West Wicklow Roar

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Glorious sunshine for West Wicklow Roar

Melanie Späth / 29.05.2010

My coach doesn't like me doing off road running much due to the risk of injury, but I've just been longing to mix up my training a bit again and since I had no big races coming up I took this opportunity to get my AR fix in.

The race itself was broken up as follows:

2km kayak
11.5km bike
7km run
18km bike
7km run
16.5km bike

Confidently I put myself down for the Elite wave...

I was a bit concerned about the running stages, since I hadn't done any running at all in ages, and decided to do my first run in ages by doing an IMRA race on the Wednesday a week and a half before the ROAR for some training (I am aware that this was a bit of a stupid idea....). This was more a test to see where I stand and to see if and how much my mountain biking fitness would carry over to mountain running (and also to enjoy the social side of it and meet some old friends). It was an 11.3km run, not particularly steep, but about half of it over pretty technical rocky terrain. I came in 7th lady, at 140% of the men's winning time. Not bad since this is the best percentage I've ever had in a mountain run, even when I used to run regularly! So I was happy with that, but not with the pain that I had to endure the three days after! My legs felt as if I had subjected them to a marathon with my thighs and calves giving out every time I tried to sit down or stand up or walk down stairs. I couldn't do any type of training until Saturday and had to take it fairly easy at the weekend too. Serves me right going out like this. I did a few more short running sessions to get my legs used to the sensation before the Saturday of the race.

Anyhow, Saturday came along with some glorious blue skyed weather and a heat wave and some of the other Elite ladies including old mountain biking champs Beth McCluskey and Jenny McAuley. I was hoping that all the time I would lose on the runs (I knew that both Beth and Jenny would be better runners) I could make up on the bike legs. How wrong I was...See All Event Posts