Mixed week and a loss to Ireland's running community

 It's not been a great week for training, I managed to get almost a 4mile run on Monday and a 5mile run on Wednesday. I had also planned for another 5miles on Friday but Daniel decided to kick off just as I was going out the door so the run got scrubbed and instead I opted to start work early.

Grace was off to Gareth Brooks over the weekend so Saturday was also scrubbed but I did manage a run of 13mile on Sunday morning before we headed into Kilkenny to take part in the slow roll.

Whats a slow roll? Well, its as it sounds, its a family cycle around Kilkenny City and since Daniel's been born we always try to take part as its something different. This time though its not me putting Daniel in a trailer on the bike as I've now upgraded to a Bakfiets Cargobike!

Bakfiets / Cargobike

The slow roll was sadly a wash out as it bucketed down with rain but a small number of us still did a cycle around the city, hopefully the next one will be better as they usually attract a big crowd with numerous families.

On Friday night I was shocked to read that Thomas Bubendorfer had passed away on Tuesday last week, he had been out for a run in Spain and was hit by a car.    

For those that didn't know Thomas, he was a very popular figure in the Irish running community and he wrote the very popular Diary of a Rubbish Marathon Runner blog.

Thomas started running to run the "once in a lifetime marathon" in Dublin back in 2004 but went on to proudly represent Austria in the 24 Hours World Championships in Turin and completed the Spartathlon in Greece both in the same year. Impressive achievements.

He was a regular face to see at different ultramarathons over the years such as Donadea 50km and truth be told he's one of the reasons I got into running ultramarathons after reading his blog.  

But other then saying hello to him I didn't know him but I was lucky enough to share about 27miles of the 2019 Connemara Ultra with him chatting about all sorts, for all his achievements he was very humble about them but he was very knowledgeable and a nice chap. He will be missed by the Irish running community and it'll be a poorer place without him.

RIP Thomas and condolences to Niamh to your family and friends.

Thomas Bubendorfer, Turin 2015 / Photo Martin Mayrhofer

 

Boston Scientific Half Marathon (Clonmel) Race Report

Blueway at Kilsheelan, County Tipperary

Long and short of the last few months is got I Covid back in January and it did a number on me, few
weeks after I had it I still had very little energy and running what should have been a easy 3miles was like a hard 15mile run.

This of course ruined my plans of a 50mile race in May which I have postponed until 2023 as I lost a lot of fitness and couldn't continue to do the training I needed.

Things are very slowly going along now, I have an entry for Dublin in October which has carried over from 2020 so I opted to make some effort on training and I signed up to the Boston Scientific Half-Marathon in Clonmel which was on the 28th August.

I've done this race a few times and its not what I'd describe as flat, but they changed the course this year and have promised a flatter course.  

Half-Marathon Race Route

The course started in Clonmel and then looped back to Kilsheelan via back roads before going onto the Suir Blueway and coming back to the finish. I've run and cycled on the Blueway a fair bit over the last 18 months or so so I knew what to expect there but I had no idea about how the route would be on the roads to Kilsheelan.

Few miles in and I knew this course wasn't going to be very flat, or at least it wasn't going to be flat until I reached the Blueway.  You can see from the elevation profile below that it certainly had some climbs, but for everything that goes up it also must go down so there were some enjoyable downhill sections.

Race Elevation Profile with Pace Overlay

I managed to keep a fairly respectable pace throughout most of this section but by the time I hit the Blueway at Kilsheelan I was starting to feel the strain of maintaining the pace. 

Up until the 7.5mile mark I only had maybe 3-4 people pass me so this was a good sign, but on the Blueway this changed and I maybe had a good 10 people pass me. This was a little demoralizing as I've not had this happen in sometime when doing a half marathon distance.

But I kept going as best I could and tried to run based on effort rather then checking my actual pace on the watch. Coming up to the finish I managed to pip two people so thats always a boost!

I entered the race expecting 1:40'ish, but I finished with a fairly respectable 1:36:17.

It's far off my PB of 1:29 and prior to January and getting Covid I could have pulled this sort of pace out of the bag on a training run so I have a lot of work to do to get back to that sort of fitness. But its still better then I expected just the same.

Long sleeve finisher shirt after the race is decent quality and it'll get some use during the winter months no doubt and for those into medals its an alright medal.
  

Some fundraising and virtual races

Over the past number of months I've been doing some virtual races, nothing too fancy but just stuff to get me out the door at times.

So far I've done the Centurion One Love Half Marathon and San Francisco Half Marathon back in Feb, will say I do like the San Francisco long sleeve top!

But for more of a challenge I've also signed up to some marathons in the coming months, October in particular is going to be likely extremely busy with the London Marathon, Boston Marathon and Dublin Marathon (Dublin hasn't been confirmed yet as virtual).

But before any of that I have the Centurion Running One Community 100mile starting this Friday the 2nd April and running until the 8th April.

It's going to be a challenge as I have to cover an avg of 14miles per day to complete this and the the highest miles I've covered in a week since October is around 50miles!

