Tag: running

Run Killarney 2025

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)1 Comment

This past weekend I ran the 10k at Run Killarney. First of all, I want to say that this is a fantastic event. It’s probably the most well-organised of any of the Irish races I’ve done, the course is a gorgeous loop that takes you through the national park, and the weather always seems to cooperate. They also have the nicest medals!

My only complaint is that I think it’s weird there are no bananas at the finish line, but at least as of this year there are vegetarian and gluten free options for the post-run snack of a breakfast sandwich. 

My time was 51:17, which is pretty much in line with my recent running. 51:17 works out to about 5.08 per kilometre, and I ran the Streets of Killarney 5 Mile a month ago in 41.28 (5.15 pace, in fairly heavy rain), and my last couple parkruns have all been in the range of a 4:58-5:10 pace. 

It’s not my 10km personal best – that would go to a flukey 48:49 at Run Killarney a few years ago – but it was a solid effort. Before the race, I told Steve that I’d love to get between 50 and 52 minutes, although I thought 55 minutes might be more realistic. So not only was I much faster than my “realistic” 55 minutes, but I was right in the middle of the range I was hoping for. 

I didn’t train too hard for Run Killarney, and one of the main reasons why is pretty silly. I have thick hair, and a lot if it, and it’s extremely slow to dry (and I hate using blow dryer). So the harder I run, and the more often, the more frequently I have to wash my hair. I just wasn’t in the mood for that the last few weeks. If my hair-washing laziness is more of a priority to me than my running speed, then it’s no surprise that I wasn’t breaking any personal records over the weekend. 

And look, that’s part of life. I’m not an elite athlete; I’m not being paid to run (or to wash my hair). I’m just trying to stay fit and healthy, and not feel like crap when I go out for a jog. My big goal when I ran my last marathon was to maintain my running routine afterward – it’s so easy to “take a few weeks off” which somehow spirals into months and months. I managed to keep up a more-or-less twice-a-week habit of a Wednesday evening jog with my running group and a Saturday morning parkrun that felt like enough. 

That said, even if I’m fairly content with my current running fitness, there are some elements I still struggle with. One thing is the natural peaking and dipping of my athletic performance. The women in my running group were talking about this the other week – how one week you might be flying effortlessly, while the next you’re huffing and puffing while going slower or for a shorter distance. 

Sometimes it’s obvious why – tiredness or dehydration or spending hours walking around the Berlin Zoo the day before you run a marathon like I did – but sometimes the reason isn’t so clear. And while anyone can have an off day, women can be particularly affected due to our hormonal changes over the course of the month. And the annoying thing is, the points where your energy is likely to be the lowest are also the times when your emotions are likely to be the most sensitive, a double whammy of poorer performance + letting it get to you. 

Now, I’ll be frank, I don’t track my menstrual cycle (and I haven’t gotten a period in years thanks to my IUD) so I couldn’t actually tell you when it’s the cause of my faster or slower runs. But sometimes you just know when, no matter how hard you push yourself, you’re not going to be getting any of those cute little medals when you upload your activity to Strava. Sometimes you know that you’re not running as fast as you can, but paradoxically you know that you can’t run any faster, at least not on that particular occasion. 

I’ve digressed here, because I did feel pretty good during my Run Killarney 10k, and although I didn’t feel as though I was running as fast as I could, it also felt clear to me that the reasons were the overall lack of training and the hot, sunny day, rather than anything internal and undefinable. 

But it’s a good reminder that these good and bad days will come and go, and you can’t always predict or explain why. And regardless of the result (which again, I was mostly happy with), it was a great day out on a gorgeous sunny day. And the pints afterward went down well, too!

A parkrun for everyone

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Killarney parkrun

This week I hit a milestone and ran my 50th parkrun. For those who don’t know, parkrun is a free, community/volunteer-run weekly 5k event that takes place every Saturday morning. Since the first event took place in London in 2004, parkrun has grown to encompass over 2000 locations in 23 countries.

