3 in 3

I have not gone mad

No I did not go mad and run three back to back marathons over the weekend. I did however run three events whose accumulated mileage did not even make up to the marathon distance. Friday night was Ennis Tracks Family Twilight Run over 5K in the grounds of Lees Road, followed by the Clare 10K Bra Run for Cancer on Saturday Morning in Ennis and finishing up with pacing duties in Charleville for the Half Marathon.

Running in the dark

My young fella runs twice a year, both times in lees road and both in darkness. Whether its Pieta house Darkness to Light or Ennis tracks Twilight run he is geared up for it. So we are off to lees road for his bi annual race. He wanted to improve on his time but of course he has no training done. He took off  too quick and by the 3K mark he was suffering and I know his time is going to be his worst. He suffered through the last 2K for a 28:05, a sore and not happy camper at all. So hopefully he will do some training or even join a club over the winter.

My moobs are not that big

In my search for a pink bra to wear in the Clare 10K Bra Fun Run on Saturday My daughter had hidden every single one of hers on Friday. There was no way in this world was I going to be wearing one of hers around Ennis on Saturday so I had to resort to wearing one of hers indoors instead. Start was at the west county where it looked like some mad hen party had descended on the hotel. Everyone had attired themselves appropriately soon it was down to St Flannan's to the start and we where sent on our merry way. Used this as a tempo run 2K warn up 8K @ 160-165 HR. Most where walking this or where going to be around the hour mark so for a change I could position myself at the front and not impede any other runners. About 10-12 runners hit off in front of me but I kept to the plan of 2K easy. I picked it up after 2K and started to real in each runner until I got to 7K. At this point I passed Brian Haran who was suffering a bit but was the only person who tried to stay with me after I passed him. He stuck with me until 9K but the hill got the better of him. I spoke with his mam afterwards and he had done a 100 mile charity cycle the week before. He is one tough cookie and one to watch for in the future.

As I was in the top three runners I had a Garda escort at the end of the race or maybe he was contemplating picking me up for indecent exposure.A very enjopyable way to spend a Saturday morning and over €5,500 raised for Breast Cancer Research on the day so well done all.

I'm a celebrity get me out of here

Pacing gig in Charleville on Sunday Morning and as I was gigging the night before I struggled with the early start to get to Sixmilebridge for a rondevu with some of the other pacers. Arrived in plenty of time in Charleville got ready, picked up our black balloons, not very smart a color choice especially when one has to write the time on with a black/blue marker. The boss had made up sheets with our names and time bands to attach to the back of our shirts. I may have needed one but my pacing partner Johnny from North Cork A.C. had no need. You see it seems he is a bit of a celebrity in this neck of the woods. During the start and all throughout the race All I could hear was "how's it going johnny ?".

At the start I realised that I had forgotten to calibrate my foot-pod for the slower pace. So I knew that the pace would show faster on the watch then what we where actually doing. So instead of 9:54 per mile I guessed that this would equate to 9:45 on my watch. My guess was wrong as a result we where down about 15 secs after 2 miles so I recalculated it would need to be 9:37 on the watch. We hit that average pace at Mile 5 and we where bang on every mile marker after this. Charleville is an AIMS accredited race so as expected the Mile markers where dead on and for future reference there was 5K splits as well.
We had a 20-30 in our group up until Mile 8 and from there to Mile 11 this had reduced down to 9. We lost 2 more on the run in, a guy cramped and his mate stayed with him. All the remaining lassies got home under the 2:10. Chip time for the day was 2:09:43 so pretty much done what was asked of us.Anyone considering  this race should do it as its flat and if there is no wind a very good PB course.
The only downside of this race is that the standard of baking and size of the spread afterwards  laid on by the North Cork Ladies will mean you will most likely consume more calories post race then where burnt during the race.

The racing Gods hate me

Will I wont I

That was my dilemma all week. I felt my fitness level have really improved since I have got my mileage back up to 40 mpw region. So I should go for sub 45 on Saturday but the 10K specific runs have been curtailed or pace cut back due to tight Hammer was it worth the risk. Friday put paid to that, Thursday evening Resting HR was 65, early warning sign something was amiss. Friday sore throat when I woke up, after work that evening felt like shit so I do what always works for me. Throw on extra duvets on the bed a large hot whiskey with honey and cloves and stay there for the next 24 hours. Arose Saturday evening feeling a lot better.

What might have been

On Monday I decided to do some sort of a test where I can evaluate my progress over the coming months in the winter. Having read a bit on this over the year I have opted to loosely follow a Hadd type training program. He has a test where the runner runs 2.4K at various heart rates with 90 sec recovery intervals. I adjusted this slightly as it was based on a runner who was capable of 5 min miles. So I reckon that this test requires the runner to at least run 8 minutes at any given effort. This meant I would use a 2K interval instead. For the rest I was going to use another pointer which may be useful, recovery time. So I will record the time it takes for heart rate to return to 120 bpm.
My current stats are as follows. Max Hr is 191 and Resting Hr is 47-54. Based on Hadd my marathon HR/LT Heart rate should be between 170-175 (15-20 bpm below Max HR). Something tells me if I did 26.2 at this effort I would no longer be on this earth. Test will run 2K intervals for 140,150,160,170 & 180 b. After each interval I will record the time it takes for HR to return to 120BPM. Results of my test are below with comments on how the effort felt.

