#writeandrun31

Well the day has finally arrived, Run 31, Day 31 of the WriteAndRun31 challenge. It's been fun.

I made a short video to say thanks to everyone whos read these posts, and watched the few short videos I made bofre now. That video will probably be uploaded tomorrow.

So thank you to anyone on Tumblr and Fitocracy who's followed me through this challenge, whether it's been props on Fito, or likes and reblogs on Tumblr I appreciate you all.

Big shoutout to Christiana ( championsaremade ) in particular (mentioned in the video) for being particularly inspiring in the beginning.

Yes it's late. Yes I'm tired. Yes I just bastardised a Matchbox Twenty lyric to use as my subtitle...

It's a little after three in the morning and I finished tonight's mile a while ago.

I had fully intended to go to the track today and do some speed work, but slept late and ended up leaving the house late. I went down to JRB's to watch the Ireland v. Italy Six Nations game (we won, but it wasn't a great match) and then grabbed something to eat.

When I went back home I decided to take a power nap so I'd be ready to hit the track hard, but I couldn't get to sleep for ages so by the time I had napped a bit and got out of bed I was already running late. It was another friend's 30th birthday party. I considered getting a quick run in before I left but decided against it as I'd have been super late then.

Instead, I ran when I got home. Just before three o' clock.

I decided to try something different tonight. Instead of listening to music I tried running while listening to Headspace's Take Ten. Not the best idea. It helped me focus on my breathing quite a lot, but it meant I wasn't paying full attention to either the run or the meditation, but live and learn.

I did the mile in 11:24.06.

My house is about five minutes away from the bus stop. To get to the coffee shop I have to walk back up the street, in the opposite direction. I own an espresso machine.

No, I did not need to buy that latte.

Yes, I do fancy the girl in the coffee shop.

After I got home I faffed about on Tumblr for a while, which seems to be my new thing. Then I  managed to go outside and plod out a 9:35.75 mile, and was already half an hour late to board games when I go there.

It was a bit of a shin dig for Stu's birthday and there was so much awesome food, plus Emmet had brought over two giant jars of cocktails. One red, labelled Healing Potion; and one blue, labelled Magicka Potion.

We're incredible nerds. Also, the healing potion? Not that great. But the magicka potion? Dangerously easy to drink!

I saved posting until now in so a) I wouldn't be too late getting over there, and b) in case anything funny happened that I could relate to you. But aside from some hilariously graphic ideas about how Gwyneth Paltrow's new ideas about steam cleaning might work, there were none.

And they really don't need to be shared!

My Mum’s friend Anne rang me tonight. She’d been trying to get through to my Mum but couldn’t so she rang me to see if there was anything up.

We hadn’t seen or talked to each other in ages though, so we spent about half an hour chatting. I mentioned I was going for a run and she said how she used to love running.

She did. She ran every day. It helped her keep her mind clear. It let her be free. Until she had to have back surgery and couldn’t run again.

It made me think of that post I mentioned just the other day. There will come a day when I’m not able to run, today is not that day.

Because it’s late, it’s cold, I’m tired and my bedroom is warm and comfy. Tonight was one of those nights where I almost didn’t run. Not because I didn’t want to (although I wasn’t super excited at the thought), but because if I accidentally fell asleep there was no way I’d have woken up during the night to get one of my two in the morning miles in.

So I put on a few layers, went out the door, and ran. I was too tired to head off all over town so I stuck to the mile in my estate.

It felt good. It felt smooth. It felt fast.

It wasn’t.

When I passed the tree I use as a start line I stopped my watch and it read 9:52.38. Nowhere near my fastest, and my slowest in a while.

I have this thing that I do whenever I finish a run at my house though. I cool down (well, catch my breath) by walking up and down the street. It’s usually at night with nobody around, so I usually do it with both fists clenched and raised above my head as if I just won an Olympic medal.

I started doing it as a joke, but it’s become a habit, and I did it tonight. It was a short run, and it was a slow run. But I still celebrated it.

If I had a rifle, and I wanted to shoot you, I would have to see you. I would have to aim at you. I would have to fire my rifle, and hope that a) you don't move, and b) nothing gets in the way before the bullet (or "round") gets to you. This is known as direct fire. Indirect fire is the opposite. I don't have to see you. Many modern weapons are indirect fire weapons. Laser guided or fly-by-wire smart missiles and the likes; but the older, more traditional artillery field gun would fire a projectile in a parabolic arc. The preferred method being from behind a mountain, five miles away.

When I first joined the Army Reserve I was a gunner in the artillery corps. Having the utmost confidence in my gun crew and the others around me, to make sure a bomb would land where it was meant to, I would fire incredibly powerful weaponry at targets I could not see.

You may be wondering why I'm telling you this. Well, today's Wednesday. Indoor football night. And I seem to play football the same way I play war.

