Lightspeed Blog

I’ve been toying with an idea for a while; a personal challenge of sorts. I didn’t want to mention it here until I was completely certain I would do it, but after an eye-opening event yesterday I’m ready to announce it with full confidence (I realise that I’m being just a little cryptic). So;

I plan to run the Dublin City Marathon this year.

The event that convinced this is a good idea was running 4.5 miles on my first proper training jog. While that seems like nothing compared to the mammoth challenge of 26 odd miles a full marathon requires, I honestly wasn’t sure if I could do it, and achieving my target has given me a huge boost of enthusiasm for running and fitness in general.

Having said that, there were some things about my performance that were less than satisfactory. In the interest of improvement, I’ll go through them in a listular format:

• I didn’t bring any water with me, due to my own stupidity.
• I ran about 20 minutes after eating, due to my own stupidity.
• I was wearing DC skateboarding shoes, due to my own stupidity and lack of owning anything better.

(Feel free to substitute “naivety” for “stupidity” if you’re in the mood to cut me some slack). I thought the shoes would be okay; but about 3 miles in my ankles really started to hurt, so I had to slow down for the rest of the journey. I took 50 minutes in total, which isn’t bad considering it was my first proper run, but in a marathon situation those would be my 50 fastest minutes; at that rate it could take me all day to finish.

So as well as general fitness training (consisting of a heady cocktail of squash, football and cycling) I’m going to need to run more. LOTS more. And for that to happen, I need proper running shoes. There’s a specialist shop in Bray I’ve been heavily advised to visit - they supposedly videotape you running and analyse the playback to determine the right shoe for you. Any decent pair are going to cost over €100 - combined with the marathon entry fee (€60) and milestone training races (€45) it seems proving your worth on the streets of Dublin isn’t cheap. But you can’t put a price on fitness…