Christmas 2015 was spent back in Northern Ireland. 2 and a
half weeks. A good break from the madness and stress of work and London. I knew
I wasn’t fit but had planned a couple of running races, and also hoped that the
winter weather wouldn’t keep me from getting out and about on the bike as well.
So armed with running gear, wet weather cycling gear, swimming gear, Christmas
presents, clothes and other stuff, I gladly left work on Thursday 17 December
and got on a plane. No thinking about work or London for a couple of weeks, for
now I was forgetting all about it.
When I was working in Aberdeen many years ago (unbelievably
now 10 years ago), from 2004 to 2005 to 2006 my half marathon time dropped from
85 minutes to 75 minutes to 71 minutes. At around the same time, I started to
enter races back in Northern Ireland any time I was home – races like the
Laganside 10k in Belfast (now the Titanic Quarter 10k), the Race Over the
Glens, the North-West cross-country. It was at the North-West cross-country
during Christmas 2005 that City of Derry Spartans Athletics Club first asked me
if I ran for a club in Northern Ireland.
And so it was that I became a Spartan and flew back to
Northern Ireland from university twice in the first couple of months of 2006, to
help the squad win Ulster junior and senior cross-country titles. Then I ran my
half-marathon PB of 1:11 on a freezing cold Inverness day. Looking back on it,
those were the glory days, and I didn’t even realise it at the time.
I’ve competed in the North-West cross-country over the past
few years. In 2013 I wasn’t too far off winning it. In 2014 I was hovering
around the top 10. This time around, in 2015, ten years on from when my
association with City of Derry began, I wondered where I’d be in in 2025,in another
ten years. This time around, in the 2015 North-West cross-country, I had no
idea where I finished. Top 30 maybe? Top 40? This year-on-year worsening in
performance is indicative that my winter training after each Ironman season is
getting worse and worse. In previous years, I have been training on Tenerife in November, which has helped my Christmas fitness. I usually push myself pretty hard on Tenerife. But in the run-up to this Christmas, I didn't go to Tenerife, so that would also have had an effect on my fitness levels at Christmas. I might try to get out to Tenerife at Easter in 2016 which will more directly benefit a summer Ironman. After the Ironman season in 2013 I had a pretty good
winter without much of a break after the Ironman season. In 2014 I had more of
an off-season, but I still knew that I needed to be sensible as I knew that I
would be competing in Ironman in the 2015 season.
This winter however, I have had no idea how 2016 would pan
out because of the uncertainty surrounding my job, and also because I needed
much more of a mental and physical break in my triathlon off-season. The Ironman business is tough.
Combine it with a tough job and a stressful city and it doesn’t get any easier.
So I switched off big time from the rigorous, disciplined training, I let my
diet slide a bit, I let my drinking habits develop somewhat, and my results at
the North-West cross country reflected all this. In previous winters I didn’t
go above 71kg. This winter I hit 74kg. I had to get a pair of “winter trousers”
for work… Not to worry though. I don’t need to be fit at this time of year. If
I am going to do another Ironman, then I need to be fit in July 2016. I have
time…
For me, the North-West cross-country this year was just a
run-out, I had no expectations of doing well, but I was pleased to be running,
I enjoy cross-country, it was good to see clubmates, and I have to start
somewhere on the road back to fitness…
I took a nice bike ride out the north coast to Portbradden, a tiny cluster of houses right on the sea at the bottom of a steep road. Portbradden is also home to the smallest church in Ireland. I haven't been there for years and years. On the way back, I noticed what looked like a unicorn sitting in a field, looking pretty content. A unicorn? Weren't these mythological? Or were my eyes deceiving me? Evidently not, see photo below...
OK, maybe it was a ram with one very curly horn and one very straight horn...
Christmas Day came and brought with it a book on
over-hydration, a new Garmin bike computer mount, a new heart rate monitor
strap, Chris Froome’s book, and a flute to add to my collection of musical
instruments (guitar, keyboard, tin whistle, harmonica, bodhrán drum). I was
pretty pleased! After a massive, massive dinner, I didn’t really have any
choice but to go out for a bike ride. I had to do something to help the dinner
digest. The roads on Christmas Day were great. No-one else around. Perfect.
