Training
Training went as good as I hoped. I had a calf tear in January and coupled with lack of diagnosis or sensible rehab, the problems persisted until April. It was the first week of May following a second minor tear that I spent the week slowly building back up around the streets of Munich. Every run was on a knife edge and I was seriously doubting my ability to make Berlin. I had no intentions of running if I wasn’t in pb shape let alone the sub 2:30 which I knew clubmates were already talking about. I got through that week, and another week of easy running in Portugal with clubmates and things were finally looking up. The calf was playing ball and I was friends with it again. By mid June I was hitting the longer marathon sessions and 20 milers again, gradually ramping up the milage but still wary of overloading the calf. My fitness wasn’t terrible but I had the benchmark of last summer and I knew I had a lot of work to do to catch up with some of the lads but I had to be patient, I didn’t force the sessions and had to trust I would peak at the right time.

The consistent training continued into July and August and I was starting to feel in better shape by the week. The mid week 15 miler on a Tuesday was on a hilly trail in Blarney and it was here I really felt the improvements were showing and was getting stronger on the hills each time. There were 5 of us planning on hitting Berlin and I spent a lot of time running alongside them week in week out. It was one of the keys of the cycle, we really helped each other through the sessions and the advantages of having a solid group can’t be underestimated. Thursday was our 35 minute tempo, typically 15-20 seconds per mile quicker than marathon pace and we had to always ensure these were controlled and we felt relaxed. Our Saturday morning sessions on the UCC pitches were also gradually getting quicker each week and we all fed well off each others energy and improvements. These were longer reps (e.g 4 x 10 mins) typically around 10 mile race pace and I’ve always viewed this as part 1 of a single session, part 2 being the following day . The long run on Sunday was always on tired legs but I felt my body adapting the more I ran these and felt fresher each week. As I neared the peak of the cycle I ran an extra 6 miles in the evening hitting marathon distance for the day, a mental boost if anything. The long runs were ran typically 1 minute per mile slower than marathon pace at a relaxed conversational pace, they always seemed to fly by. All of my other running was usually an easy paced double on Monday and Wednesday (7-7:30 pace) and depending on how I felt I’d either take Friday off or do 1 short run.

In terms of racing, I was happy with the buildup races and felt they played a big role in solidifying my confidence coming into the marathon. In July I ran my first race since April, a 5 miler in Ballycotton coming in 4th in 27:14, a decent reflection of where I was at. In mid August I came 2nd in Clonmel in 1:13:02 with training partner John taking an impressive win. A few weeks later in my final race before the marathon, I finally ducked under the 16 minute barrier for 5k running 15:55 in a local race here in Cork. That for me was a major boost coming off a 95 mile week and at that point I just felt I was ready. I knew I needed to just mind myself, get to the line healthy and I’d be giving myself the best possible chance of a good result in Berlin. At this point too I was getting close to my lightest weight all year around 9 st 8 lbs. It does require a bit of effort in food choices and cooking at home but I think there’s good bang for your buck for each pound lighter you can get without jeopardizing performance. Disclaimer: I don’t condone crash dieting to run a good race, finding the right race weight is completely individual and should be a very slow process. There’s a fine line between performance gain and performance hinderance.

As with all cycles, the much maligned achilles injury struck a few times through the cycle. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I always tried to view them as a chance to step back and absorb the training, a little warning from my body to ease back a bit and I think I managed them all very well. Generally whenever I felt the dull ache, I knew it was a flareup so I immediately backed off and in 1-3 days I was fine again. It takes a lot of discipline, it’s very tempting to convince yourself it’s nothing and you run through a session only to compound the injury but you have to see the bigger picture at the time. All that said, and I’ve said it enough at this stage, I need to really focus more on preventing these flareups rather than reacting to them. Anyway, that’s for me to worry about. Other than that the weekly deep tissue rubs on a Sunday evening kept me on top of the rest and thankfully I had no other major injury concerns. Christ, I haven’t even began the race report and I’ve written a book.

Mileage peaked at 95 compared to 100 last cycle but I didn’t go chasing 100 just for the sake of it. At this stage I know my achilles is more likely to flare when running over 90 miles per week and those 5-10 miles extra (of easy running) weren’t going to make a major difference. Once I was getting in the key sessions of the mid week long, tempo, grass intervals and long run, I knew I would be fine. Consistency is absolute key, erratic training just doesn’t cut it when it comes to the marathon. I hit my peak milage 3 weeks out and ramped down the volume while maintaining that bit of intensity and I feel I got it just about right in terms of freshness on race day. The last 5 weeks in terms of milage were 93, 95, 78, 64, 54 (including the race).

