10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Cork City Marathon 2018

1. Sure You Can Always Walk

I think my mother doesn’t understand marathons. Her pre marathon advice was “If it gets hard sure you can always walk”. I think she’d have preferred if I played hurling for Limerick. I’m nothing compared to those hurlers.

2. So So Early

I don’t think 8.30am is a good time to start a marathon. I hate mornings. I had to get up at 6am to drink a lot of coffee. It was surprisingly bright, I always presumed that it was dark at that time of day. I think they should start at 5.30pm. Sleep is important.

3. 100%

I think the humidity was a big problem. I hate humidity so much. It really affects me. You don’t really notice it until you start running. If you look at the results it was pretty much filtered by height and width. The shorter less wide runners ran quickest. It’s all about relative surface area, heat dissipation. The marathon should be moved to February.

4. Bushes

I think that even if you lined Patrick Street from end to end with portaloos there would not be enough to accommodate the needs of a group of marathon runners. At least in Berlin the start has lots of bushes, perhaps we should move the start out to the Straight Road to provide more bushes.

5. Where’s Cathal

I think my plan to follow Cathal was an excellent plan. The first mile was funeral pace, after that it was steady 6 minute miles. The only problem I had was that he runs the hills hard. I let him go on every hill and caught back up on the downhills. I was very happy with my plan. I’m not sure if Cathal was very happy with my plan.

6. Does My Bum Look Big In This?

I think I’ll have to consider different shorts. I must have lost weight because they were slipping down all race. I was getting shouts of “Pull your shorts up” around the course. Thankfully they don’t normally photograph you from behind so Instagram should be safe. I have a lovely bottom anyway.

7. Holding Hands

I think it all went wrong at mile 14. I was just jogging along behind Mike and Cathal when they suddenly started holding hands and disappeared up the road. I looked at my watch to see if I was going slower but I wasn’t, they were just going faster, a lot faster. I tried to close the gap but the two Barr’s singlets just kept on getting smaller. Small and Far Away.

8. Signs

I think I like having my name on signs. They were excellent colorful signs. Signs make me happy.

9. Ken

I think I might not have been very nice to Ken on the Straight Road. I was not in a good place as I turned the corner onto the most miserable two miles in Cork. Then I saw Ken coming towards me with two bottles of luminous liquid. Off all the things to see. He tried to make me drink it, I think I might have thrown the bottle onto the ground quite hard, I wanted to do something else with the bottle. I’m sorry Ken.

10. I Didn’t Walk

I think I really suffered a lot that last mile down North Main Street. You try to think logically, like it’s only a mile it’s not even 7 minutes, it’ll be fine, but you really just want to stop. I didn’t walk and I didn’t stop. I just got home. It was grand, a Cork P.B. Cork is different.