Irish Runner October 2022

“It's going to be a big year”

ISRAEL OLATUNDE

CONTENTS

COVER STORY

Israel Olatunde on becoming Ireland's fastest man

INSPIRATION

World and Euro Champs round-up

John Treacy

Faces behind the races

Nick Griggs

The Ultimate Ice Challenge

Joe O'Leary

Sinead Kane

INTERVIEWS

Louise Shanahan

Racing Swag

Shopping with a sport's dietitian

TECHNICAL

Can cycling make you a better runner? 12 London Marathon 20

Breathing while Running 22 Periods and performance

Top 10 races

Hydration for runners

Sustainable running

Gear review

EDITOR’S PICKS: Grace Chambers

60 seconds with

GRACE CHAMBERS

The 94-year-old tells us why young is an attitude

NICK GRIGGS Europe's fastest U20 miler

NICK MOLONEY

Can cycling make you a better runner?

Nick Moloney looks at the evidence

Team Ireland shine on the world stage We round up the World and European Championships

JOE O'LEARY

King of the mountains on what it takes to be the toughest

FROM THE EDITOR ALANA FEARON

The future is bright for Irish athletics says John Treacy on page 14. And we have to agree!

In fact, we predicted it in our January edition. But even that crystal ball couldn’t have foreseen the dizzying heights Team Ireland would rise to in Oregon (World Championships) and Munich (European Championships) this summer.

We have a new fastest man in Ireland, our cover star Israel Olatunde, coveted medals, and PBs on the world stage.

Yes, John Treacy, there is PLENTY to be excited about in Irish athletics.

But that’s not the only reason we’re smiling. We’re also buoyed by the resilience and inspiration oozing from our pages.

Young is an attitude, says Grace Chambers on page 6. Can you say it louder for the people at the back please Grace?

At 94 years young, Grace is still running every week and showing that age is just a number.

What she exemplifies is determination; determination

to stay fit, to stay active, and to defy the years.

Grace should be an example to us all because she proves that anything is possible when you put your mind to it.

And on that note, flick to page 48 to meet ultra-runner, Sinead Kane.

Sinead is blind and she could have let that stop her stepping outside her comfort zone.

But instead of being put off by the fact she can’t see, she teamed up with people who can and quite literally rewrote the rule book to have guide runners accepted in some races.

If you remember anything from this issue, make it be this: where there’s a will, there’s always a way.

Happy reading!

Alana

COLOPHON

Editor In Chief : Alana Fearon

Art Direction : Hans Spoelman

Design : Mark Hurst

Commercial : Richie Kelly

Creative Director : James Wynn

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Distribution : Business Post Group

Contributors : Evan Lynch, Nick Moloney, Enda Brady, Conor Gleeson, Helen Carr, Nick Alexander, Brian Donovan, Shane Walsh

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WHAT 'S MAKING US SMILE

By Conor Gleeson

Inspirational is perhaps a word that is overused of late. But there is no adjective more apt to describe Grace Chambers.

At 94 years young, Grace might possibly be the oldest Parkrunner in the country.

And despite her age, open heart surgery and a broken femur that left her learning to walk again less than 18 months ago, Grace can be seen every Saturday morning lining up with the other Parkrunners at Belfast’s Ormeau Park.

You might think to watch Grace sprinting home every Saturday that she has been running all her life. But in fact she only started Parkrun in September 2016 when a leg surgery prevented her from continuing her hiking and climbing.

After Grace got back on her feet, her daughter suggested she do a Parkrun, despite the fact Grace had never heard of it.

In September 2016 Grace completed her first Parkrun in Ormeau Park. She is now a well-known face amongst the Parkrun crew and everyone knows her because of her infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy.

Even lockdown couldn’t stop her and she turned up every Saturday without fail in Ormeau Park and did her own 5k. However in January 2021, following a severe bout of dizziness after her first COVID vaccination, Grace fell heavily on her way to the shops and broke her femur.

She admits she was angry at this tremendous setback and “in the depths of despair”. She even feared she might never run – or even walk – again. But Grace’s sheer grit and

determination meant she rose to the challenge of trying to compete in Parkrun before her next birthday in June that same year.

It was baby steps to begin with as she slowly built up to walking 1k. It wasn’t long before Grace had ditched her rollator and was desperate to build up her confidence again so she could start running. Her friends supported her one on each side until Grace felt strong enough to go it alone.

Miraculously in June 2021, when Parkrun resumed, Grace was at the starting line with her close friend Cathy and completed the 5k in a world class time for her age group.

Grace’s secret to success is that she has been fit and active her whole life. In fact, she used to have to cycle a 26-mile round trip to school when she was a teenager to play her hockey matches. Grace continued to be active throughout her adult life playing tennis, badminton and swimming – and she still exercise three times a week outside of Parkrun.

She also likes to relax with a well-earned glass of wine every Saturday evening before she checks her Parkrun time for that week!

So what’s her advice to anyone else wondering if they’re too old – or not fit enough – for Parkrun?

“There’s no need to be nervous. Exercise is absolutely essential. There’s such a companionship at Parkrun and I really look forward to seeing the good friends I’ve made every week.”

She added: “Keeping young is an attitude. I don’t feel old. I've always had a healthy life.”

Perhaps we should all take a leaf out of Grace’s book and imitate her infectious joie de vivre. It’s never too late to start running. .

“Young is an attitude. I don’t feel old.”

Grace and Cathy

“It's going to be a big year, but I'm never going to limit myself”

Israel Olatunde of Ireland celebrates after winning his Men's 100m heat during day 5 of the European Championships 2022 at the Olympiastadion in Munich, Germany.

Israel Olatunde Ireland's fastest man

By Conor Gleeson

In the midst of an extravagant light show ahead of the European 100m final in the Olympic Stadium in Munich, Ireland got their first ever glimpse of one of their own taking to the track for the showpiece event of the championships in the form of Dundalk sprint sensation, Israel Olatunde.

Making his way to his blocks proudly beating the green vest, there was an overwhelming sense that this would be the moment the 20-year-old announced himself on the big stage.

Magical night in Munich What came next was a performance fit for the occasion. From lane 7, with Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs to his left, Olatunde produced the run of his life, finishing 6th to break Paul Hession’s 15-year-old Irish national record in a time of 10.17.

Exhilarated, exhausted, overwhelmed, Olatunde collapsed to the track draped in the Irish tricolour as his history-making time beamed up on the screen in the packed stadium.

A moment that will live long in the memory of Irish sports fans.

Journey to the final Olatunde’s journey through the heats and semi-finals had been incredible in isolation.

Breaking his own U23 national record in his first appearance at a European senior outdoor championship to win his heat in a time of 10.19, he then followed that up with an automatic qualification for the final in 10.20.

And that made him the first Irishman ever to qualify for a European 100m final.

“I knew if I was in good shape, I could have made the final, so it wasn’t really a surprise, but I was overjoyed with the result for sure.”

A season to remember The performance in Munich topped off what has been a stellar year for the Dundalk man who runs in the colours of University College Dublin under the coaching tutelage of Daniel Kilgallon.

Olatunde was introduced to Kilgallon three years ago by his former coach in Dundalgan A.C, Gerry McArdle.

The change in training to a more endurance-based program alongside his training partners in Tallaght A.C has worked a treat in molding the athlete who became capable of breaking the 15-year-old national record.

But he had been threatening to steal Hession's crown for the whole season.

“I was with Gerry McArdle in Dundalk, I was still fresh, still growing and Gerry felt it was time to move on to a new coach. I began doing a different type of training I had never done before. It was a bit of a shock going into it.”

Hitting the headlines

The aftermath of the race in Munich caused a social media storm rarely seen for athletics in Ireland, a true testament to the scale of what had just been achieved by the Dundalk man.

Of all the messages that landed in Olatunde’s inbox, one stood out above all the others - congratulations received from Paul Hession himself, the man he had just snatched the national record from.

“That means a lot having a legend like him acknowledging my achievement.”

Rising tide of talent Olatunde is currently spearheading a generation of up-and-coming talented young Irish athletes who can undoubtedly go on to compete at the highest level on the global stage.

None more so than friend and former training partner, Rhasidat Adeleke, whom he admits caused him to lose his voice just 24 hours after his own heroics, as she went on to break her own national record for 5th in the 400m final. “I was there trackside screaming her on. I kind of lost my voice a little bit, I love watching her race.”

Moving day

After the dizzying heights of Munich, Olatunde has returned to some form of normality.

Having recently finished up an internship with KPMG, he is back at college in UCD, where he's studying computer and data science.

But one big change this year will be his new living

arrangements as he makes the move to the Belfield campus for the first time.

“The main thing will be recovery, using the extra hours where I was commuting, for recovery. It's going to be a good change for me.”

Looking to the future

With his name now proudly alongside the national record, Olatunde is pushing his career to the next level.

With the World Athletics Championships in Budapest on the horizon in 2023, he refuses to let the rising standard of world sprinting intimidate him in pursuing more success at the highest level.

And he has the support of his family, training group and local community in Dundalk to keep driving him forward.

“I don’t think it’s a step too far, we’ll take things one step at a time. It's going to be a big year, but I'm never going to limit myself." .

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World & European Athletics Championships ROUND-UP

Championships kicked off in Munich for a week that will live long in the annals of Irish athletics history.

Dundalk man Israel Olatunde captured the hearts of the nation on day two, earning a place in the European 100m final and then going on to break Paul Hession’s Irish record with a blistering 10.17 to become the fastest man in the country.

But it was Ciara Mageean and Andrew English who brought home the medals.

By Conor Gleeson

It was a busy summer for Team Ireland with the World Athletics Championships in Oregan closely followed by the European Championships in Munich.

The Worlds may not have produced any medals, but they proved it's not always about the medals. And the Irish athletes who made it Stateside did our small nation proud.

Team Ireland’s walkers, David Kenny and Brendan Boyce and the mixed 4x400m relay team of Chris O’Donnell, Sophie Becker, Jack Raftery and Sharlene Mawdsley, carried the tricolour into finals at the World Athletics Championship in Eugene in July.

Tallaght sprinting sensation, Rhasidat Adeleke was unfortunately forced to

withdraw from the team for the final due to illness after helping the team secure their final spot.

Adeleke’s individual performance in the 400m at the championships was one of the highlights, finishing 9th fastest in the world, narrowly missing out on a final berth in a semi-final won by double Olympic champion ShaunaeMiller Uibo.

Sarah Lavin was once again in superb form when qualifying automatically for her semifinal of the 100m hurdles, running strongly for 5th as she bowed out.

There were notable runs from the ever-reliable Andrew Coscoran in the 1500m, Thomas Barr in the 400m hurdles, and Mark English in the 800m, the Finn Valley man coming within five hundredths of a second away from breaking his national record in his heat.

And not to forget our throwers, Eric Favors and John Kelly who represented the green and gold in the shot put.

Then as the dust settled on Eugene, the European

Off the back of a Commonwealth Games silver medal just nine days before stepping onto the track at the European Championships, the weight of an expectant nation appeared to weigh lightly on the shoulders of Ciara Mageean as she produced arguably the performance of her career on a magical night in Munich to take silver in the women’s 1500m.

Ireland’s second medal of the European Championships arrived on the final day of action in Munich, with Donegal’s Mark English taking bronze in the men’s 800m. Remarkably, the medal came 8 years after English last claimed European outdoor honours when he won bronze in Zurich in 2014, a testament to the longevity of the career of the current Irish national record holder.

Another star of the Championships was Rhasidat Adeleke. Running in the less favoured inside lane in the 400m final, Adeleke broke her own national record for 5th place. .

Mark English with his bronze medal after finishing third in the Men's 800m

Ciara Mageean of Ireland celebrates after finishing second in the Women's 1500m Final

Ireland Women's 4x400m Relay team, from left, Sophie Becker, Phil Healy, Rhasidat Adeleke and Sharlene Mawdsley celebrate after finishing second to qualify for the Women's 4x400m Relay Final

CAN CYCLING MAKE YOU A BETTER RUNNER?

By Nick Moloney

As runners, we can gain a lot of benefits from crosstraining with our bicycles. It can enhance recovery between heavy training cycles or after a race, and also increase aerobic - and with the right traininganaerobic fitness.

Running is demanding on our bodies and unfortunately, we are all too aware of the risk of injury from over-training. But when it comes to picking alternative exercises to supplement our running schedules, we can often wonder whether they are actually getting us closer to our fitness goal.

Given the similarities between both sports, running and cycling usually appeal to the same athletes and when it comes to cross-training, cycling for runners can help us achieve our goals in a few key ways:

1. It builds stamina and endurance as you often cycle for longer periods of time than you run.

2. It aids your recovery as it is a non-impact activity which increases the blood flow to your legs.

3. It can reduce the chances of injury as it builds strength in complementary muscles.

How cycling can aid recovery Cycling can help runners to recover during race season, heavy training periods, and can be used to transition between seasons while maintaining a fitness base.

As it is a non-impact activity, cycling increases blood flow to the muscles in your legs, flushes out lactic acid and reduces stiffness.

Cycling is also a great way to transition from one season into another with a good level

of fitness, while providing a mental break from running.

Using cycling to avoid injury

A lot of the common injuries we pick up are from overuse of a certain muscle and unfortunately, we usually only realise we are overtraining once it is too late. Whether it’s from one particularly long run or cumulative mileage, the more miles you put into your legs, the higher the risk of injury.

Cycling can be a great way to build some resilience to these common overuse injuries.

Firstly, it is a non-impact sport and offers these muscles some respite. But also as the general movement of pedalling mimics that of running, especially when you are pedalling out of the saddle,

it builds up the muscles in and around your calves, shins, glutes and quads.

Cycle hard to run hard While cycling is a useful recovery exercise for runners, it can also be a great way to improve your fitness. There are many ways to train hard on the bike that will have a direct impact on your running fitness. High gear training on an incline will build strength, out-of-the-saddle sprints will sharpen your anaerobic ability and lastly, a long, steady ride will build endurance and increase your aerobic base.

