New Years Eve

We arrived home from London a little while ago and my running gear never saw the light of day. There's no excuse, well no good one anyway. There was a great gym and pool attached to the hotel but the holiday was a series of late night and later mornings which left little room for healthy options. It was a fantastic holiday, London has changed so much since I was last there! It's a great city and I can't wait to go back.

The Day After

This is the day after St. Stephen's day, it doesn't have a name of it's own so we'll call it Saturday. We have even more company this morning, almost the entire family joined us. We ran a shorter 4.94 in a very leisurely 1.04. Tomorrow I'm leaving for London for a few days and I'm bringing my running gear with me, let's try to keep up this excellent day starter!

St. Stephen's Day

Yesterdays run must have been an inspiration because I had plenty of company on my run this morning. We ran 6.71 miles in 1.13. It was another beautiful morning, I can't think of a better way to start the day... who am I kidding, I can think of plenty of better ways but this is the healthiest!!

Christmas Day Run

We had a semi-family Christmas this year, half of the family got together in my brothers house County Carlow while the other half had other plans. I woke up late on Christmas morning to find everyone, except my eldest brother, had gone out to visit family. I looked out at the vast countryside from the kitchen's big front window and decided a run along the river made a lot of sense. I'm glad I did! It was a beautiful morning and the river path is perfect for running. The route I took covered 6.61 miles and I ran it in a leisurely 1.08. I arrived back at the house just as everyone else was getting in. What a perfect start to an already great day!

Jingle Bells 5K

This was to be the last race of 2008 and a fantastic race for a great cause. Unfortunately I had a lot of work to do the night before which rendered me pretty useless the next morning. You see I was part of the committee chosen for our know expertise in the type of work. The task was to select the wine for our Christmas party. This gruelling exercise involved tasting a wide variety of wines, some excellent wines as it turned out. Although I knew that there may be a possibility of missing out on the race the next day I do take my job very seriously and forged ahead regardless. Not only was I hung over the next morning but I was also geographically challenged by waking up some 60 miles from the start line. I really had no chance of getting there...

10K on Ice...

It was a cold and frosty morning. I mean really cold and really frosty. So cold and frosty that second thoughts about running 10K were frequent and very convincing but I stuck to the plan lined up with the rest of the shivering masses before the start line. I planned to arrive at the starting area just a few minutes before the start time to avoid getting too cold but my brilliant plan was scuppered when the start time was pushed back a couple of times.

Just as hypothermia was about to set in we were off. The route was familiar but very slippy in places. It was very, very cold and I was glad to have the hat that I pickup in Newcastle at the GNR expo. I really missed my gloves, my hands were freezing and it took 7K for them to warm up!

I finished in a decent time of 57:29 (09:16 mins/m) but just missed out on a new PB by 4 seconds. The race was the first decent bit of running that I've done since the Dublin marathon over a month ago so I'm happy with my time. Next week is the Jungle Bells 5K, hopefully I pick up a new PB there!

Staight after the race I had to dash into my office to create some icons for a group of software developers sitting in another office in India... funny old world we're living in!!

Here's a link to my 10K race: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/1490148

Running thoughts...

Word on the Facebook street is that Monica ran her 7^th marathon last weekend... it reminded me that I haven't done any serious running since the Dublin marathon, that's bad... really bad! Well done Monica, as usual I'm playing catch up!!