Saturday 101814

I slept pretty poorly last night.  Early I had banged my knee pretty well against the sink, and it was throbbing well enough to wake me up.  In the middle of the night I was watching RTE 1, some show with Gaelic being spoken and English subtitles (it is an interesting point made by several in England that while it is where English originated it seems to be less and less the language spoken there).   I woke this AM feeling a bit doubtful about the Saint Anne Park run.  Nonetheless, I figured I’d at least give a jog in the direction a go to see how it felt.

4 miles over to the park.  The knee was a bit sore but not any worse for running.  The sun had broken through last night’s rain, and the park was beautiful.It was pretty easy to find the race, with close to 300 runners milling in and about.
At 9:30 a guy gave a few instructions over a bull horn, we walked around the corner and got the 3-2-1 go.  It went out quick.  I had decided with 50+ miles in my legs over the three day before, I was going to attempt to not give too much at the start, but to not go out over my head either.  In the first 400 yards I was about 10th, and then folks started to come back.  I went through a gob of folks and then I was fifth.  Just before the mile I came up on a guy and it seemed like it would be a basic pass.  But he latched on and hung for about a third of a mile before falling back a bit.  This brought us up to third a bit.  I came up onto him as we entered the second lap and he did the same.  As I came to his shoulder he surged and then stuck with me.  He didn’t shake as easy and I was pretty convinced that he’d sit about 3 yards behind me until the last quarter where he’d blow my doors off.  I managed to get some daylight between him and me over the last half mile, and finished in 18:25 for third.  For a bit I thought second might come back, but he opened it up over the last mile more than I can match and finished over 20 seconds ahead.

Not stellar, but I am happy with it in light of the load over the last couple of days.   Additionally I am happy in that  it might be the first 5k I legitimately negatively split in like a hundred years (6:08, 6:01, 5:56).  The effort was not a huge challenge aerobically, that might be the sea level thing … but my legs were clearly a bit challenged to move well today.  But that is okay as I am trying to just keep at running on tired legs. I felt like it was an uptempo run more than a “balls out” effort – I simply could not get to that because my legs were a bit too tired to do that.

Afterwards there was a psuedo community farmer’s market.  I grabbed a coffee, checked out the scene a bit, and yapped with another runner who mentioned there is an 8k in Phoenix Park tomorrow.  I am on the fence as to whether I will look to jump in or not.  I want to but apparently spikes are probably required, and apparently it will go pretty quick (sub 25).  I am okay with that but if I was the last behind everyone by six minutes that could be a bit of a problem.  The guy I spoke to thought it would be okay from a time perspective, but was pretty sure I’d need spikes.  I will see how I feel.
There was this pretty cute dog discipline class going on, as the dogs were all older puppies.

After taking it in for a bit, I started the jog back but swung east over Bull Island.  
There were all these dudes out surfing with the big kites. 
As I came back across to the mainland, there was a Scout gathering – a bunch of the younger Sea Scouts, finishing up an overnight and getting ready for some instruction on tent setup, pioneering, etc.  Cool to see Scouting in the international realm so I stood at a distance and watched for a bit.

Finished with 15.7 miles on the day.

Parkrun is a pretty amazing thing here in Europe.  Free, volunteer run 5ks.  Seems like it can’t take off in the US because of the liability factor in using parks there (from what I gather, the city councils underwrite this here in Ireland … while I appreciate that, I am not sure I am game for the cost, government intervention that means – particularly in light of the 100000 person protest there was here in Dublin last week on water metering at 5 Euro a miter (that is a 1000 liters). 

Still, I am game for paying for a good run service product.  If RD’s make money, and the people are happy with what they got, I see no problem in that (some might).  That said, I think the bar is pretty low for most races, in what they provide versus what they charge – and particularly in light of what they are getting out of volunteers.  But, anyway, that is a less than positive topic.

No Elk tag for me back home this year … I was thinking of getting one over the counter but the timing is not great.  I will probably head east for some birding again.  My father-in-law has a tag, and if he gets one, I expect to be working on harvesting to learn about that.  Candidly, this New England kid never really learned those lessons.  It takes some learning.

The call for nominations for USATF MUT Runner of the Year is up.  I’d think that probably be Canaday or Gray … probably Gray because I think technically Canaday’s wins are more on the Skyrunning circuit.

I will skip posting the obligatory Foo video today, but you can go and google what they did with Letterman this past week, including putting Taylor Hawkins up as the singer like Robin Zander (even dressing like him) with Cheap Trick’s Rick Neilsen on guitar and Dave behind the drums.

Other news stuff:  Apparently at the Skyrunning race I considered going to Steve K got the win.   Remember that guy who disappeared at the Mount Marathon race?  The post activity is pretty ugly.  And later I will be pouring over PreNats and Wisco results for XC.