Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

The Grand Canal Way parkrun is located in Tullamore. As you might guess, it is an out-and-back along the canal. You go out for 1,500 metres, the back, then out again for a shorter 1,000 section. Nice and flat, as you can imagine.

It was cool and rainy the whole thing. Everyone was very friendly and kept apologising for the weather. They didn’t seem to believe me that this was my ideal running weather. Thank you to everyone who made me feel welcome.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but this was my 50th parkrun in Ireland. Unless you ask the DUP, you insist I have only done 47.

Bala is a town located in the middle of North Wales, at at the north end of Bala Lake. Importantly, they have a parkun and it is one of the four required to complete The Full Ponty challenge. I ticked off Pontefract in June, so this is the second one I needed.

The course is an out-and-back along the river with a turnaround point at the lake. You do this twice before finishing. I had had surgery a few days before so no running for me, but I had a delightful stroll along the course with the hills in the background and the lake at the end.

Another S for my snakes challenge!

Sligo parkrun has an out-and-back section before opening up to two loops of a bigger park. There is a slight hill here, but nothing compared to Temple Newsam or Cabinteely. And on the plus side, you get a beautiful view of the hills in the distance.

Sligo is a picturesque place and I stopped on the way back to take a few pictures.

Our first base camp for our road trip was the seaside town of Portrush. Long beaches, fish and chip shops, arcades, the whole classic British seaside town feel. It also had a parkrun. With Portrush being a summer hotspot, over 500 runners turned up for an out-and-back along the beach. The sand was firm enough under foot but there were some wet bits to run through. A lot of runners did it in bare feet.

After parkrun, Venla and I built the first of many sandcastles.

What better way you could spend a Saturday than running through the Dublin Mountains?

The Trail Festival is run by the same people that run the Dublin Mountain Backyard Ultra and takes you through 30k of hilly terrain with the option of doing one, two, or three loops.

The run starts at Kilmashogue Forest and goes straight up. There were about 30 of us taking on the 30 km single loop and I soon found myself at the back of the pack. The uphill was a lovely wide gravel track but also uphill. The downhill was single track and I’m not much of a trail runner so I didn’t pick up a lot of speed there. Luckily, there was a two-kilometre road section into Glencullen that allowed me to catch the back of the pack.

Trail is a word with a wide definition. Once we were through Glencullen, we ended up climbing a steep bank (I would have completely missed the turning if I hadn’t seen others) and then onto what the locals called the “bog road” where the path disappeared and we were running through small bushes. Then there was a small gully with a river at the bottom and ropes to help us climb down. The ropes did not save me and I fell over twice here.

We almost made it back onto the Wicklow Way track before turning again towards a trig point at the top of the hill. This offered spectacular views of the whole of Dublin Bay and Wicklow in one scene.

Here we got into the real bog. I stopped on what I thought was a solid bit of mud and found myself above submerged up above my knee and had to climb my way out. At around 15k, Dublin disappeared behind the hills and I felt panicked about being in the middle of nowhere even though I knew it was just over the horizon. That was an unpleasant half an hour.

At around 23k we came down into ZipIt where there was a water drop. I had brought enough food and drink for five hours but was drinking more than expected so glad to be able to refill my bottles. Then it was straight up the hill again and towards the finish. I was tired by this point and started stumbling over rocks a lot but luckily did not fall.

The final two kilometres were downhill again and my quads were on fire as I descended. I managed to find the correct turning point, which I was quite proud of, as almost everyon else that finished came in the wrong way. Very glad to be done. I’m not sure I had fun but I’m glad I did it :D.

It’s coming home… again!

Great resilience from England coming back from deficits in all three games in the knock-out stage. I thought Spain did themselves proud of the final. But the solid passing and ball control never converted into more than one goal, so the result felt fair enough.

Dundalk parkrun takes place on the Dundalk Institute of Technology campus and consists of three laps around the playing field. While it is not the most exciting of parkruns, it was well marshalled and I had fun.

