DIARY: Kevin’s Way Run (and more..)

Our last Sunday long run turned into more of an adventure than any of us had bargained for, our plan was simple: run all of St. Kevin’s Way from Hollywood to Glendalough, allegedly a run around 30km.
One look out the window in the morning up towards the Wicklow Gap left no doubt that we would have none of the clear conditions enjoyed earlier in the weekend but the reasonable temperature and lack of wind made the persistent rain tolerable.

The incessant waters were laying another trap for us, however, as we optimistically set out around Slievecurragh. This stretch was wet but scenic and the back-road ideal for running with not a car in sight. Then followed a spell on the main Wicklow Gap road. As the signs read “Glendalough 21 km” we veered off right away from the main road and we looked forward to finishing the road stretch.

A bridge too few?
After 5km the moment arrived, only, the bridge across the river, itself only a feeder to the King’s River dominating the flood-plain, was gone and the water masses so powerful that after careful inspection we reasoned no other option remained to us than a painful slog back and the prospect of abandoning the run and returning to Hollywood or facing potentially a 39km run. The group was notably more silent trotting back to the cross-roads yet jokes were never far from ear and only Kevin decided to turn back as his cold was at him. Not a bad choice given what would follow…

We had put 18km behind us at this stage and did not get off the main road until the 24th km. “Car”, “Car”, "Car", was the constant chorus here, replaced by “I hate this road" from Jeff. As we finally passed Ballinagee Bridge and turned back onto trail, we took a look at the water-logged grassy path on our left which would take us further on towards Glendalough. “I want the road back,” said Jeff. Be that as it was, we slogged upwards on what normally would be a gorgeous grassy section. It remained pleasant yet unjustifiably wet!
As we crossed back on the south side of the main road and onto another forest trail, we saw another bridge. Only problem was that the bridge was lying on land and once again no spot could be found to cross. We could see the lovely path on the other side but had to slog through some branch-riddled undergrowth and crawl a fence back to the Wicklow Gap road to endure more tarmac before we finally hit the stretch of the way I am most familiar with as I can do it out and back from my house. From here mainly trail remained, but in the torrential conditions it had turned into quagmire and pseudo-bog.

Slippy slop
At the best of times, this part of Kevin’s Way can be slippy, today it was a mud-fest. Even once we abandoned the softer trail for the rockier parts, we felt like running in a river and the cold layer of ankle deep water did its best to hurry our progress here as the thought of losing toes began to fester in the brain. Then once again water blocked our progress. What is normally a shallow fort with barely any water was another roaring stream. Puzzled we looked across and Tim tip-toed into the water and back out again checking the depth. “I’ve waded across here countless times”, I thought to myself and then thought of Aoife’s home-made cakes and the tea waiting in the house. Oh, and also the European Handball Final in which Denmark were due to play Serbia (we won!). So, I decided to just plow through it. The water was thigh-deep and cold, which was oddly pleasant, but my footing seemed strong and I reckoned if I fell the others would fish me out (Jeff, remarked, I should have asked them to stand downstream first). Not long after I had crossed, James and Caroline helped each other across before the rest of us followed: Jeff, Martin and Tim, the six.

From here it was finally plain sailing and the stepping stones back into Glendasan provided a nice break from the monotony of slogging. The pace had been frisky at times, especially during the first 20km, and on the final tranquil kilometres back to our house, we upped it again and returned with spirits unbroken. “It’ll stand to us in summer”, said Jeff and mirrored the overall positive attitude of the entire group despite the overall misadventure our stint had turned into. No record attempt on Kevin’s Way should be attempted for a while it is safe to say! What is equally safe to say is that it is hard to quell a mountain runners never-say-die attitude, especially when he has the prospect of cakes, tea and biscuits to look forward to.

Run details: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/145658611

Another car “breakdown”
To cap out the misfortune, however, I returned home to a flat front-tyre only 48 hours after I had a full wheel alignment test done in Dublin. With the lack a pump, I have a head-ache to work out. Since me and that car seem symbiotically linked (we tend to break down with equal frequency) I am hoping this does not bode ill for me!