I first started parkrunning at an event in Australia in 2019, and since then I’ve run at 10 different locations in three different countries. But most of my parkruns (38 out of the 50) have been at my local parkrun, Killarney House, a beautiful 3-and-a-bit lap looped run in the national park, and that’s where I ran my 50th on Saturday.

I’m a bit of a parkrun evangelist — if you mention that you’re thinking of getting into running, or that you’d like to get a bit more exercise, I’ll probably start singing parkrun’s praises. And I figure that my 50th parkrun means that it’s good timing to do that here as well. So here’s why I love parkrun and why you could, too.

fun fact: i have never looked good running in a photo ever 🙂

Anyone can join, anytime

Parkrun is completely free for participants and doesn’t require advance registration for any individual event — once you sign up once, you can run at any parkrun, anywhere. All you need to do is go to the parkrun website and register. Once you register, you’ll receive a barcode that you can print out or show on your phone to be scanned after you cross the finish line. That’s how your attendance at an event and your time are tracked.

It’s a great way to get involved

If you’re not a runner or walker, you can also get involved by volunteering! Parkrun depends on volunteers, so you can register to be a marshal, a barcode scanner, a timekeeper, or a number of other roles and become a part of this great and welcoming community. It’s definitely encouraged for runners to volunteer occasionally as well! I like to do the first timer’s briefing, where I explain the route to new participants or visitors and welcome them to our parkrun. As a bonus, it’s one of the volunteer roles where you still get to run as well.

Parkrun meets you where you are

One constant refrain at parkrun is that it’s an event, not a race. Whether you’re an Olympian or a couch-to-5k-er, you’re equally welcome and your participation is celebrated. At Killarney House, for example, finisher times usually range from just over 16 minutes to just under an hour. One of the most valued roles at parkrun is the tailwalker, whose job it is to be the final finisher, so you don’t have to worry that you’re “too slow” for parkrun. There’s also no pressure to maintain a certain pace; some weeks you might run, some you might walk, and sometimes you might do both.

You can meet parkrun where it is, too

There’s a whole group of people who are avid parkrun tourists, travelling to events around the world, whether just for the fun of it or to try to complete unofficial “challenges” like running a parkrun that starts with every letter of the alphabet. While one of the great things about parkrun for me is that I don’t have to travel far to reach my local event, which is convenient and better for my carbon footprint, I definitely like to check out the local parkrun if I’m visiting a new place anyway. Even if I’m not around on a Saturday morning, looking at the parkrun’s event page can be a nice way to find a fun, safe 5k route in a new town or city.

The stats are so satisfying

Because each individual parkrun event takes place on the same route, it can be fun to look back over your personal results and see how they change over time. If you’re on a fitness journey, you might enjoy seeing the times getting quicker as you go, or if you’re the kind of person who parkruns in all conditions (internal and external), it’s interesting to see the numbers go up and down week to week depending on the weather, how you’re feeling, etc. Less than a month ago, I ran my fastest parkrun in two years. This weekend, after two days of hiking, I was over a minute and a half slower. That’s the way it goes!

If you want to get involved, find your local parkrun HERE and sign up to run, jog, walk, or volunteer! As a note, there definitely are far fewer parkruns in the United States than in other countries that have the event, but numbers are growing all the time. And if you’re looking for an event that’s local to you, maybe it’s time to consider starting one!

What I learned from my first marathon

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)2 Comments

Six months ago, I registered for my first marathon. On Sunday, I laced up my running shoes, tucked a couple gels into my pocket, queued up a playlist beginning with Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” and started my race at the Melbourne Marathon festival. Four hours, 25 minutes, 49 seconds, and 42.195 kilometres later I crossed the finish line in the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Here’s what I learned in the last six months about running my first marathon:

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What I learned from my fourth half-marathon

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I guess these are a tradition now (although I never wrote one for the Wellington half-marathon, my third last year) and now that I’m just a few months out from running my first full marathon I think it’s even more important for me to take a look at my race and think about what I learned.

