Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Eye of the Tiger Beer.
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
AuldManKing wrote: »out of interest, where did you get the vapourfys?? S.F?
Ebay. Paid a €100 premium :eek:
Worth every penny
0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
Are they they 4% Vaporflys or the vanilla version?
How much credit would you grant them for your success?
Yeh, the 4% Vaporflys.
I give them partial credit
Both runs I've done in them (the 3/4 and DCM) were suspiciously good. I am sure that my fitness was improving/recovering quickly enough due to some good consistent training. I'd probably give them credit for about 2-3 minutes, I reckoned I was in 3:14ish shape. Maybe it was the beetroot juice though 0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
A kind of recovery type week with a side of mountain running
The week started with a few regular runs. I was off work on Monday so treated myself to running somewhere new, namely Turvey nature reserve near Donabate. Pleasant enough place to run around with two loops available and a mix of terrain and surroundings (forest, fields, some cows, an estuary). I took Thursday off, and then ended up taking Friday off too as the weather was woeful when I was gonna head out.
So, Run The Line! After last year's exhaustion at the end and soreness afterwards I swore if I returned I'd do the short course. I got a lift over to the mountains with some fellow Swordsonians and ended up there way too early, though at least I got time to have a coffee etc. There was a pretty impressive setup this year with a few tents, music, grub, soup... along with the medal and t-shirt it felt like a pretty commercial activity rather than a grassroots fundraiser. After an amount of loitering around, slowly getting ready and then a few chats with some boardsies we got underway. I wasn't sure how hard I was going to run it, what with my legs a bit delicate post-marathon and no real trail or hilly stuff done recently at all. So I didn't bother pushing up for the start, and of course once I got running I decided I was feeling good and quickly realised that if I didn't push up early enough I'd get pretty stuck behind people on the narrow paths and trails so between the start and the top of Two Rock I was spending my time getting past people. That tapered off a bit as the field stretched out and we were barrelling down the trails of Two Rock, though my safety breaks were on a lot as I couldn't turn off my sense of self-preservation and general awareness that I was one mis-step away from smashing into the ground. Occasionally there'd be a normal uphill drag or flatish path and I'd make a load of hay and pass some more folks. I was overtaken a few times on the technical downhills, but generally went by them later on. Being familiar with the course from last year was definitely beneficial as I could judge my effort a bit better, I was generally pushing hard enough but not completely all out. Like last year the last 2k or so were great fun, almost all downhill and it was nice to not have to concentrate on avoiding breaking some bones and just pick up the effort. I was totally out-kicked at the end by a guy who had been just behind me, and I finished in 37th position in 1:11:43 on the clock, though my chiptime of 1:11:15 would have brought me up to 33rd, out of 323 finishers. Overall pretty happy with the effort, I felt strong throughout, enjoyed jumping around the place and but didn't completely wreck myself. The course and marshalling really is superb, and the setup at the Gap etc. was great. I had a nice soup from the cafe immediately after the race, got changed into dry clothes in the changing room and then did a bit more socialising before heading to Johnny Foxes for some Guinness and more chatting about running.
Date|Distance|Pace|Notes
5th November|10 miles|8:19|Ten miles around Turvey
6th November|9.1 miles|9:16|A soggy commute home
7th November|9.1 miles|9:08|Another commute
10th November|7.5 miles|9:25|Run The Line (short course)
11th November|1.2 miles|14:04|Holywell junior parkrun with the 5 year old! Every run counts
11th November|6.2 miles|8:59|Quads reasonably sore today, though not in bits. No other real aches or pains. Popped out to Malahide.
Total: 43.3 miles
Next week: Resuming normal service. A club session and 2 hour run at the weekend would be great. I'd like to give a parkrun a go in the next few weeks to have a go at a sub-20 5k as I haven't done one of those in a long time. I should register for some races too, I might try and get into shape for Raheny.0 -
A tale of 5 parkruns...