Only at New Year’s Eve, I dodged a bullet as I drove to Dublin and back with the nuts in the wheel almost totally loose. My mechanic had forgotten to fasten them after treatment! Luckily, the wheel stayed on during those 120km of driving and we discovered the problem before I took it out for another spin.

DIARY: Goodbye dunes, hello marathon

Our last dune session unsurprisingly drew a small crowd, competing with the Ticknock mountain race was always going to be difficult and with Aoife being slightly ill and Jason away on a stag in the West, it was up to Sean, Tony and I to pull the curtain on this series of Cerutty-inspired workouts. We went for a shorter dune loop today (taking less than a minute) to try and bring in more quality into the uphills and really getting the legs driving upwards.

It was good fun, but I don’t regret taking a break from that now and beginning my “proper” marathon training tomorrow which means “Out and Backs” every Saturday, the famous Lydiard “sub-threshold” run which gives you all the benefits of threshold running without the injury risk, staleness, glycogen depletion and muscle soreness that follows regular threshold running. The first “Out and Back” looks gentle enough with 12.5km in 57 minutes planned. I’m usually a bit faster on these workouts, but will be watching myself so I don’t stray too far across the actual threshold. There will be time enough for that when the Progress Calibration Runs replace the Out and Backs after the aerobic phase is over. So head down and prepare to run high volume until mid-March.

My ankle had been acting up a little this week after the hill session we ran in Munster last week, and because I had a particularly busy week my exercises were always rushed so I could not fully get it “worked out”. After today’s running in the sand, though, followed by the icy dip in the Irish Sea, I had time for a long regiment. I had also seen Hagen for my monthly recurring appointment in his MyoReflex clinic, so by evening time all tension was released and the ankle feels great ahead of tomorrow’s 30km plus stint on St. Kevin’s Way. Even better, Aoife is recovering faster than hoped and will do a hike tomorrow before rewarding us with her home-made cakes when we arrive in Glendalough.

We’re missing the IMRA Social this year as we have been away last weekend and are already committed to the Crusaders Social next weekend. We have not had many quiet weekends the last two months, so we had to opt out of this one sadly. Overall, I took a bit of a step-back week in line with my new “cautious” policy and recorded 75km. I’m hoping this will allow my body to super-compensate after the bigger two weeks. My first marathon training week calls for 103km of running but I expect it’ll be a bit less the injury break has taken some seconds off my base pace and I am expecting it will take 3-4 weeks before I am running consistently at the pace I need again.

To help my quest I have signed up with Romain Denis for a lactate test again at UCD and also have begun using a nutrition diary before meeting the professor of nutrition that works at UCD Sports and Performance. I hope she’ll highlight all my bad habits, check if I take in enough energy at the correct times and hopefully put some pressure on to keep me on the ideal path. I estimate I am about 3 kilos too heavy at the moment, so there is a lot of speed to be gained for the marathon in May if I can shed them in a sensible manner and optimise body composition as I go along.

DIARY: The “easy” road

It has been a busy week catching up with everything after the extended weekend in Munster. Standing at the Ballyhoura race start to run the mountain running training day brought back fond memories of one of my first mountain races which happened on that very course. I remember being midpack somewhere before getting lost with a local runner for twenty minutes in the woods and then finishing joint last. This time local man Tom Blackburn ensured no one got lost in any way and despite the chill wind we had 25 people or so eagerly participating in a 2 hour session.

I had another treatment with Hagen Stroh today and he really brought the pain which I see as a positive because he highlights exactly where my muscles are still unnecessarily tense. “Form follows function” is his mantra and while I have come on in great strides, my movement patterns are still in work in progress.

I can feel this when resuming training. I have now found a way to neutralise and manage the throbbing and irritation in my right ankle all of which is caused from tightness in the right hip and the right calf but I cannot bull-doze through training the way I did last year. Two consecutive weeks of 90km was heartening but my paces are noticeably more conservative than last year and I have to accept building my fitness slower this year. It’s been challenging because of my strange work hours and I’ve found myself doing some runs as late as nine o’clock in the night by torch-light but these have been particularly relaxing.

