Where's me bottle?

Week starting 10^th March

As my Ballycotton time was given as 1.10.13 on their website I had to email the people responsible for the chip timing. They are also doing the chip timing for the upcoming Mallow 10. Obviously my chip had malfunctioned as the time given was my gun time not my chip time. This meant a difference of somewhere between 30 and 35 seconds and the official difference between a sub 70 or not. Hopefully all will be resolved. Having to re explain your time to people ends up making one sound like you are making excuses.

This week also marks the last full week of training before the taper for Connemara begins so the emphasis was on high mileage.  To be honest I would be lying if I said my training has been high intensity – it hasn’t but it has been consistent. I still hope to get around Connemara in under 3hrs50mins but I don’t expect  anything in the 3hr30 range. It could be one those days where one will be glad to just get around. Main thing is to “enjoy it” and recover quickly. Best to get the” sandbagging” in early.

The training week from Monday to Friday went very well. 4 miles recovery on Monday, 10 miles at 7.37 pace on Tuesday, 11 miles at 8.10 pace on Wednesday and 10 miles at 7.47 pace on Thursday. The legs on the whole were feeling good leaving me with a 22 mile run up in Cork on Saturday in the company of my old buddy Aidan. He’s in training for the Limerick marathon in May and this was his first 20 miler of his training. I did a one mile warm up on my own in Mayfield thinking running around 3hrs20 on my feet would be enough of a long run with the hills providing a reasonable Connemara like profile.  The first 7 miles  went well but the pace was slow. My legs were heavy and Aidan was feeling the effects of a long working week and a long drive down. The water bottles I put the day before in the Commons rd, Mardyke and the Cooperage were meant to offer us some relief  especially as the sun was coming out by 12 pm. There fore i couldn’t believe when I saw they were missing, amazingly enough this was a pattern that was to be repeated at all our aid stations. I was well pissed off- I hope the morons that took them get a mild dose of the you-know-whats. Serve them right.

Thankfully Aidan had the sense to bring some coins to enable us buy some bottles at the garage. However the stopping at garages every 7 miles of so disrupted our rhythm and this combined with the heat, the traffic (crossing roads) and latterly the hills (Ballyvolane) made life awkward.

Nevertheless we had a good natter. Another point of concern was the fact that the Garmin froze twice out on the run so I was losing track of my mileage and time on the feet but by the time we headed back to Mayfield, I reckon I had 21miles to 21.5 miles spending around 3hrs13mins(9.27 pace) on my feet. It was all I had left at that stage. Aidan stopped at 20 miles.

Afterwards a big gang of the lads met up in Cissie Youngs to watch the rugby. I dined on Lucozade and chips and burgers from the local chipper. The food of kings....

Now whatever happened to those water bottles.....

Mileage for the week 56 miles