Dancing At Lunacy

We took the dogs for a walk at Dundrum yesterday – what a gorgeous place, the views across Murlough Bay to the mountains of Mourne are nothing less than spectacular. And while there, I saw a notice for the GR8 Dundrum Road Run, to be held on my birthday next month. A quick google (actually quite bit of Googling – I must suggest to them that their links could be more user-friendly) revealed that it’s an 8-mile cross-country race, partly on roads, partly on hills, and partly on the beach (cue Chariots of Fire music).

So I’m very tempted to sign up for this one, if only so that when people ask me what I did on my birthday I can honestly answer “I had a GR8 run!”.  The things I’ll do for a good pun!  So it’ll be a pun-run, if you will.

The thing is, I haven’t run for ages, and I’m really out of practice.  I did my first Parkrun in 6 weeks yesterday, and didn’t even manage to get a sub 30 minute time, and my legs are aching today.  Plus this is cross country, with hills and similar obstacles, possibly even wild sheep. And it’s only 3 weeks away!  Does that give me enough time to train?  But I’m clearly not built for speed, so I’m drawn to other sorts of interesting races.

Luckily for me, there’s lots of hills nearby, so I took Max out for a rather enjoyable Sunday morning run today.  I was wearing a new performance top that I bought in Lidl yesterday – a bargain at only £7.99!

Good points – it’s warm, which will be important as te temperature falls into Autumn.  It’s long enough to cover tum and bum and not ride up.

Bad points – it’s warm.  The material is quite slippy, meaning my arm-phone-holder slides down towards my elbow.  Any suggestions? How do other runners deal with this?

I’m tempted to make a small hole at the shoulder seam so that I can thread my headphones through and stop them getting in my way as I run.  But I’m a bit wary of making holes in things.

So.  Here goes.  Be ready for lots of MapMyRun status updates and blogs about Max tangling his lead around my legs….

Filed under: Lisburn, running | Tagged: GR8dundrumrun, lidl, murlough |