unironedman

Running on empty is never a good idea. But first let’s go back and recap on the week so far.

Monday was another gym session, followed by a decent swim, as covered in the last post. On Tuesday, I was feeling a little twitchy after a day’s work and headed out into the gloom with my head torch. I added in a few items of clothing to aid with visibility…

As Coldplay might put it: “and it was all yellow…” Perhaps no harm it was getting dark.

Clocked in a decent enough 6.5k in 35 minutes for an average of 11.2km/h.

On Wednesday morning, the long easy run turned out to be a rather faster affair. Jarlath, Richie, Lorcan and I hit the park after a very easy warm-up, and then Jarlath announced that he was doing a fast couple of loops for about 20 minutes of pace work.

Damn.

I tried to tag along for a while, but that man has serious motor, and can do 18min+ 5ks, so there was no danger of sitting on his shoulder at the proposed 4 minute/kilometre pace. I stuck at it for the duration, so it won’t go to waste, but considering my legs were under the impression that we’d done our speed work the night before, it was a shock to the system.

Thursday was a frustrating aborted swim. S and I headed down to the pool, and started well, with room in the lanes, but they quickly filled up with ladies doing leisurely backstroke. The pool was cut down to one lane, and the rest was literally jammed with a teacher training session. After 20 minutes, we gave up and called it a day.

Friday (today) and a good gym session in the morning where I upped the number of reps of the various workouts I do, and the day’s office work came to an end with a run in the park. I had planned to do an hour of easy running (as payback to my legs after the mid-week sturm und drang.)

Have you ever had one of those runs when you’re heading out the door, and you know you should eat something? To put it crudely, I call this the dog-shit theory. Essentially, if you think you can smell dog shit, you can smell dog shit. Or, if we want to be more gentile, if it walks like a duck (etc.) then it is indeed a duck.

When you are about to head out for an hour’s run, and there’s a little anxious flutter in your stomach, it’s not nerves. You’re just hungry. I was convinced I had eaten enough during the day. In fact, looking back, I did seem to have plenty on board. I guess I’m using it up with this extra work. Anyway, long and not very exciting story short, after about 2k, I started getting that itchy feeling in your belly. Another couple of k and I knew I was toast (actually toast would have helped, but there was none to be found in the woods…)

I was saved by the bell. I had the phone with me for clocking the stats on SmartRunner, and the SO rang from the station (SO being Station Officer) to chat about the potential new recruits the service might be hiring. I wouldn’t normally bother with taking calls on a run, but there are a few exceptions, and my SO would be one of them. I slowed down to a walk and decided to investigate a path in the woods by the river that seems to have sprung up overnight.

It is a short detour on my normal route down by the river towards the weir, but it’s pretty, winding, and will be lovely in the Summer. I managed to jog home for the last couple of kilometres but heading out earlier I wouldn’t have guessed I would be posting a 7.1k in over 48 minutes…

So, golden rule. If you think you might be hungry, you are hungry.

Above are a few random images snapped on the detour. In there are the first flushes of Wild Garlic (already a mild whiff as I passed); some pine cones, some bamboo (clearly not native to these parts, but it gets washed down the river from gardens), some jelly fungus (awaiting the rain), the weir at Lucan, and the road not taken (well, in this case, it was).

Below are a few more random images: mostly Holly the Cocker Spaniel finding ever-increasingly wonderful ways to look incredibly relaxed, and a cocktail from Tamsyn (made with strawberry cordial, blueberries, strawberries and marshmallows, ‘coz, well, sometimes a girl’s gotta have marshmallows). Plus tea. Because I live on tea.