10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Cork City Marathon 2022

1. Why are you doing Cork?

I think that coming up with a reason to do the Cork Marathon is very hard. My main reason for running it is like how people do the lottery. I am hoping that if I keep doing it one year, all I need is one year, no one will turn up and I will win in a time of two hours, 30 minutes and 35 seconds.

2. Hotel Glanmire

I think that people who think a marathon in your home city is easier are very wrong. If Cork was Berlin you would not stay in Glanmire the night before the marathon, you would stay on South Terrace in a beautiful red brick AirBnB and walk to the start. You also wouldn’t have to load an 18kg baby into the back of a Scirocco and try and drive into the City with no roads open at 730 in the morning. Foreign marathons are a lot easier.

3. Tower of Power

I think that I have finally mastered the marathon nutrition plan. It has taken a long time. The night before all eating has to stop at 6pm. The last meal was white rice and tofu which I don’t want to eat again until the next marathon. Then a tower of power at 6:30am before the marathon. My stomach was never so good in a race ever. I could almost do a PDF plan and sell it on the internet.

4. No Viv, No Hate, No Mojo

I think that I missed Viv terribly on the start line. It was terrible. I had absolutely no one to hate. I looked around at the start and saw absolutely no one that I could motivate myself with. It’s kind of hard to run a fast pace without the thought of a marauding Viv chasing you tracking you down relentlessly.

5. Mist Shower

I think that if you were to associate a colour with this race it would be the colour of wet tarmac. It was unusually wet. A weird sort of rain that comes with little or no wind and no cold. I’m not actually sure if it was raining but it felt wet. It was perfect for running, goldilocks conditions for Cork.

6. Sticky Bottle

I think that it was nice of Viv to offer to cycle around the course giving out bottles and gels to Conor and me. He did an excellent job, I even got a sticky bottle off him on the Blackrock walkway. The sticky bottles don’t work as well in running as they do in cycling.

7. London Boi

I think that I should have done a full John Meade on it and continued to talk to the guy from London for the last 13 miles of the race. Given how easy it was to talk I probably wasn’t suffering enough due to the lack of Viv. In the end I only did a partial John Meade and just told him a brief history of the route and the city lasting about a mile.

8. Straight Road

I think that I was lucky to meet Damian and Aoife during the race. It was all great until we got to the straight road when all of a sudden Damian just stopped. Aoife who was pacing us steadily turned around like a cross teacher and went back to Damian, I didn’t hear what she said to him but suddenly he was back going again. The Straight Road is a particularly awful place, possibly the worst mile of any marathon in the world. Everyone could probably do with an Aoife on the straight road.

9. The €100 Stitch

I think that the stitch that I got going down North Main Street was probably the costliest stitch of my life. As we came off the path by the Lee Maltings I had gotten a good gap on the Londoner. I was pretty sure I’d him beaten. Viv was alongside me on the bike and I felt good. Then when I turned right past the Gate and Viv went the other way I felt the stitch. I think I was holding my arms wrong or else Viv took out his voodoo doll. Anyway, due to the stitch the Londoner flew by as we passed the falling down buildings held up by rusty steel bars. I tried pushing into my stitch but by the time I had it sorted it was too late and the €200 had become €100 for 10th.

10. Finishers Discount

I think that unfortunately I will have to do the Cork Marathon again. I have gotten a little bit faster ever year so I am well on the way to my goal of winning it. I should have a good chance in 2025 I think, especially if no one new starts running it as most of the other runners are getting very old. I will continue to tell anyone who asks about Cork that it is a terrible course, definitely don’t do it, go somewhere else, Limerick, Dingle, Longford anywhere, just not Cork, Cork is mine, all mine.