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To Marathon Or Not To Marathon

Back in Ireland after the Ironman I wanted to tell the world what I had done. I wanted to scream it from the rooftops and go into excruciating detail with anyone that would listen. I was however acutely aware of the old adage ‘nobody cares about your race as much as you’. I kept most of it bottled up, divulging the highlights to those that asked. Most family and friends can’t really comprehend an Ironman. They were happy for me but equally viewed the whole thing as odd and excessive. The exception to all this is club mates and fellow triathletes. It was with this in mind that I was eager to get back to training, I wanted to talk about it and these were the people that would listen. I took my first tentative steps back to activity on the Saturday after the Ironman.


I was expecting to be sore and stiff after the race and I was advised that it would be two weeks before I would be able to run again. Sitting and standing were difficult in the days after the race but as the week progressed I was pleasantly surprised with how I was feeling. On the Friday after the race I jumped on the turbo trainer and spun my legs for 30 minutes. I was again surprised at how good it felt. It was low resistance but I felt fine. Buoyed by the previous day's spin, on Saturday I decided to join Karen for an easy 5k run. The run started ok but just after the 1 kilometre mark I felt an odd pain in the centre of my quad. It felt like someone was forcing their knuckle into a single point on my upper leg. Like an over selesis sports massage from a physio who did like to touch people. The pain spread from that point until the top half of my leg felt solid. I stopped with just over 1.3 kilometres done and walked home.

The quad pain eased after a couple of days and was replaced by knee pain. For the next two weeks I awoke every morning hoping that this would be the day that I felt ok and could go for a run but by lunch time I would be resigned to the fact that today was another rest day. It was exactly two weeks before I attempted to run again and when I did my knee hurt more than ever. I pushed on to spite my knee more than actually achieve anything. By the time I got home, after running 8 kilometres, I knew the fading dream I had of running the Dublin marathon at the end of October had been extinguished. So my season ended with an Ironman but what a way to end a season. I think I will get a tattoo to celebrate.



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