Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

I've run 100 mile weeks before. They entail a lot of running; not only is that perfectly obvious, it's also the entire point. I don...

I'm not 100% where my fitness is right now because I am getting two conflicting sets of information: objectively, my HR data is alread...

Very deliberately, this week's training was very different to the previous three. After a bout of heavy endurance training I am now tryi...

After the heavy training block of 3 (almost) marathons on 3 consecutive weekends, right now I am in recovery mode. Results are somewhat mixe...

... and after the marathon you go to Tralee and pick up the kids from their music lessons. Give them a treat and get Cian to the barber. Go ...

I better not play ice hockey today. You never know who you'd run into. Following that tough almost-marathon last weekend, this week wa...

It’s a good thing that I had checked the weather forecast. Sunday morning in Dublin was cold and grey and windy and you would have thought ...

The race has a very impressive looking tracker website. Let's hope it works (it didn't 2 years ago). My number is 5181. Here i...

Obviously enjoying mile 21 As mentioned, Limerick was my 77th marathon (including ultras), and. as mentioned as well, I have worked out ...

There once was a runner from ... Nah, I'll spare you the poem this time. I had done the Limerick marathon once before, in 2012, but ...

They used to be so cute, 15 years ago! Coming home from Wicklow on Sunday my thoughts turned towards the following weeks. The next 6 wee...

Svein and Barry When, a few weeks ago, I stumbled over an open invitation by nutritionist and ultra runner Barry Murray for a weekend ...

If you ever want some good photos of yourself and you happen to be in the Northwest of England, you could do a lot worse than contact Mart...

People keep congratulating me on my time in Manchester and I keep feeling like an ungrateful sod because I don't really want to be congr...

There isn't an awful lot to say, really. I missed my target by a fairly small margin but I had gotten over that within a minute of finis...

In one way it was the perfect weekend: City on Saturday, marathon on Sunday. In another way it wasn’t entirely ideal: with the race number ...

City won 2:1. I ran 3:01:02. Delighted with the first, obviously slightly disappointed with the second one. Was just that little bit too...

Tapering. I have to be honest, I'm not a great fan of it. It's not that I don't appreciate the fact that it gets the fatigue out...

Tapering for a marathon is as much an art as it is science and there are plenty of different basic strategies. Most, but not all, show a ste...

Calling Monday's run the last workout was a bit premature, I suppose. A lot of marathon plans have a workout 10 days before race days, a...