The mountain of pain!

Firstly, I have some rough plans for 2020 already including doing the Dublin Marathon because I got a priority entry. So that's one event booked for starters.

However, the first event I'm planning to actually do and have also booked is the Ballyhoura Moonlight Marathon Challenge in January.

Given this is a trail marathon with 1000metres of gain I figured I better start doing some trail running so with that in mind I returned to do the Slievenamon Circuit.

I used to regularly run the Slievenamon Circuit especially before my first 100mile back in 2015, it basically follows the fire road around the base of the mountain but it is very challenging in areas and comes in at over 744metres of gain over 12miles.

So last Sunday myself and Paul decided to do the circuit, for him its no bother as he regularly runs it but for myself, it was a different story altogether given how long it was since I last ran it.
For something different Paul lent me some trekking poles to run with.

First thing first, the trekking poles made a noticeable difference and made the climbs far easier as I knocked between 1-2minutes off my best time for two of the harder sections.  I'm def planning to pick up a cheap pair of them for next time I do the circuit.

However, they didn't stop me rolling my left ankle twice, on the second roll I also fell and overall my legs took a real beating.

So due to this I ended up doing easy recover runs for the rest of the week and while they did help loosen things up my ankle still wasn't right so I decided to take Thursday and Friday as rest days to leave it finally heal up.

For now, I'm going to give the harder trail running a break and I'll start back properly once I've done the Waterford Half Marathon as its just too disruptive to my training for the legs to take the beating they've taken on Sunday.

Running this week
Sunday: 12.58miles @ 12:42min/mile
Monday: 3miles @ 8:58min/mile
Tuesday: 3.65miles @ 8:25min/mile
Wednesday: 3miles @ 7:52min/mile
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 3.35miles @ 7:27min/mile & 3miles @ 7:00min/mile