The advantage to runners of doing one or two hard cycling workouts per week is you can recover quicker from the sessions while maintaining and improving your fitness.

Professional cyclists show us what they can do off the bike

Over the years we have seen a lot of professional cyclists take to running in their off-seasons and putting in very respectable times on the road, from 5km all the way to marathon distance.

For them, running is a way to stay fit in between racing, while getting a well earned break from the pressures of the peloton.

Although the running ability of pro cyclists is nothing new, in the past 48 months alone and particularly during Covid, we witnessed a spate of very respectable times coming from the peloton. Keep in mind these athletes spend very little time running as the average pro spends between 100-120 days a year in the saddle.

Tom Dumoulin finished in second place with a respectable time of 32:38 at the Groene Loper 10k run in Maastricht, Netherlands.

Olympic mountain bike gold medalist Tom Pidcock posted a 13:25 5km run to Strava but it was questioned for GPS accuracy. Although it has cast little doubt about his capability to run at that sort of time.

Wout van Aert, the Belgian champion, clocked 1:11:11 for a pace of 4:25/km at the Antwerp 10-mile race.

At the marathon level, Adam Yates sustained an average split of 4:11/km to earn himself a time of 2:58:08 for the Barcelona Marathon.

While not all of these times would admit them into the

ranks of top runners, it is still massively impressive for athletes who spend little to no time putting in the miles by foot.

The ability to cycle fast is not necessarily an indicator of running ability, or vice versa, but the cross-sport ability of these pros highlights how fitness can be built and maintained by taking part in both activities.

Has a runner ever taken to the pro peloton?

There are few cases of runners transitioning to the pro peloton, but one that stands out is Michael Woods.

Woods had previously been a sub-four-minute-miler before taking up the bike. At just 18, he ran a whopping 3:57:48 mile on track, which stood as one of the fastest miles ever run by a Canadian on home soil.

Although he had hoped to develop his career as a professional runner, it was cut short after a series of stress fractures in his foot brought an end to his dream.

In 2011, at the age of 25 and after suffering another stress fracture, his now wife convinced him to give cycling a go and although he was late to the sport by comparison, his aerobic endurance from the years of running transferred well to the bike and enabled him to become the formidable cyclist he is today.

What is it about running that translates well to professional cycling, according to Woods?

Two observations Woods made in an interview about his running background was that it gave him the ability to make important decisions under great physical pressure.

This is a highly valuable skill for a cyclist where races are often won from making lots of seemingly small decisions in the peloton, such as positioning before a climb or a sprint finish and timing attacks off the front in the mountainous stages.

The second was that he feels runners are more disciplined when it comes to training efforts such as intervals, especially on the track. He commented that pro cyclists are relatively new to that level of structured training.

When he made the leap to the pro peloton, he was also surprised that most cyclists were willing to stop for a coffee during a training session, something runners would not be used to doing halfway through a 10km run.

In conclusion

Cross-training with the bike is good use of a runner’s time as it can reduce common injuries and aid recovery. If the type of training on the bike is targeted and structured, it can improve a runner's performance.

If you are less serious about using it to supplement high intensity training, then it can at least contribute to maintaining existing levels of endurance when you are out injured or transitioning between seasons. .

ADVICE

John Treacy: the future is bright in Irish AthleticsINTERVIEW

"Then we had Marcus (O’Sullivan) and Frank (O’Meara) following soon after that. Then came Sonia O’Sullivan and Catherina McKiernan.

"It was a fantastic time and we had Irish people up there at the very top of the sport, beating the best in the world. And we'll have it again.

"Charlie caught me at the tunnel, so I had a bit of business to take care of. I kicked again and I held it all the way to the line to take the silver medal.

"But because it was Charlie and myself, an Irish and a British athlete competing in the stadium, it added something to the moment.

John Treacy, CEO, Irish Sports Council, speaking at a reception for Irish athletes at Dublin Airport as the Irish Paralympic Team arrived home from Beijing.

"We have a lot to look forward to. The future is bright. I think, for some of our athletes, I’d be really excited about them.”

Treacy’s comments came a week before the European Athletics Championships in Berlin where we all got the opportunity to see just why he’s so excited for the future in what was the most successful Championships in recent history for Team Ireland.

Of course, a conversation with John Treacy would not be complete without his reflections on the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

By 1983, Treacy’s career had plateaued. He returned to America where he had honed his skills and built a reputation as a tenacious runner, representing Providence College in the NCAA Championships in the seventies.

By James Wynne

Retirement appears to suit John Treacy. He’s in an upbeat mood when we meet to reflect on his achievements during a golden age in athletics and also to look forward to what we can expect from the next generation of Irish athletes.

He’s had to retire twice - first, calling time on a stellar career on the track, on the road and cross country and second, having successfully brought Irish sports administration into the 21st century as the CEO of Sport Ireland up to December 2021.

“We were on the world stage competing against the best in the world. Eamonn Coghlan World Champion in 1983; Ray Flynn, still the Irish record holder over 1500 meters.

Through the early part of 1984, far from any hype or fanfare, Treacy put in the groundwork for a tilt at the marathon and what would become one of the greatest moments in Irish sporting history.

“I was running second and had opened up a little gap to Charlie Spedding in third. In my mind, I wanted to get into the stadium and enjoy that last 500 meters, but I didn’t get that luxury.

"When I was back in Ireland, everyone was congratulating me on my win. I kept saying ‘I didn't win. I was second.’ And they’d say, ‘Oh Jaysus, John you won!’ which was funny, but I could see what it meant to people at the time.

"I then tried to go for a run about a week later and I couldn't run. I was laughing as I was walking back to the house. My legs just weren't functioning.

"That kind of told me that I had pushed myself as hard as I possibly could. You go to an Olympic Games, that's the pinnacle of your sport, and a week later you can’t run, and you have a silver medal in your back pocket. It's not a bad feeling at all.”

If Treacy is right, we can look forward to more Irish athletes experiencing that feeling returning from the Olympic Games in the future. .

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"You have a silver medal in your back pocket. It's not a bad feeling at all."

THE FACES BEHIND THE RACES

By Helen Carr

It’s autumn again, so naturally many runners are preparing for the big one – the Dublin Marathon in just a few weeks on 30 October.

They’ll have mapped out their plans and done the training through heatwaves, rain, wind and personal ups and downs.

On the day, they’ll turn up ready to concentrate on nothing but their run. And they can do so thanks to an army of organisers, co-ordinators and volunteers, some of whom have been preparing for this for even longer than the marathoners, and who turn up and give their all for the full day of the event.

Delivering a safe, enjoyable event for more than 20,000 runners over 26.2 miles of city streets thronged with spectators is no joke!

It’s a huge task for Jim Aughney and his team at Dublin Marathon, which they rise to with efficiency, good humour and skill.

There are many cogs in their well-oiled machine; from the volunteers at the water tables and bag drop, to the marshals, St John’s ambulance crew, Dublin city council and the gardaí, to the pacers who guide runners to their hoped-for finish time.

As runners make their way around the course, they’ll see a huge team of marshals manning the barriers and street corners, helping the gardaí keep the roads clear of pedestrians and cars – plus

cheering on the runners and offering encouragement.

It’s a very rewarding role as you get to see every runner from first to last and cheer them on until you’re hoarse. But getting this number of volunteers out on the roads takes planning.

About four months before the big day, feelers go out for volunteers to steward.

Martin Kearney of Dublin Marathon, who has the overall responsibility for stewarding, reaches out to clubs, residents’ associations and other groups.

Dick Hooper of Raheny Shamrock AC – and three-time winner of the Dublin Marathon

himself – is one of many who answers the call and commits to providing a large number of volunteers from his club each year.

Raheny Shamrock tend to get two shifts, one in the early miles and one toward the end of the race. Marshalling the final miles means being in position until the very last runner has passed and ‘is a long shift and a particularly generous piece of volunteerism,’ according to Dick.

Well in advance of October –before the runners are even at the taper stage of their training – Dick and the other team leaders from athletic clubs are

gathering names, allocating club members to various places around the course, liaising with Martin Kearney and handling all the other admin involved with manning their sections of the 26.2-mile course safely and efficiently.

"Prior to the event I’ll attend a leaders meeting and a training session with the gardaí and the Dublin Marathon Committee. I'll probably do a First Aid refresher course too," Dick explains.

He’ll also take delivery of the race day gear, so the marshals are readily identifiable in their official jackets and hats, and distribute it to his team.

On the big day, while runners are still eating their porridge or putting on their numbers and Vaseline, most of the volunteers are already out on the course getting the water tables ready, manning the baggage area and taking their places around the marathon route.

Dick Hooper always gathers his team well in advance of the race start, briefs them on their areas of responsibility, and makes sure they know exactly where to be. They often get questions from the public about the timing and direction of the race, road closures and so on – and at times need to access St John’s Ambulance.

Having briefed the team, Dick always cycles around the early miles to make sure everyone is in place, and all is well. He’ll watch some of the race from his bike, but says: "I always ensure I am in place at my own spot before any of the athletes arrive."

Dick’s own marshalling position is always on the later miles – many a flagging athlete over the years has been encouraged at mile 24 by cries of, ‘Pick it up, Dick Hooper’s on the next corner!’

Another group who are extremely prominent on the day are the pacers. Dublin marathon have three pacers for each finish time, covering

every 10 minutes from three hours to five hours.

"We are incredibly easy to find in the start area," says veteran pacer Olwyn Dunne, "with our giant, coloured balloons with the time on them."

Like the marshals, the pacers need to prepare well in advance. In their case, they need to make sure they're capable of running very comfortably within their allotted time, so they have to get in training.

The marathon organisers will confirm their suitability for

their pacing slot with a recent half or full marathon race result.

It’s a big enough commitment getting ready to pace, Olwyn says. "Training is pretty much the same as if I were racing, with the emphasis being on the long run every weekend."

On the day, they need to be on their game as they are dealing with large numbers of marathoners; over the past number of years there has been a big increase in the number of runners following the pacers with some of the pacing groups comprising hundreds of runners.

Pacers are primarily there to help runners achieve time goals,

"It's an incredible honour to line up with the big red balloon on the start line and I plan to do so for many more years."

The pacers

but Olwyn feels it’s just as important to encourage and reassure them.

"A lot of participants can be very nervous on the morning and one of the most enjoyable parts of my role as pacer is to help them relax."

This side of pacing is what originally got Olwyn involved, as she explains: "I started running in 2008 and I always found pacers to be hugely helpful and encouraging. I’m passionate about the physical and mental benefits of running so I was keen to try pacing. "I began to pace a few half marathons to see if it suited me. My first Dublin pacing was in 2012 and I have had the honour of pacing every year since then."

On the day, the pacers aim to finish in the allotted chip time, (e.g., 3:59: XX for the fourhour group), and in Dublin they run more or less even splits – "although most of us try to save a few extra seconds for heartbreak hill," says Olwyn.

The pacers also try to make the marathon an enjoyable and happy day for the runners in their group. They don’t just run the pace, they also warn runners about busy junctions where the chances of tripping are higher, grab extra water bottles for them and so on –some even tell jokes to while the time away.

And when you cross the finish line, you’ll meet another group who’ve had a long day – the bag-drop volunteers.

Like the marshals, these are often drawn from clubs and community groups. Parkrun, which embodies the spirit of volunteerism, always supplies many hands at the baggage area.

There are usually well over a hundred baggage volunteers working in shifts, come rain or shine, tirelessly sorting through 15 - 20,000 bags and doing their best to get them back to tired runners as fast as possible.

They’ll wave you off with a

smile when you drop off your bag and welcome you back at the end.

Though it’s a long and often tiring day, the volunteers seem to get so much out of their roles.

Olwyn explained: ‘It's like Christmas as the day approaches. The most special part is meeting new people; crossing that finish line with lots of happy runners is so rewarding.

"Over the years I have met many runners who told me that the pacers helped them achieve their running goal. It's an incredible honour to line up with the big red balloon on the start line and I plan to do so for many more years."

For Dick Hooper, getting word at the end of a long shift that the day is done and has gone off successfully, leaves him with the satisfaction of a job well done.

He revealed: "The Raheny stewards retire to a coffee shop and trade stories of the day."

Dublin Marathon day is a special one for the city, for the runners, the supporters and for the volunteers too.

So, give them a wave when you pass – and best of luck to all involved. .

The pacers

“It's an incredible honour to line up with the big red balloon on the start line and I plan to do so for“

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By Enda Brady 38-time marathoner

I ’ve run marathons everywhere; from Ireland to Kenya, and Australia to the Arctic. But one stretch of road will stay with me to my last breath - the part of the London Marathon that takes you over Tower Bridge.

LONDON MARATHON, YOU HAVE MY HEART

The noise, the view, the excitement and the sheer emotion of thousands of strangers screaming encouragement at you is hard to put into words.

I ran the London Marathon last week for the 10th year in a row and when people ask me why I keep going back, I ask them if they have ever felt like they’ve just broken a world record.

That’s what it feels like, times a hundred. It’s an electrifying feeling running over that bridge, seeing London at its very, very best with complete strangers watching in awe, no matter how fast or slow you’re going.

And trust me, it’s a feeling that stays with you long after the pain has gone and you’ve recovered from 42.2kms of London’s streets.

Now that I’ve got you thinking about a weekend in London with a marathon and a stunning medal thrown in, you’ll need to start working on a few logistics.

So, first thing’s first. People have often complained to me that getting a place in the world’s most famous marathon is too difficult.

You can enter the public ballot for London like everyone else, but the odds are stacked against you. You might get very lucky and land a coveted ballot

place, but you probably won’t. So option two is to approach a charity that means something to you and fundraise.

To get a London Marathon place you will be required to raise around £3,000 for your chosen charity.

Now that you’ve got your place in the race, you’ll need to book somewhere to stay. The marathon starts in the Blackheath area of southeast London, but the majority of runners will stay in the centre of town.

The good news is that a hotel room for a couple of nights in the English capital is much, much cheaper than a room in

Dublin is right now! Make sure that where you book is close to a tube station, so you can jump on a train first thing and begin making your way down to the start line.

