I know I should be grateful. I know it could be a lot worse. I know this is a relatively minor setback in the grand scheme of things.
But a stress fracture three weeks before my first overseas marathon?! It’s enough to make you weep. (Actually, I have wept. A lot).
After the doctor showed me the tell-tale mark on the X-ray and gave my foot a confirmatory squeeze, I made the kind of frantic suggestions you try with God when you suddenly realise your exams are far too close for you to pass without intense cramming and divine intervention.
I tried “What if I…?” in several different combinations, but to no avail. The doctor shook his head and looked at me as if I should perhaps be attending an entirely different kind of hospital as I suggested resting my foot for the full three weeks and then running really, really slowly. Or partially resting it and working up to a gentle jog. Or walking the entire thing…
But I’m going to Palestine, I pleaded. We then had a very interesting chat about the situation in the Middle East (I did not know that the queen of Jordan is Palestinian), and I felt we had built up some rapport, but he still would not come around to my way of thinking. The most he would allow was a symbolic half-mile walk. With a crutch.
“So how long is it, anyway?”
“26 miles,” I muttered.
I felt our newfound connection fizzle out in the stuffy atmosphere of a hospital consulting room. All hope gone, I dutifully repeated my recovery schedule after him: One week with the support boot and one crutch, two weeks with just the boot (walking on the heel), one week with the crutch and good runners, and a follow-up appointment on April 6th. Five days after the marathon.
“Of course, if you were ten years old, you’d be up and about in two weeks, but at your age…” He shrugged and shook his head at the X-ray of my poor, elderly metatarsals. I clambered to my feet, wondering was he about to offer me a walking frame instead of the crutches.
So that’s it. I know it could be a lot worse, but please don’t tell me that: These crutches pack quite a punch.
When several people in succession gleefully announce their relief at not having to see you again, you could be forgiven for being a little upset. I, however, greeted the news with congratulatory smiles and waved them on to greater, Aoife-free things. That’s because they had just met me for the sixth time in a 42km run, which had been preceded by a 180km cycle and a 3.8km swim—all using the same set of limbs that had got them to the lake shore at Killarney Golf & Fishing Club at 6.30 that morning for the 2015 Hardman full-distance triathlon.
I was manning one of the water stops, which also turned out to be a motivational, counselling, and tourist information stop. From flashes of lycra pausing only to raise a hand to indicate that they had no need of such mortal crutches as water, to nauseated wrecks hobbling on their newborn foal’s legs, the human spirit in all its guises passed me at that midge-ridden corner of Killarney National Park. There was Douglas, who had broken his coccyx the previous Tuesday and “shouldn’t really” have been doing a full-distance triathlon, Darragh who promised to name his first child after me (I do hope it’s a girl), and a whole succession of men who revealed that their lovely wives would probably leave them if they ever did another such event.
Yes, the winner finished the hilly and difficult course (the cycle takes in the grinding, ear-popping roads of the Ring of Kerry ) in a searing time of 10:06, and there were some thrilling moments when the first riders blasted up to T2 within minutes of each other, but the day belonged to people like Graham Janssen, the first swimmer out of the lake, who basked in his moment of glory, knowing he would be overtaken within minutes of getting on the bike, but also knowing that the previous year he had been one of the last to clamber onto the pier; and Dan Fitzgibbon, who made it further in the triathlon than he had any previous year, wheeling into the Castlerosse Hotel car park in the pitch dark, hours after the winner had gone home; and Siobhan Griffin, the second woman home, who gave up smoking and learned to swim the winter before her first full-distance triathlon last year.
In the end, it’s not really down to €4k Olympia bikes, Garmins, or ideal stroke rates: What is truly inspiring about the 80-odd individuals who took part in last Saturday’s epic event is the way that even the most unlikely athletes can complete superhuman challenges if they have an insanely dogged attitude. And a water-station steward they really don’t want to see again.
Running with Deer (courtesy of Valerie O’Sullivan, a.ka. the most talented photographer in Ireland)
Just before the start of every race, I look around at all the other competitors and decide that I am completely unprepared and should really turn on my heel and go home. I hear the tinkle of a hundred different models of GPS device, see the array of gel belts and hydration packs and other bondage gear, watch the convoluted stretching and warm-up routines, and panic. Yesterday was slightly different because the Lakes of Killarney Marathon is a small one and takes place barely two miles from my home, so I could afford to be almost late, thus limiting the amount of time I had for feeling inadequate.
