After resting all week to give my IT band a chance to heal I joined Joe for our long weekend run; 16 miles was on the list this week. After our 15 mile run last week, this week's 16 miles should be a walk in the park! That's what you might call tempting fate!
It started very well; good pace and a lovely route through the Kildare countryside. We agreed to stop every 4 miles to briefly rest and take on water. The first stop was pretty uneventful but somewhere between mile 4 and 8 I started to feel an ache in the arch of my right foot. This was followed by a dull pain in my left knee. We stopped, as scheduled, at 8 miles as I was starting to feel a lot of pressure on my left knee. After much stretching we carried on and almost immediately I knew I was in trouble; the pain was getting worse, I could feel pressure in my left hip and I was developing a limp. We carried on and I gradually fell behind.
The 12 mile stop was breaking point; I was limping and in considerable pain. I hated to do it but I had to throw the towel in and Joe took off to complete the run alone. I cut a rather pathetic figure as I dragged myself up the hill towards Naas, it reminded me of my 3 week stint in the Gaeltacht when I much younger.
The Gaeltacht is an area where only Irish is spoken and during the summer months there are organised residential Irish language courses. There are several Gaeltachts in Ireland; most are located in the western counties (Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Kerry). It wasn't a particularly pleasant or uplifting experience for me; we had to walk everywhere and for a city boy that had less than a mile walk to school walking almost 4 miles to our Gaeltacht College was quite a novelty on the first day. On the second day it was considered a joke and on the 3rd day it was beyond a joke. We had to walk to the college in the morning, walk back home that afternoon, walk back to the college for our evening ceili, and walk back home that night. If you add it up I think you'll find that's a lot of walking. We often hitched to college and met some interesting characters; my heart skips a beat when I think about what could have happened had we been unlucky with a lift.
The priest who appeared to manage the college was a cross between Hitler, my worst nightmare and Hitler. It was clear that he disliked his job, himself and people in general. There was one pivotal event that confirmed his close friendship with the devil. It was a weekday morning and as usual we were faced with a long march to the college with one significant difference; the weather was foul - the wind was blowing a gale and the rainfall was heavy and horizontal. We were unhappy walking several miles to college in fair weather, and we decided that in this foul weather we'd had enough and we were not moving. You could say we were on strike, our house keeper (or Bean an tí) couldn't move us. We were united, dry and wanted to stay that way. Unknown to us we had been betrayed.
The priest had been informed of our strike and was speeding towards our remote house. We heard to screech of tyres outside, we all knew Jim the postman drove at 2 1/2 miles an hour so it couldn't be him. Peering out the window we saw it was the college minibus, we could scarcely believe it... we were saved. The evil priest had a heart after all. He stormed into the house and angrily ordered us outside; we reckoned he must keep up the act of Satins' right hand man to keep us in line so we happily marched outside ready to board the bus. Only when he had us all outside did the terrible truth revel itself as he ordered us to march to the college, into the howling wind and driving rain. As the last boy joined the march of the damned he climbed into the dry, roomy mini-bus and drove slowly behind us... all the way to the college. Happy days!
As Joe ran into the distance I struggled up the hill, I wasn't entirely sure where I was but it turned out to be 3 miles back to town; 3 long, lonely miles with a limp. The funny thing is that I made it back before Joe, we should have travelled the same route and I didn't notice a pair of trainers poking out of a ditch. 10 minutes later he arrives, exhausted. It turns out the planned route would only reach 15 miles, and the plan was to run 16 so he took a slight detour to add a miles. Several wrong turns later he finds a familiar road and in the way home after adding an unexpected few miles. That'll hurt tomorrow!
Meanwhile I'm slowly ceasing up and by the time I get home I can bearly walk on the flat, walking up or down stairs was unbearable and to be avoided at all costs. About an hour later I had decided to hunt down and kill the lunitics that designed my house... all the toilets are upstairs, what were they thinking??
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