Also around this time came a text from my uncle: “Hi guys
just to tell you there is a fun run and walk in Pass in Johns memory on Sunday
27th – reg is from 1030 starts at 12 – also having new year’s party in house from
7/8 all welcome – tx me back”. I translated this to understand that my uncle
Michael had probably texted the entire extended family to let us know that
there would be a fun run in the village of Poyntzpass in memory of my dad’s
cousin John, who had died of cancer earlier this year. I had never met him, but
I knew he had been a runner and a triathlete. Poyntzpass is not far from where
my dad grew up. I’d never been there but I knew that my granny had grown up in
a little tiny place called Acton, just up the hill outside Poyntzpass. You
always pass signs for Poyntzpass on the way to Dublin. The Belfast to Dublin
railway line goes through Poyntzpass.
To my mind came a poem that I could only half remember from
when I was small, it was my dad who used to say it time and time again. It’s
about a train journey, and it has the beat and rhythm of a train clattering
over the tracks. The wonders of the internet mean that I’ve been able to look
it up and I can re-print the whole poem here. It’s entitled “From a Railway
Carriage” by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Faster than
fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and
houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging
along like troops in a battle,
All through the
meadows the horses and cattle;
All of the
sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as
driving rain;
And ever again,
in the blink of an eye,
Painted stations
whistle by.
Here is a child
who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself
and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp
who stands and gazes;
And there is the
green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart
run away in the road
Lumping along
with man and load;
And here is a
mill and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
No doubt, to my dad, this poem was about the train that ran
from Belfast, through Lurgan, Scarva, Poyntzpass, and on down to Dublin. Places
he grew up. No doubt he was the child who clambered and scrambled gathering
brambles.
I was intrigued about this run in Poyntzpass, and the opportunity
to go and see “where it all began”, and I knew I was likely to meet some
extended family I’d never met before. I texted my uncle back to find out more.
He texted back “Hi John the run is 60k backwards that’s what makes it fun.” So
I asked if him and my auntie Dolores were signed up and preparing to do it in
Santa suits…
I finally found out the full details. It was actually the
second edition of the “Run for Raff”, a 10k run in memory of a local guy named
Adrian Rafferty who died of leukaemia in 2014. The 2015 edition of this run was
also to be in memory of John Cloughley (my dad’s cousin) who died of cancer
earlier in 2015. Amazingly, he had completed the first “Run for Raff” in 44
minutes, while he was undergoing chemotherapy. There would be a walk as well as
a run, and all money raised would go to charity. The route was south along the
old Newry canal towpath, parallel to the railway line, and then back along
undulating country roads. It sounded great. My dad was planning to take a bike
down and go for a bike ride, and was trying to persuade one or more of my
uncles to join him.
But before I went to Poyntzpass on the 27th, I had to go to
Greencastle on the 26th. “Greencastle” is a very popular 5 mile road race that
I’ve done every year since 2012. I had pre-entered this year’s event and had
arranged to pick up a clubmate from Metro Aberdeen Running Club, who was also
back in Northern Ireland for Christmas and keen to run at Greencastle.
Greencastle is in the middle of the Sperrin mountains (some
might say in the middle of nowhere) and incredibly, this race has been going
for 30 years now. It’s a brilliant event, really well organised, and there’s
always a really good event t-shirt. It has grown into one of the main fixtures
on the annual athletics calendar, not just in Northern Ireland but across
Ulster and the rest of Ireland. All roads lead to Greencastle on Boxing Day,
there must have been 1300 runners there. Greencastle is famous (infamous? notorious?)
