Brian Peppard, one of the 14 adidas Marathon Virgin puts Race 1 to bed in style.........

I survived!!!

Checked the results…I had myself 10 seconds faster then recorded, but I guess it took me that long to cross the start line… and the ages are all wrong…I am only in my early 20s…must be some kind of computer glitch…honest!!!

What a crazy start to a race. I was relatively near to the front thinking I was in a good starting position, but I spend the first half mile passing people who were jogging very slowly who had started well ahead of me. The ultimate was when I passed a lady on a zimmerframe after about 200m… very strange and surreal!!!

My splits were 6:35, 6:51, 6:53, 7:12 and 6:45…34:16 according to my watch. I think the 4th mile marker was off, as I felt good in mile 4 and passed a few people. I think the wind and the hill took its toll and from talking to others on the day that accounted for about a minute…so based on that I was very close to my best time for 5 miles…(my actual best is 25:30…in 1986).

Anyway…how wrong can the bloody weather forecast be!!! It was supposed to be a nice morning for a run, and to be honest it was anything but nice. That wind as we ran through the middle of the 15 acres was not fun at all!! I tried to tuck in behind a guy of bigger width then myself (it was hard to find one!!) but found it was a cross wind…there was nothing I could do but put my head down and keep going. Then of course there was the hill…ok, I know I ran it the previous week so I was familiar with it…but unfortunately that didn’t make it any easier. As I turned at Chapelizod a guy jumped out in front of me and handed me a piano and told me to carry it up the hill…at least that was what it felt like. After all that though, I did get a bit of a second wind when I reached the top of the hill, and ran comfortably, assisted by a tailwind, for the last 2 miles.

I think the 3rd and 4th mile markers were in the wrong place as my 4 mile (flat) was slower then my 3rd (carrying a piano)…strange, but probably just my erratic pace setting.

So bring on the 10 miler. 6 weeks of training to go. As the guy on the ad says…”this is gonna be great!!!!”