Music

To listen or not to listen.

I guess it all depends on what you normally do.

Personally, when it comes to running with music I don’t. Part of this probably stems from the fact that I have always been pathologically useless in truly understanding technology and thus being able to sort out the whole, running, with a music device that actually has music I’d like to hear on it. While I claim bad genes for this, it is just as likely due to my laziness when it comes to all things digital.

That said I do like having a song play in my head as I run, whenever going solo. Now, I don’t have to know the lines but with a beat of sorts in the brain a long run can be an enjoyable affair with a sound-track playing in the background.

Of course, it is important to make sure whatever song you’re listening to, whether imaginary (like me) or real (like with headphones) your song choice should be one or made up of selections that don’t have high beats per minute, unless you are running a 5k or less. The same goes for absolute rock anthems. I mean Eye of the Tiger is great but do you really need it at mile 4? I would say, no, unless you want to kick on and sprint for him (for the next 22 miles). Ditto for those fast beat songs like the Wankelmut Remix of Asaf Avidan’s One Day. Absolute cracker for the last few hundred metres but a sure thing to ensure your wheels come off if you are listening to it on repeat from the get-go.

Of course, wearing headphones brings up a host of other unwanted issues that include:

·         Not being able to listen to the sights and sounds of a marathon that span from corner crowd cheers to the unison of race watch beeps every mile and kilometre.

·         Coming across as an exceedingly unfriendly git.

·         Being unable to hear your racing colleague shout at you, watch out for that runaway bull/car/pram/piano coming towards you!!!

For me then, I will be running ears open but with a steady beat song already picked out, something from Grounds for Invasion I think.

Yesterday’s Training

My last little long run of 14.5 k taking nearly 1 hr and 5 with 4 middle miles at a shade over race pace.

Things you will (or might) need #7: Bras

Okay so, for a start, this is primarily aimed at women.

And secondly I am not a woman. Consequently treat my remarks in the same vein as if I were commenting on how to speak Swahili.

However, based on the fact that half or close to half of those who are running will be women I thought I should at least proffer the smallest crumbs of advice that have been proffered to me from a female runner.

First, make sure you have a sports bra.

Second, whatever bra you are wearing make sure it isn’t the first time you are wearing it. Like new runners and socks you should have at least brought it out for a few practice runs before you decide to take it along for 42.1 k of continuous movement.

And finally, a second bra can work wonders in that it can enable you to put/store/stash everything from keys to gels. That this gives you a more buxom look for those early marathon photographs is only an added bonus.

Other final female related tips I’ve been told include:

·         Fake tan and 42.1 km of sweat don’t generally mix, something especially relevant to those planning on on going to a mid-term wedding

·         Shaving legs should take place at least a day before so not to affect a good night’s sleep.

·         When it comes to using the toilet all bets are off – a free toilet is a free toiler no matter what gender is put over the door.

Yesterday’s training

Rest

‘Hold!!! Hold!!! Hold!!!’

There’s a line in the film Braveheart where Mel Gibson a.k.a. William Wallace a.k.a. Son of Scotland is holding the line as a wave of English soldiers on horseback bear down on him and his men. He has done the preparation ahead of the battle and is lying in wait with big sharp feck off 10 foot wooden poles that at the very last moment he’ll call his men to pull up and impale the English cavalry. As they get closer and closer at alarming pace he starts to shout ‘Hold!!! Hold!!! Hold!!!’ That’s kind of like tapering.

Of course, I am not referring to the impaling of your enemies at the last moment but the holding part. I am referring to the ‘hold!!!’

Tapering is difficult. The first week it is the best thing ever. You’ve worked you back-side off and the prospect of taking it easy is like a tropical island at sunset with good company and a cool bottle of beer. Heaven.

Week two and you begin to go stir crazy. Your body is screaming for miles and to be occupied and all you are meant to give it at most is the same amount of days out on the road but with much reduced workload.

By the weekend before the marathon you just want to take off and push the body out. You feel your fitness must be surely slipping away with every passing day that you are not out on the road or in the field pushing yourself. Every food you eat that isn’t pure healthy is an insult to the months of marathon miles and no amount of core work can prevent you from feeling pure guilty. It is at this stage that the runners and the road start to call you. It is at this stage you begin believing that a couple of tough sessions in the taper will be of no harm. It is at this stage that 8 miles into your last 8 mile run, or 10 miles in to your last 10 mile run or 12 miles in to your last 12 mile run is not enough and a few more won’t make a difference.

At this point you need to remember Mel’s words of wisdom “Hold!!! Hold!!! Hold!!!”. The oncoming English cavalry is the marathon and you have done the preparation so be brave and have patience until race day. Nothing you will do over your taper will make you any fitter, it can only make you less fit. You need to rest. You need to be ready. You need to hold and come Sunday morning 9.00 pm next week raise up your sticks and fight.

Friday’s training

Rest.

Favourite Tops

I’ve seen the Dublin Marathon medal for this year. It looks class. I like the medals for marathons. They are really solid yokes whose weight really give a solid sense of achievement. That said they can feel a little heavy when you get them, especially after 26.2 miles. While medals are a great way to seal the finish I tend to prefer the technical t-shirts that you get with races. This is probably due to the fact that you get to wear them as a badge of honour on your runs, something that is not easy to do with the medal!

I haven’t seen Dublin 2016’s t-shirt just yet but I’m hoping it will be a good one that might make my top three.

My top three technical tops:

Cork 2011 – Red is always a nice colour and this red was a rich claret made of the closest thing to silk I think you can get. Nothing exceptional in its images but to this day I love wearing it and it has come along with me under my Trim A.C. top in many a cold race.

