Post 166 - Armagh International 5K

Knowing that the Armagh 5K was coming up, I tried to focus training on some shorter intervals. A couple of hill rep sessions (14 x 60 seconds uphill, a fairly positive session), 6 x half a mile intervals (completely blowing on the final two, quite disappointing) and 14 x as close to 400m as my Garmin watch could measure (the first 6 acceptable, 7 and 8 slower, then wondering if it was worth continuing as the times were slipping, and then stabilising it for the last few reps).

I also managed an as-near-as-dammit ironman distance swim in the pool in just over an hour, so now the mental block of “can my shoulder deal with an ironman distance swim” has to be answered as “yes it can”. OK, it’s still a bit stiff and gets a bit sore, but if I want to do another ironman, at least I know now that I can do the swim. I’m on the turbo trainer once a week doing intervals and cycling to work when possible, to keep in touch with the cycling. Turbo trainer intervals give you a tough workout without the (for me anyway) damaging impact of actually running an interval session on tarmac. Training had seemed to be reasonable in the last couple of weeks. Without wanting to curse myself, my Achilles seem to be behaving themselves and not creating too many problems.

And so to Armagh for the International 5K. An unbelievable event. Almost 100 runners broke 15 minutes last year. World-class running. I ran 15:29 last year on a bitterly cold evening. The forecast was better this time around. I flew in the night before the race, as did Deirdre. Race day was like purgatory. How to pass 12 hours? Well, a terrible sleep meant I passed a lot of the day dozing in bed. Deirdre went for a run, up to both the cathedrals. The free lunch was great. Trying not to over-eat was tough. Dessert was also on offer. Everyone was declining it. I was hoping there would be dessert in the post-race meal. There were some great sponsored freebies – chilli almonds – tremendous.

The absolute biz

We went out for a wander. Up to the “palace”, where we were literally given the run of the place by the receptionist. Some fantastic artwork was on show. It turned out the artist was the former race organiser, whose cousin had now taken on the role. Everything’s local. The race organiser had made a speech at lunch where he said they wanted the race organisation to be “human” and not corporate. They certainly achieve that. Lunch had filled me up for a while, but I was soon hungry again. I’m not used to racing so late (8:30pm). I had a few more snacks. It was a tough balance – I had over-eaten prior to the race last year and didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

Then it was time. I got ready. I didn’t like the feel of my socks. Old and crusty. I had brought two pairs. Both weren’t great. I slapped on the Vaseline. Headed for the Mall – the race venue. It’s like an elongated running track, about 1k for a lap. Floodlights. Spectators. Kids’ races in full swing. Loudspeakers. Commentary. Music. Pre-race buzz. Serious looking athletes warming up. People come to Armagh from all over Ireland, from all over the UK, from all over Europe, from all over the world, to run a PB. It’s so fast. It’s like a combination of road racing, track racing and cycling crit racing. I doubt there’s anything like it in the world.

I jogged a warm-up. I felt terrible. My stomach was rumbling and jiggling. I did some sprints. Not great. Oh well. Nothing I could do now. I threw all my clothes to Deirdre on the sidelines and headed for the start.

What would I be happy with..? I had hit a good peak just before Christmas. I was possibly in 15:10 shape, maybe not quite sub-15. Sub-15 would be unbelievable, incredible for me. I didn’t think I was in that shape. I hoped I was in shape to better last years’ time of 15:29. But the warm-up hadn’t been positive. I didn’t know. Maybe I’d blitz it and get 15:10. Maybe I’d have a stinker and get 15:50. Maybe every single star in the universe would align and I’d get sub-15. Or more likely, I’d have an awful night at the races and run slower than 16.

