Straight 10Km
run. Starting point is work at lunchtime. I’ll try to incorporate as many hills
as possible which is a bit hard to do where I am (I live in Ballymun and work
in D.C.U.). In keeping with the mantra of attack the body I’m going to try and
do as many different routes as possible so I don’t get comfortable in one.
On the run
I was extremely lucky to have one of me friends, Alan, along with me. Alan is a
friend and colleague and also the gym buddy who I think is the most regretful
about not doing H&B. He’s determined to follow as much of the plan with me
and for that I’m truly grateful. I’ve known him a long time and trained with
him more than anyone else. I truly would never have gotten to this level of
fitness if I wasn’t always trying to keep up with him over the years. He has
this inbuilt competitiveness that I could never comprehend and I've tried to learn it from
him over the past few years.
I should explain that this competitiveness is
never anything but a positive thing. He would never dream of getting annoyed
the very, very few times I manage to lift more weight or finish a run ahead of
him. For the most part he’s competing against the voice in his head that says
give up and to my lasting gratitude he has shown me how to do that too. One of
the things that continually amazes me is when we’re all completely knackered
and have nothing left in the tank, him included, and out of nowhere he’ll reach
deep down inside and with a roar tear off at speed for the last few hundred
metres or get the last few reps lifting his own body-weight as if he was just at
the start of a session.
It’s not
only leading by example that makes me fortunate to be running with him, he’s
also really good at shouting encouragement when you’re flagging and getting you
moving when your treacherous brain is telling you it can’t be done.
Anyway , on
to the run (I am aware those last few paragraphs were a bit bro-mancey). It was
a pretty good run but we were mainly trying to work out what the pace should
be. We set the goal of a straight 10K in under an hour. Al had his phone with
him and we were using the truly excellent app from mapmyrun.com. We ran 2K to
the gate of what we used to call the forest when we were kids but is now called
Santry Demesne Park. I wanted to go here because we normally run a few laps of
Albert college park next door to DCU but the thoughts of doing a several laps
of the park for the umpteenth time bored the arse of me.
We counted
the first 2k as a warmup and stopped to do dynamic stretches and form drills as
our running coach, Henry, had taught us. I’ll digress for a while to tell you a
bit about Henry but I’m sure my efforts won’t be able to do justice to the
enormous influence he’s had on me and our team.
Back in April
this year the annual DCU 5k funrun was on. A few of us in work decided to do it
and it was, until now, my only experience with setting a goal and training for
it. It was only a bit of craic but I figured I’m quite healthy nowadays so I
wanted to take it a bit seriously. Other than the odd 3 minute warm-up on the
threadmill I had never run before because, quite frankly, I hated it. I always
found it such an awkward movement and I was always fighting to get me breath
in.
Enter Henry
(warning this will get a bit mushy and bro-mancey too) , H is a colleague and
friend but he’s not even a member of DCU gym. He’s a long distance runner
through and through, you know one of them people you can always tell are
runners because they look like greyhounds. The reason he doesn’t
come to the gym with us is because his thing is his running club. He thinks
nothing of a 30k run of an evening.
He had
already very kindly donated his time and expertise to a few people who had
expressed an interest in running and coached one of me gym buddies’ wife to her
first marathon where she achieved a very respectable time. When we got a team
of about 8 for the fun run and I’d said I wanted us to train properly for this
he stepped up (in addition I should also mention H is one of the kindest and
giving human beings I’ve ever come across, a proper f**kin diamond as I’d say
if I was a bit more Ballymun!).
So the first
bit of advice was probably the most valuable, get away from the threadmill and
get out into the fresh air. If you’re going to run then run, simple as. The
reason I think this advice was the most valuable was because if it hadn’t been
for the act of getting out into the open I don’t think I’d have fallen in love
with running as much as I did. The fantastic Summer we’ve had so far also
helped.
We didn’t
always do straight runs though we mostly did a lap of the park as warm up (1.74Km)
followed by dynamic stretches and form drills (I never would have known how to
do these). Then we’d get into it. He taught us sprinting one day, strides the
next and Fartlek, me personal favourite and not just because it’s a funny word
and I have the sense of humour of a 14 year old.
On the
times when we weren’t going full pelt I picked Henry’s brains about the finer
points of running form and technique. The depth of the man’s knowledge is truly
encyclopaedic. He even knows about the chemistry going on in your muscles when
you run.
Anyway, to
cut a long story slightly less long, we did the 5k, I made it in 25 minutes but
we all still run twice a week because we’re hooked. I hope I’m not being
arrogant in saying this but I don’t think anyone has fallen as much in love with running as
I have, always about half way into a run I get this colossal wave of euphoria
which is not unlike the feeling I used to get when I was a younger man and
horsed vast amount of drugs into me. It’s a lot cheaper too so yeah, running
rocks!
So this is
the longest run I’ve done to date. We got through it in under an hour and I
have a vague idea of the pace I need to set,
I definitely didn’t push meself as
hard as I could but I’m really looking forward to Friday’s run now I know what
to expect.
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