Some downtime

Last week at Donadea

It's been a week of downtime after Donadea 50km as myself and Grace went away for a midweek break, it was lovely to get away as we both didn't have very much time off during Christmas.

We spent most of the week down in Co Cork and enjoyed seeing a few sites including Fota Wildlife which I've not been to in about 8 years.

I did however manage one sneaky run of 5.5miles during the week, it wasn't anything too exciting as I just did loops of the streets near the hotel we were staying at but it was good to loosen up the legs a bit after the 50km as I'm very wary of taking it too easy and my legs stiffening up as I've had this triggers a recurring injury in the past.

While out and about I did pay a visit to The Edge Sportshop just off the South Link Road in Cork and I got to say they have a great selection of brands, my reason for visiting was to pick up some Skins shorts which happened to be on sale as I've been hoping to pick up a pair for the last few months.

Why do I want Skins shorts? Well, basically I find running in normal shorts is fine but when it comes to chaffing up to about the 40mile mark but after that I find chaffing becomes an issue and this can turn into a very painful issue like what happened during Connemara 100 after about the 70mile mark. 

Although chaffing is a very real issue for basically every runner its often not talked about much I've found and finding a solution to stop chaffing can often be a trial and error situation for each runner.  For example for nipples I tried plasters, petroleum jelly etc and they all only worked to a point, after much trial and error the bullet proof solution I found in the end which works 100% of the time was to simply use KT Tape. KT Tape also worked out the cheapest solution also as I could buy roles off of ebay for next to nothing.

In relation to the Skins I bought the basic plan is on longer runs is to use the Skins under my normal shorts and hopefully that should assist in lessening the effects of chaffing especially for the much longer distances.   I've only tried them out for two runs so far but so far so good, the real test will be using them on a 40mile+ run however which I'll get around to over the next months.

ah the joys of running....