Butter served on a stone

Kate and Mia building their bears

Although in truth there was one other race back in the late eighties. I took to one County Kilkenny cross country race (in football boots), ending up just one place outside of qualifying for a national event, oh to the glory days … not !

Any how I took some time the previous evening studying the course. Lucky enough it was on MapMyRun which was really handy as I scoped out the hills, and figured the first half of the race was more or less a steady incline, but after that it was down hill or flat.

Race morning was a little hectic as I decided to bring my whole crew along but we arrived early enough to watch the start of the half marathon. Then we headed into the grounds of Kilkenny Castle where I did a series of warm up’s and warm downs.

Pre-Race Warm Up in Kilkenny Castle

I didn’t go for any fancy energy drinks or bars, just had some water and bananas. As the start time got closer and closer, he headed down the Parade, towards High Street, with my whole crew still in tow.

PdL's await the start of the Kilkenny 10KM Race

Then we bumped into my Dad, who was just passing through Kilkenny on his way to a Rugby match, so he took a few shots.

Rafa PdL pops by to say hello

Finally the call over the speaker system, the 10KM race was about to start. As I was setting myself up in the middle bunch of people I bumped into Frank Bradley. Frank is someone I’ve bumped into just a hand full of times, mainly at Kilkenny Open Coffee I mentioned to him that it was his post on Google+that altered me to the race.

The Kilkenny 10KM Starting Line

Now it was getting really close the buzz of the crowd was getting louder, and then suddenly with a round of applause we were off. I must admit I just couldn’t stop laughing, I don’t know why but I couldn’t.

Miguel PdL Passing the starting line

Everyone had warned me that the start of races can be quite quick, but I must admit the start to this race was so much quicker than I’ve ever experienced in training, and the down hill element of the first part of the run really didn’t help. A significant hill at the 1.5km mark put a stop to the early adrenaline rush, and got me back into a true rhythm.

The next part of of the race was fine, until I hit the 4.3km mark, I started to hit a steady incline, with head wind, right in my face, I found that hard, really hard. The steady incline remained until the 6.2km mark at which point I knew the rest of the race was more or less down hill.

I had this feeling that I had lost time on the incline so I tried to make it up on the decent, however around the 8km mark my legs started to wobble a bit and so I was never more glad to see the water station.

The last 1km was erratic, as in my running style went up and down and it wasn’t until I spotted the top of Kilkenny Castle that the last blast of energy came through and I headed for the line. I was delighted, I was finished in 46.25, which was just outside my imaginary goal time, still though I was delighted.

Picked up a medal for the first time in ages, well okay everyone got a medal, but still it topped of that sense of achievement.

The final running chart, and it’s for the race which looks like this

Kilkenny 10K Run

Here are my final thoughts at the finish line.

According to the official race results, I finished the race in 46 mins and 13 secs and placed 22nd out of a field of 80 (Mens section). Now I must say in reading that it made me very happy indeed although I noticed a number of guys finished really close behind me, which means if there was anything left in the race, they may have caught me !

They say it is all done in the training, and I can say this really held true for me, I really enjoyed the sessions as they were laid out for me through Adidas miCoach, and found a great knack to holding my phone while running, although I found holding the phone during the race was not the best, simply because I could not hear the instructions, well that’s a lesson learned.

Finally a word on the video blog which was also a first for me, I wanted to try it in some format and this felt like the best option. In fact the only time I felt it was bad was when I couldn’t train and therefore couldn’t post a video, and this feeling kept me motivated to complete this whole effort. I’m not sure I’ll do it again.

Right now for some rest !

Map of Merode in Brussels

I took the Metro, and the minute I popped my head out of the Metro stop I could see numerous runners passing by the gates of Parc du Cinquantenaire. It was perfect, just perfect there was a 2.3km track around the park, most of it had gravel on it so it wasn’t too hard on the feet, there was only a small stretch were I had to run on the road, but even then it wasn’t in a area were cars were passing by so it was nice.

Overall I’m delighted with the run and the experience.

10K Session 22: Merode in Brussels, a runners oasis