Frank Greally

Find a training group or a ‘Running Buddy’ in your local area or link up with some running colleagues at work who may be heading out on lunchtime training runs. The training effort can be much easier when the load is shared and there is the additional benefit you get of the social interaction in a running group – both before and after training. That too is good for the head.

Run your own race. I received this advice long ago back in Mayo from such running legends as Willie Morris and Mick Molloy. I thought about it again only a few weeks ago when running in the Dublin Remembers 1916 5K event. I thought about it especially when I was running too fast down O’Connell Street, with little more than a kilometre completed. I had got caught up in the euphoria of the event and was chasing a few runners ahead of me rather than running ‘my own race’. Of course I paid the penalty later in the race, when I had to slow down to a jog.

Hasten Slowly

Over the years, every time I made an attempt – and there were many – to get back to regular running, I always tried to do too much training too soon. It was only last year that I finally started to listen and take some much-needed training advice from David Carrie and Catherina McKiernan. Between them, David and Catherina managed to put the brakes on me and got me to follow a sensible training schedule tailored to small, incremental improvements. I saw the benefit of this last summer when I was able to complete some races; including running for 30 minutes 17 seconds around the track in the Morton Stadium in Santry to celebrate my (still standing!) national junior 10,000m record set there in 1970.

Celebrate your fitness and good health on every training run and in every race and remember people you know who can no longer run. My great friend Ray McBride is someone I often think of when I run. Ray and I travelled together to East Tennessee State University back in 1972 – both of us on athletic scholarships. Over a decade ago Ray got cancer and he can no longer do the one thing he loved most – run. Think of those less fortunate when you run; watch how your stride lengthens and your pace picks up.

Try to rediscover the lovely sense of play you felt when you ran around the schoolyard all those years ago. It is only when you rediscover it and bring it to your present day running that you will truly feel alive. I have found that sense of play again running with my grandchildren Hayleigh Bone and Thomas and Luke Branigan Greally. When I am with them in a place we call ‘’The Circle Field’ I feel very young at heart again with no inhibitions – a feeling I remember from the early days when I first discovered the joy of running.