Tullaroan Marathon & not doing a 10km race...

The plans for the weekend were to do a marathon on Saturday and take part in a 10km event on Sunday, although I knew I wouldn't be racing the 10km I still wanted to take part as it was local.

So on Saturday I took part in the Tullaroan Marathon, this was being run by MCI and was sort of a test run of the marathon course ahead of Tullaroan A/C's own official marathon/half/10km at the end of May,

Tullaroan Looped Course

Temps were higher then usual today at around 14/15c which is warm when you're not used to it, the course was a 13mile loop out and back into Tullaroan and compared to alot of County Kilkenny it was pretty hilly....certainly more then I'm used to in the area's I run.

From around mile 5 I knew I was going to get into a spot of bother with blisters as I could feel the start of one on my right foot, this is very unusual as if I experience them at all its generally towards the very end of an event, for example it was around mile 30 for the Connemara Ultra.

The first 13mile loop went pretty well and I was happy with the pace, I knew from the first loop that mile 23 was likely to be abit of work due to the hills on that part of the course and I wasn't wrong.

Course Profile

On the second loop around I found that from about mile 20 I started to struggle as the blister started to kick off and legs just felt pretty heavy, I'm not too sure if its too soon after the Connemara Ultra or just doing my normal miles during the week was a factor but I figure it might have been abit of both, especially when it came to the blister kicking off.     

On a plus note however I didn't experience any problems with my IT Band, so that makes two races of 26miles or further were I've experienced no IT band issues which is a good sign. Perhaps rolling it is finally sorting it out?

Anyway, back to the race..at mile 23-24 I ended up walking on and off due to the hills but after that I decided to pick up the pace and I did the last two miles at under a 8min pace to finish in 3:57:26.

Given I wasn't aiming for any particular time for this race as I just wanted to get in the miles I'm not bothered either way about the finish time, what was a surprise was the struggle towards the end of the race and that was completely unexpected esp after feeling so good during Conn Ultra. I'm clearly expecting too much too soon.

After the race the blister on my right foot got pretty painful and it hurt alot to walk, other then that my legs felt obsolutely fine.   Given the amunt of pain and discomfort I was experiencing I knew there was no chance I'd be taking part in the 10km on Sunday so I decided to volunteer instead.

I ended up stewarding one of the junctions on the course for the 10km and 5km routes, not much traffic at the junction to contend with but it was good to help out in some way.

10km race coming up on the first mile

This was the first 10km race I'm aware of in recent years in Callan and I hope to see another one next year.

I'm resting up until Wednesday of this week to see how my foot heals up so I'm going to take the road bike out instead and get in a few miles to keep things ticking over.  Its two weeks until my next marathon in Limerick so plenty of time for things to get better.

Weekly Total: 46.2 miles

Miles This Year: 681 miles