To put my effort to good use I've decided to raise money for PAWS Animal Rescue who is situated not far from where I live, PAWS does great work in relation to animal rescue, and they rely heavily on donations from the public to carry out their work.

In addition our two lovely lurchers Buffy and Khaleesi were rehomed from PAWS, and myself and Grace  always try to support them each year with birthday fundraisers and by donating whenever possible.

Khaleesi & Buffy

My fundraising is purely on Facebook so for anyone that is friends with me on Facebook if you could please donate anything I would much appreciate it.  However if you'd like to donate directly you can visit paws.ie

Thats got to hurt!

I've noticed over the past few runs that despite my Saucony Liberty ISO 2 only being new since Christmas and only having about 250miles in them they let in water much more then any previous shoe I've owned. I don't even need to run through a puddle for my right foot in particular to be soaked! All very annoying..

On Sunday I headed out for a 9mile run and I brought Daniel in the running buggy we picked up, I found about half way into the run that I got a slight pain in my back.   I didn't think much of it, I've had this sort of thing now and then over the years.

I was very wrong this time, by the time I got home I was crippled and struggled to take off my top when changing.   I've had a good few sleepless nights since due to this back pain but it has mainly sorted itself and I only feel discomfort now and then when I move a certain way.

Fortunately it isn't hurting me while running normally, clearly the whole issue was caused by my running form with the buggy.

Three Races and a Baby

We're into 2021 and unlike 2020 where this time last year I was planning on doing Tralee Marathon, Cork Marathon, Kilkenny Medieval Marathon and Dublin Marathon as an initial plan I'm going on the assumption that none of these will actually happen.

I do actually have an entry for 2021 Dublin Marathon but funny enough I'll go on the assumption that with covid they won't be allow 16,000 odd people to hang out in Dublin at the same time on the same section for street.

So I've began the year by signing up to a few virtual races, so far I have:

- Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half Marathon - Complete between 7th Jan - 7th Feb
- Centurion Running One Love Half Marathon - Complete 13/14th Feb
- Centurion Running One Community 100mile - Complete 2nd - 8th April

The first two races are just a half marathons so nothing special and while I likely won't do a PB I'll still push myself a little more on the runs then a normal long run, but the third is a seven day event where I have to cover 100miles which averages out at about 14miles a day which will be a challenge.

I've started recently to do back2back long runs on my weekends, for example last weekend was 14/18miles and it brings back memories of the times I was doing 20/30miles back in 2016/2017. It does get easier!!!

The last time I had done a back2back run was for the virtual Dublin Half/Full marathon in October which I didn't realise you had to do both within 24hrs of each other when I signed up.   The legs felt it doing the half marathon on day 2.

To add to the above challenge we now also have Daniel who was born in October shortly after I ran the two Dublin virtual runs last year so trying to work, look after Daniel and do 2hrs plus of running a day for an entire week will be a challenge, but I'll give it a go anyway.

Daniel says Hello!

 Welcoming Daniel to our family, born 1.15pm yesterday.

Virtual Dublin Half/Full Marathon 24th/25th October

The weekend finally arrived to do the virtual Half and Full marathons I signed upto, one of  challenges
with doing these two runs is Grace is due to give birth over the new few days which means I couldn't go running miles and miles away from our house like I normally would.   Instead I ended up doing different loops that were no more then 3-4miles away from the house.

My plan was to get the full marathon out of the way first and do the half on day two, these weren't going to be any sort of runs I was going to set new personal bests on by any means. I just wanted to cover the miles for the back2back challenge.

I set off for the marathon on the 24th just after 7am and started the first of many loops, for very obvious reasons I brought my phone and I also needed to bring it to run the Virtual Dublin Race Series App so I decided to listen to some podcasts for the run.  I met a few people that were clearly doing the virtual half-marathon based on the much, much faster pace they were pushing.

After what seemed like endless loops around the town and surrounding countryside I eventually finished up in 4hrs 2min.

Day two took a lot more effort, I almost called off doing the run but eventually headed out the door at 4pm the next day and again I did loops around the locality. This felt much more of a slog especially towards the end and it was very far from my fastest half marathon but I managed to just about finish it in under 2hours with 1hour 56min.

One major take away I took from these virtual runs is the Dublin Virtual Series App sucks, it was seriously inaccurate when it came to the distance and it was off my 1mile when I did the half marathon.

It was also annoying to have to worry about the app being open on my phone so due to the inaccurate meassuring I opted to upload my Garmin results over the app tracking.

Still, the swag I got in the end wasn't bad. I could live without the medals but I really like the arm warmers and they'll get plenty of use!

Spoils of my two runs, liking the arm warmers

Some cycling and some running...

I've been doing a bit of cycling and running the last few weeks, I'm not doing the same amount of miles each week/month with May of this year seeing the most miles logged with a marked drop since then as confirmed by my Garmin.

A lot of the reason for the drop in the miles is I've been busy painting and stuff in the house and also I really don't have races to aim for, Tralee, Cork, Dublin, Kilkenny marathons have all been cancelled so there's been nothing to really train for.

