Where's That Sinking Feeling? - Cork to Cobh 2011

Icebergs Ahoy!

Given the race destination. it would have been easy to include in this post comments like "I didn't hit the wall, it was more of an iceberg" and "as Cobh came into view, I got that sinking feeling" but the fact of the matter was I never hit a wall, nor an iceberg and there was no sinking feeling.

The historical significance of our destination however, meant that the irony of the situation was not completely lost on me. It was after all the route that many would have taken from Cork to join the Titanic at it's last port of call before they drowned in an icy sea. It was also the last journey for many prisoners were taken from Cork Gaol to be deported to Australia (thank you Wikipedia). So all in all, safe to say it was essentially a punishment route, a very long Green Mile (thank you Stephen King) if you will.   

Having not ran anything over 10 miles since 2007 until the Cork Half Marathon in September, the 15 miles Cork to Cobh race was going to be a whole new challenge. September was a miserable month in terms of training, a combination of laziness, work and an occasional lack of motivation, meant that the half marathon was about as good as it got, and if you read the previous post, you will know that it was no highlight for me, with my legs exacting retribution on my body at the 10 mile mark.



Having seen the photographs from the Cork Half Marathon (see previous post), I was disappointed by my poor heel-striking form in the Five Fingers. It therefore meant that I would have to alter my approach to the race to try and maintain good running form, so as there were no pacers for the race, I thought I would try an hold a steady 7.30 mile pace for the 15 miles. It was going to be a little bit slower that what I thought I was capable of, but it would ensure that I ran with a decent foot strike.



Heading Out the Lower Glanmire Road
Check that foot strike!

My only time constraint was that I had to be in Cork Harlequins to coach my side in a Peard Cup clash with Bandon. The match was to start at 1.00 pm, which meant meeting at noon. The race started at 9.30 am and would take somewhere under two hours to finish, so there was little margin for error, but I was still conscious off heading off too quickly and struggling after 10 miles.

The plan was to finish, grab my bag from the van that takes your bag from the start, jump in the car (which was dropped down the night before) and high tail up to Harlequins. Nice and straightforward. All this while I missed the Ireland V Italy rugby world cup match, mind you the stewards kept us well informed during the race, even if you had recorded it and were hoping not to hear how it was going.

The route was fairly flat, straight out of the city from near the train station, out along the Glounthane road, passed Fota and straight out to Cobh. There's a bit of a drag once you got passed Fota and another one coming into Cobh.

Two sachets of energy gel, 3 bottles of water and a segment of orange from a nice lady on the side of the road saw me home in 1.53. I came through the half marathon distance a minute and a half faster than in Blarney and held my 7.30/mile target pace. That's about as exciting as it got! Another triumph for barefoot running, well Five Finger running.

It was after the race when the real punishment began. As soon as I finished, I started looking for the van and was then told the bags were in the community hall. "Grand" says I, "where's that?". The man pointed at the long, very steep hill rising out of the square in Cobh. "Up to the top of that hill, turn right and then up the other hill".

It must have taken 15 minutes to walk up the hill to the community hall and get the gear, before running down to the car, getting slightly lost and driving along the back roads (as the main roads were closed) to get to Harlequins, in my singlet, short shorts (I wear them) and my Five Fingers, my classic coaching outfit! Delivered the team talk, out onto the pitch to watch a 2-2 draw, extra time golden goal win. Happy days.



In other news, I'm up to 48 on the waiting list, slowly but surely getting there, and am looking at doing the "Run the Gauntlet" Gap of Dunloe Half Marathon in November, so trying to keep the head down training.

Barrack Hill, Cobh: "Up to the top of that
hill, turn right and then up the other hill".
The route to collect your bag. Balls.





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.

High Fives...

Well it's been 5 months in my Vibram Five Fingers and I thought it would be a good time to review where I was with them.