I turned up, picked a spot between the balloons of the 3:45 4:00 pacers, and shuffled off when the man said go. My plan was to stick with the 3:45 pace for the first lap, then drop back so that I was just slightly ahead of the 4:00, and muddle to the finish line in my own good time. I admit that it was not really the most technical or detailed of plans, but then I don’t even wear a watch while running, so technical detail is not really part of my running agenda.
The race starts just past the entrance to the playground in Killarney National Park and heads along the bank of the Deenagh River under a canopy of beech trees in the direction of the Castlerosse Hotel. There were about five men clustered around the 3:45 pacer, who looked oddly festive with his yellow balloon bobbing madly in the breeze. We swung around the Castlerosse Hotel and trotted through the golf course, views of the Lower Lake opening up to our right as the course hit the first hill. Then it was downhill to Deenagh Cottage and off to the Queen’s Bridge and the first water stop, following the river as it curved toward the lake. On the first lap, you can appreciate things like the sound of the birds in the thick canopy of leaves over your head, glinting waves scudding across the lake, and the scent of wild garlic lying heavy in the air on Ross Island. (By the third lap, however, that smell is downright nauseating).
The marathon with a castle
There was another water stop at Ross Castle and a loop around Ross Island, where we met the race leaders powering toward us. As the miles slipped by and we headed back into the park via the Ross Road, I wondered how long it would be before my hamstring started creaking or my quads seized up or my back gave out, but I made it back to the Castlerosse Hotel and the arrival of the half-marathon winner feeling surprisingly comfortable.
I stuck with the 3:45 pacer for the second lap too, checking my vital signs to discover that I was still surprisingly alive. As soon as I had decided that I had cracked this marathon business and it was going to be ultras all the way from now on, I died. I took a cup of water and a gel pack from the steward (my daughter), jogged around the hotel to the golf course, and then fell apart. As the sun spilled out from the chasing clouds, I started to feel disoriented and sick, and my thigh muscles clenched so tight it was an effort to stretch one foot out in front of the other. The yellow balloon started to recede into the distance. And I had almost eight miles to go.
It was time to talk. Once you start to feel utterly wretched, you really have to escape from your head and go bother somebody else. So I chatted (okay, grunted between gasps) to a guy from Tyrone on his second marathon and another bouncy man from North Cork who was on his 98th (yes, really), and it helped, at least for a couple of miles. Then it was really a case of counting down the miles, slow and all as they were, and calculating how long it would before I could actually stop moving and accept death.
The entrance to the Castlerosse Hotel car park appeared like a genuine light at the end of the tunnel, my daughter waiting to finish the last few yards of the race with me, and the clock flashing 3:49. I got my medal, gallons of delicious flat cola, and a personal best. (I would say PB, but it always suggests peanut butter to me).
And, once I can go down the stairs without looking like an arthritic crab, I may even start to consider another marathon.
There are days when you head out for a run, and everything is just bouncy. You spring along that road, powered by invisible Slinkies in your shoes, and the miles slip by as if you were being wound in by a magnanimous virtual fisherman. Today was not one of those days.
Today, an eight-mile run had less appeal than the inside of my son’s gym bag, and I put off the inevitable with repeated adjustments of laces and grumpy glances at the lowering sky. So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that, when I finally did trudge through about two miles of thumping misery, my left hamstring had started to whine and my right quad muscle was getting very uptight about having to carry its wimpy cousin again. All that smug self-satisfaction at adjusting my form to become a real runner started to look pretty silly, even though last Friday’s pain-free 20-miler had me convinced I had the whole thing sussed.
With the first icy slaps of polar rain hitting my face, I fought the urge to take the first turn for home and tried to get things working properly. Back straight? Check, I think. Arms high? I suppose so? Feet meeting the ground gently at the front and rolling easily backward? Probably not. This is the thing: Without a coach or video evidence, it’s impossible for me to make an accurate assessment of my running style, and, whereas I may think I’m covering the ground with gazelle-like grace, in all probability I’m thundering along like a mammoth armadillo.
(In fact, on an unrelated note, maybe that’s why some people didn’t greet me as I run. If I catch the eye of a fellow park user when I’m out, I always say hello, but the number of people who simply stared blankly at me on my run today is making me even grumpier. Were I confronted with a scarlet-faced, heavy-breathing juggernaut in trainers, however, I probably would avoid all communication too).
So, I’ve decided to park my running form rehabilitation for the moment. I will continue to try running more on the balls of my feet and keep my back straight, but until after the Lakes of Killarney Marathon on May 16th, I will go back to downing a couple of Nurofen Plus before I head out on a training run, and keep myself going by compiling a list of the movies I intend watching on May 17th. Chariots of Fire is not on the list.
