Jackie Cahill
TEMPERATURES have fallen, the nights are closing in and yet you can still see them. Most of them are out earlier now, sometimes in clusters, sometimes on their own.
Some of them prefer the nighttime, scuttling around the streets of your local town, well-lit, for fear of being knocked down by unsuspecting, passing motorists. They’re the men and women, boys and girls, preparing for the 2011 Dublin City marathon on Bank Holiday Monday, October 31.
I’m one of them. It will be my third marathon in three years. After New York last November, the experience of a lifetime, I silently vowed that I would never put myself through 26.2 miles of torture ever again. But running a marathon is a spiritual experience, taking you to places in your mind that you have never previously visited. As your brain screams ‘stop’, your legs keep pumping, driving you forward in pursuit of the Holy Grail – the finish line.
I’ve been around the Dublin circuit before, in 2009. 4 hours and 19 minutes was an acceptable time as it was my first marathon. Coming in under four hours in New York, in 3 hours and 58 minutes, left me with a feeling of deep fulfillment and satisfaction. Yerra, you’ve cracked it. In under four hours. What’s left to do? Well, why not beat that? And that’s what I’m aiming for next Monday week. I’m not going to set myself up for a fall here by predicting a specific time. That’s an almost impossible task unless you’re one of these elite athletes, freaks I prefer to call them, who can batter the tarmac in their Asics, Nikes or whatever they choose, and get in somewhere around 2 hours and 10 minutes or under.
That pace would see an athlete run an average of just under five minutes per mile. And bearing in mind that it took until 1954 for a certain Roger Bannister to run a mile under four minutes, that tells you something about the pace that these guys can run at over 26. It’s simply phenomenal.
I’ll plod along at maybe seven and a half minute miles for the first few, slowing to between eight and nine midway through the race and but hopefully not dipping below nine for any mile. That would be good enough to get me comfortably in under four hours. Run consistent eight minute miles and you’ll run a 3.49 marathon. It’s achievable but incredibly difficult. And especially when you’re an athlete of limited capabilities, albeit with sufficient levels of stamina and staying power. When you take up long distance running, life becomes about minutes and miles.
A Garmin fore-runner watch becomes your best friend. Diet is crucial, energy gels, wine gums, bananas, jelly babies and sports drinks tricks of the trades. I thought I’d left all that behind but the kind people organising the Spar Spartan challenge convinced me otherwise. They sent me my starting numbers for the five mile, ten mile and half-marathon events that took place in the Phoenix Park over the summer months. I set a personal best of 38:33 over five miles, good enough for a 3 hour 35 minute marathon.
But it’s not going to work out like that. I’ll be happy with anything around 3:55. I hit the 20-mile mark a fortnight ago, in a time of 2:59. That’s good enough to get in under four hours but that time could have been better. A foot problem saw me walk mile 17 before I got back on the horse and hobbled home for the remaining three. With the physio on speed dial, it’s time to taper down now for the next ten days or so, get a ten miler in, a couple of 10km and three or four four-mile spins. Sounds very technical doesn’t it? Except for a non-elite athlete, it’s really not.
Let’s just hope that I’ve timed it just right. And for the other Spar Spartans, who are undertaking the event for the very first time, I wish them the very best. The feeling of running through the finishing line is simply indescribable. If you could bottle it, you’d make the proverbial fortune. To everybody running, bear in mind the following slogan: If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Bring it on…
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/gejqgqP_BN4/post.aspx
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