Triathlon is back! I took in Kilkenny Triathlon a few weeks ago and realised how much I had missed it. I decided to keep momentum rolling and sign up for Tro Provinces Triathlon, which takes place in Lanesborough. During the race you cross the border between Longford and Rosscommon, hence the name of the race.

Unfortunately, it was heat wave weekend. Temperatures were predicted to peak at 28 with typical British Isles humidity. I’m not a big fan of hot weather and I would have cancelled, except that I had just started to get my confidence back in open water and was determined to capitalise on it.

It is about a two-hour drive over, the second half of which is on small roads. I was in wave eight, which started two hours after transition closed, at around 12:30 meaning we got the impact on the day’s sun. I tried to leave my wetsuit off until the last minute to stay cool.

The swim

I was very nervous again before the race and getting into the water. The water in Lough Ree was a beautiful temperature, though. Maybe around 20 degrees. Warm enough to be pleasant to get into and cool enough to swim without overheating.

It was a triangluar course around a single buoy. I decided to take it easy and do heads-up breaststroke to the buoy. Once I rounded it I felt my confidence building and went into front crawl that I did all the way back to the swim exit. Job done and really happy with that.

The cycle

The cycle route was on closed roads and once you get through the first two turns it was a pure out-and-back affair. There was a tail wind on the way out so we were all flying. Slower on the return as we were going into a slight headwind but the aero bars really helped here.

I decided to go with arm sleeves to protect myself from sunburn. In addition, I took a second bottle on the bike with water that I could pour over my torso and arms every few kilometres to cool me down.

The run

Finally, onto the run. This too was a mostly out-and-back affair with little shade. Thankfully, the race organisers had put a real effort into keeping us cool. There were two water stations, so four chances to pass them on the out-and-back, and they put a series of sprinklers on the course so that you could run through them as well.

I took a soft flask of water to pour over myself again. However, having been sitting in transition the whole time, it was like bath water and I had to dump and refill it at the first water station.

The result

I managed to leave my timing chip in my car after I had registered, so I don’t have an official time. But according to my watch, my time was:

1:23:09

And my splits were:

I wasn’t interested in the time; I just wanted to have fun. Not miles off the 40-minute barrier for the bike, though. And a sub-26 5k in that heat was lovely. I worked pretty hard for it looking at my heart rate!

The race was well organised and they gave out free ice creams at the end. Thank you to all of the volunteers who made it happen.

Mountlucas parkrun takes place in the Mount Lucas wind farm. It is a single lap trail course and you get to pass right underneith the turbines: their foundations are just off the side of the trail and the blades pass over your head.

Lovely to have the one lap and I got a warm welcome from the volunteers. Thanks everyone, and happy 8th birthday!

I completed Kilkenny Triathlon two years ago when the swim was cancelled due to water quality. That meant the last open water race I had finished was IRONMAN Copenhagen three years ago and my confidence was not in good shape coming into this race. I registered for the try a tri as it is the same course as the sprint but with a shorter swim.

I got down there and registered fine. Despite the cloud cover it was baking hot, especially once we had our wetsuits on. We walked down to the swim and I felt nervous, especially when getting into the water. But I did it, and despite plenty of in-water nerves, too, I finished the swim.

The bike was pretty standard. Some back ache towards the end but I generally just had fun. I don’t think I used my aero bars much.

The run course was different to previous years. Last time it followed a similar route to the parkrun course with two laps around the castle grounds. This course took us onto the side of the river behind the castle and then back along the river in a lovely one-lap circuit.

My overall time was:

1:23:46

In 2023 it took on a duathlon format with an additional run at the start I cannot compare the two. Slightly slower on the cycle an slightly faster on the run, though it was probably a little flatter. My T1 looks horrendous but the mat was at the bottom of the hill by the river and included a long run up to transition.

I’m not fuss about the times in any case, I just wanted to finish a triathlon with an open water swim again and I did that so job done. I’m proud of myself. Also, it was fun!