Yesterday I ran the half-marathon event at Run Melbourne in 1:54:21, beating my previous personal best by over two minutes. Apart from a shiny medal and tired quads, here’s what I took away from it:

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My Favourite Rabbit Holes

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)1 Comment

We all have them. Those internet rabbit holes you just can’t resist going down. Maybe it’s a topic that fascinates you, or one that infuriates you, or maybe it’s just one you know has enough content online that you can kill a bit of time when things are slow at work. Maybe you have a favourite topic that you check back on frequently in hopes of updates, even if the matter has been dormant for years. Maybe you and your friends share your findings back and forth, like my BFF and I do with bizarre advice column questions from sites like Ask a Manager and Dear Prudie.

Some rabbit holes are quite common: topics like unresolved true crime (who killed JonBenet Ramsey, who was Jack the Ripper) or cryptids (mythological—or potentially not mythological—beings like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster) have always piqued our interest and our imagination. The internet has facilitated others: it’s easy to get lost scrolling through satellite images on Google Earth or idly planning a dream vacation or dinner on Instagram. Wikipedia is the biggest conduit, with its infinite hyper links making it easy to move through a series of innocuous topics until suddenly it’s three hours later and you’re deep into a world of conspiracy theories and oddities. “What is the best internet rabbit hole to get lost down?” is a common question on AskReddit, and Slate has an entire series based around the idea.

As someone who is Extremely Online, I probably go down the rabbit hole more often than most. Let me bring you down a few of my favourites:

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Six Months to Marathon

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When I finished my first half-marathon, I thought “I’ll definitely do that again, but I’ll probably never run more than a half.” When I ran my second, I thought, “I could probably tack on a few more kms, but I’ll probably never run a full marathon.” After the third, when I had finally reached my sub-two-hour half-marathon goal (1:56:42), I found myself immediately thinking ahead to the next goal. But this time my goal isn’t just time (although I’m hoping to run <1:55 in my next half-marathon in a few months), but distance. I finally felt ready to take the plunge and sign up for a full marathon.

The first thing I had to decide was: which one? My first, obvious thought was the Melbourne marathon in October, as I knew that we would be moving over here after our time in Wellington had finished. However, we originally weren’t certain that we were going to stay in Australia for a full year, and I didn’t want to train for a marathon and then not run it (barring circumstances like injury that could obviously crop up wherever I am).

I started looking at the Gold Coast marathon in July, hearing that it was a flat course and figuring that the dead of winter would hopefully cool things down. After moving to Australia I quickly reassessed; the heat and humidity of summer in Melbourne has both made it very hard to run much, meaning I’d be very behind on my training if I was to run a marathon three months from now, and it showed me that I have no interest in going up to the notoriously-humid Gold Coast for a race. Luckily, by this point we had decided that we were going to see out our year in Australia, so Melbourne was back on the table.

The Melbourne marathon is on Sunday, 13 October, exactly six months from now, and I officially registered last night. I’ve decided to use a Hal Higdon plan based on the recommendation of… pretty much everybody, and I’m going with the Novice 2 plan because I want to push myself a little (I’ll drop back to the Novice 1 plan if needed but looking at the prerequisites I think I should be okay. It will be slightly modified as the plan has you running a half-marathon at the end of the ninth week and I am going to do Run Melbourne’s half-marathon event on 28 July, which is only seven weeks in, but for the most part I’m aiming to stick to the plan as closely as possible. It’s definitely going to be tough to stick to in points—namely just two weeks before the race, when we’re planning to be in Japan for the Rugby World Cup—but I’ll make the time to run and will luckily be tapering then anyway.

The plan runs for 18 weeks up until the marathon which means that I won’t actually be starting it officially until the second week of June, but in the meantime I’m taking advantage of the cooler weather (finally) and building mileage, strength, and endurance by running as much as I can in preparation. Running a full marathon six months from today is going to be the biggest fitness goal I have ever, and maybe will ever, achieve, and I’m planning to do it right. I’ll check in with updates on my training and progress as I go, for support and accountability, and on 13 October I’ll see you at the far side of 26.2.

Follow me on Strava if you want to keep up with my training!