10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Clonmel Half Marathon

1. Hop’s Last Stand

I think that the Clonmel Half Marathon should invite back former champions for the 10-year anniversary of their victories. It is coming up on 10 years since the great day when Cullen’s finest runner John O’Connell won a great victory over Conor McCauley around the streets and hills of Clonmel. I would love to have beaten both of them badly but I wasn’t excellent enough at the time, all I can do now is try and beat the time, 1:12:18, which was good enough 8 years ago in the bad old days before magic shoes.

2. Early O’Clock

I think that early morning races just don’t suit me. There should probably be a ban on races before 11am to make it fair for sleepy people like me. The ideal time would be about 2pm like the half marathon in Den Haag which horrified John Meade and Viv. I had to get up at 6.30am to get ready for Clonmel. I was extraordinarily tired and considered not getting up at all. I wasn’t much better by the time I arrived in Clonmel at 9am where the weather was pleasant if a little windy.

3. Terrific Track

I think that the track in Clonmel is probably quicker to get to from Glanmire than MTU. It takes 49 minutes to get to the Clonmel track on the motorway. MTU at 5pm would probably take at least an hour and a half plus the track in Clonmel is far more magnificent. My favourite part of the track is not the track but the crushed beige gravel loop around the track. That crushed beige gravel should be everywhere. It is the best surface for running on.

4. 1,2,3,4

I think that I picked the wrong half marathon to do. There were very good prizes for first second and third place with nothing for fourth, this worried me greatly considering my innate ability to finish fourth. Willy Maunsell, Jake O’Regan and Sean Doyle was a bad combination to see on the starting line. Fourth was probably the best I could hope for, fourth would be victory especially if I could beat John O’Connell’s time and failing that Conor’s.

5. 68 or 69

I think that it was Tadhg O’Sullivan’s fault that I ended up doing the first kilometer with the proper elite athletes. He jokingly said to me before the start you are probably going for 68 or 69. The disrespect from the young fella made me so angry I decided I would try and run 69 and show him how great I am. Trying lasted about a kilometer, after which I looked at my watch saw 5:14 pace and decided that 69 is only possible in Spain in January.

6. Reverse

I think that I am a very sensible moderately old man athlete. After the huge failure to run with Willy Maunsell, Jake O’Regan and Sean Doyle I sensibly decided that I would wait for the second group containing Tadhg, Dermot Gorman and Ray O’Connell to catch me. I ran a handy second mile letting the Willy led group of elite’s drift off into the distance and sure enough I could soon hear the Alphaflys and Vaporflys clapping off the ground behind me indicating that it was time to get going again.

7. Marfield Hill

I think that it took about two minutes for me to regret slowing down to wait for the group. The noise of the Alphaflys and Vaporflys clapping off the ground seemed to be worse than normal. Then to make it worse I saw the huge hill at about 3 miles that looks like the hill from the Paris Olympic Marathon in that you can see it for a long time before you have to run up it. I’m pretty sure this hill wasn’t there in John O’Connell’s time.

8. Dermot and Donal

I think that once we got over the huge hill I started to feel good again. This was probably because we were running downhill with the wind behind us. The group reduced to just me and Dermot which also revealed that the noise was not coming from Tadhg’s Alphafly 3s as I had suspected and blamed but in fact from Dermot’s Vaporfly 3s. Myself and Dermot ran together nicely until the cone where we turned around and ran back towards Clonmel at which point I managed to get a gap on Dermot which didn’t make sense as I wasn’t really trying to drop him not wanting to run into the headwind home on my own.

9. Clonmel Clip

I think that there are very angry Sunday drivers in Clonmel. I had a nice solo run along by the nice river into the vicious headwind from mile 8 to 11. Then for the last two miles we ran up through Clonmel back to the track. Two cars, a Skoda with a RN reg and a Mercedes with a D reg did that thing they do to cyclists where they try to clip you with the wing mirror even though there is nothing on the other side of the road to prevent them moving out. When the Skoda stopped at the red light just after trying to clip me, I was so tempted to remove the wing mirror from the car but instead restrained myself to some Italian and Limerick style gesticulations which hopefully weren’t captured by any photographers.

10. Around the Track

I think that the cars trying to clip me greatly helped with the last two miles. I was so angry I ran quite well even though it was all quite uphill, anger is a great fuel. I was very happy to turn onto the lovely track for the last 350m with no one behind me as I am terrified of being caught and passed on a track particularly by John Meade. Dermot was about 50 seconds behind, so I was safe to enjoy my first lap on the closest track to Glanmire on my own. I was close enough to the historic time of John O’Connell and even closer to that of Conor McCauley, more importantly I was back to being fourth again which meant I could do more miles on the lovely beige crushed gravel loop without worrying about missing the prizegiving.