Targets
Note the plural. There was no single target for me, I’ve made that mistake before. Last year in Frankfurt I ran 2:36:56. Talk of running a sub 2:30 would mean taking 7 minutes off that. You don’t need to tell me that’s ambitious but I said I’d just leave it sitting there, in the corner like a bold child. Coming into the end of August and having a better sense of my shape, a clearer target started to emerge in my head, 2:32. That would be 5 minutes off the pb and still a tall order but absolutely achievable. Week by week and session by session that target was shedding it’s blurry veil as we crept closer to the day. It was becoming more and more obtainable for me assuming the uncontrollables kept at bay. Even the 2:30 was starting to whine a little louder at this stage. Two of my training partners were still firmly targeting the 2:30 but I stayed cautious and didn’t commit. On the last Saturday before the race the coach who had been quiet about targets until now, told the 3 of us to go for the 2:30. I kind of expected that and while still feeling it was quite ambitious I agreed we were all in close enough shape, close enough to go for it anyway and if we came up short we’d still be sitting happy with a healthy new pb. So with all of that I went into the race with 3 potential outcomes. Perfect: Sub 2:30. Great: 2:32. Good: PB. Anything else, inevitable disappointment and possibly firing a chair into a wall. The latter outcome really wasn’t there my mind though if I’m being completely honest.

Taper
The taper went as well as I could have hoped. Though a fair amount of boredom, paranoia and trepidation, there were no niggles or sickness and I hit the last few sessions feeling great. The final session, 2 miles at race pace (5:43 m/m) on the Tuesday before the marathon, I felt really good. That session is, quite unbelievably, the first time we ran intentionally at race pace for the entire cycle. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t yield concerns coming into the week of the race. I look at a lot of my peers and they’re all doing a lot of training at race pace but whenever I get these doubts I have to reassure myself that this approach has produced excellent results in the club. I had to trust the pace would feel comfortable on the day and I was confident it would.

Pre-Race
I travelled over on the Friday from Dublin and bumped into my clubmate Claire (who ran a fantastic 2:38) and Gladys Ganiel (2:39) at the airport who were travelling together. It was also great to catch up with TRR who was on a mission with his better half to drink Berlin dry, a real pity he couldn’t make the line along with Krusty but we’ll be seeing more of them no doubt.

I was staying with my clubmate and Frankfurt training partner John in an AirBnB apartment. My 2 other clubmates were staying nearby in another AirBnB. First time using it and I have to say it was fantastic, so much cheaper and we had a great apartment in a central location, 650m from the Brandenburg gate. Relaxed Friday night and had a big bowl of meaty pasta. Met an elderly couple in the restaurant and within 10 seconds I was holding a note with their contact details and an invitation to come stay in their house for the Boston marathon, gobsmacked.

Saturday morning and I had a bit of a sleep in following a restless night because of some vicious encounters with a gang of mosquitos who were trying to sabotage my race. I caught one right in the act in the middle of the night and I flew out of bed. “Hey!! I need that blood to carry oxygen to my muscles” so I spent maybe an hour prowling around the room with a fashion magazine. I killed all but one and went back to sleep. The one mosquito that was left administered quite few more blood extractions before morning broke. Bastard.

Before breakfast, myself and John decided to head out for a 20 minute jog to loosen the legs up a bit. It was shortly after 10am and we had planned to meet our 2 clubmates at the expo at 12. So donned in our shorts and t-shirts I grabbed the key and we headed outside. Just as I slammed the door shut I stopped to think and I said to John “I wonder if that key that’s stuck on the inside of the door will stop us getting back in”. He just looked at me with a blank expression. I put the key in the door and tried to open it. It’s not working. I agree John, we should have removed the key on the inside but still, a fairly punishing door locking system. John’s arms are already slumped on his head in a state of disbelief. We are locked outside of our AirBnB apartment yet we have a key. We have no phone, no money, nor a contact number for our host and we need to collect our race numbers. This is a minor pickle.

I saw a gap in the window but it was restricted, John is small but there was no way he was getting in there despite me trying to convince him though I was really trying to convince myself. The gap was about 3cm. Ok we’ve exhausted all avenues, the door is definitely not opening and we are not going to fit through a pathetic gap in a window. What’s next?

We headed out onto the street, with no real plan and wandered into a nearby opticians who thankfully had good english. I explained my situation, that we didn’t need any glasses but had a marathon related emergency. They were decent humans and offered the use of their phone. I had no phone number for the AirBnb host so I first needed to log into my email to get his number. I managed that after asking for a laptop and also after praying to jesus that I had 2 step verification turned off, which I did. I got the hosts number and punched it into the phone, pleased with my controlled management of the situation. This is it, we’re saved. To my horror, the guys phone was switched off. No! The worst possible case of him being out of the country crossed my mind. We jotted down his number on a piece of paper anyway and could now see that the optician staff were getting pretty wary of the 2 distressed Irish guys in their running shorts hanging around their shop. I think they wanted us to leave.

