Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

2012 is drawing to a close, and if I had to describe it in one single word in the style of a Premier League footballer, it would probably be...

I had more or less taken a year absence from the local road racing scene. A low-key 10k in Tralee in June was the only local short road race...

Happy New Bak'tun  everyone, I hope you had a pleasant apocalypse. Our twins took the whole thing seriously enough to pack a survival ba...

Assuming the world will go on, Tralee marathon will be in 12 weeks' time. For me, that means that base building is finished and the mara...

One thing that differentiates Canova'a approach to the standard one is that pace is more important than distance. I read one interview w...

Last week, Maia was fighting off a cold all week. It was just one of the many bugs that a 5-year old brings home from school all the time. O...

The training has definitely gone up a notch this week. I am still following my vague outline of a Canova build, and the advice for the last ...

I have been mildly curious about intermittent fasting for a while, reading a bit about it e.g form this guy . I have always been rather scep...

I was reading this book recently and I have to admit I am deeply envious of the author. Living in Kenya for a few months, concentrating on ...

I did a silly thing. I heard about the Concern Fast  on the radio, and before I had a chance to think things through, I had signed up myse...

It only feels like yesterday that I did my last evaluation workout. I'm not sure where all that time went. However, there was a signific...

I was never going to break any mileage records this week. The emphasis was clearly on recovery from the 30 miles on Sunday. I might not have...

Obviously, I've spent some some time in the last few days thinking about Sunday's race. There's no point hitting myself over the...

I went into this race with unclear targets. It was not a goal race, not even close. I don't run goal races 3 weeks after a marathon. I d...

30 mile race in Sixmilebridge, 3:35 (ish), 2nd place. Lost out in a sprint finish by a second. Spent some time in the ambulance, recoverin...

Evaluate: 1.  To ascertain or fix the value or worth of 2.  To examine and judge carefully; appraise This time there was a slightly bi...

On Thursday morning I knew that I was pushing the boundaries. After hill repeats on Tuesday and 15 hilly miles on Wednesday I was in definit...

I checked my logs from last year what I had done between Dublin and Sixmilebridge, and my first thought was that I had done a lot. Then I re...

Running a marathon as a training run for a marathon is fairly unusual, I admit. But having done a significant number of them, including sev...

And there was me smugly thinking I had done a perfect job when pacing the 3:15 group in Monday's marathon, when I get a comment from the...