Twenty years later, and I finally got to complete a 10k. road run. Thanks largely to a night on the canvass, when I met Irene Hennebry, whose husband Peter runs the fine Evergreen Football club blog, I volunteered for the Kilkenny City Harriers Road race series. This started with a two mile run, which yours truly had missed on that very night, and continued with a four mile and then last week, a five mile run. These leave the Smithsland retail centre near the Woodies shop on the Kilkenny Ring Road, and continue out the Waterford road and up into the country roads of Grovine and Wallslough, before coming back down to home. The road is beautiful, and it's great to see fields of rape-seed showing that farmers are finally catching on to this biofuel.
Anyway, onto Monday afternoon, and a loose mid-life crisis to myself a few months ago that I would try the 10k distance for the Carer's Association, whose National headquarters is here in Kilkenny. The pressure was on, and I was delighted to make my longest distance since 1987. That year I had trained with friends for the Dublin City Marathon, only to get injured a week before the race.
So when I made it over the line in 52.25 on Monday (no sniggering you real runners out there), I was very happy indeed. Unfortunately, tonight means another six miles, and then three next week. Then, who knows. I'll keep going I hope,, and maybe try a half marathon next-any suggestions out there??
The final humility was to see the gregarious Limerick photgrapher, Dónal Foley of the Kilkenny Voice newspaper pointing his big wide angle lens-which was needed in my case- at me as I struggled to the line. I'll post his handiwork here later to give you all a good laugh, and to remind myself to leave the t-shirt on the next time-I did promise didn't I!! Meanwhile, tonight and a 58 minute 6 miles brought the half-marathon ambitions back to earth. The Radox eased the pain though-who knows?! Watch this space......
2 comments:
The oilseed rape is very unlikely to be for biofuel. More likely it's a rotation crop for real cash crops such as barley or potatoes. It will most likely be used to make vegetable oil, or else just ploughed back into the ground. The current government position on biofuels means that it's not worth the average farmer's while getting into biofuel production. As well as the cultural inertia of farmers, you also have the problem that, in the short term, it's not economically viable. I hope you guys are planning to change that. Beir bua san toghachan.
Go nuclear!!! "Short term" solution for the next forty years. Cadarache or CERN will have fusion sorted by then. Nuclear fission was a bad idea in the 70s- I was in Carnsore- but the game has changed, and the French, eg are running their 17 plants without any problems. We in Ireland can't even land the little fossil fuel we have from the Corrib field. It's a conspiracy by Irish Communists to keep us dependent on Putin's oil and gas.
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