unironedman

So after a disappointing week where it felt a little frayed at the edges, the weekend closed off on a positive note. The mid-week runs had been a bit of struggle, the hill repeats were a horror show (‘Horrible Hills and Where To Find Them’ was going to be a blog post, but I moved on…), and then I missed a gym session. And the right Achilles was threatening to fulfil* its destiny.

Let me stress at this point that these are all wonderful luxury problems. As anyone who runs knows, you’re already one step ahead of the posse if you can, and do, run regularly. That’s not to say the geezer you pass in the park going the other way, huffing and puffing and possibly not saying hello doesn’t have his or her own demons to deal with. Hell, we all have demons. I keep mine out the back. Hungry feckers.

Anyway, let’s not digress too far. One of my fire station colleagues who runs a lot, and does regular weekend long runs invited me to join them on Saturday morning. He knows I have signed up for Donadea, and that I need some decent mileage in the legs department. So after a fitful sleep on Friday night, the alarm went off at 6.30am and I was up, porridge gobbled and out the door to meet Ciaran, Ange, Des and Cathy for a long run.

It was dark setting off, and flashing armbands were the order of the day. A quick circuit around the west end of town and we headed out towards Carton Estate, followed by a lap in the old college in Maynooth before returning home by the canal.

My watch acted up a bit in the grounds of the college, and so I lost a kilometre or so, but no harm. All told it was the guts of 15 miles, and the bones of two and a half hours, and though I was tired at the end, I wasn’t banjaxed, and the ankle felt fine.

The following day, Mark and I did 10k in the park in about 59 minutes, and that was perhaps the most pleasing part of the weekend really; the ability (to quote recent sage advice from The Majestic Fool) to do back-to-back runs, and get you in the mood for running on tired legs.

Festina. But nice and Lente!

* Unashamedly Old World spellings in this blog; any auto-corrects that slip through the net are the fault of an over-officious computer, keen to put in a z when an s will suffice. And other anomalies. Actual spelling, grammar and syntax mistakes are my own of course.