Braveheart 2016 – It’s a technical top. It’s aluminous orange. You can wear it at night when you’re running. It has a cool looking runner print on it.  It’s from the local race. What’s not to like.

Barcelona 2015 – It’s always nice to have a foreign marathon top and since my cool Berlin 2008 top has disappeared, this quickly becoming faded Barcelona one is my favourite.

And then the not so good ones:

Dublin 2014 – With sponsors so late on board the t-shirt came late too with some questionable colours, questionable long sleeves and questionable collar it has seen very little light of day.

Connemarathon 2009 – Yes, the ‘I Hit the Wall’ does look kind of cool but it looks less cool if you got the exact same one last year for less.

Braveheart 2015 – It’s a technical top. It’s aluminous yellow. You can wear it at night when you’re running. But on the back of it you have the unfortunate design and mixture of sponsors that sees Aura Healthclub and Rentokil come up with the phrase “Rentokil Where People Come to Feel Better”

Thursday’s Training

A lovely light 8k with the old friend David

Pedigree

There are two drawbacks to pedigree.

The first is that it doesn’t really work for humans, not like in the same way it works for say… horses. As a result, if you find yourself in the same race as Oisín Coe, Sean El Guerrouj or Cian Gebrselassie you probably have just as much a chance of winning as they do.

The second is that pedigree runs downhill rather than up, meaning if someone happens to be a distinguished runner it doesn’t mean that their pensionable parents will suddenly have great potential now too.

This is a pity because if pedigree did work for humans and did work uphill then I could be feeling pretty confident with my lot.

On my father’s side, my cousin’s daughter is doing great things over in Canada in Triathlons. She seems to be setting the province of Alberta alight with her performances in juvenile triathlon races. To put that in perspective Alberta is bigger than France with the population of Ireland. When I was her age, I got to the Community Games for Art in Meath but didn’t qualify.

Meanwhile on my mother’s side, another cousin’s daughter in the United States has been doing pretty good things on the track. It first came to our family’s attention when we heard she won a school race. We presumed it was an Irish thing when someone does well it is blown up to sound a lot greater, kind of like when Egg & Spoon and a Sack Race on the same day in Summerhill Sports Day 1988, and it was spoken about as if I had won Olympic Gold in Seoul.

Then we heard she won again and then again and then finally once more but this time at the Madison Square Somewhere. I quickly realised that they don’t do 3-legged races at the Madison Square Gardens and that she must be pretty good. So good in fact that she has since gone on to win a World Junior Championships, a USA Indoor 1,500 Championship and has a World Indoor Junior Record over 1,000. Go figure.

So it’s a bit of a pity on the pedigree thing.

Wednesday’s training

Rest.

A favourite 10 k

Looking around at me she asked out loud if she was in the wrong spot. While she would not have been entirely wrong, she wasn’t entirely right either. She was doing the Run in the Dark 10k like me. However, that was where our similarities ended. While I had a marathon not more than a month ago under my belt she had a pair of tracksuits bottoms on and was ‘vaping’, something not commonly associated with middle-distance runners of any background. But then it was the Run in the Dark 10k and people had come out from across Dublin and a bit beyond to run this city centre docklands run in aid of the Mark Pollock Trust.

I met Mark Pollock once. Kind of anyway. Myself and my friend Dave were running around Phoenix Park one early Saturday morning when we passed two men dragging tyres behind them. Unable to pass by with curiosity we asked what they were up to. Mark spoke first and explained that they were preparing to hike to the Antarctic. Two things immediately struck me. One was how in holding his head up as if waiting for the wind to carry back a response I noticed Mark was blind. The second was how utterly determined he looked.

He made it to the Antarctic in the end in an extraordinary fete of endurance. However just over a year later a catastrophic accident left him paralysed. Most would have given up, for Mark it was just the beginning and from this grew the Mark Pollock Trust where he set about trying to find a cure for spinal cord injuries. And from that the Run in the Dark came, a series of races that happen in some major cities across the globe every November.

The race itself should not be my favourite 10 k. Yes it is great to have the opportunity to dash the streets of Dublin that are usually closed to the runner. However, on both occasions I’ve found myself run into the backmarkers of the 5 k field coming to a close, some ‘vaping’ most not. In doing so it can feel a little like running into an asteroid field. That said I’ve always seemed to run well in it and back in 2014, not long after the disappointment of the 2014 Dublin Marathon I set my personal best here in a time of 37 mins and 09 seconds.

Yesterday’s training

Almost 10 k with 7 of those at 4.05 pace. Just to keep myself ticking over.

The Treadmill

I was in a hotel up North last weekend and due to the weather, the roads, the uncertainty of the routes and the time I was reduced to the hotel’s gym and treadmill. Having basked on open roads, forest paths, urban fields and quiet lanes for the last five months running five miles on a treadmill was utter anathema to me. While I might have been kept dry from the driving rain outside the monotony of it was almost heart-breaking.

So to keep my mind off things at least for the first half after I had finished deciding what shade of white the walls were painted I thought of other things that are mind-numbing:

·         Watching paint dry.

·         Watching a wall being paint.

·         Palm Sunday when you’re 5.

·         5-day test cricket (when you don’t understand cricket).

·         A filibuster

·         Palm Sunday when you’re 12.

·         Waiting at that red-light near Blanchardstown Shopping Centre (substitute as necessary) at Christmas time.

·         Yesterday’s porridge.

·         Cemetery Sunday when the nun home from the missions goes on a solo-run with the decades of the rosaries.

·         A doctor’s waiting room when your phone is dead, the radio is dead, the last Now magazine is 5 years old and you’ve already read about the dangers of this year’s winter flu.

·         Palm Sunday any time really.

Monday’s training

An hour and 18 minutes. Roughly 16 k.