I've been slacking off on both the running and writing-about-running front recently, but I have done a few parkruns and club sessions so all is not lost, yet. So here's three weeks (!) of updates.
Cru club session: first post DCM speed session, which was a complicated sounding 4 x (600, 400, 200 off 75, 60, 90 standing). Times were (2:11, 1:24, 45), (2:10, 1:24, 40), (2:14, 1:26, 41), (2:13, 1:26, 41). I vaguely recall that I thought it went well enough.
Malahide Parkrun: I'd taken a couple of days off running for some reason during the week, so decided to give Malahide a good go and go under sub-20 for the first time in a long time. However I made a rookie error, getting out of bed at 8:20 or so and quickly threw a load of breakfast and coffee into me. On the jog over to Malahide I inexplicably started to throw up a little, and felt a bit wonky after continuing my run. It was pacer day at Malahide, so I latched onto the 20 minute pacer but just didn't feel amazing and watched him sail off into the distance at the 3rd km or so. Finished in 20:28.
Holywell junior parkrun: The 8 year old ran a PB, his first time going sub-13.
Malahide parkrun, the revenge: I woke up a lot earlier and had a pleasant jog over to Malahide. I met a couple of lads from Rivervalley parkrun, clicker from these parts, and a particularly speed lad who runs with Clonliffe and was the eventual winner. The run went a lot better, and I finished nearly a minute faster in 19:34. Had my token given to me by TBO also from these parts, and chatted with the winner at the end.
Rivervalley parkrun: Pacers week so I signed up to do 22 minutes. There's always good craic in Rivervalley, and things got even craic-ier when it went around the Whatsapp Group that Mick Clohisey was going along. One of the lads who regularly runs Rivervalley runs with Raheny and organised a mini-invasion. On my jog over I even got to give a lost Raheny guy some directions, he was hopelessly driving around the wrong estate beside the valley. Once we got our bibs on etc. one of the regulars mentioned to me that he his PB was just over 22 and I convinced him that I'd help him beat it (most of my pacing gigs in Rivervalley have been pretty lonely, and have also included me finishing it first once, so this wasn't entirely for his benefit ). Your man was in my general vicinity, and I explained my strategy to him in the first half (going pretty easy on both the big two uphills and big two downhills). He started breathing hard and lagging behind at times, so I slowed down little so I wouldn't lose him, and called out where we were doing (around 5 seconds up at half-way). After the final hill he really started to flag and I pulled away, but ended up stalling back again and giving him encouragement, and counted down the time left. With 30 seconds to go I told him to sprint, he got in front of me and finished fast enough. I stopped my watch at 22:00 exactly. The results ended up with both of us on 22! I'll have to pace him again so It turns out The Claw did run, though he just jogged with his dad and finished behind me. He didn't soil his perfect record of running a national parkrun record on his only official parkrun by not bringing along his barcode though!
Holywell junior parkrun part 2: It was the 1st year birthday celebrations, and so there were kids dressed up (not ours though, I hadn't been checking Facebook), a load from Rivervalley parkrun over and even our own annapr who was there with the boys and volunteering as time keeper. The running wasn't as good this week though, the 8 year old took it pretty easy though still needed a lot of encouragement to actually finish. The 5 year old had a pretty bad day, he's been chesty over the last week and not sleeping well. He got very upset on the parkrun and ended up walking most of the course and finishing last. He barely got to enjoy any of the cake, hot chocolate etc. that was put on for the birthday celebrations.
Date|Distance|Pace|Notes
November 12th|9.1 miles|9:17|Commute home. Quads still in bits from RTL.
November 13th|7.3 miles|?|Cru session as above
November 14th|3.1 miles|9:12|Very easy jog around town
November 17th|8.9 miles|?|To/from/Malahide parkrun
November 18th|13.1 miles|8:41|Out at 7:15 in the morning due to a busy day. Got a glorious sunrise over the sea while at Portmarnock - there were a load of photographers out taking pictures, as there was a strong easterly wind kicking up the sea. Stunning morning!
