Back to picturesque Mount Juliet, Kilkenny for the first run of the season. I’ve been looking forward to this all winter long but disappointment has struck in as I’ve picked up an injury breaking in my new runners.
I know they say break in new foot wear slowly and I thought I had. I placed at least 20km in them but on a rare fast leg of a training run just one week before this race, pop went the left calf muscle.
As I had registered for this event ages ago I was determined to do it and so had some intensive physio on coming into the event.
Now it has been constantly raining for the past few weeks and a big storm has just passed so there was also a wonder as to whether this race would be run at all. Turns out on the morning registration desk the 10km was fine but the half marathon had to be cancelled, the course was flooded.
And sure enough as I made my way down to the start line we had to walk across a section of wooden pallets over a flooded road within the Mount Juliet grounds. Those that had come for the half were super disappointed and the consolation of running the 10km didn’t appear to appease a large section of the crowd.
Finally under starters orders and who’s there on the start line only Sonia O’Sullivan, Irish European/World/Olympic medallist and it was super cool to be able to run with Sonia for 2 kms and then that dreaded hill came into sight and sure enough it defeated me. I tried I really tried but it was just so steep.
The rest of the run was normal enough and I didn’t feel the calf muscle that much and closed the event with a time of 43:49 which isn’t too shabby and 3 minutes within Sonia’s time (which I’m sure was just a training stroll for her).
When I look back at my previous run here I had a time of 43:55 so a few seconds clipped off.
I leave Mount Juliet limping and not feeling too good I hope this isn’t a bad sign for future runs.