As much as it pains me to say it, my plans to run this year’s Dublin Marathon have come to an end because of injury. Despite trying to battle back to fitness, even short distance runs are leaving me crippled and I cannot entertain the idea of a 10 mile or more jog. So with deep regret I withdraw my ambition for this year and postpone it until 2010 when I will no doubt be wrapping myself in cotton wool until the big day.

…well actually I said it would never happen again. About 18 months ago I managed to complete one of my life goals and crossed the finish line in the Dublin City Marathon taking with me a few thousand Euro for a local charity in Waterford City. It was a thrilling experience and one, having felt the toll on my energy resources, thought that I might never do again. It never put me off running though and since then I’ve run half-marathon runs and several 10 mile races too.

However, last December, during an indoor soccer match I badly hurt my foot and damaged some ligaments that stopped me doing anything for a long time. During my recovery I made the typical mistake of yielding to an injury rather than working it back to health and I hurt my thigh muscle, which in turn made me put additional pressure on my lower back and yes, it went too. Long story short, I’ve been plagued with injury for the last 6 months and haven’t had a single run beyond the weekly game of indoor soccer. During that time I had a lot of time to reflect on how much I missed my regular runs and the freedom I felt when in a good stride and the endorphins are flowing through the brain and I decided to set my sights on October 2009 and the Dublin City Marathon.

So, yesterday, for the first time in 6 months I felt ready to take my first steps again and went for a run. I decided that an easy 10km was what I needed and easy wasn’t the word – it took me 1 hour and 3 minutes. That’s probably the slowest 10km I’ve ever run and well off my average pace by about 15 minutes. However, I made it and it was exactly what I needed to refocus my mind. So, that leaves me with 4 months of solid training until October when it will be a warm in to the race and I don’t think that I’ve ever looked forward as much as I am to putting myself through 26.2 miles of torment again. However, as many of you out there will appreciate, running is an addiction, the feeling you get after a good run is unquantifiable or when you hit a good stride at mid-distance and you feel as though you could sprint the next 5 miles non-stop, the thought of not doing another marathon is worse than the thought of doing one. Getting there and getting back to a decent pace will be a long battle though – I’m seriously off form!

Naturally no undertaking such as a marathon should be done without trying to raise something for charity and last time around it was a local hospice; this time I’ve chosen to run for the Irish Heart Foundation and see if I can get together a few Euro for them. All those of you with your hands on your wallets, steady now, I’ll publish details of the mycharity page nearer to the event. Wish me luck as they say!

Baby Giraffe
Originally uploaded by jbwan

Just received confirmation that one of my Flickr available photos was included in the recent Schmap guide to Dublin. Sometimes I spend so much time fussing over lighting, exposure, and other things with my SLR that it’s quite humbling and satisfying to have a no-thought shot with my compact Olympus c-750uz (4MP) receive more recognition than most of my other photos. Maybe it was the models that I used in the selected photo – eye-catching Giraffes!

Join the Facebook group.

Despite Ireland being in recession and despite an emergency, early budget to try to deal with the crisis, and despite a projected shortfall in taxes of €7.5 billion the government of Ireland still sees fit to proceed with a €4 billion plan to develop a small metro system in Dublin. This proposed budget, which will no doubt be inflated as time goes on given government failures with previous capital projects, is equal to over half of the tax shortfall and would put the country in a far better position financially if it was not spent developing a metro line only in Dublin. Many respected business people have already said that building a metro in Dublin will not be a sensible decision nor return any true net worth to the tax payers who are paying for it. In addition, a similar metro project, but more advanced, was completed in Madrid in 2003 at a mere €1.6 billion (http://www.urbantransport-technology.com/projects/madrid/), less than half of the proposed Irish budget. This is a gross misuse of Irish taxpayer’s money and it should be stopped. It’s no more than a vanity project for the government and is far too costly in these times of economic recession and tax shortfalls. Join the cause, let the feeling be known!