Control your arousal

I’m sitting at my desk eating brown bread and cheese sandwiches, all washed down with some supermarket energy drink (I’ll only name it when they sponsor me!).

This is the glamorous part of running long distances for a medal.

The other glamorous part is the pre-race ritual of taping your nipples and emptying the bomb bay (airborne metaphor there for having a bowl blocker) but that should be on monday morning.

Before my first marathon I had the usual problem of not being able to control my arousal (not the early morning horse’s hand brake / diamond cutter type of arousal that most of the school boys masquerading as dads are currently sniggering about).

I was all adrenaline and thumping heart rates but as time has passed and the number of marathons has accumulated the arousal issue has eased off. Like the waning sex drive of a 40 year old man ;-). It has gotten to the point where I am so nonchalant about the marathon I go through massive periods of anxiety that I’m not doing enough eating/sleeping/other good thing you’re supposed to do.

 

For example, before your first marathon you’ve probably been off the beer for the bones of 2 months. This makes you an insufferable bore as most of your friends realise that you are only funny because you drink.  Today, 3 days out from the marathon, I am wondering if I should have beer (carb loading) or wine (tastes nice) tonight.

The only real sign of the impending marathon is the inevitable crankiness that appears because the mileage has dropped. Those nearest and dearest to me now realise that my constant exhaustion is a benefit to them as it stops me nagging like a spinster all the time.

The only other sign that the marathon is less than 3 days away is my pregnancy like forgetfulness. I have forgotten the nice beach scene photo from last sunday to take your minds off my ramblings, I rand down the stairs (4 stories) at work to put a parking disc on my car only to realise that the discs were on my desk.

 

So, whether you use a cold spoon, thoughts of Margaret Thatcher having sex or the voice of the man who reads out the football scores on the radio –  until later – control your arousal.

Supplements and sentimentality

This post is mainly about running.

I have about 10 days left to the Cork City Marathon and the weather outside is baltic (winter baltic, not summer hair armpit german nudist beach baltic). This means that the marathon will be scorching and I will wilt like a wilty thing.

Anyway, the training went well. A few 20 milers, a few 22 milers, a 24 miler in the driving rain and plenty of hills and middle sized runs. My mid-week run made it up as far a 12 miles for the past 4 weeks and in future I think that this run should top 15 miles in order to make the marathon distance seem like an easy race. My mileage topped out at 60 miles a week or there abouts and is now back at about 40.

In terms of tapering I am like a C130 cargo plane coming into land at Sarajevo airport in the 1990’s. I like to drop in at the last minute and keep my taper to a minimum. I’ve tried all the 3 week taper programmes but they just leave me feeling bored and out of shape. I much prefer a week to 10 days so the long run this weekend will be about 14 and then all the other runs will be chopped in half. The 12 will be a 6 and the 6 will be a 3. I might keep a few of the 4 milers so I don’t go crazy but only as a jog.

So, the training went well and I have printed off an entry form for the River Ayr Challenge – this is an ultra (43 miles) in Scotland on 24th September. Printing off an entry form and filling it out (I’ve done that as well) is pretty much me committing to running the race (making a big assumption on getting a permission slip from the boss) but it will also allow me to put a crap day at the Cork City Marathon (read a hot day) in perspective and allow me to keep training happily for a bigger September goal. I have lots of questions about running an ultra – how many piss stops do you take, why does everybody seem to wear loads and loads of clothes, do you mix walking and running for the the harder bits and all that jazz.  If you’re a committed ultra runner (not really staring at Dave for this one) this might be your summer to impress me. Your smoking, shaving 16 year old with a Yammy FZ1E to my 13 year old on a Raleigh Chopper.  You get the picture.

Anyway, in my occasionally themed ‘getting older’ posts I will try and direct the rest of this post onto to something to do with running and ‘changes’ I’m noticing about myself.

All runners take supplements. Some of these are pretty straightforward and are used by Joe Public and Sally Housecoat as well – things like Vitamin C, multi-vitamins and so on.

There are some that become a habit and apart from expensive piss are probably not much good but the placebo effect makes them seem useful. For me the placebo pills are:

Glucosamine – good for the knees they tell me. I used to spend a fortune on this one and now just buy the cheap one in Aldi – makes no difference.

