3 contrasts

I mentioned that I trained with Mike Garrett and Paul Curphey on Wednesday night. It was the first time for several years that we had all taken part in the same session but we go back quite some time. Our races today were quite contrasting.

I firs trained with Paul in the winter of 1991 and Mike first joined us in 1996. He then had one of the longest breaks through injury that I can recall not returning for 6 years! He has had a shed load of disappointments but after taking a break from the marathon for a couple of years and training with Andy Fox's group he is all the better for it. So good to see him execute his race plan so successfully today for a win and a big personal best in the Leinster Management 20 Miles.

If I told you that Paul's time was pretty average you might be surprised because he ran 17 minutes faster than any of his times for the past three years.

His time today was 2:09:46 but his average for the past 18 years (yes this was his 19th in a row) was 2:09:02!

2:01:02	1994
1:59:00	1995
1:58:31	1996
1:58:38	1997
2:02:57	1998
2:02:14	1999
2:07:19	2000
2:02:27	2001
2:04:49	2002
2:06:11	2003
2:04:35	2004
2:08:48	2005
2:14:45	2006
2:13:38	2007
2:17:28	2008
2:26:16	2009
2:27:41	2010
2:26:15	2011

Really thrilled for Paul. If only I had  told people that I was just pacing Paul for 15 miles my day would have seemed fairly successful. But the truth was that my legs went at 16 miles even though I was only running at a pace I am used to running nearly every week and clearly I had not fully recovered from my illness the previous week. "Don't rush your comeback" were the words of advice of another old friend, Chris Quine, earlier in the week, But I did and I didn't (finish).