40,000 butterflies in my stomach

A week from today I will be running the Flora Women’s Mini Marathon, a 10k run open to runners, joggers and walkers. It will be a day of firsts for me! It’s my first year running this race, and my first time running 10k.

Every spring over the past few years it was guaranteed that someone, somewhere would ask me if I would be signing up for the mini marathon.  I’ve always said no.  Until this year. I must admit I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I’m super excited about it, on the other I’m feeling trepidation.
Continue reading

Running to the voice in my head; Terenure 5 mile race

A wise person once said “The voice you listen to creates the reality you live in”.  I never felt the truth of those words as much as I did today.

This morning I ran the Terenure 5 mile race.  I finished with a chip time of 1:13:12.  All in all I’m pretty happy with my run, even though I was hoping to finish in 1:10:00.  It definitely wasn’t the slowest long run I’ve ever done, so progress is progress!

Continue reading

A 5 mile milestone!

Approximately 4 and a half days from now I’ll be running the Terenure 5 mile road race.  My first 5 mile race.  It’s also my last long run before I run a mini-marathon in June. I’ve run 5 miles before or 8k as I prefer to think of it.  In fact, I’ve run longer than that. So 5 miles isn’t impossible, not for me!

But, I’m still a bit nervous about this 5 mile race.  I’m also a lot excited.

Continue reading

On being a ‘real’ runner – Part 2

In my last post (On being a ‘real’ runner – Part 1) I questioned the things that ‘real’ runners seem to need to achieve before they can call themselves ‘real’ runners and wrote that I believe anyone who runs is a ‘real’ runner.

As I wrote that first post I realised that it is easier said than done, to call myself a ‘real’ runner just because I run. And I think that everyone who runs has some kind of goal or achievement in their own mind that, when reached, will enable them to finally call themselves a ‘real’ runner.

Continue reading

This fat girl and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad run

I’ve heard runners talking about having a ‘bad’ run.  I’ve also heard runners say there’s no such thing as a ‘bad’ run, that any run is a good one because you’re running.

And for the most part I agree.  While I’ve struggled on some runs, and had some problems on others, just getting out for a run is a superb thing.  But, there are times when things can go wrong on a run.  There are times when a lot of things can go wrong on a run.  And there are times when everything can go wrong on a run.

Today, I had one of those runs.

Continue reading

Sunrise? Sunset!

If you follow me on twitter you’ll have noticed I don’t really sleep very well.  I generally find it hard to fall asleep, and then I’m constantly waking up in the night.  When I do get to sleep I often have such vivid dreams that I wake up feeling like I haven’t slept.  I can’t remember the last time I had a refreshing, reviving sleep!

Continue reading

Q&A Post coming up!

I decided to hold a Q&A blog post to see what kind of questions people might ask me about myself and my running.  So if you have a question, please ask in the comments below, or tweet me your question.

I’ll post the answers sometime in the next week or so (depending on how many questions I actually get!)

So go on, ask away!