Effervescent Berocca-style energy job – I think this one actually works – although now I take the Aldi version. Tesco have a cheap one as well.

Some multi-vit with gallons of Vitamin D and calcium in it. Probably not needed as I enjoy my dairy but ‘just in case’

I also must have (to the point of bringing it on holidays with me) seeds and porridge and coffee every morning but this is probably a habit more than anything.

The last supplement I take is a special pill that only runners and other idiots take at the height of their training. It’s called a HTFU pill and you normally pop one very early on a dark weekend morning or around mile 18 of a long run.

A HTFU pill is administered directly to the brain and has little or no effect on the legs or other aching parts.

HTFU is – I’m making a bit of this up so if you have a better description please share it with me – of Australian origin and stands for Harden The Fuck Up. I first came across it in a story about the cyclist Stuart O’Grady who gave HTFU wrist bands to his teammates as a kind of opposite to the Livestrong wrist bands. It basically means that if you’re going to cry off anything uncomfortable then you’ll never achieve anything.

Anyway, I took plenty of the HTFU pills and am now hard as nails, have my hair cut with a no. 2 blade and look dangerous – unless you know me.

The problem with this from a zen point of view is that in the lull periods between the HTFU pills I have found myself becoming a total blouse. I suppose it is all my inner emotions trying to balance each other out so that I don’t turn into a crazed killer from all the ‘being tough’. I have to avoid stories about sick children on the telly because they make me choke up and anything vaguely sentimental sends me for the kleenex. I recently read ‘Her mother’s face’ by Roddy Doyle. It’s a kids book and is beautiful to read and look at but the following words sum up the tag line – only child, depressed dad, dead mother, visited by a ghost of mother, kid looks like mother, I am having trouble reading the book, my daughter says – hurry up dad.

You get the picture.

We got that book out of the library and while we were there there was a lunchtime choral recital (singing to you and me) as part of the Cork International Choral Festival. The recital was by a school choir from Estonia. The same school had been coming to Cork for years and they were really welcomed by those in the know (I was not in the know).

As they sang their songs (a repertoire I think it’s called) all fresh faced and young, with their Estonian flags held in their hands I was just bowled over by their innocence and the empty map that was their future as it lay in front of them. My Estonian is shite so it can only have been my impression of them that did it.

This level of sentimentality is, I suspect, because I have been overdoing the HTFU pills (I hope) and not because I’m becoming an old codger who is finding daisies and buttercups all beautiful .

A map of the future

Old man shouty

Image via Wikipedia

The running bit first:

All is well in the lead up to the next marathon – the Cork City Marathon on the 6th of June.  With less than 4 weeks to go I’m putting in (for me) another big week and then I can let the gut out a bit and cut the miles.

I’m after breaking through the fittness barrier where the runs go from being a bit of a struggle to stay on the pace to where you look at the Garmin and go ‘oohh, not bad, should probably slow down a bit’.

That is bad. Because now I might try and race the marathon. This race has been held in sweltering heat for 3 of the last 4 years which for me is a disaster. If you add me to a marathon and anything over about 10 degrees C and the results are a mess (well, I’m the mess but the results show that).

So, to avoid the mental anguish of this, I normally adopt the ‘it’s just a training run’ approach to the race. Then, if I cruise over the line in a great time and say I didn’t race it I can enjoy all the praise. If I melt like a 99 in a kids hand then I can say I was just testing myself for the next race.

Sad really.

Anyway, the old man shouty bit.

I still think I’m about 14. I look at the 23 year old Italian Au Pair and think I’m (a) younger than her or (b) about the same age as her. From what she’s told me I’m closer to her dad’s age but you get the picture. My age is a mental thing – I like viz and fart jokes. I find the adult world all a bit ridiculous.

There are signs that I’m older than I feel but most of these are physical – My barber now offers to trim my eyebrows, my wife ridicules my cool, ironic tee-shirts (come to think of it, she’s being doing that for years anyway), my laughter lines don’t go away when I stop laughing.

Last night I had one of those signs that showed me the future, or more specifically my future:

Outraged from Ballintemple

I was out walking by Blackrock Castle with my two youngest to pass the time between recycling daddy’s beer bottles and going to bed. On these walks I like to make up my own version of the world so I can colour their perception of me and the world. This will succeed when I (in their eyes) am great and the world is fully explained. At the time of my old man moment I was explaining how the tide works and why roses don’t have willies and boobies (looong story).

On this walk you have the usual mix of people walking, roller blading, cycling and taking their dogs for a shit. I have no problem with any of these, especially the last one as as a runner I have been known to do the same thing.

Now, most dogs run free which is normally not a problem as they have been well trained to not jump, bite or piss on strangers but God bless the poor sod who happened across me last night with his bubble permed white poodle job. It was off the lead and came after my two kids with an annoying high pitched squeak that passed for a bark. The kids took refuge behind me as it nipped at them.  I waited for the owner of said hairdresser’s dog to intervene. Which he didn’t.  So I did.

My intervention could be described as ‘putting out my foot to stop the dog biting my children’ or as ‘kicking the dog in the hole’ . It’s all about perspective really.

If that had been the end of it I’d have been happy (and so would the other fella) but a switch had been flicked in my head and I launched into Old Man Shouty Mode. I gave him the full hair-dryer effect about leashing his dog, being in control of the dog in a public place, being a danger to others and all that other ‘letters to the editors’ shite. For this to have full effect you’ve got to visualise the throbbing veins on my neck, the red face from shouting and the bits of spittle flying out and hitting yer man. All I was missing was some tattoos and the title ‘being known to the Gardaí’. In the end he, now holding the dog in his arms said that there was no need to have kicked the dog to which I replied that the next time I saw him I’d kick the dog into the river.

As I wandered away with my kids, who still wanted to know how a rose took a piss if it didn’t have a willy, I made a note to myself to get less shouty and try and keep ‘Outraged from Ballintemple’ in check. I suppose Botox would do nothing for this sort of thing.

Berlusconi’s hair

The running is going great guns at the moment. All of this is relative so if you are a 100 mile/week ultra runner it will all sound very novice but if you are a 5 mile/week sofa warrior I’ll seem like an other-worldly figure.

I’ve just finished my biggest week for a long time with 6 runs over 7 days. There were 2×4 mile runs, one 12 miler, a 6 miler, a 7.6 mile set of hills and a 24 mile long run today. That gets me to about 58 miles when you add in all the 0.15 miles at the end of all the runs.

I’m particularly happy with the 24 miler today. I had a bit of a hiccup on the nutrition front at mile 15 when I had to stop for a mars bar and a 5 sugar coffee following a minor bonk but that said I was able to keep going and even negative split the 24 miles. Not bad as an inch of rain fell today so I got soaked from mile one and had a good chance to HTFU.

I did have a school boy mistake though. A damp running vest and 24 miles leads to what?……….. anyone?……. anyone?

that’s right, a pair of nips like they’ve been chewed by a terrier.

Anyway, they are the least of my problems.

I have an event next Saturday that make the Royal Wedding seem like a stroll in the park.

The First Holy Communion

For anybody not au-fait with the ritual just think of the Royal Wedding……… only bigger.

I was blissfully ignorant of this event as my own one (1978) involved a beige polyester suit, a trip to the relatives for some money and plenty of tanora.

This song by Bell X1 sums up my communion (and eventual drift towards the bloodless coup)

Now, as they say, all’s changed.

It ‘s now a cross between Challenge Annika and Weddings by Franc. Everybody comes to your house!

And langball is everything from father of the bride to Tommy Walsh (him off of Ground Force) – although after today’s run I feel more like Charlie Dimmock.

Take last Friday and Saturday.

I had to paint the front of the house, mulch the hedge clippings, get the driveway levelled up (5 tonnes of crushed limestone), measure for rugs up stairs and take the carpet down to ‘Pat the Mat’ to be cut and edged into rugs, buy a trampoline, buy a suit, paint the stairs balustrades and bannister ( a job you’d only do if you liked being mean), clear out the front room, arrange to have the curtains hung in the front room and bedroom, collect and spread 2 tonnes of topsoil and………

do a bit of running.

And if you think any of this made even a dent in what needs to be done to keep ‘her’ happy you’d be dreaming.

