Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner

This is without a shadow of a doubt the toughest period of training I have ever been subjected to. Usually I would make sure I go into an ul...

When the coach put a 40 mile training run onto my schedule, I had nightmare visions of stumbling around the local countryside on my own for ...

I find it hard to believe but the Euros are only 5 weeks away. That also means that right now I am in the middle of the hardest training wee...

I was quite surprised to see the legs feeling pretty good on Thursday morning; I would have expected a 14 mile run just 4 days after a marat...

It sure has taken a while! It has taken a very long time for my body to shake off the worst of the effects from Belfast, certainly a lot l...

I had plenty of time to think about running while driving to Dingle in the Saturday early morning rain. I did rue the fact that yesterday ha...

Maybe I should whine more often! It might annoy everyone else but as soon as I got into some serious whinge-and-whine, things suddenly impro...

I had a reasonably good run on Sunday. However, the fact that managing 8-minute pace for less than a half marathon without feeling wiped o...

This is without a shadow of a doubt the most frustrating training cycle for a long time. When I started out running I used to get injured a ...

Ah well. Holidays don't last forever, though I sure wish they did, especially this time round. On Wednesday we stepped into the plane in...

The internet connection is a bit sketchy here and once we get a connection I have to share it with 4 kids, so this is a rare chance to post ...

Ok, at some point this week I admitted defeat and admitted to myself that the best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging. I reduced tr...

I don't think my heart burn issues are a general digestion problem; I only ever suffer from heart burn 30 seconds immediately after a hi...

Well, so I had a chat with my coach and we decided to make a change to the plan and see how it goes. For the first time in well over 10 year...

I already knew I had to make changes, last Tuesday's disaster of a workout had shown that very clearly. My problem was, and maybe it was...

I have been feeling a bit strange that last couple of weeks. Obviously it's not that unusual for a runner to have hurting quads but my q...

I've never had a problem with motivation, that's for sure. The problem was generally going too far the other way, and this time I re...

When I tried my own Maffetone training 2 years ago, my initially high hopes were eventually dashed when I just would not get into proper pea...

Slowly, very slowly, the training is revving up. The coach is following a different strategy compared to what I would have chosen on my own,...

My new coach has certainly made a difference already - she has made me run a lot slower! I did try to dabble into Maffetone training a cou...