireland beating Australia, Alistair Cragg setting a new Irish record ...

No doubt about it, autumn has arrived. There is a constant debate in our household on the exact calendar dates of the seasonal changes (“Spr...

Rather predictably, Ex-Hurricane Katia wasn’t anywhere near as bad as they said, at least here in the South. The weather lady seemed really ...

I was wrong about the hurricanes - I thought we were already experiencing the remnants of Hurricane Katia this weekend, but the weather lady...

The Caribic and the Gulf of Mexico might be far away from Ireland, but their weather does have an influence on ours. Once the hurricanes hav...

I gained 3 pounds between Friday and Monday despite running a marathon on Saturday and then not having much of an appetite for the rest of t...