Get there good and early so you avoid the stress of wasting energy needlessly before you’ve even run 100m.

All runners in the London marathon travel free on the underground all day on the day of the marathon, you just need to show your race bib to rail staff if they ask for it. So that’s a few quid saved!

The trains will be very busy as you get closer to the start area. Upwards of 40,000 people take part in the race each year and the vast majority get there by train, so whatever time you set off there will be no way of avoiding packed carriages.

But the atmosphere is always upbeat, with loads of fellow runners, from all over the world, chatting nervously about what’s to come.

Your family can easily track your every move by using the London marathon app and website. They just need your bib number.

There are parts of the city you will run through where the crowd support isn’t as vocal, mostly the Isle of Dogs area, which can be hard to reach on public transport on the day.

But Tower Bridge more than makes up for this, so too does the stretch along the Embankment where the crowd really starts to get noisy.

The pain is kicking in at this stage and your legs are getting heavier, but you can’t help but be lifted by the crowd support.

You’ll notice some funny placards too. There’s always one I see near Big Ben and it says “you’re running better than this government”. (Year on year this placard has become more prophetic!)

As you run past Parliament, the route takes you up Birdcage Walk and you are now just a few minutes away from Buckingham Palace and a glittering London Marathon medal that you will cherish for the rest of your days.

The decibel level at this stage is off the scale. Your legs are screaming, your heart is pumping and your lungs are begging for a break.

But you’ll push on past the Palace (the King is never there on race day, so you won’t see a Royal standard flying) and you’ll see a digital sign that reads ‘365 yards to go’.

And then, before you know it, you have crossed the finish line.

London belongs to you and to every other runner who has just finished the best marathon in the world. .

“That’s what it feels like, times a hundred. It’s an electrifying feeling“

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Health DAC

Breathing while running and respiratory muscle training

This gentle encouragement, made explicitly to all new runners, can be beneficial for several reasons, detailed below, and contribute to better running form overall.

Now let’s take a short journey into breathing muscles, and how runners might strengthen theirs.

Respiratory Muscle Training: A VERY brief introduction This brief section will focus on the diaphragm and its functions as these are relevant to respiration, but also to other areas that are meaningful to running.

By Brian Donovan, Ph.D.

In all human activity, including running, nothing is more important than breathing. For instance, we can live without water for a few days; and we can live without food for even longer (sources differ, but between 8-21 days is an estimate).

However, try holding your breath for… how long?

For running, breathing well is likewise essential, and is one of the key components in the calculation of running economy. Rather than delving into the complexities of running economy, this article will focus on learning how to breathe while running, at an accessible level, and then introduce research in the area of respiratory muscle training (RMT) for helping to build internal muscle strength for lifelong running.

Breathing while running Endurance running is generally considered an aerobic activity. Breathing is easy and effort follows breathing. However, when new runners push themselves too hard, their running can have an impact on their breathing and take them into an anaerobic zone.

This distinction between aerobic and anaerobic zones can be monitored by runners using sports watches and/or heart rate monitors. If a runner

knows their heart rate zones, a mid to low level is fairly equivalent to deep breathing and aerobic exercise, while high heart rate zone is leading to shallow breathing (or gasping) and anaerobic activity.

Aerobic and anaerobic training should be on the tongues of all runners - experienced and newer; young and old; female and male; leisure and competitive - in order to develop a firm base for running from the outset.

The term ‘aerobic’ was coined in the late 1960's by Dr Ken Cooper and popularised by him in a number of books. In addition, Dr Phil Maffetone has been developing his ‘MAF Method’ based on aerobic training from around the same time.

One practical approach to helping new runners learn aerobic running is to start them deep breathing (referred to as either belly, or diaphragmatic, breathing) during walking to run.

The goal here is not to make anyone breathing specialists, but to help runners gain an appreciation for how breathing contributes to stronger running, and how the human body can be guided to functioning better for all runners.

While other body parts participate in human breathing (nasal cavity, bronchi, pharynx and larynx, trachea, and, of course, the lungs) it is the diaphragm that is a prime contributor to health. The diaphragm is the muscle that inflates and deflates when we breathe. The deeper the breath, the more work the diaphragm does.

In her book on RMT, Alison McConnell writes that, ‘During exercise, the rate at which [oxygen gas exchange] must increase, means that breathing must increase to keep up with demand. Failing to do so results in changes that lead to breathlessness, increased effort perception, and premature fatigue.’ (2011, p. 4).

Informing new runners about these details, we can help contribute to a heightened awareness of the value of taking breathing while running more seriously. However, McConnell goes further in her work, over nearly 40 years, and suggests training the breathing muscles to engage in aerobic activity. She later notes that, ‘Running presents a huge challenge to the breathing muscles. It requires

them to function not only as breathing muscles, but also as a central part of the systems that control posture, protect the spine from injury, and optimise force transmission during the leg drive.’ (2011, pp. 37-38).

McConnell has written two books on the subject, one practical and the other clinical (specifically for medical professionals). She has also developed a tool for strengthening breathing muscles, the PowerBreathe (as well, other breathing muscle training tools are available for use in athletic training).

An important feature of such research, and practice, is how it relates to running. Not only for helping breathing, but also helping to develop core stability and posture are two key functions of the diaphragm documented in her book.

Learning deep breathing can also help runners in delaying fatigue in running. These features should be taught to all new runners as they start to run.

CONCLUSION

What has been discussed in this article can fall under the heading: developing a solid running base, or foundation.

This is essential for all runners, but newer runners in particular should be informed of its value. By linking breathing with posture and running form, all new runners can start developing a language to talk about running, and can participate in further learning about running in sponsored workshops and seminars.

An informed runner can be an optimal runner. An optimal runner is a runner for life. .

INFOFor references to this, and other sections of article, please email author at donovanb@tcd.ie

INSPIRATION

“Last summer was a whirlwind, everything just seemed to fall into line”

Nick competing in the U20 Men's 6000m during the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Fingal.

Nick Griggs Europe’s fastest U20 miler

By Conor Gleeson

After announcing his arrival on the Irish athletics scene in 2021, Nick Griggs speaks to Irish Runner Magazine about how he has handled his high-profile emergence, both on and off the track, and that famous mile which saw him smash the European U20 record in March of this year.

It has been a little over a year since Nick Griggs produced one of the most memorable performances in an Irish singlet, taking gold in the 3000m at the European U20 Championships.

Griggs continued his impressive form into 2022, smashing the European indoor U20 mile record in March with a 3:56.40, before backing that up with a 3:58.51 in the Morton Mile in July, a time good enough to set a new national U20 record.

Just three days later, the Mid-Ulster athlete collected another U20 national record, this time for 3000m, running 7:53.40 as he geared up for an appearance at the World U20 Championships in Columbia.

Staying grounded

Despite his meteoric rise, Griggs speaks in remarkably humble fashion while referring to his achievements to date.

“It doesn't mean because I ran a quick time or won a medal here or there that I become a

bigger person, it doesn't affect your ego at all, I’m still the same guy that just over a year ago was begging for a chance to get into a 5k.”

A summer of success

That 5k referred to by Griggs is the one which saw him first announce his arrival on the Irish athletics scene at the Mary Peter’s Track in Belfast in May 2021. The then unknown 16-year-old clocked 14:15.98, setting a new Irish U18 record.

“Last summer was a whirlwind, everything just seemed to fall into line. I still don't really know how it happened. I was basically winning most races, and it was like where is this kid coming from?”

Finding opportunity in the madness

Griggs likes to emphasize the opportunity the Covid lockdown in early 2020 provided for his running to thrive.

He credits this time with helping him develop as a more

rounded athlete and instilling in him a greater focus on his academics, something he admits he didn't possess as he progressed through his early school years.

“In fourth year, everything kind of came crashing down. I wasn’t doing well because I didn't know how to revise, I didn't know how to put the work in, but lockdown and running changed all that.”

Dealing with grief

For a young man of 17, Griggs possesses an admirably stoic persona.

And this is something he has had to draw on in the darkest hours since the tragic passing of his brother Josh on 8 June 2021.

Refusing to become engulfed in grief, Nick instead channeled it towards doing his brother proud when he took to the track against Europe’s best just six weeks later in Tallinn, insisting he owed it to his late brother to “run his heart out.”

INSPIRATION

“He wouldn’t have wanted me to lie on the sofa and do nothing, he would have wanted me to keep working and that’s probably why Estonia was the best thing ever because it gave me that focus at a time when I could have just crumbled and lay crippled in my bed.”

Mixed emotions

Having made national headlines throughout the summer of 2021, it was perhaps no surprise that Griggs went into last December’s European Cross Country in Dublin carrying a heavy weight of expectation on his young shoulders.

In the end, Griggs fought arduously for a 16th place finish, helping the U20 Irish team to a silver medal.

But he admits it was a day of mixed emotions as he fell to his knees despondently having crossed the line in Abbotstown.

“I’ve tried to think about the performance less and the experience more, because I don’t think I’ll ever experience anything better, coming down that home straight, it was deafening noise, it was incredible."

European record breaker

Off the back of the home European Cross Country, Griggs opened his 2022 indoor season with a new Irish junior 3000m record of 7:57.38 in Abbotstown,

and just four days later he was back to break the 1500m record in 3:43.71.

While all the early season indicators were promising, even Griggs himself was stunned when he smashed the European U20 mile record in Dublin in March.

“I was daydreaming about it, I’d be on the bus visualizing myself going sub-4, it’s always been one of my goals but never in a million years did I think I could run 3:56. I was just in disbelief."

Coaching switch

Griggs credits the coaching environment headed by Mark

Kirk as something which has further fed his love of running, seeing him propelled to 9th in a weather-delayed 3000m final at the World Junior Championships in August.

A new sponsorship deal with Puma is the product of his success to date, but he remains grounded and the reasons why Griggs first fell in love with the sport are never far from his mind.

“I’ve got loads of guys my own age and older, it’s like a family, you’re doing your training but also doing what you love and having a bit of craic with your mates." .

FACTS

3:56.40 – The time Nick ran to break the European U20 mile record in March

7:57.38 – The time set which saw Nick become the first Irish U20 to break 8 minutes for 3000m

2 – The number of European medals won by Griggs in 2021

“I’m still the same guy that just over a year ago was begging for a chance to get into a 5k”

Nick competing in the U20 Men's 6000m during the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Fingal.

THE ULTIMATE ICE CHALLENGE AT -400C

By Enda Brady 38-time marathoner

Sky News correspondent Enda Brady had run 36 marathons when he took on the Ice Ultra, and it proved to be the most difficult challenge he has ever faced.

Every February, a group of endurance athletes gathers inside the Arctic Circle for a race that is as beautiful as it is brutal.

The Ice Ultra is 230km over five days in northern Sweden and it’s self-sufficient, so each participant must carry their own food and medical kit, plus a few mandatory items, in their rucksack. Mine weighed in at 8kgs.

I’m from County Wexford and I live in rural Oxfordshire, so training for a race in sub-zero temperatures amounted to the usual mix of long runs, gym sessions and cycling. In hindsight, I would have been better off spending time inside a walk-in freezer and getting

used to temperatures pushing close to -40c!

Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. I managed to finish one of the stages, while all the other Irish runners (Tom Reynolds, Tom Curran, Olivia Keating and John Belton) completed the five days.

Over the years I had run marathons everywhere from Dublin to Kenya, from London to Russia, from Amsterdam to Australia. But there was something very different about this race and it hit me as soon as I stepped off the train in the

remote town of Galivare, from where we would all link up and get a bus to the start line in a national park called Stora Sjofallet. It was SO cold!

Once our kit for the week had been checked, we left the cosy warmth of the mountain centre at Stora Sjofallet and bedded down for the night inside a traditional Sami tipi, with just a reindeer skin each for warmth. It was around -25c and I struggled to drift off, wrapped up in my sleeping bag. Fellow runner Simon Blair was asleep in minutes and didn’t wake until 6am the next morning!

The first stage was 50km over icy roads, frozen lakes, Arctic mountains and tundra. There were four medical checkpoints on the route where runners could top up their (frozen) bottles with hot water and get warm inside a tipi before continuing their run. I say ‘run’ but it was a mixture of running, hiking, trekking and exploring. At times I was covering 4km per hour, that’s how difficult the mountains were to get up. It looked like a frozen white desert. When we started at 7.30am, the temperature was around -15c, but when we finished 12 hours later it was pushing towards -40c.

Very quickly the field spread out with super-fit athletes like Jon Shields (the eventual winner) disappearing, not to be seen again until later that evening in Atkse, when we reached the relative warmth and safety of a log cabin where everyone would bed down for the night.

The scenery was spectacular and I felt blessed to be there. It was like something out of a film, but I didn’t take my phone out too often for pictures because I didn’t want to run the risk of getting frostbite for a selfie!

I covered the first 10km in 65 minutes and then put on my snowshoes (like a cross between a ski and a tennis racquet) at around 16km when it became clear that progress without them would be impossible. Up and up we went, getting colder all the time. This part of the route was along the famous Kungsleden (King’s trail) that was originally carved out in the 1800s to link the remote north of Sweden with the south.

When I reached the third checkpoint at 32km, I was shocked to see the brilliant Italian trail runner Filippo Rossi inside the tent, wrapped in a survival blanket, suffering from hypothermia. His race was already over and soon a helicopter would appear over the white nothingness and take him to hospital in Gallivare. I later learned that he had missed the first checkpoint and hadn’t topped up his water bottles.

The next 10km to the final checkpoint took forever and the cold was really starting to get to me. I’ll hold my (frozen) hands up now and admit that I cracked. It was just so draining and everything froze, my mind was all over the place and went to some dark places. At that very moment I hated running and couldn’t see how I could manage another 8km.

One of the local Sami guides told me that there were “4 kilometres up, then 4 kilometres down” before the finish line of stage one. I drank a hot chocolate and wolfed down some Italian shortbread biscuits I had bought in Lidl (they don’t freeze), then decided to get a move on.

The sun went down around 5pm and I was running with a head torch on, following a white beam. It took FOREVER. And then disaster struck. My glasses froze to my face, I couldn’t see anything and wobbled off the trail. So there I was stuck in snow up to my chest.

