The Tao of Tayto Crisps
Mr.Kardong's Post Training Refreshment
Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos. ~Don Kardong
As I ran past Galway Golf Course on Saturday morning, through the wind and the cold, I wondered about all the thousands of rounds of golf that had been played there over the years. So much human and sporting drama must have been played out over those 18 holes. Having played a little golf myself many years ago, I know that many golfers can take their sport seriously – just as I’m aware that many runners live and breathe theirs. The ground, over which that course was built, has no doubt, witnessed great joy as well as some disapointment. We think of our pastimes as being so very important, even when we know at the same time, in our hearts, that they are not.
Just when I was about to accuse myself of getting too wrapped up in training – for about the fiftieth time – I lightened up a little and cut myself some extra slack. Perhaps, after all, it’s possible to know that all of this is unimportant and still remain enjoyably engaged. There have been signs in the past that I’ve been in danger of losing the plot – of slipping into a trough of self-important seriousness. A couple of years ago, I stood in the canteen at work to celebrate the departure of a friend and colleague. A beautiful cake was divided-up and passed around. It looked gorgeous and yet I refused my share, because I was ‘in training’. On another occasion I sat drinking a Diet Coke in a bar and refused a bag of Tayto crisps for much the same reason, and yet I was in the company of an international cross-country runner who was enjoying a few quiet pints. Who was I kidding?
I think Don Kardong had it about right, although, for me, it’s all about the crisps.
Magic Sevens
In terms of running, seven has always been a significant number for me.
Running a mile in seven minutes or less has always been an indication of quality for me – an important marker. Although I’m certainly less of a ‘numbers freak’ than I used to be, I still log each run by distance and pace. This means that, even when I run by feel alone, which is a lot of the time, I will eventually find out what pace I’ve been doing. This happens when the big spreadsheet eventually gets updated with the raw figures. I don’t let the numbers worry me but they do act as a guide. An easy training run might be well above the seven-minute standard, but a hard run should really be below. When I’m trying to come back from injury, it’s always hard to hit the desired numbers. “You can’t keep it in the bank”, I remind myself. “You have to earn it over again, every time.”
When I tried to refocus on training around Christmas time I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I certainly had forgotten how tired, grumpy and sore a sudden increase in ‘focus’ can make you feel. It’s happened to me many times before, but apparently I had chosen to forget, that sometimes, better training makes me slower for a while. If you’re training four times a week and have plenty of time to recover you can be fresh on every run. When you’re training eight or nine times a week, it’s sometimes hard to get your arse out the door never mind spring down the road like a coked-up bunny.
Eventually, either being grumpy, tired or sore becomes normal, or those conditions start to fade. At that point I’ve reached stasis, a point of equilibrium, a point at which the training is knocking me back at the same rate at which I’m able to recover. All I need to do then is to stay with the plan and wait for the magic sevens. They arrived last Tuesday.
I went out for a quiet recovery run, having given it a bit of a lash the previous day. I ran easilly and purely by feel. Whenever it seemed like hard work, I consciously backed off. It was a beautiful day and I enjoyed the run from start to finish. I stayed in the moment all the way and tried to drink in the all the green and the quietness and the sensation of movement.
I went home and, as a matter of routine, plugged in the numbers. I knew the distance and the magic of Excel did the rest.
Milage 8.3. Average pace = 6:53.
A threshhold had been crossed and magic sevens were here.
Long may it last.
New Year before New Year
Zen Garden
For as long as I’ve run, I’ve loved this time of year. Naturally I suppose, I’ve been looking back over the year that is passing and making plans for the next. This time, the New Year has come a little earlier than usual for me. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been getting back into the swing of proper training again, in a way that I haven’t for many months. I have a reasonable base of fitness upon which to train and find that I’m enjoying running more now than I have for quite a while. I train best when I have dreams in my head and sometimes the more unrealistic they are the better. When I’m running to prepare for a race many months hence, it frees me to push hard in training now. If I’ve no big race to aim at, or dream to chase, I have no real incentive to run myself into the ground here and now. At the moment my head is filled with dreams of Connemara and the 39.3 mile ultra in April. I’ve run well there a couple of times in recent years but believe I can do a little better if I target the race specifically rather than taking it in as part of a wider schedule of races. I have a plan and all I have to do is follow it.