On the plus side the few times my ankle has gotten sore a few days of easy jogging have put me back into “a happy place” and I have surprised myself by managing 26 days running in a row since I decided to lay low and recover from New Year’s on 1st of January. The way things are going I will not find myself in 80-minute half-marathon shape within 7 weeks, as I simply cannot yet bring the pace and intensity into my aerobic running I had last year when I started with no niggles whatsoever. But this time I am positive that with my new patient approach, I will actually manage to arrive fully trained at a peak event. This has not happened since Snowdon 2009 (and even that was a fluke!) so you could say it is about time…

DIARY: Running and writing

It seems like everytime I cross a few things off my list, five new have appeared and whenever I settle down to catch-up on some long overdue task, I have heard a new cool thing on the radio I’d prefer to write about instead. What happens then is what you have seen on the blog recent, not too many ground-breaking new theories!

My main projects at the moment is writing about the newest findings on injury prevention and the programme I am working with Antony Riddle on rolling out in Ireland which loosely bases itself on an amalgamation of the disciplines Somatics, Resistance Stretching, Natural Movement, Myoreflex therapy, Postural Alignment Stretching and psychoneuroimmunology. That will be a mouthful in all its cross-disciplinary glory.

The second piece is an article series comparing Arthur Lydiard’s training to some of the “more modern” methodologies that has sprung from it such as those of Renato Canova and De la Rosa. These are taking more time than expected as there are so many misunderstandings and different interpretations surrounding all methods that it is easy to debate them towards or away from each other depending on what you put your finger to. In the end, I decided to create a series to look at different aspects in part such beginning with how the methodologies structure the phases and why they are not as rigid as they seem on paper. Nobby Hashizume has gracefully provided some good insights and feedback from discussions he has had with Canova and I am awaiting a reply from Keith Livingstone, author of “Healthy Intelligent Training”, who I am hoping will help chip in with some quotes and opinions. I am working with Keith on rolling out a series of online talks in Ireland on his book and his modern representation of the Lydiard system and we are all very excited about this collaboration.

Finally, of course, there is the running. I’m back feeling like a whole human being again since overcoming my problems and today as I did 10km with a session of 10x100m strides in the middle, I found myself running as fast as 16 seconds on grass without ever forcing my muscles to contract. It was pure flexibility and turn-over and I felt light and relaxed despite the many miles the previous days. My Monday jog ended up being very late, I did not get out until 9 o’clock to run by head-torchlight in Glendalough.

Overall, my running year has come off to a great start. I shamefully admit taking 1st of January off due to a New Year’s Party lasting until 5 in the morning. With plenty of British ales, Irish whiskey, traditional singing and Karaoke to finish off the night, we decided to begin the year restfully. Since then it’s been all about the work, though, and I have run every single day to clock up sixteen days on the trot. I am always happiest when I can run every day without pain. In that time I’ve run 171km and climbed about 2800m on my hill runs. My current work rate of 7.5 hours per week needs to increase to about 9.5 by next week and then slowly towards 10.5 for the majority of my marathon programme but I consider it a great start and hope I will have the time and energy to get in supplementary jogs in the mornings or evenings in addition to my main mileage as soon as I am confident that I am 100% “out of the woods”.

DIARY: Review 2011

Among the runners I worked with last year, one could justifiable leave the season with a lot of disappointment and the knowledge that his coach had let him down.

Thankfully this runner is myself, another proof that being a self-coached athlete can be extraordinarily difficult. Where a “3rd party coach” has perspective, you have emotion. Where your coach sees unacceptable risks, you see worthwhile gambles. A similar cycle of events as 2009 and 2010 was not met with the hard wisdom earned from those years but rather with the same propensity to repeat errors and this time the consequences were harsher: by the end of the year I had completed only 2160km (1342 miles) of training.

Year on year
My performance has plateaued over the last few years and you do not need to be a super coach to figure out why:

• 2009 (mileage): 3023 km (1878 miles)
• 2010 (mileage): 2980 km (1852 miles)
• 2011 (mileage): 2157 km (1341 miles)

There are no quick-fixes or magical formulas out there to make up for such a drop in mileage, despite the number of charlatans around claiming the opposite. My year also had a terrible rate of consistency as I started by running five of my ten highest mileage weeks ever, within a five week period (the first five!). In twenty-five out of the year's fifty two weeks, I managed 35km or less weekly mileage. Five weeks featured zero mileage when the injury was at it’s very worst. Looking through the year, I would classify 14 weeks as “proper training”, not an impressive return.