Kilkenny and Dublin have put on virtual events and I did the Kilkenny Medieval Half-Marathon on the weekend of the 12th September but the same incentive to push the pace doesn't exist with a virtual event so I finished in a time of 1:38:09 which put me 3rd in the half marathon results.

I'll get back to more running as Dublin gets closer, especially as I accidentally signed up for the Dublin Full and Half-Marathon which have to be both run on the same weekend at the end of October!

The problems with not paying attention...

We're still in a worldwide pandemic and I'm still running, although a lot less in the past 3 weeks.

Upto a few weeks back I've been doing between 30-40miles a week and while not improving on my speed I've kept things ticking along and I've been enjoying some new 10-11miles routes I started running because of less traffic on some local roads.

That was until about 3 weeks ago when I went out for a 13miles run, 2miles into the run I felt a niggle on my right knee area which I initially thought nothing of it and ran on, after all these things happen now and then.  

But by 4miles into the run it actually hurt me a little so I stopped and stretched a walked a little and again started running. The rest of the run was pretty uneventful and I finished fine.

An hour after I got home I was crippled, it hurt to walk and going up/down the stairs was a real challenging with me being unable to put any weight on my right knee! So I took it easy and did some cycling over the following days on and off to see if things would be better.

I've since had two sports physio appointments and it turns out that luckily I've not done myself any joint damage and instead my IT band had tightened up so much it was causing my knee to land differently which caused the pain.   I've had two sessions of dry needling and its worked wonders, this week I've managed about 6miles of running with no pain in the area and finally going upo/down stairs is painless once again!

This all could have been avoided if I had cut the 13mile run short and it shows the importance of listening to your body and the problems with not paying attention,

So this shows the first problem with not paying attention!

The second problem with not paying attention is when you sign up to races, due to the Covid19 pandemic of course countless races have been cancelled outright or postponed. 

I go to do the Midnight Marathon in January of this year but since then every race I had planned to sign up to or had actually signed up for has been cancelled for 2020 with the exception of the Tralee Marathon which moved from April to September 26th so I should be running that.

Unlike Tralee the Dublin marathon is a much bigger race so its been cancelled for 2020 and its in its place they've recently introduced the virtual race series which includes the Dublin Marathon which is taking place in October.

I signed up because the virtual aspect suits due to two reasons, one it gets another race done under my belt and the second reason I'll get to shortly.

Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to this either as I signed up to both the Marathon and Half-Marathon and only after did I realise that both had to be completed between October 24th-26th. So provided I have the time to do both it's going to be a busy weekend and the legs are going to be a little tired.

So two instances where I should have been paying more attention.

Although the races for 2020 have been almost all cancelled this has at least for me been a good thing, especially when it comes to the Dublin Marathon because we're due our first child at the start of November so heading off to Dublin likely wouldn't have gone down to well with Grace.

When I get out to run from November onwards should be a interesting challenge.....

A global pandemic will change things...

The world has changed so much since my last blog post on the 4th of February so I'm going to detail some of those changes below as since January the media reported the covid-19 outbreak in China and as things moved into March we heard about it in parts of Europe.

I kept on doing my training runs in preparation for the Tralee Marathon on the 11th April but back on the 13th March due to the covid-19 global pandemic things drastically changed in Ireland as the Irish government starting closing schools, colleagues, pubs and any unessential shops and business.

This, as it turns out, worked well for running as I was able to run some normally very busy roads to do some nice long runs up around Co Tipperary including a marathon distance up around Ballingarry, however then further restrictions came into force on the 28th March meaning any non-essential travel including for exercise beyond 2km was not permitted or encouraged.

Due to the 2km restrictions, I've been doing longer runs by taking in a few of the local loops and out and back sections to reach 8 and 10miles. But I still wanted to do a marathon distance since basically all races between now and July are postponed or canceled (No Cork or Waterford marathons for me either).

Last week I decided I'd run some loops of the estate I live in, specifically I'd keep running the

0.28mile loop outside my house until I hit a marathon. I started off at 8am and to the bemusement of neighbors I kept on looping and passing my water station outside my house and I hit marathon distance in 3hours 47nmin.   Not bad overall.

But even before I hit the marathon distance I decided I wanted to hit a nice even number of 30miles, so while I slowed down a lot I kept on doing loops until I eventually hit 30miles in 4hours 42min 59sec.

All in all not a bad day really.

But back to the pandemic.....right now as I type there are 2,329,651 confirmed cases and 160,721 deaths with the USA being the number one country in the world for infections and deaths (740,557 infected, 38,979 death) much of which can be put at frankly disastrous handling by Trump and his administration. In Ireland, there are 14,758 confirmed cases and 571 deaths and right now they are reporting that we've flattened the curve.

Overall in Ireland restrictions came in quick and we were certainly much more pro-active then our next-door neighbors in the UK which went ahead with events like Cheltenham which result in about 60k people a day mixing in close quarters.

There have been a few infection cases locally and even deaths from health staff in the local hospital which is worrying and extremely sad for the families affected. There is a big focus on protecting elderly and vulnerable groups from the virus and on that note, my parents have been on lockdown since this all kicked off so they've not gone further than their garden.