10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Kilgobnet 4 Mile Road Race

1. K is for Kilgobnet

I think it is good to run races in places that you’ve never been to before. I’d run races in Beaufort lots of times but I’d never made it to Kilgobnet. John Meade told me that Kilgobnet means Gobnait’s Church. Gobnait is a lovely name.

2. Pattern Day

I think that this race must have been some sort of pattern day festival race. All I remember about the Pattern was that you didn’t go through Ballylanders on Pattern Day. Kilgobnet seemed lovely and there was no traffic.

3. Variant Vaporflys

I think that my green pair of Next%s are not as bouncy as my pink pair. The difference is very noticeable, I am concerned that they are counterfeit and not actually magic shoes, I might send them back to Nike. They are newer so perhaps they just need to be broken in, it could also be that I am not fit or have run out of talent.

4. A Game

I think that it was foolish to think that I could beat John Meade in a race like this. He really brings his A-game to these small festival races in small villages miles from anywhere, they really are made for him. I knew he was taking it seriously because he wouldn’t do a long warm-up so I had to complete the warm-up on my own.

5. Hairy Start

I think it was good to see a man who had both more height and more hair than me on the start line. It turned out that he was also much faster than me.

6. Surge Capacity

I think that I had way too much hatred for the first two miles of the race. I really really wanted to be able to stay with John Meade and the other hairy tall runner. I was doing fine until about 2 miles when there was a little hill. John Meade did that horrible surging that he does on little hills, it’s incredible how annoying it is. I was so angry that I sprinted up the hill to try and stay with him, I managed to get up the little hill still in contact but I completely wrecked myself doing it.

7. The Lonely Mile

I think that the first of the two left turns on the course was pretty much the end of my race. It came just after the small hill and I was completely gassed after trying to match Meade’s desperate surge. Meade and the tall hairy man took the corner dangerously fast and disappeared off up the narrower road. I was left on my own waiting for the inevitable arrival of Kieran McKeown. I must have been running quite quickly because it took Kieran a full mile to catch me.

8. The Envelope Race

I think it was inevitable that Kieran McKeown was going to outsprint me. When we got to the final and only right turn, I got it terribly wrong. I left Kieran take the inside line, nearly broke my ankle trying to make the turn in the magic shoes and barely got any faster when I tried to sprint. It was desperately pretty pathetic and I deserved to be beaten, to make it worse there was no white envelope for fourth place.

9. Classic Courses

I think that all races should be run on courses like Kilgobnet. It was a proper course, sort of like one of the old Ballycotton 5 mile series courses, it even had grass down the middle of the road for the last mile. The GPS might have measured it 0.05 miles short of 4 miles but anyone who complains about that should be sent back to the City and forced to run perfect GPS time trials around Monaghan Road for all eternity.

10. Poor John Meade

I think my favorite part of the day was watching poor John Meade have to watch the tall hairy runner accept the lovely perpetual trophy for winning the race. It was a very sad sight as he stood to the side while the tall hairy man accepted the lovely trophy, you could almost see John thinking, that should have been me. Hopefully, I will be the tall hairy man accepting the trophy ahead of John Meade soon.