November 18th|1.2 miles|10:15|Glorious PB junior parkrun with the 8 year old after the longish run.
Total: 43 miles
Date|Distance|Pace|Notes
19th November|8.4 miles|9:06|In Galway talking at a conference, so jogged up past Salthill and back.
20th November|3.3 miles|8:19|Early jog to/from Salthill
21st November|9.2 miles|8:43|Commute
22nd November|9.2 miles|9:01|Commute
23rd November|4.1 miles|9:09|Jog around Swords
24th November|8.9 miles|?|To/from/Malahide parkrun
Total: 43.2 miles
Date|Distance|Pace|Notes
26th November|9.9 miles|8:46|Commute
27th November|9 miles|?|Cru session
28th November|6.4 miles|9:21|Wasn't in the mood to endure the weather, so rejoined the local Flyefit and ran on the treadmill for an hour. Felt like I was doing sub-8 miles!
30th November|6.7 miles|9:00ish|Work to Beaumont and then to the bus.
1st December|6.2 miles|?|To/from/Rivervalley parkrun
2nd December|1.2 miles|11:10|Junior parkrun
2nd December|14.5 miles|8:15|2 hours to/from/around Malahide Castle. Slowed down a bit as it went on, though I am sure the faraday cage of Malahide Castle robbed me of some distance and therefore pace
Total: 54.3 miles. Better.
November total: 169 miles
Next week: Club session. Not much chance of a parkrun as my work xmas party is next Friday.0 -
-
Trying not to build up log debt again...
Date|Distance|Pace|Notes
10th December|9.2 miles|9:06|A commute
11th December|4 miles|9:08|Instead of going to the club, I went to the pub to watch the Liverpool game, so I jogged around a bit after work.
12th December|10 miles|9:20|A slow commute I guess
13th December|3.3 miles|9:45|A very slow jog into work after hopping off the bus in East Wall. It was very windy.
14th December|10.3 miles|9:05|A commute home
15th December|6.1 miles|?|To/from and Rivervalley parkrun. A great atmosphere due to the terrible weather. Finished second in 22:05 or so.
16th December|10 miles|9:21|Decided to avoid the cold weather and do my run in the relative comfort of the local gym, watching the Barcelona game.
Total: 53 miles of slow running
Next this week: Club christmas session, and a parkrun. Also continuing my "run for 30 minutes every day during December for no reason whatsoever" streak.0 -
-
-
-
-
The past:
2018 was not a great running year... other than a decent 5k effort and a good marathon PB. The year started with the DisneyWorld Marathon, which was ultimately a sh!tshow, for a bunch of reasons. Some back pain and a general malaise caused me to go off the boil coming into it, and generally being on holiday is not a great way to be set up for a decent run. Afterwards I basically gave up on Donadea, even going so far as to message ultraman to give my place to somebody else, but I made a last minute decision to run the bloody thing anyway, and ended up running another very unsatisfying time, though somehow really enjoying it at the same time. The next few months were spent slowly building up some fitness, but I used the bad weather as an excuse to slack off once more. I ended up running a well run K Club 10k (though didn't go sub-40), and bounced into a bunch of sessions targeting the Bob Heffernan 5k where I ran a bad race but was 6 seconds slower than my PB. After that I got distracted by the World Cup, and then heading over to the USA for a bit which I ended up treating like an extended holiday (i.e. lots of booze and slacking off) and doing no serious running. To make up for my slacking off I did the San Francisco Marathon, blew up again and narrowly got under 3:25, which was an ok performance given the tough course but was actually a sign of serious regression. I ran about 30 miles in the 3 weeks after that, and returned back to Ireland in terrible shape.
