Saturday 16 November 2013

Eight Women and Two Men

I'm trying to be a little more creative with my post titles, as you never know what people are searching for on the web.  This morning Eight Women and Two Men (Bubbles and myself) went for a ten mile run. I was a bit worried if I was taking on too much in ten miles, but I knew the route and if I wasn't feeling well, I could bale out at different spots.  We ran Long Ross with Lynally thrown in, and I was happy enough to come home in 1hr, 43 min and 46 seconds.

Running in a group is definitely the way to go. I've said it here many times, how easy it is to stay at home when you're planning a run on your own, but that it's more difficult when others may be waiting for you to turn up, before they head off. I certainly wouldn't have got out of bed this morning only for that fact.  The other big plus of running in a group is that you'll push or pull each other on.  There were times on this morning run when I was going through a tough stretch, and on my own, I would have slowed down or stopped. However as we were chasing a pack ahead of us, I didn't want to fall too far behind, and so I just ran through it.  Then when I was feeling a bit better, Ray and myself caught up with the girls. This was around the seven mile stage.

One of the interesting topics that came up on this mornings run was Rays' musings on how difficult it can be to get the running watches working properly, and getting to understand which buttons to press, to get it set up right. He claimed the watch was a bit like a woman in that regard, but once you got the hang of it, and the worked out which buttons to press, (or not press!) great fun was to be had!

Anyway thanks to the two Marys', Hillary, Sharon, Josie, Miriam, Trish, Dorothy and Bubbles, for the company this morning. until next time, Slán.

Sunday 10 November 2013

Back at it!

It's been a while, I know. I felt it this morning when I ran 7 miles with Bubbles. In fact. I'm still feeling it now, especially between my legs, as I forgot to put on the Vaseline before the run. I started an Internship in Dublin two weeks ago as part of my College course. The office hours are 9 - 5:30, which means I have to get the 6:50am train in the morning, and I do well, to get the 6:15pm train home in the evening. This means early nights and early mornings, which doesn't exactly fit in with training at the moment. I'm trying to come up with a solution, and the weekend run, seems to be an obvious target. I've been reffing rugby matches most weekends, which rules me out of the long run on that day, and somehow, I've always found an excuse for the other day of the weekend. So a big thanks is due to Bubbles for getting me out this morning. In fairness, Ray has been ringing me regularly, to find out where I've disappeared to, and encouraging me to get back running. I had great intentions of going for a run today, but in all honesty, if Ray hadn't texted me last night, I probably wouldn't have gone.

What I found this morning when I did go, was a welcome as warm as ever. There were about 15 runners heading off at 8:30am, but Bubbles stuck with me, as I was going at a slower pace. We ran Short Ross(7 Miles) in a time of 1hr and 13 min, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We chatted the whole way around, me for the first half, and then Ray for the second half. We were joined by Adrian Martin(Club Captain) for the last mile, as he was coming back from a longer run, and just happened to meet us at that part of the route. So Adrian took up the conversation from that point until we finished. After we'd finished, Ray told Adrian that he'd gone for a ten mile run with the girls yesterday. Adrian seemed impressed and asked who else was in the group. After Ray had named some of the runners, Adrian exclaimed that they were a lovely group to go running with, and that their progress had been very good over the last year or so. He then asked with a bit of a frown, if they still chatted so much? I found this quite amusing considering, Adrian hadn't shut up since we met him on the run home! When I pointed this out to him, he laughed with his usual good humour and just shrugged his shoulders.

There's a table quiz on Wed night as a fundraiser for the Harriers. There were 40 teams at it last year, and Bubbles and myself are going to be part of a team this year. It's on in the Court Hotel at 8pm, and the cost is €40 per table of four, of course everybody is welcome and the more the merrier. Another member of our team is Billy Delaney, a clever lad with an insane general knowledge, so I'm hoping for once that I might finish at the head of the field, in a Harriers run competition!

As it's been a while since I was on the blog, so I looked over some stats since I've last written. Obviously numbers have dropped off, due to the lack of fresh content, but I found it amazing to see that my post entitled "In The Kingdom of Kerry" has attracted a large audience. The average page views per post is around the 120 mark, with the first two and the Half Marathon post reaching 400. I can only imagine what disappointment, web surfers must have had when they clicked on the post "In The Kingdom Of Kerry" as I doubt all 996 page views came from people interested in a running blog.

Anyway, It's good to be back, and thanks for reading. until next time, Slán.