home now having scoffed down a large amount of pad thai and a small amount of beer. I'm wrecked.
Well, woke up after a fitful night's sleep (I am obviously more nervous about races than I let on), had porridge and 2 mugs of tea. Packed up car (cakes, change of clothes, map etc). Race is over an hour's drive from here, even on a quiet Saturday morning. Weather glorious - sunny, not very windy, cold. Glorious drive through the mountains - autumn colours, the whole bit. I manage not to get lost and park; walk down to registration, pick up my number (it's now just gone 10, race starts at 11), hand over sponsorship money and have a small cup of bad nescafe. Queue for loo, not once, but three times...(clearly this pre-race peeing is necessary for my performance!). I look around and the small field of runners (250) are younger than the usual crowd (lots in 20s and 30s) and all look alarmingly slim fit and composed. I cast around to see if there are any fat, slow people who might be at my level. Alas, there are none. There don't seem to be any walkers, at all.
Jog down to the start, feeling nervous and jumpy - and wonder what I'm doing here at all. Much messing about, and we walk up to the start line and finally get going at 11.10 (this race is not chipped or anything like that). We run 500m along a flat track before turning off onto a very steep path up through the trees. At 500m I am already last! I have both Garmin and HR monitor 
. This pull up through the trees is really tough, steep, rough under foot and kind of from a standing start. After about a km the track levels off; at this point I can barely see any runners ahead of me - they seem to be long gone. I remind myself of my goals - to run the whole thing and to come back in under 2 hours. I feel like I am struggling, once the track starts to go uphill again (knowing full well that there are about 4 miles of this ahead), but the trusty HR monitor tells me that I am running a good steady pace - about 11.30m/mi which given the incline I am happy with, reckoning that I can catch some of this up on the descent. It's mostly on tracks, not too wet, with stunning views of the lake (google 'Glendalough' and look on images) and the surrounding hills. It's pretty cold, but I am not. After about 4 miles I overtake some people! (futurity - you will know how rare this is for us plodders) who have started like bats out of hell and are now paying the price.
The path then winds up between some caravans (eh? what are they doing there?) and turns into a stream - quite deep in places, but very boggy, wet and difficult underfoot (clearly 'trail' run in Ireland means that you Must Run Through a River and sink up to your calves in mud at some point in the race). I find it hard to run this part, and lose a good bit of time. At the top is the waterstation and the halfway point. I fill up my water bottle and wring out my socks...
The rest of the run (pretty much) is downhill, sometimes sharply downhill, and I start to turn over 9.30 pace - I start to fret about going too fast and turning an ankle (this would make life extremely difficult at home! DP can't drive!) so pull back slightly. Before I know it I can see the visitor centre, although the track heads along the contour before taking a sharp left turn into the valley. There are about 10 people behind me and a few bits of fruit left! These runners were serious though - fast and used to running the mountains - I don't train on terrain like this at all.
Afterwards got back to car, scoffed peanut butter sandwich, and went off to work.
All in all I was pretty pleased - I didn't quite manage to run the whole thing but that was down to terrain, and I was delighted with the time - also for those of you interested in such things, I ran the whole thing at an ave HR of 149, and never went over threshold. So I ran a very conservative race - I am tired, but not exhausted and fully expect to go out for a few easy miles tomorrow. I am glad to say that I got the fuelling right (more or less) and the toileting right. It was a glorious run; I'll do it next year and try to come in 12th last. It also reminded me how beautiful Wicklow is and how lucky we are to have it only an hour or so away; my neighbour has a house there that she offers to us regularly - I think I might take her up on it so that I can run fuck-off hills more frequently.
Oh, and just before we set off, some old geezer shouted at us and said 'youse are all mad'...too true, too true.
Best of luck to fanny (if I'd only run another 3 miles then I would have met your target too, ha ha ha) and futurity - I must try the motivating gift technique sometime too.