Tomorrow I have another list of jobs to do including ordering 2 tonnes of sand (easy) and barrow it down the back of the house (not so easy), doing the same trick with 8 tonnes of driveway gravel and loads of minor jobs like re-painting the stairs and trying to make my back garden look less like Berlusconi‘s hair.

From the comfort of my sofa and at a low angle my back garden looks lush and fulsome – just like the thatch on Mr. Berlusconi’s crown.

But if you stand up and look down on it all becomes apparent – it is raggy, thin and patchy.I feel that the Bunga Bunga girls have the same thoughts as they look down at Silvio’s dodgy pate.

This might have something to do with the fact that the lawn is trying to grow on builder’s rubble.

So, to remedy this I barrowed the 2 tonnes of topsoil over the lawn (lawn is really pushing it in terms of a definition of it but my thesaurus is broken) and my wife insisted on the trampoline.

Now I want you to do some sums: what do you get if you take 10 children, add a white dress and loads of ‘good clothes’, multiply this by a trampoline to the power of sweets and divide all of this by 2 inches of mud (topsoil).

Any idea what that will produce?

I’ll have about 6 beers in me by the time I can tell you what the real answer is.

I’ll be doing less running next week (obviously).

Fluffy White Dogs

The running is going well, for someone with an injury.

The sore hip is responding well to the underpants only manipulation but the ramping up of the mileage has meant that the slightly sore knee has become a pretty sore knee. The worst is the day after a long run. The knee is pretty sore for about 24 hours after the run and then it fades away and we’re good to go for the next run.

I am well ahead on the long runs with an 18 miler done last Sunday and I think I’ll take a week off some time between now and the marathon on 6th of June. This should allow the knee to settle down a bit.

My strategy of 6 runs a week is starting to pay off with 48 miles last week. The HR is dropping for the pace – the 18 miler was done at 8:11 pace and a 145 HR – the first 10 miles were well under 140 which is always a good sign for me.  I’ve managed to make the weekend hill run come in under 60 minutes as well – this is a drop of 4 minutes for the same effort over  the last 4 weeks. Part of this is down to the fact that I am getting up an hour later and so the feeling of starting the run while being asleep is receding.

Now the main topic of this post. My kids are getting to an age where in the next 5 years I’ll have to invest in a dog – When I say invest I mean go to the dogs’ home and pick up a stray. The pestering has started already. I’ve started with the normal things to make them think about the real implications of ownership- taking a shit on the floor and asking the kids to clear it up after me; promising to take them to the Vet if they stop walking the dog and make them watch the Vet put the dog to sleep.

I think they’ll  keep pestering so even though I am saying no to their face I’ll be saying yes when the day comes.

The best part of being out running every day is you get to see what sort of dogs are popular. Now, when I was a kid there were two types of dogs – small terriers – good for ratting – and something you got from a cousin or uncle in the country – a collie, a labrador, a setter or an alsatian. There were some sad souls who had the misfortune to own some sort of small yelping toy dog – some sort of thing with a pitiful bubble perm.

There was also the obvious dog to suit the owner thing – y’know – a spaniel for some sort of orienteering nut, a Staffordshire bull terrier for a fireman, a collie for a shepherd.

Well. from my totally unscientific straw poll of dog types in my neighbourhood it seems that the only type of dog available is the small bubble permed white yelping jobbie. Some sort of mincing cross between a poodle and a shi-tzu. I can cope with this as it means that I know what I definitely won’t be getting. I’ll be getting something bigger and with less of a leo sayer hair style.

What I can’t understand is how grown men can walk in public with one of these little noise machines. Is it because I’ve had a metrosexual bypass or is it because I couldn’t live with something so ignorant of its own ridiculousness. I shit you not, everyone has one of these. Of the 5 dogs on my street 5 of them are this sort of yelping shitebag.

Now, there’s a lady up the road who owns a great dane (i wonder if she calls it Hamlet?)  and even though she must always have a plastic bag full of shit in her pocket I’d say she’s great craic.

 

Good luck to all running Connemara this weekend. I am nervous just thinking about it – and I’m not even running it.

 

 

When I was 38

Stick with me.

Only 2 more of these to go and we’re back to normal service.

As I’ve been getting closer to the end I’ve realised that it takes about 10 years to get perspective on a year. I have been having trouble sorting out the important things from the last 10 years (my 30’s) .