Luckily, Simon Blair and David Mohring, two English guys I ran across Kenya with in 2018 in another amazing race organised by Beyond the Ultimate, dragged me

out. But my snowshoes had broken; the strap at the back was damaged beyond repair, so Simon carried them for me and gave me his hiking poles. We reached the log cabin and there and then I knew my adventure was over. The snowshoes couldn’t be fixed and it was impossible to go on without them. I will happily admit that this was a blessing in disguise. The first 6km of stage two were directly up Mount Kabla in sub-zero temperatures and I would have been an accident waiting to happen.

The Sami boys gave all three of us lifts on their snowmobiles to the end of stage two, a holiday village with gorgeous little log cabins in a place called Arrenjarka. There we piled into the restaurant, ate some reindeer burgers and chips, drank lager and listened to ‘The Winner Takes It All’ by ABBA.

Did it feel like failure?

Honestly? I felt like the happiest man in the world for those few hours. And I take my hat off to the 10 runners out of 28 who completed all five stages. I was the only Irish person who didn’t make it, so maybe one day I will have to go back and put that right. .

“So there I was stuck in snow up to my chest.”

TECHNICAL

By Shane Walsh

Olympian, Dina Asher-Smith has called for more funding for studies on how a woman's period can affect athletic performance after the British sprinter pulled up with cramp during her 100 metres title defence at the European Championships in Munich.

RESEARCH ON THE IMPACT PERIODS HAVE ON PERFORMANCE IS MILES AWAY FROM WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE

is it really any wonder that women are afraid to talk about their menstrual health and haven’t been versed on how to understand their bodies.

This movement is changing with the world of social media that we now live in, but we have a long way to go.

One area that has really helped the clients I work with on a daily basis is to track their cycles. Every woman is unique and so is how their body works.

Athis level, winning a race can come down to the smallest of margins and everything that can be done to improve times, speed or performance in any way needs to be looked at.

One area of this that needs a huge amount of research and funding is the impact that periods have on performance.

With the meteoric rise of women’s sport over the last few years, which has been amazing to see, the research in this area hasn’t quite been on the same trajectory.

Unfortunately, much of the research over the years has been carried out on male athletes and not a whole lot has been carried out on females. This means you are missing out on 51% of the population!

To quote the amazing Dr. Stacy Sims: “Women are not small men”. So how can the current research be relevant to women?

But some sports and managers are taking a closer look and are leading the way into this area. These include former England Lioness’s boss, Phil Neville and Chelsea Women’s manager, Emma Hayes.

In 2020, the Chelsea manager revealed they have been designing players’ individual plans around the phases of their menstrual cycle in an attempt to help control weight

fluctuations that can occur and lower the chance of soft tissue injuries.

And research in 2016 backs this up and showed more than half of elite female athletes say hormonal fluctuations during their menstrual cycle hampered their training and performances.

There is also ongoing research into the link between anterior cruciate ligament injuries and specific phases of the menstrual cycle.

If you look at the recent success of the England Women’s team in the European Championships and look at the amazing success of the Chelsea’s Women’s Football Team in the last three years (3x league titles, 2x FA Cups, 2x League Cups and the Champions League) we

can 100% say there is a link between knowing how to work with your body and when to push it.

SO HOW DO WE IMPROVE THIS?

It has to start in schools. This is where many of us learn about things and our beliefs about the world are molded.

We all have that awkward memory of sitting through a sex education class when the teacher didn’t want to be there but also maybe wasn’t versed well enough on the topic.

The boards of education in many countries need to create a curriculum that is more up to date, and that removes shame and stigma around the matter.

For so long, the topic of menstrual health has been a toxic word in society and

So, tracking your cycle, through apps/products like Clu, Kindara, Natural Cycles or even using a pen and paper, can help you to understand when appetite might increase and also when you can push your training to perform at your best.

The second thing that can be improved is the level of funding available to the research on women’s cycle health and the impact it has on the body. After her race, Dina Asher-Smith made an amazing point: “I feel like if it was a men’s issue, we would have a million different ways to combat things, but with women, there just needs to be more funding in that area.”

The trick will be to have funding for education so that you know when to expect your dip or increase in performance, and to create funding to have a safe place for women to speak up in team sports with each team having a Female Liaison Officer allocated.

The tide is turning on cycle health but we need more help to get it to the levels that will benefit over half of the population. .

INFO

Shane is a qualified Nutritionist, Personal Trainer and host of one of Irelands leading Nutrition Podcasts “Shane Walsh Podcast”. Shane specialises in the area of Female Health and Fat loss.

Contact Shane at www.shanewalshfitness.com or @shanewalshfitness on social media.

/ ADVICE

Hear from legends of athletics past and present on The Athletes Record podcast where athletes share an honest and inspirational account of their sporting life, the things that matter most to them and what they learned along the way.

The record that nearly never was

After attending her first race with her dad aged just six days old, she was destined for stardom on the track.

It may have taken longer than the Cork athlete would have liked, but she set a new Irish 800 record at the Belfast Irish Milers Club meet back in May when she beat previous record holder Ciara Mageean to cross the line in 1:59.42, a full twosecond improvement on her previous best.

more 1500 runners who happen to run eights, but there's a very impressive list of 800 meter female athletes and the idea that for some reason I've ended up at the top of that list is absolutely crazy.

“I never thought that I could achieve that. The athletes I was competing against were trying to break 2 so I was like ‘maybe I should target that too.’

didn’t want to race that day at all.

“I ran a 400m six days before and I had been thinking that it would be good prep for racing on Saturday, but I was really unhappy with my 55.8 and it crashed my confidence. So on Monday I text my coach quite late and I said ‘Hey, thinking I might not race on Saturday, let me know what you think.’

“So he was asleep and on Tuesday morning he rang me and he told me in no uncertain terms that some people have real problems but I'm not one of them and that he’d see me at training at six o'clock that night.”

Louise crossing the line to win the Women's 800m at the Irish Life Health National Senior Championships.

By Irish Runner

Olympian Louise Shanahan has had one hell of a summer.

She came fifth in her 800m heat at the World Championships in Oregon, just missing out on a place in the semi-finals by 0.12.

And the Leevale AC star also put in a strong performance at the European Championships in Munich in August, finishing eighth in her 800m final.

We caught up with her before all that to find out about the Irish 800m record that nearly never was, and how she ‘Exceled’ herself into the Olympics.

Louise celebrates winning the Women's 800m at the Irish Life Health National Senior Championships.

So how does it feel to be one of only two Irishwomen in history to have broken two minutes for 800m?

Louise told Irish Runner shortly after her recordbreaking run: “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. When

“But I never set out to be the best in Ireland. I didn’t think that was an attainable goal for me.”

The fact that Louise wiped two seconds off her previous best isn’t the most remarkable thing about her new record. The most remarkable thing is that the Leevale AC runner

After that training session, her coach managed to convince Louise to race. Which is lucky for her, she admitted. “If left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't have raced. But thankfully, I have good friends and a good coach.”

There’s another reason her record almost never was. Back at Christmas, the 25-year-old PhD student had been invited to talk at a conference in Hawaii, an opportunity that

the fact I would say that Belfast is a really good meet for me and for the last three years I’ve run PB’s there.”

It’s ironic that Louise almost pulled out of a race in which she set a new national record because she thought she wasn’t in good enough shape.

But that must mean that even Olympians get crises of confidence?

“Yeah, I think when you look at athletes better than you, you're like, ‘oh, you've run so fast, you must be confident all the time’. But I'm certainly not confident all the time. My training group tease me as I'm probably one of the least confident athletes that there are.”

Louise said her lack of confidence stems from the sixyear period from when she was age 15 to age 21 when “I trained really hard but didn't see any improvements in my PB”.

“I think when people watch me race, they might think I race with a lot of confidence. And often I stand on the line believing that I can win. And I think that can really give me an edge over other competitors.

“But in terms of ability to run fast times, I definitely don't have the confidence to think that if training is going well, you're automatically going to run well. Because I think for so many years I trained really hard, training went well and I didn't see the results.”

So despite everyone telling her she was in good shape and was going to run well in Belfast, Louise didn’t believe it - to the point where she told herself if she ran 2:03, it’d be “a pretty decent season opener.”

“I personally didn't believe that I was in PB shape, even though looking back on the sessions, it probably did suggest that I was.”

So does Louise think the fact she didn’t believe she could do it that day in Belfast worked in her favour?

“Every time I run well, I'm genuinely surprised. There

have been quite a few races over the last year where I've crossed the line and thought ‘did that actually happen? I’ve looked at other athletes on big PB’s and they’re so composed afterwards, like they expected it to happen. Whereas I think my lack of confidence means that every time I do run well, I'm as shocked as everyone else, probably even more shocked.

“I think it makes it quite enjoyable for me because I end up going in there with quite low expectations, then anytime I exceed that, it's a positive.”

With all that lack of confidence and low expectation, surely Louise went out and painted the town red to celebrate?

“So the celebration for this one was a little bit weird because I traveled home from Belfast on Saturday night. So I was actually traveling for most of the hours after the race. But what was really nice was, because of flights, I flew into Gatwick so I had to travel across London. And quite a few of my friends had been in London watching the Highgate 10k. So I actually bumped into a lot of my friends and we all got the last train from London to Cambridge together.

“So it was a bit weird because one minute I’d run really fast and then I was sitting on a train with all my friends for an hour.”

As a fulltime PhD student, Louise said it was very quickly back to the reality of 10-hour days and lab reports. But she admitted to having an “extra perk” in her step thanks to her track achievement.

“Reality is a little more enjoyable when you’ve ran a PB.”

With an Olympics under her belt, a degree in physics and a PhD underway, how important is a PB to athletes like Louise?

“It’s that feeling of knowing that you're in the best shape of your life. I really, really enjoy that feeling. It's kind of like you can do anything, even if you can't. And I really like being in the best shape of my life. And thankfully, I guess over the last few years, I've kind of continued to progress and I've had that experience quite a bit.”

Looking at her achievements now, it’s hard to believe that Louise endured a period of five years until she was 21 with little to no improvement, despite her best efforts. So what changed

so radically to propel her to the Tokyo Olympics, and to a national record?

“I think that athletics is particularly tough in your teenage years, and particularly for girls. You hear a lot of 14, 15 and 16-year-olds running quite fast and then all of a sudden they kind of stop improving for one reason or another.

“I was really lucky as I had a really good youth career and I won the European Youth Olympics in 2013. At that point, I kind of thought there's no reason why I can't be the best. And then for no real reason, I just stopped improving. So the times that I was running when I was 16 were good. Suddenly when I was running them when I was 22, they weren’t as good.

“I think it happens to a considerable number of Irish female athletes. And I think if you look back, quite a lot of people will have this plateau. All people really see is like, ‘Oh well, she's 16, 17, 18, she's not winning as much’, and people automatically jump to she's going to college, and she's out more or something like that.

“But actually I know for myself that I trained just as hard when I was 17, 18 and 19 as I’m doing now, but it just didn't really click for me. I think I struggled quite a bit through my undergraduate with balancing sports and academics. And it's funny because people say if you do an undergraduate you've got longer holidays and more free time so it's more compatible with athletics. But I found that really difficult because the exams for undergraduates are generally around May which is just about the time when you need to start peaking for athletics, when you need to start getting into really good shape. So I think I found that in my undergraduate, just when I'd be trying to get into good running shape, I'd be studying loads and probably not getting as much sleep because I was studying. And so I wasn't able to perform in May and I'd still be recovering into June.

Georgie Hartigan reacts after winning the Women's 800m with a PB of 2:01.48, ahead of Louise Shanahan, left, who finished second, at the Irish Life Health Elite Athlete Indoor Micro Meet in Dublin.

INTERVIEW

“And to be honest, undergraduates are full of deadlines and a lot of assignments. So with the best will in the world, it doesn't matter how early you start an assignment, it's very hard to not end up having late nights. I did my undergraduate in physics and I think we'd average three or four assignments a week. I can remember staying up until three or four in the morning trying to get assignments finished on time. And it wasn't because I was leaving them to the last minute. It was probably my own fault, because I'm the person who wants that very last mark. Why would I go to sleep at 10 o'clock if I could only get 90% when I could stay up an extra few hours and try to get 95%?

“I used to study incredibly hard and I really struggled (with athletics). I managed to get the training in but I probably was missing out on a lot of the recovery and not improving because of that.”

The proof was in the pudding because around a month after Louise finished her undergraduate, she had her first big breakthrough when she went from 2:08 to 2:04, ironically at the Belfast Irish Milers Club.

Thankfully, Louise has found balancing academics and sport a lot easier since starting her PhD, perhaps why she was able to set a new national record.

“I think for me the big initial breakthrough happened just after I finished my undergraduate. But then once that breakthrough came, a lot of the progress has been made since I started my PhD in Cambridge because I just have more time to recover. I'm also extremely lucky with the group that I have in Cambridge. I don't think there's a single session where I'm the best athlete. In terms of during the winter, we've got quite a few girls who are making or just missing GB Cross teams. So I spent my entire winter being dropped by these girls. And then we go into the summer, and there's a couple of

1:48/1:49 800m guys, so on the track they're absolutely perfect training partners. And then I go and spend my entire summer trying to hang on to them. So Cambridge has worked out really well for me.

“In Cork, it was difficult to find people to train with. There were a lot of people who were training for 5k but there weren't that many people who were keen to try to run a 60-second 400.”

It’s clear from speaking to Louise that her studies are a huge part of who she is, and that determination to succeed and be the best is as important on the track as it is off it.

But she’s convinced that she would never have qualified for the Tokyo Olympics if she wasn’t a physicist.

“Qualification for Tokyo was based off getting an automatic standard. But there was just no way I was going to reach that. So if you weren't going to qualify by the standard, you needed to qualify by the ranking scheme, and the ranking scheme is done by your five best performances, where your performance is determined by how fast you run, where you finish in the race, and the quality of the competition. So I sat down at the start of June, about three and a half weeks before the deadline, and I said, ‘this is the shape I'm in; this is how many points I can expect to get from my time; and these are how many points I’d need to qualify for the Olympics.’ And I was able to work out exactly which races to go to so that I could get enough points.

