10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Bere Island 5 Mile

1. Island Life

I think that Bere Island is my favourite of all the small islands off the coast of Ireland. It is a very interesting little island. It’s sort of like where I grew up in the Galtees except that you can’t escape to the city without getting on a boat. The roads look identical and the hills were very similar.

2. Weather Forecast

I think that weather apps are too catastrophic with their colouring systems. I checked the windy app on Friday and Bere Island had red coloured wind. It looked terrible and there was constant rain forecast. It seemed like it would be impossible to get a boat to the island with red coloured wind and fast-moving arrows. When I got up on Saturday morning I looked out the window in Glanmire expecting the trees to be bending over but instead the leaves on the ground were barely moving so we hopped in the car for the two hour drive to the ferry from the pontoon.

3. Ferry

I think that getting to a race start by ferry is a great idea. I have a terrible fear of going on a ferry from when I was a child going across to Clare Island so I was very scared. Thankfully it was an excellent ferry like the one that goes from Passage to Cobh with absolutely no side to side motion and no risk of death.

4. GAA Island

I think that there must be a law that says there must be a GAA club on every island in the country. For the warmup we jogged over to the impressive GAA club to use the facilities. There doesn’t appear to be much GAA being played on the pitch as the grass was longer than the grass at the cross country race in Carrignavar. Perhaps they could convert it into an athletics track and turn the island into a running paradise. It has everything else, lots of hills and plenty of quiet roads.

5. Strava Routeplanner

I think that there aren’t many options for course designers on Bere Island. There are very few roads and only one of them has a loop. If you asked Strava for a five mile route on Bere Island I’m pretty sure the computer would come up with the Bere Island five mile loop.

6. Leevale

I think that the Leevale singlet is very scary. When we lined up for the start I was half horrified to see a young fella in a Leevale singlet. It is a very intimidating singlet, I think it’s the colours. I was thinking did Chris Harrington or Ken Nason send some young fella down on purpose to torment me, a new Charlie O’Donovan, he looked like he was. When we started, he kept up with me for about a mile. A mile is long enough for it to become worrisome.

7. Haute Category

I think that if it wasn’t for the gigantic, enormous hill in the second mile I might have had company for longer. The second mile of this race is indescribable. It is a hill unlike anything I have seen in a race in Ireland. It is remarkably steep, at least as steep as Patrick’s Hill. I was very glad of the huge hill as I had magic shoes unlike my fellow Leevaler so I was able to bounce right up to the top. If you had no magic shoes it would have been a very hard hill.

8. Sqaull

I think we were incredibly lucky that the weather apps got it all wrong. Before the race there was a weird squally shower, sort of like a mini hurricane that would last three minutes, it would have been impossible to run in that. Somehow during the race it was perfect, there was barely even wind, the sky might even have been blue. You could hear thunder in the distance which was kind of nice. Bere Island seems to have it’s own climate that weather apps can’t predict, it seemed to be terrible everywhere else nearby.

9. Rush Hour

I think that the last three miles of the race are lovely. Once the ridiculously steep massive hill was out of the way it became a lovely rolling slightly downhill run to the finish. Apparently, we took a detour to avoid a slippy road but I didn’t notice as the route seemed perfectly logical to me, I just followed the lead van which was fine until we encountered the only two cars on the island who were out for a drive. The roads are very narrow, so I had to wait while they maneuvered around each other, sure what harm, sure who’s in a rush on Bere Island.

10. Course Record

I think that course records are great. I like course records because they apply only to mad courses. When there is a course record you know that the route is mad so they have to have a course record so that people won’t be upset when their time isn’t as fast as it would be on the John Buckley 5k loop. In the end I only barely got it by about 10 seconds, I probably should have waited on the line until the time was just one second under and then stepped across so that it would be easier to break again next year like that guy in Spain did last week. I’m not sure if that would have gone down too well in West Cork.