10 years ago none of my family were married and we had no children. Now we’re all married (bar one) and there are 10 grandchildren. I haven’t mentioned any of them except my own yet in 10 years time they will obviously have been the most important thing in my life and the lives of my family.

And here I am boring you about how shit I am at running.

I suppose the fact that they are keeping us from our wine and beer and scribbling on the walls isn’t helping their cause but on the other hand, in 10 years when they’re crashing our cars and drinking our wine and beer we’ll still be growling at them.

2008.

I was no longer a marathon virgin. I was in a phase of my running that would take me on and upward path for about 18 months.

Before January was out though I had the joy of having child number 3 born healthy and well. We’d had a roaring row over Hannah’s name (Alison, Kim, Millie) – I had a particular problem with Millie having been a reader of Viz for the past 20 years – so we had this baby sexed before the delivery date and agreed on the name.

Tom Xavier.

Tom is after lots of different people (not least among them Tom Waits)

and Xavier is my father’s middle name (exotic for 1930’s Ireland  – in a kind of latin catholic way).

 

Tom 1 day old

 

Of course he looks nothing like that now. Only last night he was washing all the family toothbrushes in a basin full of shit and water – he had taken a dump on the floor, tidied it up and decided to wash his hands and toothbrushes at the same time -reminds me of the thieves who took the photo.

The rest of 2008 was made up of running and economic melt down.

On the running front I had 2 marathons – Cork in 3:35 and Dublin in 3:20. That 3:20 was the first and last time where I ran blind and stunned myself.

The following are two images that remind me most of 2008. The first one is the place we went on holidays (and have gone back every year since) – Brisighella.

 

the second one is taken on the 17th of October in the garden behind St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I was drinking coffee with a very good friend of mine who knows lots more about markets and money than I do (or ever will). He was describing to me the economic Siberia that would beset ordinary people in the years after 2008. I was mainly ignoring him but it was soaking in all the same.

 

Holidays - Brisighella

 

 

October 2008

 

Cork City Marathon 2010

Ok,

I’ve read loads of race reports before and they are a combination of a suspense thriller and a stamp collector’s description of his latest find so as this is my first report I’m not sure whether it will come out as a suspense thriller or a stamp collector’s tale.

To set the scene, this was my 7^th marathon and they had gone something like this (in terms of mental head wrecker): Hell, Great, Greater, Hell, DNF and Ok. A longer way of describing them would be that the first one was realising you had signed up for something horrible and realised you weren’t ‘that’ into it, the next two were a better (read – the training went well, the conditions were good and the result was better than expected). The next 2 (Hell and DNF) can be characterised by the following words: medical tent, drip, cardiologist, virus, angry wife, cop-on. The Ok marathon was basically me realising that in order to run a good marathon you had to run well within yourself no matter what the out-come was on your result and you could not go balls out like you would on anything up to 15 miles and get away with it.

Which leads to last Monday’s marathon.

I had decided that I was going to stick to home races this year (partially because of the recession and partially because sitting in a novotel in some European pos- war  industrialised town eating pasta on a portable stove makes you realise that you are a bit of a nutter). Anyway, I stuck in an entry for this race back in March and got on with the training. The training went well (which might be something I’ll note for future events but probably won’t) and I only had one minor injury – the tight hip – easily solved by giving some  money to a man to manipulate my hips – and the taper was the usual mix of am I over eating?/not resting enough?/head wrecker.

There was one other non-running injury:  Last week I had done ‘something’ to one of my ribs (a muscle or a cracked rib) and it was healing well until I put some neurofen gel on it before bed. Then I slept on it and when I woke up I couldn’t bend over on the sore rib. I could still take a full breath on the ribs so I decided to hope for the best and run trough the pain.

I collected my race pack on Saturday and met the usual host of people who make marathon running seem normal – the girl who had run from one end of Ireland to the other in 5 ½ days; her husband who was running the marathon in his fireman’s gear, they guy who was pushing the ‘bog-trotter’s marathon’ and so on.

In order to test my mental reserves my wife arranged for us to visit a student art exhibition on Saturday afternoon. When you bring children with you to an art exhibition you only need the following words: don’t. touch. It.

