December 2014 – Keep Moving Forward

A steady couple of weeks running with a good mixture of surfaces and tempos. the week leading up to Christmas week I covered 70KM which included speed sessions, trail and sand sessions, very enjoyable. We are having our first bit of cold weather of the winter this week, so I got to run in -2C, just a little off the -30 of the North Pole :), but good to get some cold weather finally!

My confidence is building all the time, I have no doubt now that the rest I had following the injury I sustained during the 10 in 10 has really benefited me physically and mentally, I have enjoyed sticking to a proper recovery plan and feel ready for the “Lock up the year” trail marathon on December 31st.

Christmas week consisted of a few sessions but mainly food and drink!,I ran on the 22nd(6KM)23rd(6KM), 26th(12KM), 28th(21KM), not a bad return for the week given it was Christmas. Important to focus on the family at these times and enjoy be focused on enjoying the time with them.We had a brilliant time and thankfully Santa called and was very good to the 3 kids.

The fundraising campaign is nearing the big launch and I am very excited by what we are going to do for Habitat, we have a new Twitter handle @nphomerun and our website will launch on the 9th of Jan. Myself and Dave are having weekly calls to share training stories and give each other support, these are really enjoyable and it is great to have a compadre to share this experience with.

Next up is the “lock Up the Year Trail”, I’ll post an update following this run.

So Ciena have selected their runner and my partner for this adventure. David Van De Wetering is from Halifax in Canada and has completed a few tough challenges to date, including an Iron Man. I am looking forward to meeting David and getting some training runs in with him.

I stayed on the sand for most of my runs last week and really enjoyed it, it is energy sapping though and I have noticed that both pace and endurance get seriously hampered when you are running on sand, last week I completed 65KM with about 30 of this on sand.

Due to my steady progress in training I am going to run a marathon on New Years Eve, it is called “the lock up the year” marathon and it is held along a Royal canal, which runs through Dublin and Kildare. I was going to hold off until the Donadea 50KM event in February for my first run, however I am felling fit and come the 31st I will be at the level required to run a marathon.