Clonakilty Back2Back Marathons

Last week was pretty uneventful up until the weekend as all I was doing was tapering for the Clonakility Back2Back marathsons at the weekend.

As you all know my big goal was to do both marathons as sub4 or failing that atleast to do both days as sub 4.30, I felt good and was sure I'd manage the sub 4.30 no problem for both days and I might even have a stab at the sub4 target on both days.

Saturday morning started off well enough and I kept a pretty steady pace throughout the run, I felt good throughout most of the run however I did manage to hit my left shin off of a branch around mile 7. Although this didn't seem like much of an issue at the time I started to feel it from mile 23 onward.

I didn't think much of it and went on to finish Saturday in good shape and the legs felt in good shape as well.   However, as the evening went on my left shin started to hurt me more.

On the morning of day two my left shin was still hurting in the morning so decided on a much much easier pace for the second day, I felt the pain in the shin for the first 5miles or so but then it eased off and it barely registered. 

However due to this pain it appeared I was changing my running gait which brought its own problems as after mile 15 I started to experience a fair amount of pain in my left IT band. 

The IT band was particularly painful anytime I went downhill but I had no problems what so ever going up hill. The last downhill was seriously uncomfortable, felt like mile 15 onwards was just a slog to the finish because of all this which was frustrating.

Official Finish times for both days are:
Saturday: 3:58:34
Sunday: 4:49:34

Although day two ended up being longer then the 4:30 initial target, on average both days were still below the 4:30 so I'll take it as a win anyway :)

As I write this my IT band is feeling in better shape and I've been working on it to ease things abit, but my left shin has a nice big bruise on it which i feel everytime I walk.  I'm going to take it easy for the rest of the week and see how my left leg improves.

Weekly Total: 64 miles

Miles This Year: 331 mile