My total focus after that was on DCM. I built up my milage, did some club sessions to get some speed back, and did the Fingal 10m and Dublin HM in underwhelming times (both 7 minutes slower than last year). However my focus was always on DCM, and I continued on a progressive set of sessions and milage that ultimately got me into a good place where I could attack my soft marathon PB from 2017. The final few sessions went well, and I ran a great 3/4 marathon with the Vaporfly 4% shoes 3 weeks out. The last 3 weeks went to plan - a bunch of HM pace stuff, and a decent taper. On the day I out-performed my expectations and ran a good marathon to get just under 3:10. I'd be content to retire with that as my best marathon.
The present:
After the marathon I had some minor calf injury, but it went away quickly enough and I ended up running a good Run The Line (short course). From then on I struggled a bit with motivation (as in I was drinking a lot and dossing), but finally did my first sub-20 parkrun after a few club sessions and got my milage up a bit. I ran every day in December, but ended up having a couple of bad niggles on my left upper-leg/hip and on my left foot (which I think was caused by sprinting for a bus while under the influence in Crocs). Both of which appear to respond positively to lower milage, so the end of the December running streak was mostly short, slow distances. Generally I've slowed down a lot. 9 minute miles are my easy pace now, and anything else feels like effort.
The future:
I am overweight (>84kgs) and only semi-fit really. I need to lose weight, so I've bought a fancy weighing scales The interesting learning from last year was that I have obviously plateaued, but it didn't take *that* much effort to get back into roughly PB shape. Boozing affected my consistency last year a lot, as did a general lack of discipline - I was content to use bad weather or whatever as an excuse to not get the miles in, but mostly it was consistently being hungover that threw a spanner into my works. I don't really have any excuses to not kick on and ultimately train to get into PB shape or better. Between now and June, I'll be targeting 5k/10k type races and trying to get faster. In August I'll hopefully kick into marathon training for Dublin, and give it a proper go. Given that I ran the second half of DCM in 1:32 this year, I really should be threatening a sub-3 this year but it's a long way off for now.
2018 stats:
2454 miles (lower than both 2017 and 2016)
73 full commutes
Races:
Disneyworld Marathon: 3:21:06
Space Race 4M: 25:46 (on marathon weary legs)
Donadea 50k: 4:09:15
K Club 10k: 40:36
Bob Heffernan 5k: 18:45
SF Marathon: 3:24:54
Frank Duffy 10M: 1:11:06
Dublin Half: 1:34:10
DCM: 3:09:52
RTL: (whatever)
parkrun volunteer: 9 times
Goals for 2019:
100 commutes
PB in more than one distance0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
Race report!!!
When is a PB not a PB? Well, when you've been a lot fitter and run faster on longer courses I guess
I hadn't done enough to be in good shape for Raheny, though in the last day I took a look at my previous efforts (2016: 33:35, 2017: 31:47) and realised that I had a half-decent chance of a PB if everything went well on the day. I'd run a sub-20 parkrun a couple of weeks ago, rested a good bit due to an annoying niggle and the race atmosphere should push me on a little. I was probably fitter during my last attack on Raheny, however I ran a bad race (i.e. treated the first 4k as a 5k race) and I'm so much wiser and smarter these days (I hope!). I spent Sunday doing the things that all elites do before races, i.e. doing a shop in Dunnes, tidying the house etc. before setting off towards D5 at around 1.15. Traffic was a little congested all the way there, so after parking in a nearby estate I brought my bag to drop-off immediately and got ready after picking up my number. For my warmup I headed straight to St. Anne's to, er, water the trees, and then met BG and had some good chats before heading off to get some strides in. After the strides I met murph_d and so got more strides in. A longer warmup than usual, but no harm done, and nothing was feeling too niggley. Myself and D placed ourselves reasonably well in the crowd, and met my work/clubmate C, and had a bunch of regular pre-race chats. Somehow our position seemed to get worse, as a lot more people showed up in front of us, and suddenly it looked like we weren't in a great position as the runners all moved up.
