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A quick review of the last few weeks. It has been tough that’s for sure. After the stomach bug I dropped around 8 pounds of weight, normally not something I complain about but it reflected the fact that even the most basic workouts proved difficult. As a result I had to start from scratch again. By the end of August I had clocked up around 46 miles that week which on the face of it didn’t look too bad at all but the lowpoint was a DNF in the Tullamore half marathon. This was my first DNF, I have struggled in some races before but always some way or another managed to crawl to the finish – most notably the Rome and Cork marathons in 2012 and 2013 and the sufferfest that was the Connemara ultra this year. This time after 8 miles I had nothing left in the tank and jogged gingerly for a further 2 more miles before calling it a day. I ran a slow hour beforehand covering 7 miles. The plan was use the race as a marathon pace run with 7 miles slow and 13 miles at marathon pace, in this case 7.50 pace. I have done this kind of workout before and it has always proved beneficial but this time I just felt drained after the hour warm up jog. Last year I managed a respectable 1.34.41 on the course last year but this year it was to be a tough afternoon. Maybe I was just out of fitness or still recovering but it was a disappointing setback. My buddy Aidan ran a cracking time in 1.30.33- great going.

I recovered well enough the following week to clock some good workouts running 45 miles with a 8.3 mile tempo run at 7.15 pace on Thursday and a long run of 21 miles on the Sunday. However by the end of this week a planned 50 miles this week had come to a abrupt halt after 3 days and 21 miles. I don’t know why I stopped running but I just did. I simply didn’t have the hunger or zest for it. In fact I was happier not running rather than running, a activity that was supposed to be fun had now turned into a crushing overwhelming drudge. Even doing the marathon in Frankfurt is turning into a type of overwhelming dread. Hence I rested since Thursday but aside from that had a excellent weekend meeting with friends, family and being with my wife. When I get back to wanting to run you will be the first to know but it may not be for a while.