"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own"   Sri Chinmoy

Maynooth 2 Mile - June 15th - Ireland

Several times over the years I've had strange dreams of running in a race, looking for the lap counting station or the finish and not finding it, running on and on and getting anxious about how far there is to go as the race becomes an endless loop. That's not the sort of dream you want to come true but it kind of did at this 2 Miler!

I'd run at the university/seminary in Maynooth back in 2013, coming back from severe illness and injury, so my course pb was a modest 15:50 or so. Having spent 2 weeks without running since Czechman (needing to clear up some niggles before the next epic challenge, the 14 Peaks Ultra) I had no pretensions of running a 12-something, but I was hoping at least to get under that previous Maynooth time and perhaps get close to 13 minutes. The morning was beautiful, sunshine with a thin layer of cool mist over the parkland, as we gathered at the start. I did a good 20-minute jog warmup, first out there as usual, watching the international family of runners arrive. As well as Nirbhasa and Gianluca who I knew would be ahead of me, there were 3 younger Latvians, 2 of whom I had duelled with in recent 7-hour walks (Emanuels and Peteris) and the evergreen Jwalanta, bouncing back from an injury layoff and looking fresh.

After the race prayer and a brief silence we headed off under the trees on a wonderfully flat and scenic loop course. Ambarish had announced it a 3 laps of the loop, turning right at Tejvan's marshal point each time, then straight-on-at-Tejvan after completing the third loop to run in to the finish by the church. At first all went well, I was running what felt like a sustainable pace (just under 7 minute miling I think) and gradually edging my way up the field, past Edgarz, the Latvian musician, into 3rd place betwee Nirbhasa and Jwalanta.

The morning was really fresh and gorgeous and it felt great to be running again after the layoff. Surprisingly, as the laps went by, Nirbhasa didn't widen the gap and I could stll see him 50m or so up ahead, with Gianluca already out of sight at the front. As we came to the end of the third lap, Tejvan was frantically signalling to both of us (myself and Nirbhasa) to turn right again, but we overrode that marshal instruction - I remember calling out that we'd done 3 laps and this time we had to go straight. Nirbhasa and I both went for it, ignoring Tejvan and sticking to what we thought was the brief - but how wrong we were :)

After the short straight section there was no finish line - and no clear way to the church, which we could see beyond a wall. We went left, followed around the perimeter of the church, kept going, across the front of the college, round the back - Nirbhasa at this point realised the game was up and stopped running when he'd clearly covered the 2 miles. I jogged on to the finish, realising we should have gone right-then-left at Tejvan after 3 laps. Everyone else knew - but somehow the 2 of us hadn't got the memo

So, instead of a glorious third place and the honour of being in-the-fruit, I settled for around 8th and a very slow time. I think in reality it was around 14 mins for the 2 miles or maybe a bit over, 14.30 perhaps. Who knows. It was, as they say, a lesson learned. And learned on a lovely, fresh, sunny-and-cool-and-misty Irish morning. Great to be racing again.

  
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