“So for example, I could have gone to faster races where I might have run slightly faster. But then if I'd finished in fifth and sixth instead of say, second or third, I wouldn’t have had enough placing points and I wouldn't have qualified. Or similarly, I could go to slower races that I knew I'd win, but then I wouldn't get enough time points.

“I had a huge Excel sheet basically working out how to

qualify for Tokyo. I wasn't necessarily the fastest athlete, but I knew exactly what I had to do to get enough points to qualify and thankfully my legs were capable of doing that. But I think if I didn't have a maths brain, there's no way I could have qualified.”

And Louise thinks this formula could help more Irish athletes in future.

“I think we actually could have had even more athletes in Tokyo if the athletes knew this is the formula that you need to qualify. And that's not taking anything away from the performance. You need to qualify; you still need to be able to run those times. But if you run those times in the wrong races, you're not going to qualify. So if you're going to be capable of running those times, you want to make sure that you run them in the right races so you get enough points. So I think it's definitely something that we can work on to try to get as many Irish athletes to championships as possible.”

With such a blistering start to 2022, have Louise’s ultimate ambitions shifted?

“Dream one was just to qualify for the Olympics. And that was the dream I had since I was nine years old. I think it's actually quite interesting to see

the difference in perspectives if you grew up in Ireland versus the UK. In Ireland, we don't have that many Olympic medallists so the dream is to go to the Olympics, but very few people dream of winning. With the UK, they're actually exposed to a lot more medals and as a result, when you ask them what their dream is, theirs is to go to the Olympics and do well and to win a medal.

“I always had the dream of going to the Olympics but I never dreamt of having a medal around my neck. And it was a bit weird when I came back from Tokyo where I was like, Okay, I've achieved this, but what's next?

“I achieved that but I was still a 2:01 runner so I knew there was quite a bit of time that I could naturally take off and I guess the next barrier was 2:00. And so I kind of thought it might take a year or two to get there, if I got there at all.

“I got there a lot faster than I could have imagined and now I guess the obvious thing is I’ve run 1:59 so why not run 1:58? But I don't like to focus on times too much so I think for me, I'm now hopefully going to be exposed to higher quality competition and to get better at racing and to belong more in these races.” .

Louise in action during the women's 800 metres at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Top 1o

SPECTACULAR IRISH RACES

2.Bere Island Parkrun CORK

How often can you arrive at Parkrun by boat?

5.

Connemarathon GALWAY

8.

Maurice Mullins Ultra WICKLOW

By Helen Carr

With races opening up at last after the long pandemic shutdown, we’re all eager to get out and test ourselves again. So why not start by doing one or all of the most beautiful races this country has to offer.

There are so many amazing events that it’s hard to choose but to get you started, we’ve shortlisted our Top 10 spectacular Irish races.

The morning ferry from Castletownbere delivers runners to the Bere Island start line in perfect time. When you’re running this 5k, it’s like the whole island is your park. You’ll pass a wedge tomb, a Viking harbour and a 19th century military fort, surrounded on all sides by the wide-open seas. This parkrun is a real community affair, with everyone from the ferryman to the post-run café involved in the event. It really is a place apart.

3.

Warriors Run Strandhill SLIGO

Named for the warriors of legendary Queen Maeve, this 15k run is a true test of strength. You run uphill from beautiful Strandhill beach to Knocknarea, up along its ridge and to the cairn at the top – Queen Maeve’s tomb. Then you plunge back down, facing spectacular views of the Atlantic, to the beach. The middle 6k is the toughest as you climb through fields, scree and heather. Book well in advance as this unique event sells out fast.

4.

Mourne Way Marathon Events

Rostrevor DOWN

A perennial favourite. Runners come from all around the country and overseas to run these tough, but breathtakingly beautiful, half, full and ultras in a stunning part of the West. Everyone mentions the notorious hill, Hell of the West, but if it slows you down, that just lets you better appreciate the dramatic Connemara scenery. All three races come in through a spectacular valley to finish in Maam Cross where the atmosphere is second to none.

6.

Dingle Marathon and Half Marathon KERRY

Winner of half marathon of the year four years running from 20152018, and marathon of the year in 2019, Dingle must be doing something very right! The races are held on closed roads across the beautiful Dingle peninsula and immerse runners in the spectacular scenery and rugged coastline of Slea Head. After the race, participants and supporters can enjoy real Kerry hospitality in Dingle town.

7.

IMRA Ballyhoura Trail Marathon

LIMERICK

This 50k run covers the northern section of the Wicklow Way, the Republic’s first ever Waymarked Trail. Passing through the beautiful Ballinastoe and Crone woods, there’s a variety of terrain, from forest trails and rocky mountain paths to railway sleepers. You’ll be running uphill a lot, but it’s worth it for the breath-taking mountaintop views.

9.

Antrim Coast Half Marathon ANTRIM

This fast, fun course sweeps into Larne harbour and through Larne town before moving onto the worldfamous Antrim Coast Road. This race has it all – spectacular views of the sea, smooth, flat roads, and an elite field alongside the mass race. Mo Farah has run it and in 2021 Yalemzerf Yehualaw of Ethiopia became the first woman ever to break 64 minutes for the half marathon, running 1:03:44.

1.Achill Half Marathon and 10k MAYO

Voted the most scenic in Ireland in 2018, these races take you around our largest offshore island, starting and finishing at Keel Strand. There are some tough hills, but they’re worth it for the spectacular scenery, stunning views and great support along the way. Even Achill’s rain has its own charm when the clouds part to reveal a glistening landscape of mountain, sea and sky.

There’s something for everyone here – a 10k, half and full marathons, an ultra and, new for 2022, an Ultra Trail 168km race. All runners cover an array of terrains in the majestic Mournes, from road to forest to open mountain. The races finish in Rostrevor Park, where there’s a festival atmosphere with refreshments and fun.

Enjoy 26.2 miles through the mountains and forests of Ballyhoura.

There’s lot of climbing – over 1,400m up and down – but the beautiful, dappled woodland, ferny, heathery hillsides, rushing rivers and rolling hills of this area make it all worthwhile. The run is also renowned for its friendliness and camaraderie.

1o.IMRA Howth Summer DUBLIN

And just to prove you don’t have to get very far from the city to have some wild running, just 10 miles from Dublin city centre you have wonderful views of Ireland’s Eye and Dublin Bay as you run over the Ben of Howth. This 11k trail run is fully marked and takes you across terrain varying from rocky to trail and through beautiful, tranquil forest. A sharp up and downhill makes it an enjoyable summer evening lung buster.

Achill Half Marathon

INSPIRATION

King of the mountains Joe O’Leary takes on one of the world’s toughest endurance races

By Nick Moloney

Joe O’Leary was one of the two men from the West of Ireland to achieve a podium position in this year’s Montane Spine Race events. Originally from Kerry and currently living in the Mangerton area, Joe is no stranger to mountains and rain, the key ingredients for the notorious Spine Race and his defining third place position in the Challenger event. And here he tells us all about his journey from amateur rally car navigator to the 2022 Spine Challenger Race.

But his road to running started with an unconventional turn of events. After spending years as an amateur rally car navigator, he found his fitness was lacking and when at age 25 he decided to get in shape, he started mountain biking in the dark winter evenings.

Joe bought a second-hand bike and started training in the evenings, alone. It was only after a few of his buddies asked him to go mountain biking together that he discovered a deeper appreciation for training in the mountains.

Joe soon started to take his athleticism more seriously and started competing in mountain bike racing such as the Irish Cross Country Series.

His weekends quickly became hectic and Joe would often find himself doing a marathon on the trails of Kerry on a Saturday and then a mountain bike race on the Sunday.

“I had to decide between them and went into the mountain running.”

Joe’s ultra debut came in 2016 when he finished 3rd in the Kerry Way Ultra Lite. Over the next few years, Joe’s commitment to running intensified and he was doing a lot of ultra-distance (typically longer than 50km) trail events.

The Kerry Way Ultra became one of Joe’s biggest goals and in 2018 he made his first outing on the 191km course.

even more technical – but Joe still finished in 28:57:04.

“I couldn’t believe how cruel it was running around in the pissing rain in the dark during a storm but I thought it was great craic, while suffering unbelievably. Sure it was pure Kerry weather so it was no notice to me,” he laughs.

Next, Joe set his sights abroad and took on TDS in 2019 and UTMB in 2021. TDS was his first big international race with 9,130 meters of vertical squeezed into 146km. Joe predicted he would complete it in 28 hours and finished in 28:05:07.

Joe’s journey to a podium in the Spine Challenger event was years in the making.

His approach to running is simple and like a lot of ultra runners, he seems to enjoy the suffering that is implicit with the distances they traverse.

His running at this stage comprised of ‘pretend running up Mangerton’, which Joe describes more as fast hiking.

His love of competing eventually drove him to a mix of events and once he started taking his running more seriously, he found he was trying to split his time between that, mountain biking and road racing.

“I never thought I’d be able to do [the Kerry Way Ultra] and I thought these people were pure legends.”

The race is notoriously tough. It is a full lap around Killarney that takes in some of the most remote and technical trails that Ireland has to offer. Unsurprisingly, the weather was wet and windy which made the course conditions

Then he managed to secure a last minute place at UTMB six weeks before the event, but had a good level of fitness as he was already training hard for the Kerry Way Ultra and the fastest known time on the Iveragh Traverse. Looking back, UTMB was one of the highlights of his running career.

“It was a very emotional start, there was a fantastic atmosphere there but I think I started too fast and was feeling

poorly at the first checkpoint, so I decided I would enjoy the damn thing as it was pretty spectacular. I put on an audiobook, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ that was nearly 19:30 hours long. I then headed out into the dark with a smile on my face and never looked back.”

Joe finished UTMB in 31:02:10 and was pleasantly surprised that his energy levels were good the next day and weeks following the event.

All of this was leading up to Joe’s defining podium finish at this year’s Spine Challenger Race, widely regarded as one of the world’s toughest endurance races. Joe had attended the Adventure Race World Championships in Gallaecia in October 2021 and didn’t start back training properly until November, so there was only really six or seven weeks of a training block before the Spine.

“I was a bit worried I hadn’t enough vertical done and that I was rushing my training a bit and cramming. I did Torc Mountain and Mangerton so I got a lot in over Christmas, doing eight days in a row and tapered for a week but it wasn’t ideal training. I had only done two speed sessions but there was no point in panicking as I had to make do with what I had, end of story. But I had a lot done from the last two years.”

During the Covid pandemic, Joe managed to keep up a consistent running schedule which also stood to him for the

Spine Race. His average since TDS in 2019 would top out at around 80km per week and his long run would be no longer than 30-35km.

Having some of the highest mountains in Ireland on his doorstep and the predictably unpredictable Irish weather to simulate the conditions for the Spine all played into Joe’s back pocket.

“I did Carrantuohill Christmas day which was good preparation because it was pissing rain and I was going up the Ladder [Devil’s Ladder] and there was a river of water coming down against me, so I thought this is very Spine-like, so we’re sorted.”

The race was everything the Kerryman thought it would be, and in many ways harder, as the weather was unusually cruel, even for the Spine.

“It was brutal, it is everything they show from the promo videos and pictures. I would look down at my feet and marvel at how bad everything was. A mixture of snow and rain had made the route treacherous and even more technical than it already is. Navigation became a game of trust with your GPS as well -worn pathways were made completely unrecognisable.

“It was snow and slush up high and in the lower regions it was just mud and water. You’d go down three inches with each step. Plus, all the gates you had to open, they’re worse than the Kerry Way. It was on a latch on a little hook and it was always on the other side so you had to try and figure that out and open it.”

At one point, the finish time Joe had set for himself began to feel out of reach. Not only had the conditions made the course more difficult and treacherous under foot, but the chances of getting lost or wondering off the trail were extremely high.

Joe slogged through but after six hours, he began to predict that he would be 35-40 hours

on the course, far behind the time of 30 hours he set himself.

He had been sat in third place for a while and had a good lead on the runner behind him, but there had been some changes to the route due to bad weather. This led to a detour being put in place around Dean Clough after the route through the fourth check point, Wessenden, had flooded.

Joe missed this detour sign and confusingly, his GPS was not loaded with the detour on it so he followed the line through the flooded road which was comparable to river crossings he had completed before.

“It was the only detour not on the GPS, but without it [the GPS] you would have ended up in France or somewhere. It would be pointing in a direction and you’d think there is no path up there but sure it would be covered in snow so I was looking for the footprints of the other two guys.”

As Joe didn’t take the detour, which was longer distance wise, and the runner in second place did, a time bonus of 18 minutes was added to his time to make up the difference.

There was still a lot of racing ahead at this point and the hills kept coming and with them, technical descents on tired legs. By the time Joe reached the checkpoint, he was feeling beat-up from the weather and a few tumbles he had taken. He remarked that he had never fallen so much in a race and having to carry a race pack that weighed around 7kg only made it more difficult to stay upright. About half way into the race, he thought he was finished.

“At 73km in I thought I was going to pull out, it was just horrible and I couldn’t get my mind around it even though I would usually be quite strong that way. I know people say they want to pull out all of the time but when you’re feeling that way at a checkpoint, it is very easy to pull out and hard to talk yourself out of it.”

After some back and forth with the volunteers and eventually one of the event’s doctors, Joe realised he had no real excuse to back out, so he settled for a cup of tea and headed back out on the course.

Joe maintained his thirdplace position all the way to the finish and was about 50 minutes behind second place, with the closest runner to Joe nearly seven hours behind him.

“It turned out to be 30:30:47 which I was delighted with in the end, but I could have gone a bit faster if I had got my ass in gear quicker. I had kind of lost interest in it a bit and knew there was a good gap behind me and I didn’t feel as fresh as I did in UTMB where I could push on hard. Plus, the conditions had got bad as well.” .

