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Jun
9
2008
|
How not to run the Wicklow Way Relay 2008 |
DUBLIN, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - O.k. so Aisling was there with big ambitions in mind (guess who ran leg two and set a new record? :) for her times. I was just there to make it through the day! I suppose the name of my team, The Social Climbers, gave it away though :)
you know how it is though, we were there for some fun, but we definitely weren’t going to just ramble along - we’d all give it our all!
Naomi, my girlfriend, got the Silly O’Clock start (getting up for 5am is not a cool time to be getting ready to run with a bunch of elite runners…..). Still though, she did clock in a more than impressive time to start off with, even amusingly coming across one runner who she could hear after over-taking them to be getting sick. Lovely, and all before the time I’d normally have breakfast!
Kudos to all our other team members (Barry Watts, Fiona Sherrin, Rachel Cinnsealach, Kevin Byrne, Declan Cunningham and Moira Creedon) who put in very respectable times also - it’s interesting to see we all averaged pretty close in our placings throughout the whole race. As a whole, the team knocked 17 mins off last years result - not bad for a bunch of climbers.
Anyway, I suppose I should reference this since Aisling referred to it on Friday. I hadn’t run my route before - ever (although I was telling everyone on the day that I had walked it 10 years ago so that there wouldn’t be any issues ;). As luck would have it, I’d the longest leg (although thankfully supposedly one of the easiest to figure out).
See the photo above, that pretty much shows how I ran the leg. Mobile phone with a digital image of my leg, and a text description. Who says you can’t make it up as you go along!?!) It was pretty hard to see the phone screen in the sun but it worked out pretty well :)
How’d it go? At only one point did I feel that I’d gotten lost, and considering the other two guys I met didn’t know where they were going either, I didn’t feel so bad. All in all, a good day at the office and it cost me about 2-3 minutes.
On a side note, not running for 3-4 weeks and then running a 20km hill run is NOT a good idea. I still can’t walk properly……
- Neal :) -
Latest Comments (5):
lol!!! on a phone, that’s gas!
I’m so glad I didnt have to do that leg ..I recced on bike last week and thought it was tough. Fair play neal and well done.
@Robin: thought you might like it :) gave me a laugh too and you should’ve seen the looks I got at the beginning. LOL
@Grainne: yeah, it definitely drags on in places. Although, I have to say the scenery was gorgeous - can’t believe I’d never been down there before. Does that mean I wasn’t running fast enough if I’d time to check out the scenery? ;)
LOL at you! Our leg 7 runner hadn’t recce’d it either so we were very glad she got through it too! Well done Neal, I’d be too scared to head out like that! But you ran a great time anyway, anything under 2 hours for that distance on the hills is very impressive.
LOL, sounds like a fun day out.
You’re dead right about it not being a good idea to run after a 4 week break. Still walking like cowboy after deciding to run the Cork marathon on a whim last weekend : ?
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