Meeting a running legend & recovery

Little bit of catching up to do......

The last two weeks have been a very mixed bag, after my high mileage week which ended with the Slievenamon Loop I began my tapering for the Dublin marathon on the 27th October, however things didn't go great.

For anyone that read my last blog post you'll note that I fell during the Slievenamon loop, while this wasn't very painful during or after the run or even the next day I had alot of muscle pain during the week after it.   It did however start to get abit better so I decided to go ahead with my plans for a very easy paced run on Saturday.

So last weekend I decided to meet up with the legend Tony Mangan while he completes his lap of Ireland after already completing 50,000km that he's already run around the world since 2010.

Tony started his world run in October 2010 by running the Dublin Marathon, once he completed the marathon he stayed running across Ireland, Newfoundland land, Canada, north and south America and now he's been to over 40 country's!

Tony & myself on the old Waterford Road

He's basically running a marathon a day for the past 4 years, he's been keeping a very interesting and detailed blog of his adventures since the beginning. (well worth a read!)

I met Tony for a few miles while he was running from Waterford to Kilkenny on Saturday and did around 11.5miles from Waterford to Ballyhale on the old N9 road.  (Garmin Link)

The pace was easy going and I wasn't alone as I was also running with  Catherine who was also from Kilkenny and was also well experienced as she had previously completed the Connemara 100. We were supported by a friend of Tony's and also Vincent who is the race director of the Tullaroan Marathon.

By the time we hit Ballyhale I decided to call it a day as I had plans for the rest of the day but Tony & Catherine went on to run the rest of the way to Kilkenny, meeting up with others along the way.

Catherine, Tony & Myself

As it turned out this run (although a very easy pace) was likely a very very bad idea as the muscle pain in my chest and side really kicked off again.

Sunday was very painful and things hadn't improved on Monday at all so I decided to be on the safe side I better see a GP as it was hurting to breath, so long story short I confirmed I didn't damaged any bones in the fall and it was just muscle pain.

On Monday I was questioning if I could go ahead with the Dublin Marathon but as the week went on and as I looked after the muscles in the area in question things started to improve, on Thursday night I went for my only run of the week which consisted of 1x 9:00min/pace, 1x 7:00min/pace and 2x 8:40min/pace and I felt pretty good afterwards.

As it stands right now (Friday) I feel the best I have since my fall and I experience next to no discomfort and certainly no pain so if anything the run on Thursday appears to have really helped loosen things up again.

So what are my plans?

We I'm a stuborn fecker so perhaps very foolishly I'm going to go ahead with Dublin and I'm going to go out with the sub 3:20 pacers and see how things pan out.

Is that smart? Perhaps not in some people's view but if things don't go well I'll drop off the group and even drop out if it comes to that.  But I'm pretty confident that I'm in good enough shape to reach my goal.

Last two weeks runs broke-down as:

- Monday: Rest
- Tuesday: Rest
- Wednesday: 3miles @ 10:20min pace
- Thursday: 5miles @ 8:27min pace
- Friday: Rest
- Saturday: 11.51miles @ 15:18min pace
- Sunday: Rest
- Monday: Rest
- Tuesday: 1.3mile walk
- Wednesday: Rest
- Thursday: 4miles @ 8:30min pace
- Friday: 1.2mile walk

Miles This Year: 1,641 miles