10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Glengarriff 5 Mile

1. West Cork

I think that West Cork is my true home. West Cork is one of the only places that I can go and people will assume that I am a local because of my name. There is no more West Cork name than Coakley. So driving an hour and a half from the city for a race doesn’t seem too mad.

2. McElhinneys

I think that my chances of winning in Glengarriff depended mainly on the absence of McElhinneys. There is a great risk of one or even two of them turning up rendering the task of winning impossible. Luckily, they must be on a break or miles from West Cork as there was no Darragh or Eoghan present.

3. Airports

I think that spending 12 hours in an airport the day before a race is a very bad way to prepare for a race. I had to go to Germany for work which is normally a nice trip but British Airways had to replace one of the wheels on the plane in Dusseldorf so I missed my connection back to Cork. You can read a lot of newspapers and magazines in 12 hours.

4. Red GPS

I think that it is very important to sync your watch with your phone after returning from abroad so that the GPS gets back on track. I forgot to do this so on the start line in Glengarrif I was left with every modern-day runner’s worst nightmare, a red bar on the GPS signal. I contemplated not bothering running as if it isn’t on Strava it didn’t happen but I reckoned it might right itself after a few miles so at least I’d have something to put up as evidence.

5. Beara Weather

I think that the weather in Beara is amazing. It is like it has it’s own unique climate, either that or Mark Gallagher has a secret weather machine that he uses to guarantee sunshine for 2.30pm whenever there is a race on. The weather machine must have a new feature this year as not only was it sunny but it was hot, proper hot, like Spain hot.

6. New Footpath

I think that we should all vote for the Green Party again so that there can be more new footpaths like the new one in Glengarriff. They seem to be very proud of the new footpath as at the start we were told that we would be disqualified if we didn’t stay on it. We were very conscious of this so when we got to the right hand turn in the town where the footpath begins, we all went to turn right only to find it taped off. I was worried we would be disqualified but luckily the new footpath only began outside the town so we were all safe from disqualification.

7. Kenmare McElhinney

I think that it is great to see young fellas running road races. It is not so good for my chances of winning, but it is good for the sport. The first mile of the race is very uphill so when I reached the top I was terrified to find that there was a young fella from Kenmare with track runner form wearing Darragh McElhinney style shorts right behind me.

8. Potential Trouble

I think that if someone is still with you at two miles into a race you might be in trouble. I was hoping that after my week in Font Romeu I would be able to drop the young fella from Kenmare on the trails. Unfortunately he seemed to be even better than me on the nice perfectly groomed free from deadly rocks trails. When we got to the two mile mark he was right on my back. I began to picture the finish in my head where the young fella with the track runner form would dance away from me and make me look like the moderately old man that I am.

9. Groovy Gravel

I think that the great thing about racing young fellas is that they rarely venture beyond five kilometers in races. This was the one hope that I had. Sure enough from mile three to four the sound of the youngfella’s vaporflys crunching the perfectly groomed gravel started to grow fainter and fainter until all I could hear was the lead bike in front. I was still worried about the finishing road mile so I had to open as much of a gap as I could on the winding trails. The winding trails are so much fun to run at a pace so it was easy to find the motivation to push a bit.

10. Grand Slam

I think that it is still a grand slam if you win all four races in series consecutively even if they aren’t in the same year. I think they called it the Serena Slam in tennis when Serena Williams did it. Coming into the home straight which finishes with a steep climb to the finish I was terrified that the young fella from Kenmare was flying after me so I sprinted as hard as I could which is a barely noticeable increase in pace. Thankfully I had opened a gap just big enough that there was no sprint finish with the Kenmare McElhinney. Keep an eye out for the name Tommy Arthur he will be good.