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Saturday 20 March 2010

Tempted to accept a lap short


How many laps do you run? The fastest local marathon runners in Ireland, Britain and Germany in recent years chat after the 20 miles.

I was passing the Manx Harriers clubhouse during the Leinster Management 20 miles this morning with 11 laps to go when Nigel Armstrong shouted out "10 laps to go". "Oh no, there are not" I replied pantomime style. As each remaining lap passed Nigel continued to try and convince me that I was wrong but eventually conceded that I was right - there was an error on the lap scoring sheets (one lap was missing).

This may sound awful to some people who would be delighted with my time, but I haven't spent the winter running around in the cold mornings to run around 2:09:36 for 20 miles. Had I run a lap less my time would have improved by more than 3 minutes.

I'll try not to dwell on my stuff for now though and just want to thank Marie Jackson and all the helpers this morning. The weather was better than expected, the rain stopped just before the start. I was in the lead for around 12 miles (I even lapped Ed Gumbley at one stage) as he stuck to his plan to restrict his workout to 15 miles.

Lots of new faces and personal bests too. And I'm sure they all ran 40 laps.

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