On Sunday I couldn’t take the sitting around anymore, my legs were jigging like an extra from Riverdance after 2 days of rest so I went for a 2 mile run. I did an out and back on mile 20/21 of the marathon course. It was about 20 degrees C and my pace was about 7:56 for a 155HR. After all the rest an food this was supposed to be 7:30 pace for 135HR –   I could not say that my nerves were settled but at least the idle feeling was gone from my legs and I was a bit more tolerable to be with. The rib was ok but the first mile was painful, still, it settled after that.  I must have given the impression of enjoying the art visit from the previous day because we ended up in Ballymaloe House at another art exhibition complete with small children who wanted to touch everything.

I hit the bed at the usual time but like a school child the night before a school trip I didn’t get much sleep but was relieved to hear driving rain when I got up at 6:00am for the mandatory bowl of porridge and honey. For anybody who has read this blog will know that I am not very good in the heat so anything other than that keeps me happy.

I got a lift from my brother-in-law to the start. He was running the relay with his wife so they went back to get ready for that as I braved the elements and jogged to the start. I met Brendan at City Hall and had a brief chat with him. I explained to him that I wasn’t really up for a day of suffering to which he replied ‘why the hell are you running a marathon then?’

There wasn’t too much hanging around at the start and following the start of the wheelchair race the gun went off for the main race. I had lined up about 30 seconds from the start and had decided to run at whatever pace seemed tolerable and then decide what to do after 4 or 5 miles.

I ditched the bin bag and put on the sun glasses and set off.

The sun glasses are like on of those superstitions that everyone has. They were a bit pointless on the day that was in it but they kept the wind out of my eyes.

Miles 1 – 5

7:45, 7:41, 7:40, 7:35, 7:41

These miles went by very comfortably and there was a conscious effort to hold back so that I didn’t over commit too early. I felt fine but the easterly wind that was blowing a driving rain into your face for part of mile 1 and all of miles 3 to 5 was pretty uncomfortable. Still, I enjoy the rain and my only concern was that my core temperature would drop later in the race.

Around mile 4, going down the low road I got into running with two others. One was a guy wearing an Eagles AC top and the other was a guy who I ran with on and off from miles 4 through to mile 18. I found out later that his name is Eoin Field and I would highly recommend him as a running partner. He was chatty, funny and very supportive to me and to others who we met and ran with. He saluted and acknowledged every supporter we met.

At mile 5 we hit the first relay change over point. The wall of sound and support was fantastic and I was still very comfortable and able to enjoy the atmosphere. I realised later that I was upping the pace at the relay change over point (the running fast past the fit looking chick syndrome) and by the third relay change over I had managed to slow down.

Sunshine on a rainy day?

Miles 6 – 10

7:45, 7:45, 7:38, 7:47, 7:39

With the first change over point behind us I was time to settle in and get on with things. The easterly wind was still with us all the way to mile 7 where we met our first gentle hill. I used to regard any hill I met with a phobia normally reserved for spiders but through plenty of aversion therapy I have learnt to love them. In previous marathons I had always take energy gels at every half hour but I had been sipping on a lucozade for the first few miles so I had postponed the gel until mile 7.

After mile 7 we hit the Jack Lynch tunnel under the river Lee. I agree with Thomas that the Garmin always gets the distance wrong (I recorded 26.44 miles) even though I followed the racing line religiously but when we got to the Jack Lynch tunnel the had cordoned off the racing line for recovery vehicles. Not the best.

Mile 8 and 9 were on the N25 road and slipped by in no time at all. I ran beside a guy from East Down A.C. and was able to give him some advice on what the next few miles would be like. We were approaching my hunting ground and I knew I could run the next 8 miles in my head easily.

Mile 10 took us through Mahon and onto the second relay change over point. This was slightly downhill. At this stage we were all soaked through to the bone and it was really only a question of whether you were running into the rain or away from the rain.

Miles 11 – 15

7:31, 7:47, 7:54, 8:05, 7:45

Mile 11 was another one of those running too fast through the marathon relay change over point but it felt fine and I only noticed it once I studied the Garmin data at the end of the race.

