The Trim 10

While I can't stand over everything below, from my knowledge... There are things that you never feel better after: A session. A puncture. A car accident. A break-in. Losing by a last minute goal.  T here are things that you rarely feel better after An operation (at least not immediately). Opening you work email at home. A Big Mac meal. Watching 2 hours of cat videos on YouTube. Taking a phone call from you ex. And there are things that you nearly always feel better after A lie-in Taking an extra day off work A hot shower. A cold shower. Taking the time to ring an old friend. A massage. And finally there is one thing that you always feel better after A run. While it is smack-bang in the middle of Christmas with daylight fading and wintry weather it is a rare, rare thing to come back from a run and to regret it. If you can always remember this, then you will always have just enough energy to get yourself out that door, away from the box of Cel...

So training might be getting tough around about now. Part of this is because we’ve entered the staff night and ‘Christmas Season’ season! A place where intervals and long runs do battle with office parties and burgeoning lunches. It will be hard for everyone, but persevere! With the miles building week on week it isn’t a bad idea to reflect on the surfaces you are spending more and more hours running on. I’ve heard it said that during a marathon you will lose a few centimetres as the pounding of the road takes its toll. The good news of course is that you grow back. With that in mind however it is worth considering just how much time training on hard surfaces you are doing and whether there are alternatives. As a help here is a quick guide to the surfaces we roll on and in from good to bad – Grass:  Perhaps the nicest surface to run on. Even in the warmest and driest of periods, grass retains its bounce. This is important and noticeably so especially for longer runs...

I got out for a nice long run last weekend. Meeting up with a great bunch of fellow runners (aren't all runners a great bunch?) I ended up heading out a road that was very close to home but one I had never ran before. It was funny I had never come across it before and it reminded me of how lucky we are in Ireland to have so many tarred roads crisscrossing the country. It also reminded me that these weeks I have been doing little or nothing to allow the body to rest after a long season of running, have seen my fitness drop down. Still it was mild enough and very enjoyable. While I may have only made it out just the once this week I hope you've been able to get into the training much more and are now regularly hitting three solid sessions a week. If you have then a few further tips for the week ahead. First though the schedule: This week’s training schedule: Slow run:  30 minutes. Tough run:  10 min warm up - 4*4 mins intervals* with 2 mins recovery - 10 mins warm ...

So, the first week of training. Did it all go to plan? Did you manage to make it out all three days as planned? Did you make use of the cold but dry weather to take to the paths and the trails, to blow out the cobwebs and get back up and running? If you did, well done, you’re flying. If you didn’t then don’t worry, join the club! I'm currently giving the body rest having decided to help out this 10 mile instead (at least that's the plan at the moment). Even still I had hoped to go out twice this week and it was only on Saturday night when I was on the verge of yet another week where nothing happened that I decided I needed a run like a plant needs the sun so the alarm was set early Sunday and by 8.45 I was in the Porchfields in mild December dry weather with old friends and well-worn runners. There will be weeks when it just doesn’t happen for you. You don’t get out due to illness, due to tiredness, due to weather, due to family commitments, due to paving slabs! But whate...