TIPS

• Have the right mentality“You have to start it knowing you will finish, that you have to finish because if you are in any way ambiguous about it you won’t and you will find the easiest reason to pull out.”

• Look after your feet“Any race I do that is long or wet then I put body glide on my feet for a full week beforehand. I put it on at night and then put a sock over it so when I wake up in the morning my feet are lovely and soft. It pre-impregnates my feet with moisture – I used chamois crème on my feet as my feet were like a baby’s arse. (During the Spine) there was no sign of trench foot after 12 hours and every time I stopped to eat I had them airing out of the sock. Then a small bit of powder and more chamois crème and then back in the socks and they were fine for the rest of the race.”

• Run with your fully weighted backpack and it will make you stronger too. It is hard to train with them but once you run without them, you’ll feel like you’re on cloud nine.

• Bring some audio books to keep your mind off the negative thoughts and on the task at hand.

“It was a very emotional start, there was a fantastic atmosphere there but I think I started too fast.”

Hydration for runners: How to start hydrated

By Chris Harris

When it comes to hydration, many runners will naturally focus on what they’re going to drink during training and events. But how you approach hydration before you tie up your running shoes and head out the door can have a significant impact on your performance.

Maintaining good fluid intake in the days leading up to an event will ensure your body is ready and primed to perform well. Your body is very good at telling you whether you’re optimising your “fluid intake” by increasing your desire to drink if you’re not getting enough, and peeing a lot more frequently if you’re overdoing it.

Once you start running and begin sweating, you’re generally going to be fighting a losing battle against fluid and electrolyte loss, so starting properly hydrated can be extremely beneficial. Optimal hydration will maximise blood volume which helps reduce cardiovascular strain and increases the body’s ability to dissipate heat produced by the working muscles.

Many runners will no doubt have experienced standing

in the long queue for the portaloo in an event village because they’ve drunk too much before they’ve even reached the start line!

There’s a natural temptation to drink lots of plain water in the build-up to an event in the mistaken belief that you’re going to start well hydrated, but this will actually lead to you joining the aforementioned toilet queue and can actually lead to a nasty condition called hyponatremia (low blood sodium levels).

So, how do you start optimally hydrated? It’s worth adding sodium to your pre-race drinks because sodium is the main electrolyte lost in sweat. It helps with cognitive function, muscle contractions and increasing fluid retention, thus enhancing the body’s ability to remain hydrated for longer.

To help ensure you start optimally hydrated, try preloading with a strong sodium-based electrolyte drink.

Preloading is a process designed to maximise fluid retention so you begin exercise maximally hydrated. The strength of this electrolyte drink is important, and most sports drinks contain far too little sodium to make a meaningful difference in blood volume. The science suggests a sodium quantity of ~1,500mg per litre of water (mg/L).

We recommend drinking a ~500ml bottle of water with 750mg of sodium in it the night before your event.

And then consume another ~500ml bottle of water with 750mg of sodium in it ~90 minutes before you start running in the morning, aiming to finish the second bottle ~45 minutes before the

start to give your body plenty of time to absorb what it needs and pee out any excess.

The key to optimal hydration before a big event is to avoid weaker sports drinks, as you’ll lose a large proportion of the fluid as urine and it’ll likely slosh around in your stomach without being properly absorbed. Furthermore, drinking lots of plain water in the build-up to a race can dilute your body’s sodium levels before you start, thus reducing ability to retain fluid and increasing likelihood of dehydration.

What should I drink during my run? Water vs. Electrolytes.

Hydration before and during events may not be as straightforward as athletes would like, but that doesn’t mean it has to be overly complicated. There are a plethora of ‘standard guidelines’ that exist stating generic quantities of fluid

and electrolytes to be taken per hour in order for you to “smash your PB”. This simply isn’t the case, and in fact every individual should have their own personalised hydration strategy.

During shorter bouts of exercise and for day-to-day hydration, plain water is often enough to maintain hydration levels. When it comes to longer training sessions and races, the amount of electrolytes lost in your sweat becomes too much for plain water alone to supplement.

It’s important to replace a proportion of your sweat losses to prevent conditions associated with low sodium levels such as hyponatremia, which in severe cases can be fatal.

Considering this, it’s important to understand that plain water isn’t always sufficient as the event distance increases and/or you’re sweating at a higher rate. When athletes hydrate before an event with strong electrolytes, it’s often unnecessary to hydrate much (if at all) during events lasting < 90 minutes.

When events extend beyond 90 minutes, that’s when some other variables need to be considered before planning your hydration strategy.

After all, how much sodium in your sweat (your sweat sodium concentration) could be very different to the runner standing next to you on a start line. After conducting thousands of Advanced Sweat Tests, Precision Fuel & Hydration have tested athletes who lose as little as 200mg of sodium per litre of sweat, to those who lose more than 2,000mg/L. So, it’s clear that a one-size-fits all approach to hydration simply doesn’t exist.

Sweat sodium concentration is just one part of the hydration equation.

Whilst the concentration of sodium in your sweat remains fairly stable throughout your lifetime, sweat rate (i.e. the

volume of sweat you lose) can change dramatically depending on how hot the environment you’re running in is, how hard you’re working, and how many layers you’re wearing.

Because of this, it’s important to undertake some sweat rate testing in similar conditions to your race before you get there, so you can make educated estimations of your fluid losses on race day and therefore plan an appropriate hydration strategy.

Those of you who are salty sweaters (i.e. have a high sweat sodium concentration) will need to take on a higher concentration of electrolyte drink than those with less salty sweat, and likewise those with higher sweat rates will need to replace more fluid than those with a lower sweat rate. This may seem obvious but we’ve seen several high-level athletes completely overlook these simple calculations which has led to some fairly dramatic DNF’s.

It’s important to listen to your body and react accordingly if you crave plain water or salty products during training and races. Trust these signals and be flexible with your hydration plan. Combining an element of drinking to thirst, listening to your body and using your experience offers the best route to hydration success.

How to rehydrate quickly after training and races It’s not advisable and rarely possible for athletes to drink enough to replace 100% of their sweat losses during exercise, so you’re likely to end a session dehydrated to some extent. This isn’t a problem as generally your body will restore homeostasis through the food

ABOUT

Chris Harris is a Sports Scientist and Researcher who hold a Masters degree in Sport and Exercise Physiology from Cardiff Metropolitan University. Chris has several years’ experience working as a performance physiologist for numerous national governing bodies in sports such as Triathlon,

and drink you consume after exercise.

The body is very clever at achieving biological homeostasis (essentially balancing and stabilising its internal environment). After exercise, when blood volume and blood sodium is reduced due to fluid lost through sweat, breathing and urine, your body initiates physical steps to get back to ‘normal balance’.

It does this by a) increasing the water that is filtered by your kidneys and pumped back into your blood, to make you pee less, and b) by increasing your desire to drink, to subsequently dilute the levels of sodium in your blood back down to normal levels.

However, you may need to take a more proactive approach to rehydration if your sweat losses have been extremely high or you need to be 100% ready to perform again soon (e.g. you’ve got another training session later that day or the following morning).

In these circumstances, we recommend mixing up a ~500ml bottle with 750mg of sodium in the first few hours after exercise.

A 2014 research paper summarised this technique nicely by concluding that if you want to rehydrate quickly after a run where you have become quite dehydrated, or need to be back on top form again very soon, then you need to drink about 1.5 times more fluid than you have lost, and you need to make sure there’s plenty of sodium either in or with the fluid to account for the salt loss too. .

ADVICE

Rowing and Athletics, before joining Precision Fuel & Hydration as a Sports Scientist in January 2022. Chris is also an elite agegroup triathlete who specialises in long-distance racing. He has qualified for and will be racing the IRONMAN World Championships in Kona this year.

FROM THE WEIRD TO THE WONDERFUL: Race swag through the decades

By Helen Carr

Talk to any group of runners about ‘race swag’ and stories will abound about the great medal they got that doubles as a bottle opener, their cupboard full of ‘Ballycotton 10’ mugs, the electronic can opener they won at a local race, or the time they got a bag of (delicious!) new potatoes in a goody bag (thank you, Lusk 4 Mile).

Finishers’ medals and race memorabilia have been around since the start of the mass participation running boom in Ireland. The National Marathons in the 1970’s had a laurel wreath for the winner only, but by the time the Dublin Marathon was first run in 1980, the idea of a ‘finisher’s’ memento had caught on.

In the early years, every finisher was presented with an etched copper plaque bearing a Dublin City scene. But the now-familiar medals permanently replaced plaques in 2003. When I started running road races in 2010, finishers usually received medals –which seem to increase in size year on year – or t-shirts. A few established races, like Ballycotton and Jingle Bells, provided commemorative mugs, while the Raheny 5 has hung onto its iconic plaque.

With the proliferation of races in recent years, race directors are branching out into all sorts of new directions to give their event a unique selling point; hats, buffs, running belts. Since its launch 20 years ago, the Dublin Marathon Race Series (which holds races of varying distances over the summer to fit into a marathon training schedule) has been particularly good at giving finishers useful running accessories emblazoned with their logo.

There are so many ways to remember your race: the Stook 10 Mile in Kilkenny gives gorgeous little cowbells –perfect to bring along and ring the next time you're spectating – while some races, like the Roscommon Harriers 10 Mile and the Portmarnock Road to Beach, have an ice cream van at the finish for overheated athletes.

But once the day is over and the race is run, what do the medals and mugs mean to runners?

Sarah O’Neill of Raheny Shamrock AC, who has run all six Marathon Majors (New York, London, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Tokyo), cherishes her

special Six Stars finisher’s medal.

She started her journey to it almost by accident when a group of her friends were training for the New York Marathon.

She recalled: “I was going to be on maternity leave for the training period and I thought ‘why not, when else am I going to get the time to train for a marathon?’”

Despite an injury halfway through training, Sarah made it to New York. “I crossed the finish line thinking ‘Never again’,” she laughed.

However, she kept going, one marathon at a time. Dublin, where she took an hour off her New York time, was second and gave Sarah confidence to continue the Major Marathons, moving to Chicago and Boston next.

“My friend Steph was also aiming to run all the Majors, and the Tokyo marathon was her sixth. Running Tokyo with her was a fab experience and after that I had to continue.” Sarah then ran Berlin and

Sarah O'Neill of Raheny Shamrocks AC has run all six Marathon Majors

finally London in 2021, 18 months later than planned due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As well as each finishline medal, everyone who completes all six marathons receives the ‘Six Stars’ medal, six medals fused in a circle.

This is one of Sarah’s most prized possessions, reminding her of her 11-year journey to complete all the Marathon Majors. Hanging in her hall are her medals from her first three marathons – New York, Dublin and Chicago – commemorating her progress from 5:07 to 4:04 to her 3:58 PB.

Important running souvenirs can commemorate notso-great days as well as triumphant ones.

Eoin Fegan was running his third marathon in Dublin in 2014 when he was overcome by the heat and ended up in an ambulance 25 miles into the race. Crossing the finish line in his slowest time at a stumbling walk, he can barely recall collecting his t-shirt and medal. But in the years since, whenever he wears the top, he remembers that day and is glad

he made it to the finish line.

During the first Covid-19 lockdown, Ronan Wogan of My Run Results set up an online portal where runners could run a solo ‘race’, then upload their results and get on a ‘finishers’ list with other runners around the country who were running the same event.

To increase the sense of togetherness, he also set up My Run Community, a Facebook page for runners to post stories and photos from their runs.

He offered the option to buy souvenirs from each virtual event – t-shirts, medals, buffs, even face masks. From the reaction and feedback, he soon realised that the race gear helped provide a sense of occasion and community. Suddenly people weren’t just running alone, they were united with other runners across the country in their Christmas or Valentine’s t shirts – running the same distance and posting their results.

I remember the excitement of waving at other runners in their Christmas Run t-shirts around the Phoenix Park in December 2020 when there had been no ‘real’ races for six months.

All through the months when we were confined to our own counties, my sister and I ran virtual races, one of us in Dublin, the other in

Leitrim, and felt a real sense of connection. We weren’t physically together, but there was a sense of a shared event, and the race swag helped with that.

Of course, most runners also have race souvenirs that are gathering dust, or never even made it home with them. But everyone probably has some that they cherish, or that make them laugh.

Sean Greensit of Lusk AC recalls an unusual goody bag from a Yorkshire race containing a can of craft beer, a tube of intensive foot cream and a boiled egg!

Personally, I love my Ballycotton 10 finishers’ mugs, especially now that the race is no more.

Drinking my coffee from them reminds me of the great times I had in Cork with clubmates, and of hearing the Ballycotton 10 song blasted out at the start.

I’d say my favourite (& weirdest!) race ‘swag’, though, is a medal I won when I was third woman in a Bram Stoker (of Dracula fame)-themed race about 10 years ago. It was my first ever podium finish at a race, plus I love Bram Stoker.

I have such fond memories of running it; we all had to run wearing vampire-style capes and vampire make-up. I think the race director was more of a Dracula fan than a canny businessman, as he had special giant medals individually struck from copper for the podium finishers. (I suspect he spent all the race takings having them made!)

It was all such fun, and I still smile when I look at my medal.

When asked what they do with all their race memorabilia,

many runners mention framing their race numbers and marathon pace bands, hanging up their medals, taking out their Jingle Bells mugs every Christmas and looking forward to adding another to the collection.

Race swag often reminds us of places we’ve been, things we’ve achieved, hard days and triumphant days.

It can be quirky, emotional, or meaningful, and as Sarah O’Neill says of her collection: “It reminds you that you’ve achieved something and hopefully had fun with friends along the way.” .

INFO

People want to be able to look at their medals and remember the races, the places, the people they ran with; in response to this companies like www. kerrysignaturefurniture. ie have created a series of medal hangers (personalised or with inspirational slogans) so runners can display their medals together and see them every day.

A SPORTS DIETITIAN’S GUIDE TO GROCERY SHOPPING

By Evan Lynch

DISCLAIMER. It’s not what you think. As a dietitian, I am frequently asked about my grocery list, what I pick up, what I skip, the superfoods, the secret guilty pleasures.

