Full Marathon - Age Group PB and Irish Record (TBC)

Continuing with the Crazy Bear challenge with days lost and finishing line closing in I had to come up with a plan to try and get the remaining 7 half marathons in with 6 days left - simple - 1 a day and with a double up. Hmm but that was complicated when I offered to help out my father in law with some work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday ... so 7 half marathons in effectively 3 days - bugger - ok then 3 HM's on two days and then a gentle one to get over the line - well if I'm doing three a day I might as well do a full marathon and so that was today's plan - get up at 6 and do a HM at the gym then home and refuel while doing a few chores and back to the gym for a full marathon. After which I was popping round to finish laying a laminate floor and then put a bed together.. good job I ain't working.

This mornings HM went pretty well - lifted the stroke rate to 22 to ease the pressure on the legs and kept it at 70% HRR finished with decent time of 1:18:28.2 or 1:51.6 ave.

So back in and a fiddle to get set up off I set the target was the current Irish 40-49H record of 1:53.1 or 2:39:06.3 set by Ally Cooper. I find a groove of sitting just below 1:50 pace rating 24 and felt confident of holding it - although the HR did rise quite quickly initially - so went with that - all was going well until about a hour from the end when I guess the earlier HM and lack of proper refueling took it's toll and had to draw on a lot of grit to try and even continue - took a few stops for water and chocolate but I'll be honest I was looking at the "wave" (the erg equivalent of the runners wall lol) well after what seemed like a eternity I did manage to get back into a groove but the initial plan was in tatters and it was a case of best of what was left - bearing in mind the circumstance I was happy with result and after all it is a new record and age group PB - plus only 4 HM's left to do now!

 the list above is missing a HM on the skierg