waider

It's been more than two weeks since the race and the organisers still only posted the first 120 finishers. I was outside that (I'm figuring roughly 175th or so of 1,600 entrants) so I still don't have my official time. This is rather slack; they had the full results up the same day as the race last year. Anyway, this afternoon I trawled through 1,600 photos on Flickr looking for any that might feature my running self, and turned up just the one (I'm #512, and this is shortly before the finish, and shortly after my push for the line started flagging). Flickr's search is really painful for this for several reasons:

• The photos taken by the organisers, or someone posting on their behalf, aren't tagged;
• There were several events on that weekend titled "Jingle Bells";
• Flickr's advanced search lacks useful features like "discard any photos by user X from these search results" or "discard any photos with tag X from these search results" (the latter is achievable by redoing the search, but really, it should be dynamic)

I seem to recall whining about Flickr's wimpy search interface some time ago, probably for exactly the same reasons, and as a result of doing exactly the same search. Which would suggest it's not changed in at least a year.

updated to add: according to the EXIF tagging on the photostream, this is about 18:40 into the race, which would put me 40 seconds from the finish line. Which means I was probably still puffing like a steam train and attempting to persuade myself not to back off.

Jingle Bells 5k run: raised over €250, ran the race in under 19:30. Personal time ~19:21, race clock 19:26, no idea what my official time will be.

I totally ran the crap out of the last few hundred metres: this is the first time I've come to the end of a race with my lungs hurting. Worth it to take a whole minute off last year's time, though.

edited to add approximate splits: 1k @ 3:40, 2k @ 7:30, 3k @ 11:30, 4k @ 15:30, 5k @ 19:21. I'm a little hazy on the splits, to be honest - I think the 7:30 might have been a 7:34, but then again maybe it was the 15:30 that was a 15:34.

Unfamiliar territory and forgot my watch, but it looks like about 2.8 miles in 20 minutes. Half of that was gentle downhill and, as I discovered on the way back up, assisted by a weak but persistent wind - which became a headwind on the way back.

5k, 19:48. Actually, my watch said 19:50, but I was running so hard for the last few hundred metres that I didn't manage to press it properly as I crossed my notional finish line.

Wooooooooooooooooooooo!

Ok, so not fully operational, and certainly not pushing flat out, but 5k in 22:34, dammit.

Sometimes, when the wind, the gradient, and my pacing is just right, I hit this sort of loose-legged long stride that feels serene. Happened me twice this evening, once coming down Hyde Park Road, and once on Sandycove Road, and there was just a hint of it as I wound up at my front door. I like that. I wish I could hit it more often, and without running.

I was talking with That One Friend[1] about maybe doing the Dublin City Marathon as far back as February this year. I'd found a three days a week, 16-week training plan that pretty much gave me the luxury of not deciding to start training properly until about July, and in the mean time I figured I'd go ahead and do the Adidas Race Series (5 mile, 10 mile and half-marathon races, a month apart) as I'd done last year.
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So one of the more peculiar post-race injuries appears to be my right shoulder. Now, it's entirely possible I slept on it the wrong way or something, but I don't recall having any trouble with it this morning so I can only attribute its current state of "please do not lift me in that direction" to the race.

This is obviously a major concern, since this is my drinking arm, dammit.

I picked up a new pair of runners last weekend, sticking with what the nice adidas girl told me and thus I'm now the owner of a pair of adidas Supernova Control 10, er, running shoes. I'd actually spent a little time looking online beforehand, and while Nike also do a motion control shoe (what us over-pronaters need, apparently), Lifestyle Sports didn't stock any of them, plus I had a 10% discount voucher for the adidas kit courtesy of my little foot test.

( More on them shoeses )