My shopping list is rather simple and mirrors my simple approach to diet; I am a big believer in not overcomplicating things. This article will outline a little on how to navigate a supermarket, what to stock in the pantry, how to read a food label, and when they don’t apply.

First thing’s first, before you ever go grocery shopping, you should try your best to eat a solid meal. Research has shown that going grocery shopping whilst hungry makes you more likely to impulse-buy hyper caloric food items.

This is a fairly natural instinct. When hungry, we seek energy and a bar of chocolate fits the bill more than an apple in this respect.

Secondly, it is important to know what you need to meet your requirements prior to entering the grocery store. If you have no plan or frame of reference, your purchases will reflect this and you will likely end up short changed for adequate recovery snacks, fruit and veg and pantry staples.

I see it happen all the time. If you are a solid meals Monday to Wednesday and a beans on toast candidate by Thursday, pay attention to the next paragraph.

To work out what you need in your shopping cart, we need to reverse engineer your requirements, so let’s take a look and use an 80kg male endurance runner as an example:

Protein needs for endurance athletes are 1.2-1.4g/kg/day whereas for power athletes, requirements fall between 1.6-1.8g/kg/day. So, if we take our distance runner at 80kg, his requirements would be 96 –112g/day.

Let’s say also that we would ideally like our athletes to consume about 5g/kg/day carbohydrates on average, working out at around 400g daily.

We should also assume that we are going to try our best to get our athlete eating at least his five a day and following a healthy diet pattern.

Working out the requirements for an athlete like this, who

EXAMPLE TRAINING DAY:

MEAL

Breakfast

Mid-morning snack

Lunch (3hr pre session)

Snack (2hr pre session)

ASAP post workout

Dinner (1hr post workout)

Evening carb hit

CONTENT

Overnight oats (60g) made with skyr yogurt, chia seeds, berries + apple

40g mixed nuts + portion fruit (2 x kiwi/clementine)

260g cooked wholemeal pasta w. tomato based sauce + 160g chopped veg + 2 tsp olive oil

Banana, large Large bagel + jam

2 medium baked potatoes + 100g salmon darne + 160g mixed veg 3 weetabix + 250ml full fat fortified milk

has a desk job and runs 3-5 times a week, we get a calorie requirement on average of about 2800kcal per day.

A key focus for athletes also may be to ensure that there are appropriate post workout recovery snacks, which typically give you 0.5-1g/kg of your weight in rapidly absorbed carbs. So how might we put this into action?

Well, let’s look at a meal plan below that might tick all these boxes in a clever way, and let me walk you through the carb and protein contents of some staple foods.

Example training day below:

If we run off of the above example, and want to work in some easy ways to include variety in the diet, here’s how you could go about it and what your shopping list might look like:

1.Proteins: You really only need one serving of meat or fish daily provided that you consume dairy, eggs or grains as part of a balanced diet. For a week of eating, that is 7 portions per person. A portion of meat/fish is about the size of

NUTRITION

440kcal — 68g carb, 23g pro, 8.5g fat 290kcal — 14g carb, 7.5g pro, 23.5g fat 504kcal — 88g carb, 14.5g pro, 11g fat

120kcal — 29g carb, 1g pro, 0g fat

330kcal — 70g carb, 10g pro, 1g fat 731kcal — 89g carb, 42g pro, 23.5g fat 355kcal — 51g carb, 14.5g pro, 10g fat 2783kcal — 409g carb, 112.5g pro, 77.5g fatTOTAL:

What does 10-15g look like?

1 tbsp honey, jam spread on toast, 150ml glass juice, one piece bread, apple, 2 x kiwi/ plum, 2 clif blox, 250ml sports drink, glass milk

What does 20-30g look like?

3 tbsp oats, 40g portion cereal, 1 x banana, handful dried fruit, 4 baby potatoes, wholemeal wrap, bagel thin, krispie square, 250ml mooju

the palm of your hand (approx. 100g). Frozen salmon/cod fillets, a small pack of lean mince and a 3-pack of chicken/turkey fillets is a very easy way to tick the protein box. And yes, I said frozen. Research has shown that frozen fish, veg & fruit may have superior nutrient qualities to their fresh counterparts, and they have better shelf lives with less waste production – easier on your pocket, less waste, highly convenient. It’s a win win.

What does 30-40g look like?

Standard bowl porridge, regular bagel, medium potato/sweet potato, egg noodles, portio spaghetti/ pasta, fruit smoothie, breadroll, gels

would be the likes of single serve bags of popcorn, low calorie protein ice creams, rice cakes and nut butter, and some dark chocolate or frozen yoghurt. These all add value to your diet and often tick the box for people who are seeking something nice at night time.

What does 40-50g look like?

Large bowl cereal, portion gnocchi, High5 energy, bag microwave rice or grains, 2 x energy gels, 500ml mooju, large portion couscous

What does 50-60g look like?

Portion maltodextrin, TORQ energy, 2 belvita bakes, jam bagel, pizza base, large baked potato, 3 slices bread, 1 cup rice/couscous/ quinoa

What does 70-80g look like?

Sis BETA fuel, 1.5 TORQ energy, 1.5 scoops maltodextrin, Maurten 320 or sports drinks + 2 x (gel/banana/rice cakes/krispie square hourly)

Based on the requirements of 2000kcal energy needs*

ADVICE

(per

2.

Carbs: For your main meals and your recovery, you are aiming to be roughly hitting your weight in grams of carbs. To vary your carb intake very simply, try this method I use to keep things mixed up. 1 small bag sweet potato, 1 small bag regular potato, 1kg bag wholemeal pasta and 2-3 bags of microwave wholegrain rice/mixed grains. These 4 options will give you variety at lunch and dinner. Picking two boxes of high fibre cereals (Weetabix/oats/Bran Flakes/ malted wheat) plus a portable carb source (bagel/panini/brioche roll) will make sure you have a carb hit at breakfast, lunch, and a post workout snack.

Normally, for example, if I was giving cardiac rehab education or if I was counselling a diabetic, I would advise lower salt, sugar and saturated fat and would always advocate for wholegrain options.

Typical label reading and healthy eating guidelines do not really apply to athletes, or at least do not apply in the time period immediately surrounding exercise.

Two examples of this would be looking at a bagel with jam, which would give high sugar content and would be classed as such using the traffic light label system below. Consider that high sugar items are exactly what are appropriate post workout to aid rapid glycogen repletion, whereas high fibre items or low carb items would hinder your recovery.

I hope you found this helpful, or at least informative, and if you want some help devising your shopping list or putting your sports nutrition tactics together, please reach out to me on Instagram @elynchfitnut or email me on

info@evanlynchfitnut.com to book your spot in the clinic (online/in-person), join the nutrition coaching program or to organise a sports nutrition workshop in your club.

Happy shopping, .

PROTEIN CONTENT OF COMMON FOODS

MEATS, POULTRY, AND FISH Beef/Turkey Jerky Beef, Chicken, Turkey, Pork, Lamb Fish, Tuna Fish

Imitation Crab Meat Seafood (Crabmeat, Shrimp, Lobster) Egg

SOY AND VEGETABLE PROTEIN Soy milk

PORTION SIZE GRAMS OF PROTEIN

3.

Fruit & veg: I am busy/ lazy (I’m not quite sure which trait is more dominant) but for me, frozen veg mixes and frozen berries provide an ever-ready/quick method of injecting nutrients into my meals. For reference, a portion of fruit or veg is equal to 80g. Outside of this, two easy things you can do to help you get your fruit & veg intake sorted – pick up the likes of the Aldi Super 6 or supermarket equivalents to vary your fruit & veg for you, and it’s always helpful to grab a tin of mixed beans to swap out for a meat/fish source once a week. Job done.

The second example would be salt intake guidelines. While this is highly individual, sodium losses per hour of exercise can easily exceed 1,000mg (2.4g salt) per hour, so adding a pinch of salt to main meals or having a salty snack on bigger training days may not be counter-productive, as athletes often require more salt than non-athletes. In fact, often significantly more.

All I ask is that you bear in mind that peri workout nutrition is not the same as healthy eating guidelines, and that the food choices around this time period need not absolutely align with these guidelines.

Edamame, fresh or frozen Edamame, dry roasted Tofu

LEGUMES AND NUTS

Lentils Lima beans

Kidney, Black, Navy, Cannellini beans

Refried beans

Hummus

Chili with beans, drained Peanut butter

Nuts

Sunflower seeds

Almond milk

MILK AND DAIRY

Milk, skim or 1%

4.

Other items: Pantry staples and nonnegotiables would be the likes of skyr/quark/soya yogurts, fortified dairy/soya milk, a bag of mixed nuts, two different types of sides and a high quality bottle of olive oil. Healthy snack items

In case you missed it also, most label guidelines are based off of an individual whose energy demands are approx. 2,000kcal day, an intake which would be dramatically lower than that of most athletes.

High protein ultra-filtered milk, fat free Yogurt, fat free, light Greek yogurt, plain, nonfat, light Cheese, hard (low fat)

American cheese (low fat)

Cottage cheese, Ricotta (part skim) Sugar free pudding, made with milk

1 oz dried 10-15 1 oz 7 1 oz 7 1 oz 3 1 oz 6 1 6 8 oz 7 ½ cup 8 1 oz 13 1 oz 3 ½ cup 9 ½ cup 7 ½ cup 8 ½ cup 6 ⅓ cup 7 ½ cup 10 2 Tbsp 7 1 oz (¼ cup) 4-6 1 oz 5 8 oz 1 8 oz 8 8 oz 13 6 oz 5 5 oz 12-18 1 oz 7 1 slice (0.7oz) 5 ½ cup 14 ½ cup 4

CHRISTMAS MADE EASY FOR THE RUNNER IN YOUR WITH INTERSPORT ELVERYS

There’s a chill in the air, the leaves are falling, and we’ve got our gloves back on for the early morning runs.

AND THAT CAN ONLY MEAN ONE THING – CHRISTMAS IS COMING!

BUT

before you start stressing about what to buy the runner in your life, we’ve done the hard work for you with this festive Gift Guide.

From waterproof jackets to Dri-fit leggings, beanies, tops and the latest must-have running footwear, Intersport Elverys have something for all tastes and budgets. So, sit back, grab a cuppa, have a browse, and thank us later!

Happy shopping!

Putting the sustainable in running

By Helen Carr

One of the lovely things about running is that it can be such a minimalist sport – a pair of shoes, some light clothes and the open road. That’s all we need.

instead of making multiple fast-fashion purchases.

Many brands now have a ‘sustainability’ tab on their websites, so when shopping online, you can check the credentials of any brand that takes your fancy.

materials like eucalyptus, sugar cane, castor bean oil and recycled bottles.

And that fits in so well with the living lightly that we are all trying to do to protect our fragile planet.

But when we take a closer look, it’s not so green. Our beloved technical fabrics and foamsoled shoes may keep us dry, comfortable and injury-free, but running apparel isn’t the best for the environment; nylon, polyester, spandex and so on are made from nonrenewable resources and do not biodegrade.

Even washing technical fabrics releases micro plastics into the waterways with every rinse.

So, what can we do? Apart from washing your running gear less, which several athletic brands are working towards by adding smelly-microbe-neutralising silver to their fabrics – and when you do wash it, using cooler water temps – it might be worth checking out more sustainable sportswear brands.

Some may be higher priced, but are also high quality, so if you buy something you love you can wear it for years to come

Founded in 2006, Bam is a longstanding sustainable activewear company. Their cool (literally and metaphorically!) colourful running clothes for men and women – from socks and bras to shorts and outer layers – are made from bamboo, a renewable fabric source, and the environmental credentials of every purchase are listed on the packaging.

Bam is working to achieve zero waste to landfill, zero pollution and zero wasted water by 2030.

Another brand working to reduce waste is Girlfriend Collective, a Seattle-based company now stocked by Lifestyle Sports. They produce leggings and sports bras in a fantastic range of colours and a very inclusive range of sizes –all made from recycled plastic bottles.

If you want to support local, Organic Movement is an Irish company, set up in response to a trip to India where its founder witnessed the exploitation of workers in the garment trade.

If you’re looking for footwear, Allbirds (a 100% carbon-neutral company) manufactures running shoes and clothing from renewable

Alongside these smaller brands, the established sportswear behemoths are also dipping their toes into sustainability. At Nike, their ‘Move to Zero’ initiative has led to recycling and refurbishing of runners that would otherwise have been discarded, plus they are using manufacturing waste from their clothing and shoes to make new canvas, fleece and rain jacket materials.

All their more sustainable options are clearly labelled for customers.

Brooks running are also aiming to move to 100% recycled polyester in footwear and new apparel materials by 2023, and you can read about their progress on their website.

On a local level, you can aim to keep running gear you’re finished with out of landfill by donating it. There are a plethora of buy/sell/donate groups for running and sports gear – just do an internet search for your local area and you’re bound to find a Facebook group or similar.

It’s also possible to donate your worn-out running shoes. Your shoes often lose the bounce you need for running long before they are truly ‘worn-out’, so they can be of great use to the needy, at home and abroad.

Belfast man Daniel Gardner

has set up ‘Soles of Belfast’ to refurbish runners and donate them to homeless people, and around the country many sports clubs also do collections of clean, preloved shoes with some life left in them for people in need.

Races, too, are doing their bit to become less damaging to the environment.

In 2019, the Paris Marathon announced that it had become carbon neutral. Organisers had managed to offset all the race’s carbon emissions through reducing waste, by planting trees along the race route, and recycling textiles left at the start.

It turned out that 94% of the carbon emissions were the result of runners travelling to Paris for the event, so a simple change that we could all make is to support more local races.

If you are travelling to an event, why not use public transport or carpool – Parkrun has been encouraging this since its inception.

Irish races are starting to become much more conscious of reducing waste and taking initiatives like placing containers at the finish where runners can separate out their recyclable water bottles from their banana peels.

I like the recent trend of picking what extras you want at race sign-up, so you can choose what you need –t-shirt, hat, medal or nothing – and forgo the rest. .

