No Sand, No Pack and Over 140 Miles to go...2011 Cork Half Marathon

Cork Half Marathon:
Spoon Shaped Course

There is an awful feeling you sometimes get when running road races – it’s the feeling that you’re close to the red zone and you are not even half way. Your body starts with “hold on a minute here, we’re running a bit longer than usual” and then for me it goes “screw you Phil, I don’t like this pace”. This is followed by “I know what will slow us down, I’ll threaten to cramp your legs and while I’m at it, I’ll mess with your breakfast and upset your digestive system, that’ll wipe the smile off your face.” I don’t think I was smiling anyway but I was in relatively high spirits finding myself slightly out of my depth with the cheery pair of balloon carrying runners leading the 90 minute pace team for the Cork Half Marathon.

The course is spoon shaped, going out and back on the same 4 mile stretch with a 5 mile loop in the middle. My plan was straightforward – keep the pace team in sight until half way and then hang on and try to get in around 95 minutes or so. Simples! 

The Smiling 90 Minute Pace Team in Orange with Balloons
(That's me on the left trying to hang on)

This was the first time me and my Five Fingers took to the road for a race, which made me a little bit nervous. After 4 miles I had been dropped from the pace group, but they were in sight, the lead runners laughing, joking and smiling for the occasional camera. That’s when the awful feeling set in, not even half way into the race. I was neither laughing nor joking at that point and I didn’t want to see a camera. I knew when I was driving to the race that I hadn’t trained to half marathon distance and that I would treat this as a training run, a starting point for increasing mileage in preparation for the MDS and so I decided to take it easy, but you get carried away with the pace group and before long your swimming against the tide, or to be more accurate running slower and slower as the pace group drift further and further up the road.

Chasing the Pack - Dropped After 4 Miles
Note the Right Foot Heel Strike - Poor Form

And I mean up the road. The first miles to the end of the spoon handle were over a relatively taxing but gentle incline, but you felt better knowing that you had to run back down the incline after the loop section. At the start of the loop the incline became steeper, still ok to run but slowing down the average pace by a fair bit. Just as it levels out, there’s a blind turn off the road to the right and you find yourself at the bottom of a punishing increase in incline into the village of Grenagh, a hill-top village overlooking the Mallow Road into Cork.

I set off with optimism, which quickly changed to that feeling you get when you question your own sanity, but I eventually found a rhythm and ploughed on for about half a mile. As you entered the village at the top, the crowds were unbelievable – there must have been 8 or 10 people clapping on the runners – you could barely see the road.

Onward and downward we ran out of Grenagh, down a steep hill past the 7 mile mark. It then levelled out thankfully and I had time to assess the situation – 6 miles to go, feet ok, legs a bit tight but it’s all downhill for the last 4 miles!

More lies from my brain - it actually wasn’t downhill at all, more flat from there to the finish with the odd incline. And somewhere between 9 and 10 miles, Team Phil disbanded, my body had had enough of me and thought that it would be good to tighten all my leg muscles as much as possible and so it did and it lasted until the end of the race. My last 3 miles were all well over 8 minutes, pushing my time to 1.38.38 and disappointingly away from my 1.35 target. I did meet Niall O'Crualaoich at the finish though, and he assured me I was on the right track for the MDS.

It was the first time the fingers had gone beyond 10 miles and the first time they had raced. My feet were a little sore afterward, mainly because of my neglectful approach to training in September, having had a very good and positive August of running. On a positive note, I had at least avoided BNS (Bleeding Nipple Syndrome!) as I got to grips with a tub of vaseline prior to the race - I learnt my lesson from the 2000 Dublin City Marathon.

Still haven’t decided whether to run Cork to Cobh 15 mile race on October 2nd, although having run the half marathon, it doesn’t seem as daunting.

My last thought was that if it was the MDS, I’d only have around 142 miles to go! And then I thought that I’d have been running on sand carrying a 10-12kg pack...well at least it's a start.