The sh!tshow 6:32, 6:24
The start was pretty chaotic. It was pretty difficult to get into any kind of rhythym, and there was a lot of bumping into people. People were leaping all over the place, onto paths, winding around parked cars. A car on the road came out of nowhere at one stage. I wasn't getting too frustrated, but it was obviously holding me back. When I did get some space I made up some ground, and by the time we were back passing the start area things had started to settle down. I had a vague idea of 6:30 as a minimum viable pace, so when my watch beeped I was happy with the time, as any time I had glanced at it it was in the high 6's-low 7's. I passed Helen here, who seemed to have every supporter shouting her name. As things opened up along All Saints Road I started to pass a bunch of Crusaders folk and the odd person who I'd recognise from being around me at races. Things then got pretty tight again along the Howth Road, where being penned in by the barriers and passing the occasional wheelchair racer meant that I slowed down a bit here and there.
Salvation on Sybil Hill: 6:15
The glorious road of The Grove was both downhill and roomy, so I made up a good bit of ground here. I overtook a good few folks, and definitely was working hard but not to exhaustion. Mt. Prospect was where I crashed and burned last time 'round, but that wasn't happening here. I was doing a decent job of staying mostly in check with the folks around me.
The out'n'back 6:17
I was happy to go through 5k bang-on sub-20 pace. The wind got windier in the park, and the walkers got walkier, and generally everything started to get pretty damn annoying in St. Annes. Gawking at the faster runners on the other side of the avenue was a good distraction, but as ever the avenue seemed never ending. The 180 was grand, but by the end of the avenue my lungs were burning and I was losing a few places.
The bit at the end 6:28
Hmm, that's a bit slow. I did slow down coming up through the park, but I didn't think by that much. The Strava map suggests some serious course cutting, which of course didn't happen. In face I resisted all temptation to jump on the path at various times which a lot of runners did, especially during the first mile or two. I didn't have that much to give, it was total survival mode and my lungs were red hot. I anxiously checked my watch once or twice but couldn't really figure out what was going on. I got a shout out from I-have-no-idea on Wade's Avenue, and when I turned onto the finishing straight my watch was at 31:00. How f$cking far away is the finish? 30 seconds?! A minute?! I gave it my best, and it turns out that my first guess was correct. I stopped my watch at 31:25, but it turns out the chip-time was 31:30 - still, a 17 second PB, which was basically as good as I thought things could go on a good day.
Result: 31:30 (364/3866) - 17 second PB.
Definitely a good day given my level of fitness. It's far from an actual PB - according to my Garmin I ran 5 miles 10 seconds faster at the Fingal 10k in 2017. I might have run faster that day if I was wearing the 4% Vaporflys then
As ever with Raheny, it's almost much of a social event as it is a running event. After quickly picking up my bag and getting changed I met a good amount of boardsies and club folks and had all the chats. After driving home I definitely felt like I had run a race, with a weird exhaustion-thirstyness-hunger that kicks in after a decent effort. The goody bag appears to have been restored to its former gluttonous glory, and I've yet another Raheny plaque to add to the collection, along with my third PB out of three Raheny 5s. Long may it last 0 -
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
I saw that pic today (they're my husband's photos) & thought you looked like you'd tried pretty hard! Well done, that's a great time!
(Re finisher pics, I can't talk - I appear to be determined to pass a child or die trying in mine :pac::))
ETA: 1) I didn't know you went to The Grove what was your era? (Mine was approx 88-89 to maybe 91?)
2) sorry for the thread derail, but Green Man line up is out today. Tempted?????
Tell your husband "thanks" for taking that photo
My Grove going days were brief and a bit later than that, I went a few times in '95. I quickly graduated to underage drinking in Fibbers and Dazed.
I saw the Green Man lineup earlier! It looks very tempting, though I already have two holiday type things in July and August, so it might be a bit of a push
I do really want to see Stereolab, so far they've just confirmed 3 shows on their reformation tour - the two Primaveras and now Green Man, chances are they'll play something like All Together Now over here, which is already sold out. Hmm!0
Advertisement