By Irish Runner

‘No’ isn’t a word Sinead Kane accepts, which is ironic given that she has faced down more than her fair share of no’s throughout the years.

Registered as legally blind with only 5% vision, the Co Cork solicitor has had a battle on her hands to be included since she was a child.

“I was never involved in running as a child, I was never involved in sport because I was always left sitting on the P.E. bench. Nobody ever invited me on their team, and I suppose even when they did invite me, they didn't really want me participating,” Dr Kane told Irish Runner.

Childhood scars run deep and while that adversity may have deterred others, it fuelled a fire in Sinead that, unbeknownst to her at the time, would propel her to TWO Guinness Book of World Records and make her the first visually-impaired Irish person to run an ultramarathon in Ireland.

Even the fittest among us might wonder how you go from

BLIND AMBITION:

How one woman with just 5% vision made it into the history books

no involvement in sport, and registered blind, to completing the gruelling World Marathon Challenge – a punishing race that involves running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days – as well as a world record 130.5 km on a treadmill in just 12 hours.

For Sinead, it all began on the streets of Dublin with the Dublin Mini Marathon in April 2012.

She recalled: “I was just about to turn 30 and I was asked to do a 10k run for ChildVision. I didn't have a clue what 10k was because when you don't drive, it's very difficult to work out distance, and when you can’t see, distance is difficult for me to perceive. And so I suppose I didn't actually think about it. The only words I heard were that it was for helping a cause that was close to my heart so I just automatically said yes.”

Sinead had eight weeks to train and while she struggled, she still set herself two ambitious targets – to finish in under an hour and to raise good money for ChildVision. And perhaps in a sign of what was to come, she passed both with flying colours. And she caught the running bug. But it was then that the challenges started to mount up, the first one being a

struggle to find a guide runner to assist her in her first half-marathon attempt in September 2013. Defeated, she had to abandon that race ambition, but she was quickly back on her feet when she found a guide runner in early 2014 and took on the Cork Half Marathon that June.

It was at that point that Sinead discovered she had quite a talent for longer distances so, in typical runner style, she was already planning her first full marathon before she’d even caught her breath. Finding a guide runner once again caused issues, so she ended up turning to social media for help. Her Twitter plea was answered when a man volunteered to be her guide, the only snag being that he was based in Dublin, 260km away from her Cork home.

Sinead’s resilience shone through once again when even the prospect of spending six hours on a train once a week to do a two-hour run didn’t dampen her enthusiasm. But because she wanted to make the most of these precious weekly sessions, she ended up pushing herself to the limits and jumping too quickly to 18-mile runs. That naivety left her with a nasty knee injury and out of training for four weeks, just a month out from the Dublin Marathon.

“All I dreamed of was my name on the Athletics Ireland website alongside all the other girls”

Sinead Kane

You’ve probably guessed it but Sinead made it to the start line, she just didn’t meet the target time she set for herself.

She said: “I don't know why I set myself this target of four hours, but I just had this time in my head and I came in at 4.01. And to me, the world was over, I was never again running. I was in extremely bad form at the end of it, and I was saying that I didn’t even feel like I'd run a marathon. I was looking at all these people around me and they were limping and I just wanted that feeling of exhaustion, because it would have felt then as if I had really pushed myself.”

At the end of the race, Irish international ultra-runner John O’Regan approached Sinead and asked her how she felt. Unbeknownst to her, he had been observing her and realised she had more gas in the tank.

“And then he said, ‘I think your talent lies in ultrarunning, you should do a 50k’. This was all said at the end of the finish line of the Dublin Marathon and this is a typical runner. You're finished one race and you're planning your next race.”

With John by her side, Sinead moved up a gear and 2015 saw her complete her first 12-hour run as well as her first 50k race. November 2015 saw Sinead take on the gruelling Volcano Marathon and, despite a disappointing finish, she set her sights on going for gold.

She revealed: “I came last in that race, and nobody wants to ever come last. There was a lot of falling and tripping and mental resilience needed. When I was coming home from that race, I said to John that even though that race was mentally extremely challenging, I wanted to do something even tougher, and he suggested the World Marathon challenge, which is seven marathons in seven continents in seven days.”

Fast forward a year and Sinead set her first world record as the first blind person to accomplish the feat. She was also the first female from Ireland to do it. And if you want an idea of just how tough that marathon challenge is, here’s a taster.

Sinead recalled: “I ended up suffering with really bad blisters. My feet were so swollen that you couldn't actually feel where my ankle bone was. And when I walked, you'd be able to hear the fluid swishing in my feet. And it was very difficult to get my feet into runners.”

Not content with just one world record, Sinead set about bagging another one in February 2018 – to run the furthest on a treadmill in 12 hours. And her 130.5km brought her straight into the record books.

After that, Sinead set herself a new target – not only to complete a 24-hour race, but to rack up the 200km necessary to be eligible for selection

for the Irish women's ultra 24-hour team. It was a case of third time lucky when in April 2019 she hit the jackpot.

But there was more heartache in store when Sinead learned that she couldn’t compete at the Ultra Running World Championships in October 2019 because her guide runner would be breaking a rule which stated that no athlete was allowed outside assistance.

“All I dreamed of was my name on the Athletics Ireland website alongside all the other girls’ names, and there wouldn't be any asterix beside my name to indicate that I had a disability, because I think the unique thing about me is that I'm competing alongside able-bodied athletes as

opposed to other athletes who have disabilities. Like anytime that I'm in any of these other races, I'm the only person there with a disability and so I do stand out. And I suppose that mentally does affect me sometimes, because I just don't want to be standing out, I just want to be doing my own thing, like any other athlete.”

Sinead took the issue up with the International Association of Ultra Running and ended up having to take a court case against them. And the court in Monaco said she had been discriminated against under Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights. And so she ended up competing at the World Championships and being one of the first three girls to finish and thus being counted among the scores for the Irish team.

With that ticked off her bucket list, Sinead next set her sights on trying to become eligible for the Paralympic Marathon. But because that involves national classification to verify her disability, and then the same process abroad for international classification, time ticked on and then the Covid pandemic hit, 

Sinead Kane and the Irish Team

Sinead Kane and her guide runner Gillian

meaning all those plans went up in smoke. And Sinead returned to what she knows best; ultra-running.

“Last August I represented Ireland in the 100k, the Anglo Celtic Plate at Mondello Park. And it was the first time in the 26-year history that the women's Irish team won the plate. So that was a proud moment for me.”

Not one to sit around idle, Sinead did another two 24hour races last September and October and has now restarted the application process for the Paralympic Marathon.

There is no doubt that the adversity she has faced throughout her life has made her stronger and more resilient and her motto “fear stops us from achieving our goals” could help us all push that little bit harder.

But what’s most inspiring about Sinead’s journey and achievements is the fact that what so many runners take for granted, she has never experienced.

She said: “People always say ‘just relax and get into your stride’, but I can never fully relax because I always feel like

I'm on edge. I would love to be able to just be in my own race where I can just put on my headphones and just forget everybody else around me. But I can’t.”

So what is it actually like being Sinead, we ask?

“I have 5% vision so people need to be two or three meters away for me to make out a face. From about six or seven meters away, it's more shapes and objects. Also, I don't see depth. So for example, the road would be grey, the path would be grey, and it all looks flat. But because I know I'm on a path, then by the power of elimination I know that the curb is somewhere to my right or to my left. I don't use a guide dog and I use a white cane every so often, like in places that I'm not very familiar with.”

Even for someone as strong as she is, there must be days when it all gets too much. And even though her parents always taught her not to feel self-pity, she admits there are tough times.

“There are lots of days when I do feel sorry for myself because it's much easier to be negative rather than positive.

It's easier to stay in your comfort zone rather than being uncomfortable.

“But to me, resilience is building confidence within yourself, to know that you're able to overcome problems, obstacles and setbacks. It’s finding effective ways that will build your confidence. In school, I felt very abnormal because I was the only person with a disability whereas at home, I felt normal because I'm in a family where we're all visually impaired.”

An exemplary role model for disabled and able-bodied athletes alike, Sinead isn’t trying to paint a picture that there are no limits to what you can achieve. Instead, her message is to be realistic.

“For example, I will be doing quite well if I get to a threehour marathon time, but I would find it very, very highly unlikely if I'm ever going to be running a 2.40 marathon. “Set your goals where they're realistic, but they're only realistic if you put in the hard work to get them. It’s much harder for people with disabilities because I can see there's a lot of inaccessibility there in terms of support, resources, and even community help.”

Sinead has undeniably been a whirlwind in running since she first burst onto the scene in 2012. But what does she want her legacy to be?

“What I want it to be is that I tried to make able-bodied sport more accessible for people with disabilities, that it's not a case of all the ablebodied people into this sport, and all the disabled in the Paralympics. I feel that if you genuinely have a talent and if you are able to compete in the able-bodied sport, then you should be able to do that and supports should be put in place.” .

To find out more about Sinead, visit www.sineadkane.ie

“But to me, resilience is building confidence within yourself, to know that you're able to overcome problems”

Sinead Kane and her guide runners

RIDE 15 REVIEW

By Nick Alexander

The shoe feels both lighter and softer and is also higher off the ground (there’s 3mm more foam under foot in this version).

Ride 15 also feels more stable compared to previous models as your foot seems to sit deeper into the bed of the shoe with the cushioning from the thicker insole that comes with this model (more of that shortly).

Ride 15 still has PWRRUN as the midsole which Saucony describes as “light, springy, flexible and powerful”. The tongue and the fourth/fifth eyelets (the A-Strap passed down from the Endorphin Pro 2) really help to feel like you're locked into the shoe.

It's firm but with a really nice, delicate cushion. The engineered mesh upper is lovely and there is a lightly padded tongue that just fits right. The shoe is generous in the toe box and straight away it feels fast.

I try not to compare the shoe to its rivals immediately, but that’s how it will be judged after all. It's much firmer than a Brooks Ghost, Hoka Clifton, ASICS Gel Cumulus or New Balance 880.

I’d compare the shoe to the Hoka Mach 4 of the current models available, but it comes with a little bit more cushion.

Saucony have invested in the insole of the shoe (maybe waving a white flag in defeat as everyone has been playing catch up to Brooks’ DNA loft cushioning for some time).

This makes for a slightly softer first impression though the all-round feel of the new model remains fast and responsive.

Saucony is still giving us PWRRUN with the shoe; PWRRUN+ comes at the level above (Triumph) and PWRRUN PB (Endorphin range).

Saucony fans will be impressed by this shoe. Ride 14 was a minimal upgrade from Ride 13, but they’ve put in a lot more effort in this version.

The shoe feels like it cradles your foot when you are in it, which is a bit Hoka-esque, and they have added 3mm to the stack whilst keeping the drop 8mm (35mm - 27mm).

It adds to the all-round stability of the shoe, backed up by a decent wide base in the forefoot.

The shoe has a powerful take off and softer landing thanks to the PWRRUN midsole.

I have used this shoe for a variety of runs already. Initially I took it out for a five mile run at 8 minute mile pace. I have a route in Dublin along the beach that I live near where I’ve tested a number of new models of shoes this year and the Ride 15 really felt like it helped keep my legs ticking over on the sand.

Since then I’ve used it for everything from tempo to recovery runs. It has also become my weekly session shoe of late, where I’ve wanted to be a bit faster without going down the nylon/carbon fibre-plated shoe option.

Indeed, I used the shoe in a weekly time trial with my running club (Raheny Shamrock AC) where it gave a good account of itself (I’ve also used its rivals, Mach 4, Rincon 3 and New Balance 880 in these runs).

Saucony has been making faster shoes using EVERUN and now PWRRUN for some time. The Ride sits above the Kinvara and below the Triumph in the Saucony (price range) family.

CONCLUSION

All in all, this will be one of the best daily trainer shoes of 2022 in my opinion. It is a great update, it is much lighter and softer with more cushioning thanks to the increased stack height.

It will go fast enough for speed sessions and has enough in the cushion stakes to go on those weekly long runs. .

(4/5

This is the new version of Saucony’s mileage shoe and my first impression when trying it on is that the new shoe is a big improvement on the previous model, Ride 14.

60 SECONDS WITH MOLLY

SCOTT

She's the effervescent 23-year-old sprinter who is coached by her mam. Balancing sprinting and her studies to be a barrister, it seems Molly Scott has the midas touch.

1. What does the world know you for?

Being in athletics, and probably a good start out of the blocks.

2. What’s your greatest achievement to date?

Running 7.19 in the 60m and breaking the Irish record twice.

3. Biggest regret?

Defining my results by times when I was a junior athlete.

4. What scares you the most?

Not being present enough daily and focusing too much on the future or past.

5. Who’s your biggest inspiration?

My Mam!

6. What’s your best memory?

When I came 3rd at the u18 Europeans, I didn’t get back to the hotel until midnight.

I thought everyone had gone to bed but when I went into my room, the whole team was inside and surprised me! It was an amazing moment.

7. One word that describes you best?

Conscientious

8. What’s on top of your bucket list?

To make an Olympic team!

9. Something you’d tell your younger self?

To have as much fun as possible along the way doing your dream sport and to have more compassion for yourself.

10. Who is Molly off the track?

A big book reader and fashion lover.

RUN FASTER AND FURTHER WITH LIFESTYLE SPORTS

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DEVIATE NITRO 2 €160 — UK 4 - UK 12

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Cushioning: NITRO Elite cushioning technology provides pinnacle responsiveness in an extremely lightweight package.

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Support: Lightweight PWRTAPE upper provides support and durability.

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DEVIATE NITRO ELITE FIREGLOW €200 — UK 4 - UK 12

AVAILABLE IN SELECT STORES AND LIFESTYLESPORTS.COM

Cushioning: NITRO Elite cushioning technology provides pinnacle responsiveness in an extremely lightweight package.

Energy: Engineered carbon fibre PWRPLATE stabilises your foot while maximising energy transfer.

Support: Lightweight PWRTAPE upper provides support and durability.

Grip: A thin, durable PUMAGRIP LT sole provides multi-surface traction that won’t weigh you down.