Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

I have been following Tony Mangan's blog pretty much from the start of his run 4 years ago. Since then he has almost covered 50000 km...

I was rather nervous on Friday morning when I took my first step. I could feel the hamstring, but it didn't really hurt. Nevertheless, I...

It's been so long since I last had to miss a day's training due to injury that I cannot even remember what it felt like. I've ha...

The song has absolutely nothing to do with running, except that for some reason it went round and round in my head for the entire two hours ...

By Monday I was very happy with my training and how my fitness was developing. The miles just flew by and felt rather effortlessly and the ...

I got a reminder a few days ago to keep doing the evaluation workouts and gather feedback from them. I was planning on doing them anyway, bu...

Well, plenty of comments on my last post and not one of them contained Rory McIlroy kind of abuse, great :). What struck a chord was "w...

It was a hard decision. I spent a lot of time mulling things over and certainly took my time. After achieving the IAAF standard in July, I...

I can't run 50 miles and then not spend a couple of posts rambling on about it. I was wondering how my 6:54 from Dingle compared to my...

Does anyone ever sleep properly the night before an important race? If you do then count yourself lucky because I sure don't. This wasn...

It is just past 6 am on Friday morning and the Dingle pre-race nerves have truly taken over. I've been awake since 5 am, totally unable ...

A couple of months I was contacted by a representative from a company called Airia , which I had not heard of before. They had been developi...

I think my training would be much easier if the week had 8 days; it would be so much easier to do all those decent workouts and still have ...

Is there anyone left who hasn't done the Ice Bucket Challenge yet? I know it's a gimmick and a very self-indulgent one at that but i...

Well, I've had a good run of, err, runs, and maybe I was just due a bad one. But since this was my first long-ish run since Belfast, it ...

I'm always a bit weary about proclaiming that I've turned the corner; it always reminds me of City's frequent announcements of t...

City started the season as they finished the last one, with a win. As for United - I'm pretty confident the trophies Rory McIlroy displa...

As Belfast slowly fades into memory, my legs are starting to come round again. The first couple of weeks after a full break are always ever ...

I was glued to Social Networks yesterday, getting (sparse) updates from the Connemara 100 race (that's 100 as in miles). The number of r...

I cannot help but notice that the Tralee 100k was won in a time that was slower than my time in Portumna. Now, obviously there are a few cav...