Oh yeah that marathon
Sunday, October 11th, 2009“Wow. You are going to die when the marathon comes around,” said John Healy. He said this after I told him of how shattered I was last night. After the Ireland-Italy game we walked back to the city centre. Healy, who weighs about 2 stone more than me, had to slow down for me as my legs simply couldn’t keep pace with him. Yeah, things have gotten weird.
A series of events over the past month and a half have combined to throw my warm-down from the walk and re-preparation for the marathon into a state of chaos. It’s not that I’m so tired that I can’t keep going, far from it, but my leg muscles have withered such from lack of use that I’m simply not able to keep pace with even relatively slow friends.
So here we found ourselves walking to Madigans on O’Connell St for a quick post-match pint. I left after the first one as I had to get to Ken Hynes’ 21st in the Long Stone. Once again Healy walked with me. Once again I had to get him to slow down. Within an hour and a half I was fading fast and had to retire, not arising until noon today. This rather excessive level of fatigue prompted John’s rather stark response.
Of course it’s nowhere near that bad in actuality. As it stands I can still go quite substantial distances without feeling tired, I just tend to do them a lot slower than normal. The lack of training will probably kill my shot at a PB this year as with 15 days to go to the race I now have to enter the tapering period, when light running is the maximum I can allow myself. Amusingly a light run would be more than what I managed in most of the past month so essentially it’s just continuing what I’m doing now only with the addition that I cut out the booze and eat healthier.
How this will all affect the time I post is anyone’s guess. A PW, or personal worst, is highly unlikely as even with the slower pace I’m still in far better shape than the post-hernia recovery state I was in when I did a 7 hour 45 minute time in 2006. My personal best of 6 hours 32 minutes is more possible but still fairly unlikely.
A more realistic window is somewhere between my other two marathon times of 6 hours 49 minutes, from my first Dublin race in 2000, and 7 hours 15 minutes, from 2007. As I plan to run no less than 6 miles, and hopefully a full 8, of the Dublin course it’s reasonable to think that I’ll be inside the slower of those times. The catch will be in the walking miles I post. It’s a near certainty that my walking miles will be slower than those I typically post. This may be compensated somewhat by my slowing less as the race wears on than I typically did in past marathons.
Either way it should prove a decent challenge, but nowhere near the challenge that one Gerard Fay from Drogheda is taking on around the same time.
Ger got a mention back at the start of the walk when he completed a 24-hour walk around a GAA pitch in Drogheda, clocking up 95 miles in the process. Well he’s back at it, once again in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland, by doing the Dublin marathon course 8 times in 8 days. Over the course of the week before the race Ger will come down from Drogheda and do the full course every day, wading through all the human traffic, stopping at pedestrian crossings and whatnot, before turning up at the starting line on the 26th for what by that stage will seem like the far more sedate task of doing the actual marathon itself.
Just for a change of pace I’m going to stick in some seriously 80s electronic music. This is going out to Sam Libreri and Ken Hynes who both celebrated their birthdays this weekend.
EDIT: As if proof were needed that I’m a tad scatterbrained, I initially added this as a new page rather than as a new post.