for its killer hill at mile 4. You can happily be running at 5:30 per mile and
then you might not even break 7 minutes for mile 4…
Again, like the North-West Cross-Country, things have got
progressively slower for me at Greencastle. In 2012 I was fourth overall. In
2013 I was fifth. In 2014 I didn’t make the top 10. I didn’t know how to
approach this year’s race. Two races in two days? Madness. When I was 21 or so,
and didn’t know any better, I did two races in two days (the Scottish Road
Relay Championships in Livingston and the Garioch 10k in Inverurie) and
resolved never to be so stupid again. It was tough on the legs. And now my legs
are 10 years older! And I’m currently not fit and haven’t trained much since
Ironman Wales in September, and my legs are very deconditioned, and the last
thing I want to do is two races in two days, but I really want to go to
Greencastle and I also really want to go to Poyntzpass…
So I decided a conservative approach would be best at
Greencastle. With a slower first couple of miles, it meant that I had conserved
energy and started passing people in the second half of the race, and so I
didn’t hold too much back in the second half and ran an almost identical time
to the previous year. But my legs were still sore afterwards. They gave us
protein-enriched milk for an after-race drink, and I had brought loads of tuna
with me, so I wasn’t short on protein immediately afterwards, which was a good
thing for my legs. It made me a bit pukey in the car on the way home though…
Then the next day it was off to Poyntzpass, about two hours away, via a toilet stop at my aunt’s house, which we had to wake her up for… I wasn’t really sure what to expect in Poyntzpass, given that it was a memorial event for two people who were fairly recently departed. I knew there would be lots of family and friends of both there. I didn’t know what size of crowd the event would attract. I had it in the back of my head that it would be really cool to do well at it, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to run fast. My legs were seizing up from my exertions the previous day in Greencastle. My muscles were sore. My left ankle was particularly stiff. But at least the weather forecast was good. The recently departed were looking down in that regard…
It turned out that there were hundreds of people about. I
did my own thing before the start and didn’t talk to many people. Dad had
persuaded uncle Gerard to join him on the bike, so they headed off before the
run started. I tried to warm up. Come on legs, loosen up! Don’t be so stiff! As
I was jogging down to the railway crossing, the lights started flashing and the
warning alarm sounded. A train was coming. I could have ducked under the
barriers and got away onto the canal towpath to do my warm-up, but something
made me stand and wait to watch the train fly past. I looked both ways but
couldn’t see anything. Then I saw it appear from around the corner.
I could see that this wasn’t a normal train. The guy beside
me said that this train was doing a “mince pie run”, and that it was the
original old Enterprise locomotive and carriages that would have chugged
between Belfast and Dublin back in my dad’s day, decades ago. It seemed apt
that I should see it today. The train thundered past in a blur of smoke and
noise, but not before I saw “Enterprise: Belfast – Dublin” painted on its
cylindrical front end.
Faster than
fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and
houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging
along like troops in a battle,
All through the
meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the
sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as
driving rain;
And ever again,
in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations
whistle by.
OK,
enough nostalgia, now I had to get warmed up, or get my legs de-stiffened at least. I did
the best I could, and the run started. Four of us formed a lead group, with an
official bike leading the way. I was happy to sit at the back of the group and
work my way into the race. The four soon became two. Then after about two
miles, I took the lead. But forget about leading the race, this was just a
great run and a great day to be out around Poyntzpass. The old canal was to the
left. The hills and fields were ahead and to the right. Blue sky. Sun out. It
wasn’t half distance in the race yet, so I was still feeling good. Tremendous.
I could have run the whole 18-odd miles to the town of Newry, where the canal
meets the sea. But after three miles, there was a turn-around point. I had been
averaging just over 5:30 per mile. I felt OK. The legs were heavy but
functioning.
At just over half distance, I was directed off the towpath and onto a country road. This was the undulating part of the course, up on a slight ridge. Good views to the left and right, but by now I was working harder. I just wanted to get finished by this stage. My legs were going to give me agony after this. “Two races in two days John? Don’t expect us to allow you to walk properly for a good few days now…” I finished in just over 34 minutes and picked up a nice trophy and £50 meal voucher. I ate two tuna sandwiches to get some protein on board, and I forced myself to go for a good long jog to try to shift the lactic in my legs and to stop myself stiffening up.
After
this, dad and uncle Gerard had finished off their cycle, and most of the other
runners were done. Walkers were finishing too. I got chatting to a few people.
I met Adrian Rafferty’s wife Claudine, and John Cloughley’s wife Ann. Both
brilliant people, so positive and full of life. I met a couple more uncles and
aunts, a couple of cousins and young kids of cousins, and a good few of dad’s
cousins as well. Lots of people I’d never met. Lots of positivity.
Everyone
(runners, walkers, cyclists, family, friends) had congregated on the road
outside the Railway Bar by the start/finish line and everyone was just chatting
away in the sun. Everyone was talking about what a great event it had been, and
how we had been blessed with good weather. What a community, and what a way to
remember.
Someone
said, “Come over here to this stone wall.” So a few of us went over. “There’s a
face in this wall, see if you can find it.” A face? What? The wall was about 3
or 4 feet high and about 20-30 metres long. How would we find a face in it? Was
it just stones that happened to sort of look like a face? Had someone drawn a
face? About ten of us got up close and personal with the wall and scrutinised
it in detail, bent over to get a good look. Someone finally found the face. It
was literally a big block of stone with an intricate carving of a face in it.
There must be a story behind this too, but I haven’t been able to find out yet.
