Mon: 55min easy + 5 x 15 sec strides. Complete. 11:39km.
Tue: 20 min warm up, 8 x 1k @ 3:40 (60), 20 min cooldown. Complete. 3:38, 3:40, 3:39, 3:38, 3:39, 3:36, 3:37 and 3:30.
Wed: 60min easy + 5 x 15 sec strides Complete. 12.76km.
Thur: 20 min WU, 25 min @ 4:00 km, 20 min CD Complete. 6.44km in 25 mins (3:53 pace).
Fri: Off
Sat: 30-45 min shakeout Complete. 7.14km
Sun: Larne Half Marathon. DNF – dropped out at 10km. Boo urns.
“There it is again, that funny feeling”. And so the lyrics go. But what is that funny feeling? It’s the unmistakable disappointment of a DNF. There have been three before this week and all time trials – never in races. This one felt different though.
The last minute switch to Larne was a result of the awful car crash in Clonmel that took the lives of 4 young folk – 3 celebrating their Leaving Cert results and the brother of one of the girls who was driving the car that crashed near the town. Clonmel AC made the correct decision to cancel the race and, after fishing around in the wheelie bins outside my house for several minutes, I managed to find my previously discarded race number for Larne. Larne isn’t ideal for travelling up on the morning of the race and was made even more inconvenient when it was announced that we had to be there at 8:30, a full hour before the scheduled start time, to be guaranteed entry to the correct corral for the race. An early start of 5am and a 2.5 hour drive threw my pre race nutrition plan out the window. Instead of porridge, I decided to have overnight oats with yogurt and berries in the car on the way up, a banana an hour and a gel 10 minutes before. The start of the race was an absolute joke. When I ran Larne in 2021, the organisation was an absolute joke to the point that it was unsafe. This time, although not dangerous, had the runners lining up at the start line 45 minutes before the start of the race. We were only allowed run about 300 metres up a hill to warm up and there was no toilets or water anywhere. People always talk about how great a race Larne is but I’ve yet to see it.
Notwithstanding all of the above, I had a shite day. I don’t think any of this fed into a poor performance, or at least I’m not looking to use it as an excuse. From the jump, I just didn’t feel right. The first kilometre was downhill so I went through that quicker than planned but knew that would even itself up on the way back up that hill. I was in a group for the first two kilometres but I was going to slow to 3:40’s and with that I lost the group. I was in my head a bit to stick onto the group (they were running approx 3:35’s) but I decided to stick with the plan and run my own race. As soon as I let them peal away, I was pretty isolated. There wasn’t anybody close behind me and I was in no mans land. At 5k, my legs felt like they had nothing in them and I was already labouring with my breathing. I also wasn’t really aware of my surroundings and kind of zoned out; so much so that I missed the water stop and forgot to take a gel. It was only at 6K that I realised I didn’t take a gel so I lashed it into me then. At this point, we were coming down to the waterfront where the course does flatten out and thankfully there wasn’t much wind. One of the women who was in the group ahead of me was starting to drop back so I made the plan to get up to her and continue on. By the time that happened, the breathing had worsened, the gel had no effect, my legs felt heavy and I was in a bad mood; all things which are not conducive to running a good race. I didn’t really countenance dropping out until 9K and, even then, I said I’d get to the 10K split and make up my mind. Once I had sight of that, I knew I was done. Physically and mentally, I just had nothing left. I pulled into the side and sat on a wall for a minute to gather my thoughts and my breath. After about 60 seconds, I felt pretty good again physically but wasn’t arsed getting back into it, which probably worries me more than anything. I started walking back to the finish line when a volunteer walked out in front of me and asked “Are you ok? Are you injured?”. To which I said “No, I’m not injured”. And with great disdain, this young volunteer looked me dead in the eye and simply said “Oh…”. A proud moment for 32 year old me.
Speaking to Seán after the race put me at ease again – not immediately, but we got there. There weren’t really any signs in the lead up that this would be a bad day or that I wasn’t in good shape so it’s best to take this as an anomaly and not get too bogged down on it. In saying that, however, the next week will be entirely easy just to make sure that the body isn’t under too much pressure. I do feel under pressure, though. It’s hard to square the circle of consistently training well, for the most part, and then just having an absolute stinker of a race. Particularly when the whole point of the race is to practice for the marathon. Losing a long run 4 weeks out is as much of a disaster as the DNF itself. All we can do at this stage is move. Maybe this is the indicator that a PB won’t be on the cards. I wouldn’t be one to leave things in the lap of the gods, to roll the dice, to take a chance, so I will have to make a clinical decision closer to the time in terms of what Berlin is to be. Will it be a goal race? Will it turn into a training run for Dublin? Will it just be a jog and finish in whatever time? Or will it even happen? As Mr Stevens says in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize winning novel – “For a great many people, the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day. Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day”.
Buckets of Rain 