I have been running 3-5 days a week covering between 18 - 30 miles a week without a block of ice coming anywhere near my shins. I haven't had that sort of consistency since I was 17. The surfaces I have trained on have varied greatly from grass (45%), road/tarmac (35%), beach (15%) and forest trails/paths (15%). I have run on the flat, up hills, down hills and over all sorts of stones, broken glass, kerbs, tree roots, mud, muck, grit, gravel and dirt. I have broken PBs for a lot of my training runs that were  initially set in normal runners.

My primary training areas are as follows:

Glanmire's Pike - 2 GAA grass pitches making a half mile loop

Rochestown's Line - Old railway line turned into a tarmac walking/running path

Currabinny Woods - Forest trails - hilly, stony, muddy terrain, good for hill reps

Redbarn Beach - Compact sand beach, 3.5 miles long

My feet have gotten used to the varying terrain and there is little or no pain or awkwardness when I run on forest trails or gravel. There was a good bit at the start but my feet seem to have adapted accordingly.

In short, I'm thrilled with the Five Fingers.

I still have some questions though:

First of all, they get wet, which is fine in the summer but in the winter I'll freeze. Is the solution to run in Nike Free, which are more like normal runners, for the winter?

Secondly, what do I do with my orthotics in all my other shoes? Some of them were purchased big enough so that my orthotics would fit in well and would be too big without them. Should I stay wearing my orthotics in my shoes or take them out completely? What sort of shoes should I be wearing or does it matter when you are just walking around in them?

Thirdly, if and when it comes to it, what do I do for the MDS? Do I use the Fives as a foot strengthening mechanism and then run in normal shoes or do I try to find a minimalist pair of shoes good enough to get me through the Sahara?

Despite it's vast content, t'interweb offers few solutions to these questions. For the moment I shall crack on and keep my research going.

I bought a second pair of Fives before a recent trip to the Netherlands and trialled them around Utrecht. The Irish U18 hockey team thought they were hilarious. Despite the funny looks you get, they have been nothing short of superb. They feel even better that the first pair. I'm lovin' it...

The Only Way is Up...

A new entrant and straight in at number 85 in his first week in the charts is Phil Oakley...well in at 85 on the wait list at least. For those of you old enough to remember, "the only way is up baby" in the words of Yazz.

I sent off my deposit and was given my username and password for the site, allowing me access to the site's forums, my personal details and most importantly my position on the wait list. 

Doing my sums, I know that around 300 people signed through Running Sahara (RS) have gotten the confirmed places and so I need 85 of them to drop off in the next 12-18 months to get a place. My Saviour Steve from the previous post didn't think this would be a problem, but that's nearly a 30% drop out rate. The email you receive says not to worry too much until next year and that's when the list will start to move.

2 weeks later, I was checking out some information on the site and decided to check the wait list, I was up to 72...not bad going I thought to myself. A week later and I was up to 63 and the week after that I was up 10 places to 53, not quite Top of the Pops stuff, but positive at least. I have been at 53 for the last three weeks.

I've also been checking the forum. As you'd expect, the majority of entrants are from the UK, but there seems to be at least 2 other Irish people, both based in Dublin, who have signed up too.

"Arse Biscuits!" and My Saviour Steve

"Arse Biscuits"

If you have read the previous posts, you will know that I have been checking a website claiming to be "the official MDS website for the UK, Ireland and Israel" and that information for the 2013 MDS was forthcoming and forthcoming and forthcoming. Was it forthcoming? No.

By the time I had phoned them for the 10th time and finally got through to some random women wondering what the craic was, she didn't have a clue. Her response to my "false advertising" claim was that she didn't know anything. The following day, the website had changed.

So as it turns out that there's a new website, as a different company had taken over the registration for the MDS. "Arse biscuits" (courtesy of Fr. Jack Hackett pictured above) was how I summed up my disappointment very loudly when I realised that all of their 2013 places were sold out and I was 14 days too late, arse biscuits indeed. To make me feel even worse, they had started a registration list for 2014, compounding the guilt I had for not being more thorough in my research. Woe is me.

And so as I went home on the Friday, I threw all the toys out of my pram and I sulked, sulked at home, sulked my way through dinner with my wife Yvonne and friends of ours that night and then sulked my way through the weekend.

