The journey towards the Dublin City Marathon

When I started this blog I has the idea to use it as a way to keep me honest in my training by forcing me to log every (or almost every) session including mileage and how the session went, and a lot of things have happened since my last post back in April:

- I did my first night run on the trails, head lamp and all.
- Went on holidays and tried to run an "easy 10k" in 30 degree heat and nearly died
- Started exercising for 10 minutes every morning before work
- Ran the Born to Run 10k series around Dublin (none of the races were actually 10k)
- Ran the South Dublin 10k race in July
- Started training for the Dublin City Marathon in October

Sadly, writing hasn't been one of them. I fell into the trap of wanting to be read people other than myself and my imaginary friends and I realised that the most popular blogs have content and knowledge. I just have stories... and excuses.

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Visualization for beginners

I've been a competitive athlete all my life. I've been involved in different sports at different levels since the age of 8 and along the way, a lot of coaches have spoken to me or my team about visualization. "See yourself scoring that try" "See yourself winning that match". Only now I realise that I never understood what they meant. It's easy to close your eyes and see yourself scoring a try, a winning goal or whatever, but all boys do that when they play footie on the street. So how does that help you achieve anything in a proper competition? That's the piece I never understood and maybe my coaches never did either. I think the confusion comes from the overlapping of two concepts: imagination and visualization. Imagination allows you to see yourself on the pilot seat of a spaceship to Mars to rescue Lady O'Mygodyouregorgeous but has nothing to do with reality. Visualization on the other hand, is about seeing yourself achieving things that you...

How will races look like post COVID-19?

I think racing the way we're used to is gone forever. There! I've said it. No more long queues at the portaloos before the start. No more corrals with 1,000 runners touching, shaking hands, and wishing each other luck. No more post-race hugs and tears, not unless you're part of the same household. So let's reverse engineer a race and see if we can come up with a picture Social distancing So, there are 10,000 of us converging into one spot in the city. How can you make sure we all observe social distancing? That's a bit of an issue unless we're running in the desert or high in the mountains where there are acres to spare. The queueing system We start by creating an orderly queue. In fact, we create many orderly queues around the access area to prevent overcrowding. First of all, the zone must be cordoned off for the queue system to work. Otherwise, everybody does what everybody does when there's no system in place: we invade the zone. So, all ru...

How was 2018 (Part II)

So, with one successful in the bag, I was excited to test myself in the Frank Duffy 10mi race in August to see if the longer distances were improving too. Here's how it went: August - Frank Duffy 10mi As with the 10k race, the organisers moved the venue from Phoenix Park to Swords. I didn't have a clue about the route or the profile of the race. Mind you, I couldn't remember the last time I had run a 10mi race so couldn't figure out what pace to run at and this was critical.I just figured out it had to be slower than a 10k but... how much? No clue. So I ran and picked up the pace in the final 2k to come in at 1:17. I was happy with that but a friend I met at the race said "you can easily run the half in 1:40". I had never done that or got even close to it. Still as you can see, I was still improving. September - Dublin Half Marathon Crazy targets, unrealistic expectations, unachievable goals... these were some of the thoughts that were going through ...

26.2 Ways to Run

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