26.2 Ways to Run

Can we do it again? Please! Please! Please?! It's been nearly a week since the big race and I'm still glowing from the experience. I know I had spoken before about the excitement and compared it to what I had experienced in previous races but… this time it was for real.  I set out on this journey with the goal of hitting a new PB. You know, the flattest course on earth, record breaking course, the best athletes of the planet come to Berlin to give it a lash. Truth be said, for mortals like me, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Berlin have all been flat with perfect weather conditions so I don’t think it would've made a difference. I built the expectation for this one out of something that I wanted to do… just because. On Friday morning I set out on the early Aer Lingus flight to Berlin. Apart from a few of families and two guys in suits, I think the rest of the plane was full of runners. For the next two hours you could hear bits of conversations and all of them were runn...

It's all about the journey As I sit here, it's only 3 more days till I toe the starting line of the 2019 Berlin Marathon and it's probably the most excited I've ever been about a race (I probably said the same thing last year at some other race but hey, it adds to the story, right?). It's also the most intense training programme I've done to-date without a doubt. I remember talking to my good friend and coach Daniel Trejo back in May about it (he wasn't my coach at the time) thinking I would ease myself into it by ramping up the mileage between May and July and be ready to start training properly after my holidays. Well, that didn't happen... Instead, I was sent a high intensity programme that started like, the day after. In time, I must admit it got easier to manage despite of the high demands in terms of time and quality sessions plus peripheral conditioning needed to survive without injuries. Here we are talking about weights, core exercises, ...

I had previously mentioned I had purchased a Garmin Forerunner 235 (just before they announced the launch of the new 245… but that's another story) and how I was trying to adapt to life with an optical HRM. Fast forward 3 months and the truth is, I haven't. Some people swear by the Forerunner 235, calling it a workhorse, super reliable, etc. I found it to be the complete opposite. Leaving aside the poor battery life compared to the 8 to 10 days of the old 230, I still can't get to grips with how unreliable  readings from the watch are. And that's a big problem for me. I bought the watch with the idea of monitoring my performance based on HR and using this information to adjust my training routine. Mind you, I'm not a pro-athlete or even a competitive club runner but I do try to improve all the time, but data like the one below, where, at a pace of 8:35 min/km my HR was 164, I just can't believe. I may as well just buy a $5 watch. So, I...

Time for an update After nearly three years of wearing my Forerunner 230, I thought it was time to do an upgrade. For a while I had my eye on the Forerunner 235 but the price was never right. In the process, I had read multiple reviews and was pretty convinced it was the right watch for me... until I bought it. After about a week of wearing it, I was utterly disappointed with the performance of the HR monitor and the battery life. And nothing I had read before warned me about it so I figured out it would make sense to write a piece in here so that other people may be aware before they take the plunge, especially now that the prices have dropped to under $170 as rumour has it that the 235 is on its way out. Rather than writing a new review for an old watch, I'm going to concentrate on the HRM. First of all, yes, it is oh so convenient, especially if you've ever trained with a chest strap and you still have the the scars to prove it. But also, it's different technol...

Why did you start running? We all start running for a reason. For some people, the motivation is to lose weight, for some others the is to gain fitness to do other sports. There is of course the love of running as a sport in itself but I don't think I've ever met anyone who one day just laced up, went out and was converted. There's always something ahead in the distance that pulls you. That's the inital goal. The pits of short term goals Say you take up running in January to lose some weight after the excesses of December. You religiously get out 3 or 4 days a week to do 4 miles and after a couple of months you hit your weight target. Then what? The initial goal is achieved and there's no incentive to keep on running so, instead of 4 times a week, you now run twice a week. Instead of 4 miles you run 3, then 2... See the pattern? There has to be more than immediate objectives to keep you going. Otherwise, there are too many forks on the road, too many deci...

Visualisation... sounds kinda intuitive, no? You close your eyes and imagine yourself performing the task at hand whether it be scoring a try, hitting a hole in one or crossing the finish line at a marathon, but there's more to it than that. A dictionary definition will tell you visualisation is the act of using mental imagery to create visions of 1) what you want to achieve and 2) how you want to achieve it. For me, step 2 was missing for most of my life as I would only picture myself achieving the final result (i.e. scoring a try, finishing first in a race) but not the journey to get there and that's as important if not more so than the end result. To this, I would add that, the richer the picture the more effective the process. Think about it using this really simple example. If I ask you to draw a cat and you draw this: You're not thinking much about the cat other than making sure it doesn't look like another kind of animal. It's simple and it gets yo...

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 ...

Reading through my old posts from 2018, one thing that stands out is that after the Rotterdam marathon I felt not cheated, but deflated. Despite ramping up the training, results hadn't been great. However, something was happening cause a week after Rotterdam I ran the Great Ireland Run - and by the way, what's the story with that race this year? There's no information online at all? - and even though I was meant to run it just for fun, I ended up running about 16 seconds away from a new PR. That gave me a big boost of confidence. So, here's the rest of the year in figures: April - Rotterdam marathon. Check out my post  here Great Ireland Run. As I said, I was very satisfied with the result, spceially cause it was so unexpected and unintended. Just to put it in perspective, here's the results from the same race in previous years. You can definitely see the progression through time. May - Bron to run series. Of course I wanted to see what I could do. Of cou...