I had another idea. Using the opticians laptop and aware that he’s now getting slightly impatient, I quickly logged into Facebook and sent the our clubmates a message telling them to come to our address. I’m not sure what that was supposed to do but it was just a general SOS and maybe one of them could do karate on the door. We thanked the opticians and vowed it would be the first place we return to if we ever needed glass or sunglasses in Berlin.

Now we wait. So we waited. And we waited. John was getting pretty antsy now saying he was hungry and he might die if he didn’t eat. We were standing at a street corner near our apartment to stay in the sunshine and time was just slowly ticking by. We couldn’t believe the lads hadn’t seen the Facebook message yet, they had been on it all morning posting rubbish. It was now well past noon so we assumed they’d finally suspect there was trouble in Chinatown when we didn’t show up to the expo. It was getting grim now, there was an air of defeat and John was already talking about smashing in the door, fairly extreme I thought at this stage but didn’t rule it out either. I was fairly keen to get the race number collected and hold it in my hand, but I knew things would work out…wouldn’t they?

There I was, leaning up against a wall, squinting from the glare of the midday sun and solemnly scraping a piece of stone against a wall when I looked at the ground and what’s that? Folded up in a neat little square as if it had just partaken in a shady drug deal was a real ten euro note. What the! I unfolded it and held it up to the sun and I leaped with joy. John! we’re saved. Well ok, we’re not saved but we can eat. John didn’t share my elation, not one bit. I said I’d go find us food with my newfound wealth and John would stay at the corner (now fondly known as tenner corner). I walked off but when I got around the corner I started running, I just didn’t want John to spiral further if he knew I was after getting a run in and he didn’t. I found a supermarket nearby and bought the essentials, 4 rolls, a packet of ham, a packet of congealed chicken and a packet of cheese. I had to do a lot of maths while walking around, I couldn’t possibly take the embarrassment of getting to the checkout and having to bring something back. It came to about 9.60 in the end which was a great result so off I ran with the goods, hopeful that the situation has improved.

I arrived back and the mood was still as bleak. I really hoped the lads would have turned up by now but it was just lonely old John looking like a homeless runner. We might actually have to smash the door in. I said we’d eat our rolls and then go try ring the number again. The rolls went down really nice but the chicken was disgusting so I only had 2 slices of that. A while later and a yellow taxi comes slowly around the corner with two grinning monkeys in the back. It was our clubmates who thought the whole situation was hilarious, which to be fair it kind of was.

They came back to the apartment with us and for some reason wanted to try open the door themselves and also inspected the window and came to the same conclusion that not even a baby hobbit would fit through there. I got hold of one of their phones and dialed the number I wrote down earlier hoping for a better response this time. Ring ring. Yes, he’s answered! I slowly explained our situation to the host and without me even finishing the sentence (you’d almost swear this has happened before) he chirps in. “Oh that’s no problem guys, just use the second entrance”. It’s right on the other side and brings you into the bathroom”. Without even replying I looked in horror at John and pointed to the other door, which to be completely fair is the entrance to somebody else’s apartment and happens to have a side door into ours. The other clubmates processed to burst their holes laughing as John put the key in and opened it. I couldn’t help but laugh too but it was more a sense of overwhelming relief. John later admitted thoughts had crossed his mind of sleeping on the streets of Berlin and explaining to his family why he didn’t run the marathon. My brain didn’t get quite that far.

Alright, this report has gotten way out of control, I didn’t mean to go into so much detail of the non-race stuff but it’s a funny story and had to be told so look I’ll post it now and finish part 2 later. For the rest of the day we just hopped into a taxi to the expo which was a very quick in and out job (that’s what she said) and then we went for lasagne, bit of coffee shop lounging and walked around a small bit, but not too much. I bumped into EagRouge also who we all know had a terrific race, he was with his kids and looking very relaxed, I got a sense he was about to do something special. In the evening we relaxed with a home cooked meal of chicken and sweet potato in the apartment, enjoyed with some much appreciated comic relief on Netflix with the movie “I Love You Man” starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segal which I’ve seen before but still a good laugh. I headed off to bed around 10:30pm but not before a quick sweep of the room with my fashion magazine to execute any potential blood lifters.

This brings us nicely into race day, coming in part 2…

(again really sorry that this contains absolutely no reporting on the actual race)