This misfortune may yet lead to a fairy-tale ending, however, I saw that I retained 82-minute half-marathon form many month's past the beginning of my injury spell and today my fitness and training capacity seems to be returning at a storming rate.

Racing statistics
In terms of racing, I did more than my training would really have warranted, basically doing a race per week of proper training. Unsurprisingly, I was rarely effective and my overall haul does not compare well to the previous years:

Races/Yr	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
#	41	16	27	26	14

The count of 2007 races is not something for a runner with competitive ambitions to aspire to but this year turned out worse than even the plantar-haunted 2008 which had marked a previous low-point in my fortunes. 2009 and 2010, while frustrating, at least had the redeeming qualities of being slow progressions from that damaging year.

Adding to the story, five of my fourteen race happened during the brief period of 27th November to 11th December when the La Santa Running Challenge (another great highlight to be fair) kickstarted me again, leaving the overall year barren both in terms of racing and training.

Highlights
The year past did not turn into a complete wash-out even so, my personal highlights being completing my first ultra in spite of the lack of training, recording a 5 mile PB, running my half-marathon PB close weeks after the ultra and taking the silver medal with our Wicklow Way Relay team. The latter three were bittersweet as the half-marathon and 5 mile showed how much more could have been had things been different, and the relay, while exhilarating, would have meant more if I could have added 100% of my potential to the 100% effort I put in on the day.

In terms of coaching, there were so many positives but I’ll cover that in a separate article at some point. A final highlight from a non-competitive perspective was acting as team manager for the Snowdon team, a rewarding experience and welcome excuse to stop over at a race that has come to be part of my annual cycles, injured or not.

Madman in training
Training rhymes with constraining for a reason and my most damaging flaw as an athlete is the inability to accept deviations from a set plan even when my physical condition has changed from the outset. Looking back over the autumn weeks leading into the Dublin Novice Cross-Country, a dismal performance by athletic standards, you see a runner who has just shrugged off an injury and is recovering his fitness suddenly doing two-three quality workouts per week (mainly cross-country specific tempos, intervals and the Lydiard hill circuit).

This training would have been fully appropriate had the season gone exactly as sketched out at the beginning of 2011 but not for a runner who had the period March-August largely disrupted by injury. Unsurprisingly I began to run some decent times in training and some strong workouts. In reality, this was just the last flicker of  my winter condition being consumed and by the time the Novice came around only a fatigued shell was left to hobble injured around the course of the Novice race. If was a race car at the outset of the year, the bright sparks of August were just the flames from the wreck being set alight by the roadside.

Either way, the cross-country races marked a premature end to the autumn season while also set the scene for my most fortunate chain of events of 2011.

A complete understanding of injuries
In terms of learning and experience no year ranks higher than 2011. I have broadened the scope of my knowledge far beyond the field of running which has proved extremely valuable as publications focusing on one event tend to be somewhat limited once they depart into areas that is not their key expertise (such as nutrition, injury prevention, psychology and health).

Rarely a day passes now without me sending a mail off to some expert or scientist and every week usually adds a few more books to the “read” list. My meeting with Dr. Mark Cucuzzella, Antony Riddle and Hagen Stroh particularly helped redefine my understanding of the nature of chronic injuries and illnesses. Where our modern paradigm has become blinker-visioned in treating almost all conditions as structural problems, science really suggests most causes are purely functional and eminently curable. But that is a topic for an upcoming article.

Where to go from here?
The natural reaction would be to throw the baby out with the bath-water at this stage. Three years with little improvement and many injuries would suggest a potential that will remain unfulfilled and a body to injury-prone to handle the sport, but the truth is different.

Since meeting Antony, my body is stronger than ever and getting better every day. My new understanding of the causes of injuries means I can counter and repair almost on-the-fly and a return to running has been the obvious result. By embracing Somatics and Resistance Stretching, and the emerging scientific field of psychoneuroimmunology (ouch!), I have the opportunity to almost completely nullify the negative physical and mental effects of aging until an extremely advanced age. With a refined understanding of nutrition and training, I am better placed than ever to capitalise on this new platform.