Three Choirs and No Man
Balance - Who Needs It?
The theme for the weekend was balance – how to define it, and how to achieve it.
I traveled south with an old friend to the Clonakilty Marathon last weekend. The conversation ranged far and wide. Music, religion, the X-Factor and acceptable dating etiquette for old fogies all came in for close scrutiny. We both agreed that, in all of these things, balance was the key to success. In the case of the X-Factor however ‘balance’ must consist of not watching it at all, under even the most trying of circumstances.
Clonakilty Ploddin’
The Mean Streets of Clonakilty
As one last gesture in the direction of ‘kickin-it’ I think I’ll go to Clonakilty on Saturday for their marathon. I have to be honest with myself and know that I’m not in the shape to run really quickly there, but I just can’t resist the urge to run hard just one more time before the end of the year. If I could duplicate my Sixmilebridge time I’d be more than happy. A stretch goal would be to get under 2:50…possible I suppose, but unlikely. The main goal is to have a little fun.
I hear it’s a hilly one but that doesn’t really worry me to be honest. We all have to cover the same ground. In the short to medium term, I’m determined to shake myself out of my recent lethargy and get a lot fitter than I have been this year. Although it’s frightening to think so, the Connemara Ultra is only three and a bit months away and if that race doesn’t motivate me nothing will. I have loads of new training options swimming around in my head and I’ll have to make some of them real.
A three-stage plan is begining to form in my head;
- Run Clonakilty as best I’m able.
- Recover for two weeks.
- Train like stink for the Connemara 39.3 Ultra
Let’s get part one done this weekend and then concentrate on phase two and three of the big plan…
Time To Get Back
It’s been too long since I posted.
Thankfully, I’ve been both running and writing since I last posted here . Unfortunately, I haven’t been running as much as other years and none of the writing I’ve been doing has ended up on here. Even though I haven’t run as many miles this year as before, I have run plenty of marathons - ten or eleven so far.At least I hav’t sunk into complete sloth and self-absorbsion.
Despite my scaled-down training, I’ve enjoyed my running a lot over the last 10 months or so. Unusually for me, I didn’t find any real competitive focus after the Connemara Ultra in April. I had changed jobs in March and that move brought with it it’s own pressures and distractions. I tried to carry on as before, but it didn’t quite work. As a result, I trained enough to run fairly well without running really well. Not a disaster I suppose.
On the personal front, I had some tough times over the summer months that are hopefully behind me now. For a while, I found it hard to care much about sport and I ran more from habit than desire or design. For a while, I wondered if I’d ever get back to any sort of balance. After an early moning sit at a local meditation center, I noticed the words ‘It Will Pass’ pained neatly onto an outside wall. I snapped the words onto my phone and straight away made the picture my ‘wallpaper’ and ‘screensaver’. Looking back, it seems like that moment was when I stared to come out of the funk I had allowed myself to sink into. Being constantly reminded that no much trouble you feel you have, that it will all go away at some stage, was a real help.
Hopefully the funk has passed. I have enough trouble with fog without trying runningthroughfunk 
The Day the Cow Went Mu
Clicking Off Miles - Connemara 100 Mile Road Race 2011 - Copyright Iain Shaw
All Photographs Copyright Iain Shaw
Race Report
I leant forward, rested my forehead against my forearms, bent almost double and sank onto the windowsill of an art gallery in Clifden. It was nearing ten o’clock on Saturday evening. It was almost dark and I was a happy man. With one-hundred miles of road behind me, I was wallowing deeply in the delicious sensation of simply not running anymore. I had been running, more or less continuously, for a little under 16 hours. I wasn’t completely exhausted – although I was almost there – but I was sore almost everywhere that it was possible to be so. When I eventually raised my head, I saw a small painting of a cow in the gallery window, which was entitled ‘Moo’. My scrambled mind made a connection to ‘Mu’, but that’s another story entirely.