Miles 12 and 13 had such extreme weather as to be almost a comedy. We were running along the coastline on an amenity walk with a driving rain almost pushing you off the path. At the start of mile 12 I came across some ladies walking their Labradors against the marathon runners. I had expected loads of different things but to be hit by a dog was not one of them. The slower times for miles 12 & 13 were basically because of the head wind and because I was running behind slower runners. I had decided that it was better to hide behind a slower runner than to push on on my own through the head wind.

I hit the 13 mile mark in 1:41:37. This was based on the chip timer. I don’t know why they didn’t put the timing mat at the halfway point but I was satisfied with this time. I still felt fine and now knew that I would be on for an enjoyable day.

The time for mile 14 was slower mainly because I had stopped for a piss. I had been toying with stopping from about mile 10 for a piss and had contemplated pissing while running but I haven’t reached that level of ‘commitment’ yet!

By this stage I was running with Eoin again and another lad called Sean O’Mahony who ran for UCC AC and we were on my turf. The marathon route was now along a sheltered railway line that had been converted into an amenity walk. Of the 5 or 6 days of running I might do a week I would run this route at least 4 time so I was actually running with my eyes closed at some stages. We were getting close to the 16 mile mark and Eoin kept telling us that from that point we were in single figures. That was a reassuring mantra. I still wasn’t suffering but I did find myself cooling down the legs and the back of the neck with water to keep myself fresh and focused.

The legs were holding up reasonably well. The ‘good’ leg was sending pain signals from the hamstring but nothing too serious. The calves were in good condition but I was a little worried that I might cramp at some stage. My liquids intake was lower than normal because of the weather and the piss stop. I took the second of 4 gels around the 15.5 mile mark. I also took a water sponge on board (why, I don’t know) and kept it tucked into the elastic of the fuel belt.

Miles 16 – 20

7:41, 7:39, 7:50, 7:56, 7:57

Mile 16 took us through the next relay change over point and the run through the change over point was starting to become a real boost. The field had thinned out at this stage and the relay runners at the change over really seemed to appreciate the effort being put by the full marathon runners.

At mile 17 I had a few gels to be collected from one of the volunteers manning a water table. The collection of the gels went very well and this marked one of my internal mental goals for getting around the course.

Mile 17 and 18 marked the end of the flat section of the route and the start of some hills to mile 21.

By mile 18 we were running through Turner’s Cross and it was at this stage that Sean (or maybe Eoin) formally announced that ‘it was starting to get tough’. My mumbled answer was to embrace the pain and not to fight it. I was a few feet in front of them at that stage and I was still feeling fine so I decided to hold my pace and see how long I could keep going with out a blow-up. I wasn’t aware of the drop in pace that the Garmin shows up but we were now approaching the end game in terms of whether my original plan to set out at a steady pace would hold true.

Mile 19 and 20 were generally up-hill and although it was gentle the field had started to throw up casualties. The weather was still pretty bad but it was vying with lots of other things for attention now. I had entered that zone where you start to feed like a vulture scavenging off the failings of others. I was spending my time eyeing people up in front of me who were clearly suffering at the wall and in pain and I was using that to drive myself on. It’s never pretty but it does allow you to objectify the stupidity of what you’re doing.

At mile 20 I had hidden a bottle of lucozade in a garden hedge in case I needed it. I had realised that water and gels were what I was going to use for the rest of the race so I let it pass. At mile 20 we had reached the high point of the course and it was now a drop down to mile 21, a climb to mile 22 and then downhill or flat all the way home.

Miles 21 – 26.2

7:54, 7:56, 7:52, 7:52, 7:52, 7:53, 3:08

My support team had made it to Rodger Casement Park at mile 20.5. Before I could see them we were confronted by the sight of a full funeral cortege travelling towards us. As we slogged up the last hill but one I turned to the guy beside me and said: ‘this must be some sort of a joke!’ Still, I spotted my mother, Finola my wife and my 3 kids just after that and Finola had to go into action as the official photographer, gel provider, cheer leader and water carrier. It was like watching a formula 1 pit stop.

too much energy at 20.5 miles

I got a huge hit from meeting them there and I knew now that no matter what pain I encountered from here on in I was going to enjoy the whole thing.

Mile 22 brought up the last marathon relay change over point. I didn’t need to moderate my pace for this one as fatigue had done it for me. Just after mile 22 we went down the last hill and turned onto Inchigaggin lane. I was really starting to appreciate the support been shown by those that had come out to brave the wind and rain to cheer us on.