Weathering “runner’s low”
Personally I feel like a general who has lost most of his battles but remains almost confident of winning the war. When I checked my running diary for the figures for 2011 I noticed that I had not filled out a single entry since 18th of September, such was my despondency after the last injury-blow. I had gone off running, literally, in what was probably a low ebb in my enthusiasm for the sport.

Now, on the other hand, enthusiasm is fully restored, and in many ways a change of mindset has brought it back to levels it had not reached since the early years when everything was exciting and no cynicism surrounded my view of the sport.


Summary
In terms of pure numbers, I wrote down 15 goals for 2011 and achieved 3 (and these were more process focused goals). Athletically, 2011 was a failure on almost all counts. But I feel it will be a landmark year when I look back once upon a time. No training I did this year could have handed me as big an advantage for the future as the things I had to go discover in my search for why the injuries kept recurring. The answers seemed obvious, but they are not (if they were more traditional treatments would have worked, they did not). I see that as more valuable than a PB or race victory in many ways: I never accepted the frailty of my body as a “de facto” and never stopped searching for the true explanation regardless of how many specialists had to capitulate. In the end I found my answers; now I have to retain that wisdom and apply it to make 2012 the success 2011 could not be.

Ron Daws believed that every able-bodied man has the capacity to run sub 2:30 for the marathon. Keith Livingstone confirmed that it was not seen as an extraordinary feat in his time and I agree. Functional, environmental and societal problems constrain our ability to utilise this level of talent but anyone who could overcome those problems and be trained right should set their aims very high indeed and I am no different. 2012: here we come.

TRAINING: Sausage sessions

Both as a coach and as a runner there are training sessions that I enjoy more and some less. Coming home from tonight’s fartlek, I had enjoyed myself greatly in both roles. I’ve taken to participating in most of my own sessions as it is a golden opportunity to train with people.

For this evening’s fartlek workout I had chosen a session called the “sausage session” (which is really just a colourful name for “structured fartlek”). It may seem that “structured” violates the very essence of what a fartlek is supposed to be about and detractors would be right in pointing this out. But when you are running as a group, you need to take advantage of that and the sausage session is designed to be random and unpredictable in its own way and knock “us Western runners” out of our cosy even-paced workouts into the sort of roller-coaster running that African athletes so excel in.

A quick history of sausages

The “sausages” were introduced to New Zealand (and the Lydiardites) in 1968 by Roger Robinson and quickly proved a very effective training method both for cross-country specific work and as a way to increase oxygen uptake during the aerobic phase. These sessions were still run at the top aerobic intensities but offered a little something else from the easy and steady mileage during that period.

I first read about the session in an article from New Zealand Runner titled “Where Have All the Runners Gone?” about the steady decline of New Zealand athletics but only really took notice when Keith Livingstone included it in the Lydiard Foundation “training manual” Healthy Intelligent Training.

How to do it

The rules of a sausage are easy: one person leads each interval and no one is allowed to pass out the leader. However, slower runners are allowed to cut corners and faster runners can run wide if they so wish. Each runner is told the duration of their interval and the maximum intensity they should look for.

Today’s “sausage” looked like this:

• 3 x 3 minutes, 1 minute jog recovery (max 10k pace)
• 2 x 5 minutes, 2 minutes jog recovery (max 10k pace)
• 3 x 3 minutes, 1 minutes jog recovery (max 5k pace)

There are not breaks in this workout, you never stop running, and I particularly enjoyed this aspect as it gave a great sense of pace and kept the adrenaline level high. Initially, the runners chasing the leader seemed reluctant to cut corners but as the session went on, more and more used this. The 1.3km grassy circuit at UCD was almost ideal.

Our luck did not stop there: I had precisely eight runners in attendance on the day which meant each runner only needed to lead once. This is another useful aspect of the training session: everybody get’s exposure to how it feels to lead a chasing group regardless of relative ability in the group.

The pace

I decided to lead off to set the expectancy for the pace and was actually too conservative as I ran the 3-minute split at 4min/km pace (a good deal slower than my 10k pace, although perhaps not at the present moment!). From here on every runner who had to take his turn really brought the effort. James Clancy blasted away in before the dreaded “third man”, Jason Kehoe, ran the fastest “sausage” of the day, as we had all feared he would, setting a 3:39min/km pace.

