Week Three started with repeats. No surprise there, really, because each week of the programme begins with repeats on a Tuesday. If I had a little more enthusiasm, I’m sure I could root out some sort of gag about all this. But I think you know me well enough now. Make up your own joke. It can’t possibly be any worse than anything I would have inflicted upon you.
8 x 400m repeats at 3:30 pace. Ha, ha! Sorry, what? You’re serious? Oh…
3:34 was the best I could muster, and the rest of them were in the 3:40s with one 3:50. Which I will take, by the way. Done in the evening after a hard day’s work, I am happy with the results, even if I know I am missing the targets. Wednesday was a 7k at a more acceptable 5:50 pace but I went a little faster at 5:37. Thursday arrived with more woe in the form of 5 x 1k repeats at 3:55 pace. A bit leggy, and plenty of stiff breeze around meant I only managed to get one ‘lap’ of the pitches under 4 minutes with a 3:56. The rest were a shade over 4, though only one – a 4:12 – went into double figures in terms of seconds.
And just by way of mockery, Garmin decided to award me a New Personal Record for my first repeat. Pah!
Saturday was a 9k run at 5:40 pace. At last; a pace I recognise. Surely my old legs would fall into their old ways? No, as it happens. Again, I went out a little fast and never really slowed down, finishing with a 5:26 pace. This new programme really encourages you to get motoring, which is understandable, really, if you are trying to get a fast 5k time. But it’s interesting to see how quickly the body adapts to running that bit faster. That said, I need my body to adapt a little faster to this concept. There are 5 weeks left to go before I find a suitable 5k route to have a crack at the sub-20, and I am not sure it’s enough time.
(Incidentally, the editor has just pointed out that we used this blog title (more or less) back in March 2025. He really can be a tedious old fart sometimes…)
Sunday, and up at a reasonable hour with S. Dropped her off at the pool in Maynooth and I headed for the towpath to knock out 14k along the canal towards Kilcock. Just as I was smiling to myself at the thought of sending Gary a pic from my phone of me jogging in his home patch a few hundred yards from his house, himself and Niamh cycled past me. I should have known there was no way to run in Maynooth without getting busted! Lovely warm morning for a run with very little wind, and managed 14k as required in 5:18, which was a little faster than the suggested 5:25 pace. Also, a slightly worrying niggle with a right hamstring, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that. Funnily enough, I had been thinking that all this additional running and speed work would cause mischief somewhere down the line, but I had been pleased with progress to date. As any runner knows, you don’t have to commit anything to writing, or even whisper it to a colleague. The Running Gods are in your mind all the time. They see all.
Day off tomorrow, so that’s a good thing. Plus I have all of today to recuperate. And Week 4’s Tuesday intervals are something of a consolidation phase.
I am still toying with the idea of the time trial concept: pick a route, measure it accurately, and run it, perhaps with a pacemaker on a bike. But just me, really. Against me. And the clock. But then the other option is to find a 5k race and use the buzz of competition to spur me on. To that end, I found myself googling ‘fastest parkruns in Ireland’ during the week, which turned up a few options in Dublin. And a little further afield, on the weekend when the programme officialy ends, there are a couple of chip-timed 5k races; one in Kildare, and another in Wicklow. I’m leaning towards a proper race; that little buzz of competition might help with those valuable few seconds.
Above is a Giant Hogweed plant I have been keeping an eye on. It’s along the Liffey and I pass it the odd time on a run. It’s beside a popular fishing spot and where youngsters like to swim. I’m a ‘live and let live’ kinda guy but I did report it to the local authority as it’s reached six foot in height. Not the first time, either. The last time I did this, they nuked the area with glyphosate, and just killed all the native plants. The Hogweed came back. As it does. They need to dig it out. But I bet they won’t.
In other news, the World Cup is up and running. It’s the early stage of the tournament, when sub-editors get to use ‘plucky’ a lot in their headlines (e.g. ‘Edgy Scotland earn nervy opening World Cup win over plucky Haiti’). Mind you, FIFA have so fucked around with the format that it will take two and a half years to reach the knockout stages…
Some good stuff already. Morocco should have won their game against Brazil, but a draw is okay, I guess. Australia looked good beating Turkey. And Qatar snatched a late equaliser against Switzerland. (Side note: you always ‘snatch’ a late equaliser. You never just score one. Those are the rules. See above).
And on that note, check out this sketch which goes some way towards explaining Ireland’s attitude to the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNe-MkExcEI
The Musk gag below is very topical, but will go over your head if you’re not Irish.
unironedman 