Week 8: Around the Curragh in 13 miles...

After the 20 miler I had to do on my own for last years Dublin marathon this had to be one of the hardest training runs I have ever done. Psychologically I was in the wrong place which, from experience, will make the difference between a good and bad run.

We started off well and ran towards Donnolly's hollow. It's a flat easy stretch with plenty of open space to run on. After rounding Donnolly's monument we made for the golf course and straight in to a headwind which didn't much for our failing moral. It wasn't too bad, this part of the route was tree lined and we had plenty of shelter from the howling wind.

After a mile or so we turned right where the trees gave way to bushes and scrub land. It took twice the effort to maintain our speed, our failing moral hit rock bottom but we knew had 13 miles to do and there was no getting out of it. We had started and as always we were going to finish.

After a couple of miles we reached the next turn that would bring us through the Curragh camp. This stretch was all uphill and mid way it dawned on me that our moral was now beyond rock bottom and going down. It took incredible effort to get up that hill and why, WHY was that wind still head on?

Now, on the other side of the Curragh, it was down hill and getting a little easier. When got back to the car we had only covered 5.5 miles, we had 8.5 miles to go, yikes! We carried on running, this time along the motorway to Kildare town and around by the Curragh camp again. By the time we got back to the road we had covered almost 11 miles and the end was in sight. We ran what we thought was a 2 mile loop but we were a little short and a little extra jaunt was required to make up the 13 miles.

It took us 2hrs 16 minutes to run the distance, which really isn't that bad considering we had 3 stops (all water, 2 in and 1 out!) but it was a tough one. The first thing to get into gear before any run is your mind, if it's not in the right place you will suffer a lot more than you need to.


Here the map of our route and stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2705050.