Yvonne told me that if I really wanted to get in, then I should get on with contacting charities etc. I sulked at that too.

On the Monday I thought it might be worth sending a "woe is me" email to the new website (http://www.runningsahara.com/ - RS) and to any charitable organisation that had ever anything to do with the MDS. One charity came back to me to offer me a potential place based on a proposal I was to submit around how I would raise money for them. Just as I was thinking how I was going to raise the money, RS came back and said it was no harm going on the waiting list and if that didn't work they said I could have a charity place with the official MDS charity - Solidarite - for 2013. Thank you to my saviour Steve at RS. Goodbye arse biscuits, hello smiley face. 



Questions & Answers

Niall O'Crualaoich

Shewer, shewer, shewer, we'd a man on there from the Cork area...After some futile attempts at trying to meet past competitors of the MDS from all over the country, I found just the man in Cork - Niall O'Crualaoich.

Niall is a bit of an endurance freak - he completed the 2009 MDS, which had it's first day washed out and they increased the mileage, he's swam the channel in nothing but speedos and some vaseline and is a veteran of more than one Ironman. When I asked him about the requirements in terms of physical competency to run the MDS, he said "you could do it now as you are, but you'd be f*cked by the end of it". Fair enough.

I had a list of questions for him, all of which were answered reassuringly for me:

Q: What about the heat?

A: It's not as bad as you think. Remember the Cork marathon in 2007? A guy I know did the MDS and then the Cork marathon that same year and said he suffered the heat more in Cork. But it is hot and you'll want to manage the water well.

Q: Is the 50 mile stage as bad as it sounds?

A: It's more than 50. Most people run to around the 40 mile mark and then eat and sleep for a bit before finishing, depends on how you feel. You might be tired afterward.

Q: How did you manage your feet?

A: Well the glue I used to attach the gaitors to my runners failed and so sand got into my socks and I got some blisters. I'd advise you to bring some extra glue.

And my list of questions continued until I felt much better about the whole experience. We left it saying that the best thing for me is to get in to the race and after that we'd meet and talk about training, gear, equipment etc.

So now just to get the entry and we're off...

Giving it Galty...



Descending Galtymore with
Galtybeg in the Distance

Another month drifts by and still there’s no sign of the entry opening for the 2013 MDS. I’m getting a little worried now as I have contacted the Irish agent for the race and have had no response despite leaving messages and emailing. I might have to be charitable and go down that route. Either way, I want in!

In the meantime I’m continuing on with my strategy of run when I feel like it and run in Fivefingers as often as possible.



I felt like a challenge at the start of April and so I packed myself off to the Galty Mountains in Tipperary, minus the fingers. It had been at least 4 years since I last run up the mountain, so I had forgotten about the start, which is relentless, a long stony track with a nasty incline that never seems to end. About three quarters of the way up (the first hillock of the stony track, not the mountain) I was reduced to walking, breathing very heavily and thinking of the dunes in the desert. This did not bode well for my confidence/motivation/mental health.



The cross at the summit of Galtymore - taken just before my encounter with the hungry sheep



Once you get over the initial rise, it levels off and things felt good until I passed the air crash memorial and Galtymore comes into view. As one of Ireland’s six mountains over 3,000 ft it was rather imposing and the ground began to rise again quickly, as the stony road continued up toward Galtybeg. Onward and upward, skirting around the boggy bottom of Galtybeg and up what seemed like the near vertical rise to the top of Galtymore. It was a bit of a run/jog/walk at times, but I've been told that adding in some walking training is a good thing for the MDS. I was munching on a fig roll bar and a banana at the top and was freaked out when a sheep appeared in front of me and begged for food like a dog. 



After that it was down the hill and up the slightly less taxing Galtybeg, along its ridge and down a quick and uneven descent back to the car. An enjoyable couple of hours no doubt and as good tester for the body for future events.

Apparently the MDS dunes are far bigger than Ireland's highest mountains, so looking forward to that, should I get in. All in all, a worthwhile trip and a good base to train in for the future.