On the positive side, whatever about my hamstring and quad, I shouldn’t suffer any more strain from attempting to pat myself on the back.
I used to have a rule: Any run longer than six miles required headphones. I didn’t have an MP3 player in 2005, when I trained for my first marathon, but by the time I’d signed up for the 2009 Cork City Marathon, I was an iPod devotee, spending the Friday or Saturday nights before my long run adding to my playlist and calculating just how many Killers tracks I could acceptably fit into a 2 ½ hour training session. Plugging those buds into my ears and hitting play sent me into my own little bubble, bouncing along with no fear of boredom, oblivious of my surroundings, whether I was skirting a lake gleaming with snowy swans or counting off miles along some generic road. The inevitable slump that I used to feel around seven miles never registered, the heaviness in my thighs from mile 12 seemed to lift, “Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll” or “Blood Buzz Ohio” were guaranteed to spur me to new speeds when my pace slackened.
Then one day I forgot my iPod. I opened the glove compartment, and there it wasn’t. I was all set to put the key back in the ignition and drive the three miles home to retrieve my electronic friend. How was I going to get through 14 miles on my own? What would happen when I got to the long creep of a hill that appeared completely flat but made my quads scream? How could I put down more than two hours of my life to a soundtrack not of my choosing? I decided to find out.
And it wasn’t that bad. I’m not going to say that my eyes were opened to the wonders of nature, that my feet felt the pull of the earth spurring me to a new personal best, or that the meaning of life revealed itself to me as I creaked past Ross Castle around mile nine. In fact, I did find myself dwelling on how far I had gone and how much further I had to go and wondering had I always made so much noise as I thumped the path in my Mizunos. So, no, it was not a revelatory experience. What I did find, however, was that the experience did feel more like running and less like going for a run. I was not just ticking another training session off my list; I was conscious of my steps, of the terrain, of the people I was passing, and the sounds around me (even if much of that soundtrack seemed to consist of my unnervingly noisy breathing and the aforementioned thumping).
So now that I am training for the Lakes of Killarney Marathon, I am running completely wireless. My times are definitely slower, as I don’t have “Tubthumping” to power me through the last few miles, and I am feeling every twinge and ache more than I would have with the distraction of a playlist, but I am also feeling freer to explore—not just the place where I’m running, but the space inside my head.
What I have always loved about running was the simplicity of it. Note that I did not say “easiness.” There is nothing easy about dragging your body outside in the dark to plod with eyes squeezed shut against an onslaught of hailstones, but there is something satisfyingly simple about the process of setting a target, finding a training programme, and following that programme until you achieve your goal. After my second son was born, in 2000, I decided to take up running to tone up my saggy bits. It worked. In 2005, I resolved to write a book and run my first marathon: I completed the Dublin City Marathon in 4:05; the Mommy lit masterpiece Where Are They Now? is still languishing in a drawer. Running has always been the most reliable area of my life, the one pursuit that yielded the expected results once I put in the required effort.
Until now. I’m training for the Lakes of Killarney Marathon on May 16th, following the trusty Hal Higdon Chicago Program, which is the most straightforward plan for any kind of runner to finish a marathon in a relatively respectable time. Usually, all that is involved is putting one foot in front of the other and completing the mileage: a six- to ten-mile run midweek sandwiched between a pair of three- or four-mile runs and capped by a long run at the weekend. Not easy, but definitely simple.
The problem is that, for the first time in my 15-year relationship with running, my body is cheating on me. It’s failing to keep faithful to the clear and irrefutable partnership that involves my brain overcoming its desire to remain wrapped in a duvet while my body logs the distances necessary to get me across the line in four hours or less next May. My brain is doing its job, but my body is letting the side down with a bothersome hamstring. I stopped running for a week earlier in my training and that seemed to help, but now the pain is back, shooting down the back of my left thigh and humming nastily through the day, even when I’m not running. I’m trying to adapt my running style, pumping my arms more, walking up hills, and favouring the balls of my feet more than my heels. I’m slathering myself in Deep Heat and Biofreeze and stretching my quads more to help balance the load, but, with only seven weeks to go to the actual event, I’m facing the possibility of having to drop down to the half-marathon. Or worse.
I know I should be grateful. I know it could be a lot worse. I know this is a relatively minor setback in the grand scheme of things.
Iron(ing) Woman 