I stayed very wide at the start and on the first lap – away from all the argy-bargy of the tightly-packed group, minimising the risk of a stumble or a fall, and able to carry my speed better round the wider turns I took. They had a marshal shouting the time after every kilometre. You need to do 3 minutes per kilometre to break 15. At 1K I was at 3:01 and feeling decent. At 2K I was at 6:01 and still just about feeling decent. At 3K I was at 9:03 and realising I couldn’t sustain it. Then it was into damage limitation…

The last lap was horrific, especially the back straight. There’s an incline, where you gain maybe 1m in height over 100m up to the back turn. Hardly even worthy of the term “incline”. But running up this felt like running through quicksand, it felt so slow compared to previous laps. Onto the back straight, everyone straining and sprinting and on their limits. I heard Deirdre from the sidelines. I ran as hard as I could. I saw the clock at the finish line from about 100 metres out. I knew I’d beat last year’s time and run a PB. I couldn’t run any harder. Crossed the line. 15:22.

And then collapsed onto a barrier in agony. It took a while to get my breath back. The initial reaction was that I was happy to run a PB. And that’s still the over-riding feeling. I ran a PB – I can’t argue with that. I probably had hoped to be slightly quicker, maybe 10-15 seconds or so, and probably had the shape to do that.

The transition from running cross-country (as I’d been doing all winter) to running really hard and really fast on the road was tough for me. The soles of my feet were in agony. So much so that I physically couldn’t do a warm-down. Which was bad news as I really needed to do a warm-down, and 4 days later my legs are still suffering from not being able to do it. Pacing Armagh is very difficult as you just get swept along by the tsunami of fast runners. My miles got progressively slower, as I started too quickly. Not disastrously so, but better pacing equals a better finishing time.

Anyway, it was done. I hobbled back to the hotel, sat in a sauna for a while, got showered, and headed for the bar where many runners would have been celebrating PBs with pints. I did likewise. A Guinness went down quickly. The dinner was at 11pm. 11pm! I’ve never eaten that late. They had videos of the races on the big screens in the function room where dinner was served. And disappointingly, no dessert…  I struggled with the second pint, but had a good chat with the former race organiser and artist – he had plenty of stories and by the time we were done we were the last ones left and called it a night. The soles of my feet were still on fire.

Friday was a complete day of rest, apart from 8 lengths of the hotel pool (I generally tend to think swimming isn’t worth it unless 100 lengths are completed!) Saturday was a beach ParkRun. I was insistent I was going to run nice and slowly, and treat it as a recovery run. But when you get there and toe the line… It turned out I couldn’t have run fast because my legs and joints were still sore from Armagh. So a nice easy enjoyable 24 minutes with Deirdre did the trick, followed by a bit of sightseeing. Forget all the famous Belfast icons like the Titanic quarter and the city centre, the coolest thing we saw was a huge flock (a murmuration) of starlings above the Albert Bridge over the River Lagan, to-ing and fro-ing in silent formation. It was spellbinding.

Lough Neagh sunset

I had made the decision to return and run the N.Ireland/Ulster cross-country next week, rather than the Scottish National cross-country. Turning out in Scotland would have meant I’d probably have become Edinburgh AC club cross-country champion. Turning out in Ulster means I will have a chance of extending my record of 5 team gold medals. I rarely get the chance to race in the red vest at home. I’ve been doing the Ulsters for years. So I’m back again next week.

With that in mind, I wanted to get in a couple of tough training sessions, while still leaving enough time to taper off before the Ulsters. I knew exactly what I wanted to do on the Sunday. Long beach intervals, finishing with a tough uphill up the road off the beach. But I didn’t know if my legs and joints would allow it. I went out and tried and they seemed OK. Even the day before, they wouldn’t have been able. So it was three-and-a-half minutes up the beach (into the wind), three-and-a-half minutes back, and one minute up the hill. A tough session, with the fourth and final rep in a white-out of sand. I got through it, but I’m still finding sand in my hair and ears.

I will need to give the legs some TLC this week – some foam rolling, self-massage, hot baths and so on. I’ll hopefully strike a decent balance between training hard but not too hard, and hopefully have a decent run in the Ulster cross-country at the weekend.

Training done was as follows: