Sunday, November 19, 2017

It's been sometime since I posted...

Dublin Marathon
Credit: Marathon Club Ireland / Vincent Guthrie
It's been awhile since I've posted an update and it's also not been a very activate few weeks.

Why?
Well, back on the 13th October I headed off for a spin on the road bike which I had been doing to maintain fitness while I've eased off from running to allow recovery.          All went well until I reached around 200metres from home where the road bike just went from under me and I hit the ground hard. 

I wasn't even doing any sort of fast speed but I still managed to cut up my arm and bruised my ribs from the fall.

It's over 30 days later and only now can I do a run where I can a run at a decent pace without any sort of pain or discomfort. Up until now it hurt to breath deep, hurt to lay down in bed and if I coughed. All of this really makes it awkward to do any sort of decent running.

Due to the injury sustained in the road bike I did still go ahead and run the Dublin Marathon but I opted instead to only use it as a slow training run with the aim of finishing somewhere between 4hrs-4.30. I did manage to pop by for a Marathon Club Ireland group photo before the race though.

Since then things have improved and during the week I managed my first run where I could comfortably run at a sub 7:30min/mile pace without feeling discomfort from the ribs so that was a good feeling. I did this for 9miles.

However, yesterday when I ran the Stook 10mile (for the 5th time) I still opted to take it nice and handy and also treated this as a normal training run and took it handy at around a 8:30-9min/mile pace for the vast majority of the run I also spent most of the time talking to people including Catherine Guthrie who represented Ireland at the Belfast 24hr in July of this year.

The exception to this was the flying mile (mile 8-9) where I ran the mile in 5:35min, I'd have run it faster only for the road was wet so I actually slowed myself as I was afraid I'd slip and fall on the steep hill.   Grace also joined me at Stook this year and she took part in the 5km event so it was nice to spend time together at the event.

The Famous Stook Cowbell
So whats next?

Next Saturday night I'm taking part in the Long Way Round which is a fund raiser for the South Eastern Mountain Rescue in Clonmel. It'll be a challenge as its almost all trail and mountain but it should be an enjoyable event and I'm looking forward to it.