Then came the vaunted 5-minute sections: Jeff Fitzsimons had promised talking pace and snickered about his 25km run the day before. These promises and exertions seemed forgotten as he disappeared away in a rush and held what “a brisk pace” throughout the long leg. Tim Chapman did settle the pace a bit but we were not relaxing by any means (again, unlike what Tim had promised, runners are terrible as setting expectations).

Newcomer to my group Paul Doherty got the first shot at 5k and put in a strong shift before it Sean Burke put in a 3:46 paced turn at the rudder . I noticed during the sessions how different runners adopted different rhythms. Some were on the back of the leader or thereabouts for each single repeat while others would drift back and relax for a few before hammering full force into later (usually in their own leg, a bit of pressure comes with the leader’s mantle). And, of course, it was hard to really know because everyone cut their own corners (or refrained).

Counting warm-up and cooldown the running came to over 15km (more for those admirable fellows who ran to and from the venue) ensuring that this was still essentially an aerobic workout.

Next week

Next week will feature another sausage session: Part of the beauty of the concept comes from the endless variations available. Perhaps I will tease runners with the 1 x 1 min, 1 x 2 min, 1 x 1 min, 1 x 2 min repeat ad nauseum (meaning invariably faster more interrupted running). Or perhaps we’ll do something more akin to a pyramid or a staircase or perhaps something with a very nasty long segment in the middle (10 minutes anyone?). Time will tell…

DIARY: Dunes and mountains

Last year my running season began with a series of largely lonely very strictly prescribed aerobic workouts. These were undeniable effective in creating aerobic fitness quicker than any other method of training but mentally it took an iron discipline to execute them week on week and eventually breakdown followed.

This year necessity and experience finds me using a different approach having inserted a one month “pre-strength” period into my marathon preparations for Copenhagen, an approach inspired by the Japanese adaptation of the Lydiard system which features daily 5-6 hour hikes with backpacks to build up muscular and tensile strength to its maximum. The Japanese then embark on a gruelling aerobic period with three runs per day (90 minutes morning, 60 minutes Noon, 90 minutes evening) six days per week before their weekly long run.

My training aspirations do not reach that far but mountains is a language I love and understand and I have decided to create my own pre-strength programme based around a mixture of regular hill running, fartleks, stride and drill sessions and Saturday dune running at Brittas Bay.

As I learned from Antony Riddle last year, whatever sport you pursue, the environment in which it takes place (be it a boxing ring, a lake or on a mountain) must become an unobtrusive part of your every day living. Running must come as naturally as walking and should be linked to a positive experience by your sensory session. When you go out the door it should not feel painful, tiresome or forced but rather enjoyable. One of the easiest ways to make it pleasurable is to have company so rather than do my regular 1-month coaching break I have increased the number of sessions I run in January and make sure I participate in every one!

Fartlek

Wednesday began this new routine on an abysmal day of roaring winds and lashing rain. Only four lonely souls made it out to the darkened UCD campus but our fartlek turned out anything but recreational as we subjected ourselves to all sorts of paces and finished off doing some “fun racing” over the 100m, 200m and 400m distance.

A real easy fartlek should be fully self-controlled but when we meet up I try to make a common game out of it with certain rules. Our competitive instincts always run high as it is, so my challenge for the coming weeks is how I can “restrain the flock” and ensure we do not go overboard in these sessions.

Working out the pains

My troubled right ankle flared up badly on the last part of the Fartlek but thanks to Hagen Stroh, Antony Riddle and my new favourite toy “The Stick”, I can manage to release it. The stick provides instant muscular release, aggressively attacking any knots and trigger points particularly in the calf similar to what I am sure Ger Hartmann will do. I cannot do six hour sessions but with the Stick at hand I can torture my calves several times per day.

Antony Riddle’s postural exercises allow me to “reset my posture” before every run. I do a series of natural squats, foot yoga drills, core exercises and jumps from a step directly down into a squat position. These drills help overcome muscular tension and bad habits from sitting too much and old injuries and leave me starting my run with better posture. The jumping exercises “convinces” the sensory system that the system is indeed fully ready to take the pounding ahead and helps kick-start the natural springiness that we all possess in our legs, turning them from stiff and rusty to flexible and soft.

