Obviously rubbish at this blog business

So here I go again after another massive gap.  How many posts is that in total? 5? Over 3 months?  Big medal for me I think!
Right...so I did Dublin Marathon.  Missed my time goal by 9 minutes but in the end I really wasn't bothered....just wanted to finish.  Is it a cliche to say it was one of the hardest things I've ever done?  Well it was.  So tough that for days afterwards if I started thinking about it or if the subject came up with someone or over the radio I would find myself welling up.  I realise that this makes it sound emotional in a quite sentimental way but it wasn't like that at all.  I've probably only faced myself warts and all in the way I did over those last few miles of those 26.2 twice before in my life and both were during childbirth.  Similarly to labour I had no interest in ever doing it again right after but starting considering it again the next day.....the mind is a really funny thing.
Wonder if it's easier the second time around?  Anyway it won't be for a while...possibly not even next year, we will see!  Maybe I should do a race report while I still remember it so I can compare to next time?

I felt like I recovered quite well from the marathon..no major problems.  Did a half last weekend to round out the season while I still had the miles in my legs.  Didn't love it as lots of it was on a beach and I now know that I hate to run on sand.  Time was ok - 1:51:44.

So what's next?

Cross country season!  Have been training with the local athletics club for the last few weeks and I think the coach likes to throw everyone in at the deep end so I'm showing up a 4k ladies race on Sunday morning.  Nobody is making me but I would never have volunteered myself so I guess I should be grateful as I'd never ever have even though to enter.  Please please please don't let me come last!  That's all I ask. 

Everyone at the club seems to be really nice and friendly so hopefully this will all be positive.  Keep me on the straight and narrow just a little bit longer before I let loose for the Christmas!   

Ooops!

So I sort of forgot to write anything for the last few weeks...a combination of laziness and lack of access to a computer. My phone is banjaxed too and that has been my backup. Must try harder young(ish) lady! Training for the marathon continues and I'm now officially on taper. Yay! So so delighted about this as the last few weeks of running have been quite tough, just never really felt rested on a run and my longer races have been really really tough to the point where I questioned my level of fitness. Anyway it's done now so no point worrying too much about it until race day. Time to recuperate and focus on shorter quality sessions and staying healthy. Now is not the time to catch a cold! In other running news I have another new pb over 10k! 47:40 which is also a full 5 minutes faster than I ran the same race last year. Absolutely delighted with that. This is even more impressive when you consider that we ended up in the pub Friday night for more beers than was a good idea at any time and definitely not the night before a race. Not very clever at all! Anyway it all worked out ok in the end so no harm done. Next big goal is sub 45 but I'm not holding my breath for that for a while. It took me so long to get under 50 minutes that I can't believe I'm actually considering sub 45 at all. I'm starting to feel like I might have some real speed in my legs (relatively speaking!)

Last solo!

I'm very excited to say that I did my last solo long run for quite a while last week!  Next weekend I have a kilomarathon (26.2km) and after that a 3/4 marathon (30ish km.)  I'm lucky in that I quite enjoy the time by myself that I get while running and I have no desire to run with groups regularly but it will be nice to have that energy for the next few weeks.  Does that make me seem really antisocial?

Will have to fit one more long run in after that and then it's taper time....otherwise known as Breaking Bad binge watch and Italian food eating frenzy time.  Can't wait!

In other news I had my first sports massage last week.  Naively I booked this on my birthday for a little treat for myself?  This was the opposite of relaxing.  50 minutes of undignified screeching later and I was officially feeling very sorry for myself indeed.....oh well!  Get over it you big jessie!

Happily the physio said I don't have any obvious problem areas and am surprisingly ok for a first marathon training cycle so that's good.  I'm wondering how painful the massage would be if I was having problems?

Speaking of birthday presents I did get a lovely surprise from the BF..... a garmin 210 with a hr strap.  What a guy!  He knows it's something I would never have gotten around to buying for myself (cos I'm not a real runner people!) but I'm delighted with it...and him the big handsome devil :)  Brought it out for a spin that very day.

Look at me adding pictures and everything!

Really sad to hear about the death of one of the half marathon runners in the Phoenix Park today.  I know that statistically these things do happen every now and again but it's always a terrible shock when it does and stats are very little help to the friends and family of this young man. Hopefully every young healthy person who is lost brings us one step closer to getting to the bottom of these syndromes.

Long run 3

The third of my long runs done today.... Yay!  Happy with that as my legs were still a bit tired after Sunday's effort.
As usual for me the first 5k sucked quite a bit.  This was not helped by realising I needed to pee just after I left.
Added to that I had decided to try a new route that seemed to go past loads of private homes but no handy little fields for me to jump into for a tinkle. Boo :( 

Found a quiet field in the end after about 7k to my relief and my legs had warmed up at that stage so it was all fairly easy (for a 30k run) after that.

Feeling ok this evening so maybe that means I'm getting used to the distance?  Major sweet tooth though, would give given my right arm for a giant galaxy bar this evening!

(Short) race day

So this second post took me a little longer than expected. Luckily lack of writing hasn't meant lack of training.... Plenty of running going on!

I've done two 30k long runs now so happy with that. The first I thoroughly enjoyed, probably due to the novelty of it. The second was harder although it was a couple of days after a wedding so it may have been partially dehydration and alcohol.
Anyway they are done and both in negative splits so that was good.

So back to today. Doing a local charity 10k so will do a few k as a warm up and then something similar after to turn it into a decent distance tempo run. Looking forward to it mostly but a little bit nervous as I'm hoping to pb by quite a bit. Always a bit more pressure over a familiar distance as you know what kind of time you should be doing.

The next few races I'm signed up for are all longer odd distances so not so much pressure and also makes it easy to get the long run in!

Fingers crossed for today and I'll update later. Must also put up my pb's over common distances so I can keep a record of improvements (if any.)

Update
New pb over 10k. No official chip time up yet but looks like around 49 mins. Yay!  Been trying to get under 50 for a year so delighted with that.

Update on the update
48.57!!! Yay!!!

Starting somewhere....even if badly

First post...Eeek!  Finding myself slightly intimidated by this utterly blank page so will fill with waffle to get rid of the air of brandnewishness(not a word most likely.)
So I've been running for a medium length of time, about two years and have until now done a fairly average amount of training per week for shorter or middle distance.....mostly 5 and 10k races.  I've never won anything or placed in my age-group and probably never will.  However, I have found myself moving up from the bottom 25% of many races to above the 50th percentile and I do consciously work on getting (a bit) faster.  So I repeat...I will almost certainly never win anything but I do want a way to document my running...from where I have come from to today and then hopefully to where I get to in the future.  Even if this just ends up being a place where I keep records of my races and pb's that nobody ever gets to read then maybe that will be a nice thing to look at down the road a bit.
Ideally it would be nice to bore someone else a bit with my microanalysis of training runs but lets see how it goes....god knows this might be it! Post grand total 1!
Oh also I've signed up for the Dublin Marathon which I'm in the middle of training for and it seems that running quite a bit is going to be all I'm doing for a while. Plus eating.  Lots and lots of eating.  Silver linings people :)