Clonakilty Marathon Directors Run (Day 1)

I already have the Clonakility Back2Back booked in February this year so I decided to sign up to one of the directors runs, I figured this would give me a good feel for the course that I plan on running twice in two days and at the same time I might as well get a nice 26mile long slow run into the mix.

So up at 4.30am and a 2 and a half our drive later I arrived down in Clonakility, although it was frosty in Kilkenny it was far colder in Clonakility with plenty of ice on the roads (I even past around 5 crashes on the Cork - Brandon road).

We set off shortly after 9am and my plan was to try keep it at an average pace of 9:00min/mile, but of course that went out the window as I got talking to people during the first few miles. Silly mistake to make but sure its not like I had to run the course again the next day...not this month anyway.

Really enjoyed the course as it had some really nice coastal views and there was next to no breeze which really made it nice and enjoyable.

Photo from Clonakility Back2Back

I will admit that I did feel the hills, now some of the blame is down to the fact that I just don't train on hills very much but also due to the fact that I wasn't very desiplined when it came to my pace.   

As I mentioned above my avg pace was supposed to be 9:00min/mile and I should have kept to that pace throughout. But did I? No of course not!  

I intentionally allowed my pacing to go all over the place, I think part of this was trying to see could I still run a decent pace during a marathon even after already running 30miles in the same week and the other part is I upped the pace when I felt good.

Up until now anytime I've ran a marathon I've always tapered the week or two weeks before, this however was a different setup altogether as I was running a marathon after already run around 30miles in the same week. 

What was the outcome of this?  Well, I ended up walking on and off at mile 21 and mile 25 (hills) but I still finished in 3:57 so given I was aiming for under 4hrs its still a good outcome.

So that was Saturdays long slow'ish run, to finish off my weekend I did a 10mile 9:00min pace run in the pouring rain. Surprisingly my legs felt pretty good on Sunday but they did feel tired come Monday.

I did another 9:00min/mile 4mile run this morning and although the legs felt a little stiff at first they were feeling good by mile 2, so all in all I'm happy so far with the progress.

Weekly Total: 66 miles

Miles This Year: 88 miles