Date	Temp	Weight	140	150	160	170	180
17-Sept-2012	12°	169lbs	8:43 (0:44)	8:10 (1:00)	7:36 (1:30)	6:56 (2:12)	6:40 (N/A)

 This was a bit of a mixed bag.

• I was very happy with my 140 through to 160 paces. Felt like I could hold these quite easily and never felt under any pressure to finish them.
• I have in the past run 10K with 175-180 average but I was very glad to see the end of the 2K @ 170.I do not think I could have held this effort for too much longer. 
• The 180 just did not happen got to the start of the 3rd lap where HR was not above 178 and when I pushed it my running form just fell apart and hammer started to feel tight and I was sucking air in like it was no tomorrow.

Typical plodder that I am can suffer through miles 20 to 26. of a Marathon but ask me to go all out for 2K and I wimp out like a pussy. Looking at the numbers and how I felt I reckon the last 12 months my LT threshold has dropped under 160 so over the winter concentration is on getting this back up to 170 region.

To infinity and beyond

Training going forward will be as follows with 3 Key sessions.

• One long run of 2-2.5 Hours @ 140-150 effort/pace.
• Tempo run of 75 Minutes @ 155 effort 
• LT Run of 60 Minutes @ 160 effort.

Currently I have only got the Tempo and LT runs to 4 miles so over the next 5 cycles I will build them up to the required level. Each session will be separated by 2 easy days of swim/easy running and some aerobic cross training. I may or may not take day 10 as a complete rest day. This has been working well for me so far since end of June and I do need the extra recovery time as I am an old fellow.

Sept 20 
           7 Miles 5 Miles 38:35 7:43 pace , HR 155 with 1 Mile WU/WD 

Linux to the rescue (again)

Recover a broken NAS Drive

So I get to meet these people regularly. Drive/PC full of important stuff like photos videos and whatever but no backup. Last week a guy in a blind panic enters our offices. All the family pictures, videos communion etc on his NAS device and its not working. "I have no backup and the wife is going to kill me if they are lost." Put the drive on the bench dead as a duck, no problem, strip the device once its established it is out of warranty, and remove both drives and place into the workshop PC. On power up one of the drives is clonking or in other words goosed. This is not good, most likely this is a raid device and if its RAID0 someone will be heading for the divorce courts.

My trusty Rescue CD

There are many rescue CD's out there about but my choice is Image For Linux by Terabyte Unlimited. This comes as part of the Image For Windows and is well worth the €49 price tag. It cotains an ISO image which has full network and scripts to do SMB connections as well as all the usual tools from Busybox.
I will outline below how you can mount up a broken/degraded raid system with a rescue or full Linux system.

Use fdisk to determine, the data partition will be the largest one
#fdisk/dev/sda (first sata Drive) use hda if its first IDE
In this case it was sda3

Try and mount the partition
#mkdir /mnt/data
#mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/data
error stating this is part of a Linux raid array

Check the system for raid drives
#mdadm –examine --scan
You should get an output like ARRAY /dev/md1 UUID:<long string of characters>

Then create a configuration file
#mdadm --examine --scan > /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

Edit the configuration file
#mcedit /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
Add to each line the raid type, number of devices and the actual devices
Example for a raid1
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID:<long string of characters> devices=/dev/sda3,missing

Make the raid devices available
#mdadm –A –scan

Check the output of /proc/mdstat
#cat /proc/mdstat
The device should be listed as degraded [U_]

Mount the drive
#mount /dev/md0 /mnt/data

Extract data and save some poor fella from a faith worse then death.

Only wimps use tape backup real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)

7 Day declaration

To Race 

Recovered extremely well from Dingle, that I turned my mind to doing a 3 * 2 mile @ 10K Pace session. Decided to keep the pace as close to 7:15 as possible but easy off if Hammer started to stretch. From the warm up it never felt 100% so was going to abandon ship. Once I upped the pace strangely it seemed to easy up for the first 2 intervals. Only really started to tighten in the last 100/200 m of the second interval. So I went for the third but could not maintain the pace without feeling a tightness in the hammer. Drop the pace but even with the dropped pace it still felt like the toughest of the three. Afterwards I felt okay and was deciding to aim for 45:30 in East Clare 10K in 2 weeks. 

or not to Race

Then I woke up the next morning, right hammer and glutes where as tight as hell. Took 3 days of light running, stretching foam rolling and swim to get any bit of mobility back into them. Even on 8 mile Easy Run on Saturday the still felt tender and sore. Is it really going to be worth the risk of a bad injury just to knock 1 min of a PB ? Also I now have a double gig the evening of the race, so horsing gear and standing for the guts of 6 hours is not what you want post race. I think I will park the sub 45 10K until the spring and just concentrate on building back my strength and mileage over the winter.

