Dublin Marathon, Mile 3

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Running and vacation in Croatia

Week 25/26

Today I just arrived back to Mannheim, from a weeks vacation in Croatia. We go once or twice a year to a place called Ciovo, on the Trogir Riviera. Its a really nice place and we own an apartment there. You can leave our house at 0530 in Mannheim, fly from Stuttgart airport and be on the beach for 0915! The week was nice; my wife's parents and some friends were there for 4 days and then we had two days alone, and then my brother James and his partner arrived.

I managed to get some running it, but not as much as i had planned! Slept in a few days and couldnt be bothered for some days, but managed to get out 4 times and covered around 30km. Thats not too bad for being on vacation!

There are some awesome places to run there, but you cant escape the hills. Here is a picture I took whilst out on a 10 K'er:


Drank too much, ate too much but what can you do when on vacation, eh? :)

On the last day my brother James arrived. We went out to dinner and was celebrating our 1 year anniversary of our car sales business. Here's us tucking into a bottle of bubbly:


All in all, it was a great week and happy to chill out and let the running take a bit of a back seat for a bit. Next week it will be all about losing the weight gained though...

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Didnt do the Mannheim Marathon last week

Week 23 and 24

So after all the training and preparation for my "home town" marathon last Saturday, I didn't even get to lace up my runners, never mind get to the start line. An unexpected very warm stint suddenly blew up the pollen count and caught me off gaurd, and knocked me for six. Now I suffer from hay fever every year, mostly only for the month of May. So i take tablets for all of May but as this year May as a wash out, I guess the pollen only started flying when the sun started shining at the start of June, by when I had ran out of tablets and thought i didnt need any more. Boy was I wrong. On the Friday before the race i was wrecked and didnt sleep over night. The race was on Saturday evening but I knew by Saturday that I didnt have the energy and wasnt in a correct state to even try. GUTTED.

But hey, life goes on. Well, i was a bit of a moody fecker this week as my wife will probably tell you. And I had lost the motivation to get out and run for most of the week, only clocking up two 5 KM runs mid week. But today (Sunday) i ran a nice low key, local 12km event in Mannheim that was really nice and got my juices flowing again. I decided that i wasn't going to push myself but was going to just enjoy the race, but quickly I started to push myself and saw that I might clock a 10km PB if i pushed a bit more. Going past the 10KM marker I was at 53.43 which is 23 seconds faster than my previous PB! BOOM! That got my spirits lifted, but i was pretty fucked for the last 2 KMs. 12k is not a normal distance that one would normally train for, and caught a few people out at the end.

A friend of ours Mike who also ran, came 6th overall with a very fast 48 mins for the 12km, only a few seconds behind the winner.

Anyway, that was what I needed to get my head back into the training mode. I said I was going to do 4 marathons in the space of a year. With Dublin last October and London in April, i have to find 2 more to do in the next 4 months! FCUK.