Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

Many years ago in 1978, Alberto Salazar suffered so badly from heat stroke after the Falmouth Road Race that he had his last rites read to h...

I had a strange feeling in my legs on Tuesday as the quads felt a bit sore when sitting in the office chair (they had done the same on Monda...

Tralee finishing "sprint." Photo by Kieran Connolly This week was obviously marked by recovery from the Tralee marathon. I had...

Things I did over the long weekend, in sequence: I ran a marathon I built a bookshelf for Cian I went to the Glenbeigh St. Patrick'...

The original plan had been to train reasonably hard this week and run the marathon as a long run at the end of it. The sore legs following B...

I had a bizarre start to the week; my very first thought upon waking up on Monday morning was "what a weird nightmare coming 101st in B...

You might remember that a few weeks ago I had written a short paragraph that I would not be running in Ballycotton this year because my appl...

I had a look through my most recent log entries and immediately noticed a sudden clustering of "slightly heavy legs" notes. Marath...

As I have mentioned on a couple of occasions, I'm presently trying to shed a few extra pounds. It's not that I'm particularl...

I do have a set of speed workouts that I learned when I was coached 3 years ago, and I do dig them up whenever I am in a build phase. One fe...

It is one feature of my training that I don't do much speed work. I have been told quite a few times that I would be a faster runner if ...

The last couple of days I've been increasing the mileage but always kept the effort very easy. It all worked very well, I am feeling goo...

Andrew, me, Don and Liam after lap 1 Photo by Paul Kiely . Jeez, I really am getting old confused. I was convinced today was Wednesday...

The alarm went off at 4:50 am. I had my breakfast and just before 5:30 left to drive across the country to drive towards county Kildare. It ...

As all runners know only too well, we are quite susceptible to injury. Every runner has plenty of stories to tell. I have been lucky enough ...

I guess I managed to carry a bit of luck from last week over to this one. I was cycling past the primary school just as at least a dozen par...

I’m starting to think Eurhythmics songs just be banned in Ireland. Too depressing. Nevertheless, I’ve started a new training phase. I...

The last few days were like a whirlwind. Every day would bring totally unexpected but very welcome good news. I received an email on Wedne...

There as something strange going on with my body. On Sunday the weighing scales reported 147.6 pounds. Nice. 24 hours later, and after a pe...

The legs felt distinctly heavy during the first mile of Thursday's run, a sign that the fartlek workout had left its mark. However they ...