Interval	HR	HR%	Time
2 Mile	162	83%	14:31
2 Mile	170	88%	14:34
2 Mile	177	93%	14:38

5 Minute recovery Jog in between.

There is no wall

Post Race

Off to Dingle on Friday to pace the Dingle Half Marathon for the 2 hour slot. After receiving various emails from the Bosses new PA we found out that our accommodation would be in Dingle fairly close to the start line. This however meant an extra half an hours drive for me which meant It would be a very quick shower before returning to Annascual for pre arranged pizzas and pastas. Meet the rest of the crew, grub and banter was good. A couple of quick pints later and it was off to bed for the night.

Race Day

Surprisingly I got a great nights sleep, normally I don't before these races, it might have been the grub, quick pints or the comfy bed but my one lingering doubt is that I fear my room mate may have slipped me some Rohypnol, the conversation the next morning involved my ability to use a certain item of cutlery. Up and dressed, breakfast supplied by our chef was porridge, we also had some very nice homemade brown bread but I steered clear of this for fear of getting struck by a bowel movement somewhere before the finish. We get the race brief from the Boss. Photo shoot and a quick run down to the start to warmup

99 Red Balloons

Yes the pacer's nightmare the dreaded balloons. It's late when we get them and they are all knotted together, takes 5 minutes to untangle. Proceed to attach balloons with pin, now my record is dismissal as regards getting these bloody things across the finish Line. I'm one from four so aim is to get this one home. Starter gun @ 9 and 2 minutes later we are passing under the start line while I try to get my two watches to start on time I feel a thug on my shoulder, damn balloon has snagged on the start and is fluttering away behind no longer attached. I also notice another balloon floating up in the air as well so at least I am not alone. Anyway I am paired with Keith and the plan is to keep up with the 4 hour pacers for the first 6 miles or so, this will give us a bit of time which we will us on the drag from 7 to 9. We did not have a big group to start with but a lot of people seemed to join us after mile 2. The miles ticked along nicely and support was very good along the route considering it's a country race, Local's are out in good numbers. When we got to the first of the drags the wind which was in our face was quite strong. Advised people to tuck in behind us, this section was tough so no doubt anyone who was with us was suffering a bit. I dropped off Keith by about 20 seconds to try and keep people who where dropping off the back to start again. We held the most of the group together and our time was spot on at mile 10. We picked it up again a small bit on the downhill sections as there is a small but killer of a drag at 11. Around this time an ambulance could be heard approaching in the distance, most runners heard except one headphone wearing Muppet who was still on the same side as the approach Ambulance. I managed to alert him of it but he didn't seem too impressed with me giving him a dig to get his attention. Can't understand why people wear headphones in races, they completely miss the whole atmosphere as well as putting themselves in harms way. Meet Ken Beggs who ran a mile with us at this stage and we arrange some after race pints in the Marina Bar. Again I dropped back 20-30 seconds behind Keith to try and encourage as many as possible to stay with the climb and not walk. There was a bigger attrition on this hill but one girl stuck with it only to stop up at the top. As we approached mile 12 we had a few with us which where sent on there way as we where not sure if they had started ahead of us or not. Kept pace to the finish, we picked up Oliver Claire at this point who was doing the Full and had a quick chat about his exploits in Connemara recently. Plenty of people had got second wind coming down the hill towards the finish and passed us out. When we got there we where bang on 1:59:49 so no time for hanging about but straight over the line, the lady who stopped at the top @ mile 11 crossed about 30 seconds after us but I hope she started behind us and got her time. Several thank you's afterwards from runners so we must have been some help to them. Pick up my bag quick stretch meet with other pacers to catch the bus back to Dingle. Must add big fail on my part, sent a bag out to the finish, (beside a pub) without leaving the price of a pint in my pocket.

Ultra Race

While waiting for the bus Keith Whyte came through as graceful and easy as usual. He looked like someone just starting a race and the fact he was after running the guts of 30 odd miles into the wind and up the Conor pass did not show. In the time it took us to get bussed back to Dingle, short walk back to our accommodation, shower and stroll to the finish he passed us again (still looking fresh) to finish with a sub 6 (5:59:25). This was a brilliant performance and I was thrilled for him considering the disappointments he had last year. It's great to see a really nice guy get the just rewards for his efforts. Normally no one remembers second but Ray Lanigan's 2nd was just as equal a run and I am sure his day will come.

Post Race

The post race barbecue was a nice touch as it allows everyone to meet up afterwards and keeps people around to give much needed support as they cross the line after Full/Ultra. We cheered on the remaining pacers as well as a few old friends at the finish. After getting some grub it was of to the Pub for a Pint of the black stuff which was arranged around mile 10 with Ken.
As I was playing for a wedding that night, I had to leave early that evening, boss needed a lift back and I was glad of the company for the journey home. Would love to have stayed on, as no doubt the crack and atmosphere around the town afterwards would have been brilliant. It's a definite race for me sometime in the future, if I get back to doing the marathon distance.