At about mile 22.5 we turned onto the ‘straight road’. We now had about 1.5 miles of a dead flat, dead straight road with a wind and rain blowing straight into us. In previous years people had complained that you never seemed to make any progress on this road because the buildings at mile 24 never appeared to get closer. There was no need to worry this year because the low cloud and rain had obscured everything.

At mile 23 (by the mile markers as opposed to the Garmin which was now a good 500m off the markers) I went through in 3:00:03 and knew that I would make it home in the 3:20-3:30 bracket. I had set 3 target times for myself at the start: 3:25 for a good day, 3:30 for an average day and 3:35 for a tough day.

I was feeling very good now (better than I should have been) and at mile 24 I found my self cracking jokes with the motorcycle cops marshalling the route.

Mile 24 took us up past the mardyke area and Fitzgerald’s Park. I collected my last few water bottles at mile 25 and dug in for the last push.

At mile 25.5 I spotted Dan Kennedy, a St. Finbarrs AC runner I’ve overlapped with in a few marathons and local 5ks before (despite his being 18 years my senior and having a pretty impressive track record). I decided I’d try and kick to catch him but I think he had the same idea so I couldn’t get to him. I knew he would have started near the front so I would probably have him on the chip anyway.

The Garmin had beeped about 500m before the 26 mile marker – hence the 3:08 for the last 0.44 mile. This was a 7:04 Garmin pace.

With Dan away in front of me I had the 300m of the finishing chute from St. Patrick’s Bridge to the tape to myself – and I enjoyed every minute of it. I aeroplaned and zig-zagged down the road, I whopped the crowd, high-fived my kids and had my name called out over the loud speakers. I was absolutely delighted with myself – the proverbial dog with two cocks.

mile 26.1

I crossed the line with 3:25:27 on my Garmin and this was confirmed as my chip time later.

I felt fine afterwards and my average heart rate of 161 confirmed that I had run well within my abilities. I had excluded any sort of speed work in favour of an aerobic base so the idea of hanging on for 10 miles in the anaerobic zone was never on the cards.

I could have gone faster but with the idea of building on this for an autumn marathon I think my plan worked out as well as I could have hoped for.

Afterwards I met my family and the mastermind behind www.racepix.com and I got another medal from my kids – A chocolate medallion with ‘number 1 dad’ stamped on it.

Medallion Man!

The support out on the course was sparse but really appreciated. Given the bad weather conditions I’d rather have the few but dedicated supporters  – they were like an extra energy gel.

On the general organisation of the event I think that of the 7 marathons I’ve run it is up there in the top 2 for organisation. The only hitch I could find was the lady walking her Labradors on the narrow part of the marathon course at mile 12. Not a very big gripe really.

I think I’ll enjoy the next few months and run for fun before deciding what the next challenge is going to be. It’ll either be another marathon or an ultra. The training will lead.

I’m up-loading this from a hotel WiFi so the photos will be added later.

Tape your Nipples

This post is mainly to remind me to tape my nipples before the marathon tomorrow and to ask all the people who found this page after googling it:

What were you searching for when you typed ‘taping your nipples’?

I’m pretty open minded so feel free to share your thoughts.

Honesty and other concepts?

Tapering is going according to plan:

Racked with guilt and doubt that I should eat more and then 5 seconds later I should eat less; then I should run more, then less.

All going according to plan.

I dreamt last night that I ran the marathon in 3:18 but my watch didn’t work so I was waiting for the official result – the kids woke me before I got to it.

On another front I had to console my 7 year old last Friday when it came to the school sports. She came last in the sack race and it was only today when I downloaded the photographs that I realised why – she was the only one jumping. Just before the race she had gone to the teacher to tell her that her feet were sticking out of the sack – the teacher gave her a new sack and all was well – except she came last.

No place for her in pro-cycling methinks

Dopers at the sack race

In other news my wife came first in the 10m dash (but lost the remaining 90m). She used to be a first team hockey goalie so she has fast reflexes but not the stamina required for the 100m.

And finally,

The machine gun bunker is coming along but to the untrained eye nothing has happened since the last up-date. At the moment all the work is inside (my head).

The bunker from which I shall mow down my enemy