I've mentioned before that I was never into football growing up, this meant I didn't develop the skills of even the most casual of five-a-side, kickabout-in-the-park players. What I bring to the table is my ability to run. Which, might I add, is a lot more than I brought the last time I was in a semi-regular game.

I can generally chase an opposing player down, and I can get in their way, making it more difficult for them to pass or shoot.

If the ball comes to me however, it's never to thread the proverbial needle with a beautifully executed pass. It's usually to just get it clear of the onrushing players. And, having the utmost confidence in my team to make sure the ball lands where it was meant to, I tend to indirectly "pass" the ball by walloping it incredibly powerfully off a wall and assuming someone will manage to get it on the rebound.

In fact, the other week I was clearing the ball away from the other team, so naturally, I fired it towards the wall. A team mate got to the ball before it reached the wall twenty feet beyond him and, actually being able to play the game, stopped the ball with his foot, controlled it, and passed it up the line to another team mate. I had kicked the ball so hard though, that the next day he lost a toenail from the foot he had stopped the ball with.

So I don't know how I got the ball tonight, but I kicked it. Like i was firing it from a cannon. It took a perfect straight line the full length of the court. It either went past everyone or they decided simply not to get in the way. Paddy, (PaddyBrophy on Fitocracy), who was closest to the goal believed it was going a mile wide and simply watched it sail by. Then thought "Oh shit" as it clanged off the post, millimeters from going in.

It would've been the greatest sporting achievement of my life.

In other news I bought a pair of runners in Pennys for ten quid so I wouldn't wear out my Asics playing football. I haven't run in anything other than a pair of Asics Gel Kayanos since 2008 and I forgot how bad for you cheap shoes can be. The insoles felt like you were standing on hard cardboard, there was zero support and absolutely no grip.

I was like that kid in The Mighty Ducks Two or Three (whichever one they went to the Olympics in), you remember the one that was incredibly fast but couldn't stop? That was me tonight.

Bear with me, this one's a little rambly...

Right, for those of you who don't know (and I'm guessing that's most of the people reading this) Dublin city (and some of it's surrounding area) is served by a tram service.

This tram service is known as Luas (or "the" Luas). "Luas" is the Irish for speed. They obviously thought that had good connotations for a commuter light rail system, which makes sense.

So today, on my way home, the Luas broke down. On the Green Line anyway. There was a "technical fault", read: power failure.

I've walked along the Luas line once before when the service had been suspended due to an accident and an army of commuters shuffled like zombies towards their offices. So I figured a) I was going to be late, and b) I'd walk. Although our Luas tickets would have been valid on Dublin bus to get us into the city.

Point to note: When it comes to reliability, I trust buses in this country about as much as I trust wishing on a star as a form of contraception.

Unfortunately two Luas workers stopped me from walking along the line (despite the fact that a group of about ten passengers were doing the exact same thing within spitting distance of us). One of these lads was apologetic, polite but firm and said I'd have to get a bus. As I was getting his name his buddy came over. This guy was belligerent, aggressive and downright rude. And he started having an argument with me over why I couldn't walk along the track,despite the fact that half of the tram were currently doing that exact same thing.

When I walked back to the road a third Luas worker was explaining to a passenger that "it could take them half an hour to get the buses sorted out".

So I decided screw this, instead of going to the bus stop that the guy said was "about 200 yards down the road", and waiting God knows how long for a bus; I left the stop I was at (Beechwood), skirted around the block following what was vaguely the direction of the tram line, crossed under the rail bridge and up the steps to the Ranelagh stop. From Ranelagh I followed the tracks into the city, passing out Tweedledum and Tweedledee as I got to the city. The nice one didn't even notice me, the asshole gave me a look like he wanted to kill me but he couldn't actually figure out how I'd gotten there. He was, after all, an idiot.

Anyway, I checked the time when I got to Stephen's Green, 17.30. My bus leaves the Ha'penny Bridge at 17.36. I've made that walk in close to that time before but this time I'd miss the bus by five minutes and have to get the next one.

Ordinarily I would have been much angrier at this, except it was 17.30. If the Luas had actually ran I'd have only been at the Stephen's Green stop a few minutes earlier, we wouldn't have been sitting on the track for five minutes before they realised they couldn't restart the system and had to cancel the service; and I wouldn't have had to stand arguing with Dipshit either.

So if you take away the time I wasn't actually walking I'd have arrived at Stephen's Green at basically the same time as the tram should have. Walking. In jeans and shoes, and carrying a backpack.

Which means if I didn't have a backpack, and I was dressed for a run, I could have beat it. I run faster than something that is literally named for it's speed!

When I got home I was half an hour late to get to Stu's for the first actual game session of Shadowrun (which is a very complicated game to play), so I dropped my bag, put on my gear and ran over.