With a few easy jogs and this routine my ankle settled and caused me no trouble during the weekend’s running.

Dune running

Eight runner turned up to my first dune running session and we got quite a workout here and I left with the impression that people saw this as something a little different. We began with a slow run over the entire stretch of trail among the dunes (about 2km worth) before doing some warm-ups on the beach and four quick sprints to the top of an extremely steep dune. The last bit was mainly a bit of fun and had most on their hands and knees as they reached for the grass and belted down again.

This done we prepared for the main part of the day: 2-3 circuits featuring 460m of intensive running over the dunes with equal recovery back on the beach. Greg Byrne, Jason Kehoe and myself shed our shoes and went barefoot while Gary park ran in Nike Katana (a “spikeless spike”) about the flimsiest shoe you can get (and I mean that as a compliment).

The change in grip and power of each leg drive was incredible as both Jason and I noted immediately. Suddenly we were slipping less backwards in the soft sand and each lap saw our group take off at a ferocious pace as a pack of beach-hares hunting each other: up and down and up and down, with no lay-off. On the final lap our enthusiasm almost caused a triple-collision between Jason, Greg and I. We did not get away entirely Scot-free: Aoife had to pick up five thorns from the dead thistles that had strewn the path the same evening. Jason likewise had to go to work with his pinchers.

The shorter circuit proved a better choice than the longer one I had originally intended. With its longer length and steeper dunes, all but the strongest wore out fairly quickly on the long loop and what we were looking for was some explosive strength work and to really work the ankles, calves, quadriceps and hamstrings. With the short and undulating dunes, we got what we came from. As a bonus, the lack of impact from the sand leaves your legs fairly fresh for the next day.

Trooperstown/Paddock hill circuit

The final group session of the week proved the most popular with a full twelve mountain running enthusiasts starting out from the Visitor Centre car park and a further two joining us at the Woollen mills: Tressan and James McFadden. I got worried when I saw James: last time we went on a long run, he had set a ferocious pace up the Torc Waterfall climb during our Kerry Weekend which left half the field gasping for air.

His running style is deceptively effortless (and he had finished 5th in the BHAA cross-country the day before!) and you get pulled along until you start feeling the string late on. Each stride uphill, even a steep slope, sees almost his entire foot hit the ground and “bound off” the ground giving him a powerful uphill bounce rather than a conservative shuffle.

I found myself first in the firing line during the initial single-track which means you have commenced the climb to Trooperstown chatting away with James up front. As we hit Trooperstown proper, I decided to let myself drop off as Kevin O’Riordan and James continued at a pace that left me wondering what we’d have in store for all the miles ahead. The trio of Tim Chapman, James Clancey and Jason Kehoe working their way up behind me caught up here while James and Kevin ran back to us and our front group took off down the shoulder together.

Food at the end of the tunnel

Luckily, Aoife knew the route as well as a sizeable gap had opened very quickly between our group and the next runners. It’s not pleasant to feel under pressure to keep up during a long run, so this worked out perfectly. By Boots mountain, James had left everyone and only come running back towards us as we emerged from Trooperstown Wood. The mountain was wetter and sloppier than last weeks and without grips it made for a real slide-fest in places.

At the foot of Brockagh I told Jason, Kevin and James to go on ahead as Tim and James Clancey had fallen a few hundred metres behind on the descent off Scarr and I wanted to ensure they took the right turn. We ran in together in just a few seconds over 2 hours for the 20.7km. This was 9 minutes quicker than last time so we felt like we were moving at times and to reward ourselves for the effort, I had worked on a vegetable soup the previous day which was served for everyone in our house with pots and pots of tea before Aoife rolled out the birthday carrot cake in honour of the double-celebrants: James and Tressan.

No one got lost and the reviews of the route seemed favourable, Brendan Doherty went as far as telling me he’d “add it to the armoury”. Next up we’ll be looking for something slightly more open mountain but with the current extremely wet conditions, my creative brain cells may need to work again as my first choice route can be slightly soggy even on a good day!