Watch this space…
Then
it was decision time. There was going to be a “full afternoon’s craic” in the little
Railway Bar, likely with singing and music and instruments. But there was also
an invitation to go “up to the house in Acton”, where my granny grew up and
where one of my dad’s cousins still lives today. We headed up to the house. It
was a small house, built maybe a century ago, but modernised. There were hills
behind, countryside all around, and the house overlooked Acton Lake, also known
as Lough Shark. It was beautiful. I doubted there were sharks in it, but I
wondered where the name came from. “Shark” doesn’t sound like an Anglicisation
of an old Irish name. I couldn’t find anything on the internet. None of the
uncles or aunts or cousins knew. Who would know? In the end, I used the power
of the internet and tweeted Rice’s Hotel in Poyntzpass, who told me that it is
an Anglicisation of the Irish “Loch Searc”, which means “lake of the lovers”.
Did I mention it was beautiful?
Anyway, I got a huge history lesson up at the house in
Acton: the fields behind where the family grew potatoes. The out-house that was
once a toilet. Lough Shark below. People. What they did. Decades. Craic. I
really enjoyed it. Someone produced an old black and white photo of the view
from the house over Lough Shark, taken in the 1950s. The view hadn’t changed a
bit. I’m sure in another 50 years from now, not much will have changed. The
permanence of the landscape. But the transience of people. Quite a few people
said to me that if John Cloughley had been there, he and I would have had a
heck of a chat about running and triathlons and bikes and open water swimming.
I couldn’t help but agree and wish that I’d known him.
In addition to all this, everyone was well-fed – there were
buns, cakes, sandwiches, crisps and soup, all in seemingly limitless supply. My
hands were freezing after having stood outside looking at the view and
chatting, so I was grateful for a bowl of soup. But I didn’t realise just how
cold my hands were – they weren’t functioning. I lifted the bowl of soup but my
fingers didn’t have the dexterity to grip it, and it very nearly went flying.
It was a small kitchen and there were a lot of people in close proximity. It
would have been messy and embarrassing. I managed to half-control its fall so
that it landed with a bang on the table, without spilling anything. I let it
sit there cooling while I shoved my hands in my pockets for 10 minutes to try
to warm them up. Then I tried again. Success. I could hold it. And that was the
“Run for Raff” day. A really great day. It’ll be a regular fixture in my
calendar from now on.
I managed to do one swim over the holidays, and did a couple
of runs down on the beach. It’s easy to take my phone with me on the bike as it
easily fits into one of my small frame bags, and it’s quite easy to whip out the
phone when cycling, and so it’s easy to take a few photos when on the move on
the bike. Less so while running. But I took the phone down to the beach on one
of my runs and took a few photos.
I did a few bike rides too. Two pairs of gloves, a hat,
three upper layers including a waterproof and windproof jacket, two pairs of
leggings including waterproof ones, and waterproof/windproof shoe covers. I
hate the cold. I did a couple of spins with my dad, and a couple by myself. The
bike at home just about does the job but it’s not like my racing bikes. With
the fast bikes, you put effort in and you get payback on the road in terms of
acceleration and speed. With the bike at home, you put the effort in but you
don’t get quite the same the payback.
I went out for one blitz of a ride, flat out, full steam, up
to the Gortmore viewpoint on Binevenagh. I went up the most direct route, which
hits gradients of 20% or more. This is tough in anyone’s book. Regular readers
of this blog (see post 64) will know that there was a statue of Manannán Mac Lir, a
mythological sea-god, up at the viewing point. But he was cut down and dumped
off the cliff earlier this year, and although a replacement has been
commissioned, Manannán is not back where he belongs yet. And Gortmore looks the
worse for it. Another hilly ride took me over the Altikeeragh Road on
Binevenagh, and then up the Bishop’s Road climb. Tremendous cycling, as good as
you’ll get anywhere.
New year’s was spent at my uncle Michael’s and auntie
Dolores’s, with a pile of aunts, uncles and cousins, and literally a pile of
drinks outside keeping cool, and a pile of food. And a couple of guitars. It
was a good night and I had a few drinks. Nothing too crazy, maybe 4 or 5 pints.
And I was ruined for two days afterwards. Drinking (or rather being hung over),
like running and triathlon, doesn’t get any easier with age…!
And with plenty of sleeping, lots of really nice food
(thanks mum), some snooker with my brothers that was so competitive it was
agony, a few drinks, a bit of reading, some flute-playing, and some failed
chasing of the Northern Lights, that was pretty much Christmas 2015.
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