10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Alghero Half Marathon 2025

1. It’s Always Sunny in Sardegna

I think that Sardinia is probably my favourite island. It is like a warm Achill Island, an amazing place with beautiful and stunning scenery. The only problem and it’s a small problem is that it can be a little warm for running. Luckily on Sunday some cloud rolled in from the mediterranean making it more like Achill Island than Sardinia.

2. Cannonau

I think that even if you weren’t going to Sardinia for a half marathon it would be worth going for the food and wine. Cannonau is the local wine which is very good and fregola is the local pasta which is so good it is amazing that it isn’t everywhere. They are clearly very proud of the fregola as there is a restaurant at the airport that cooks fregola from scratch.

3. Olive Oil

I think that it is worth going to Sardinia just for the olive oil. I replaced the usual football match and race combination with an olive oil farm tour and race combination. Unfortunately, we picked the worst time to go on the tour as they had just started the harvest, so all last year’s olive oil was sold out and this year’s olive oil hadn’t yet been produced.

4. Singlets

I think that there are a few important things to remember when running races in Italy, number one is that you need a medical certificate signed by a doctor to run the competitive race as Julius and Evita the other Cork runners in the race found out. Number two which I forgot is that they have separate women’s cut singlet. Forgetting this I ordered Rhona a medium as usual. My mistake meant that I had to run up to the registration on the morning of the race to swap for a large, luckily, they were also selling last years singlets for €5 so I returned with three singlets and a good 4km warm up.

5. Gazzetta Dello Sport

I think it is a pity that we don’t have a newspaper like Gazzetta in Ireland. I can’t read Italian but I know it is a great newspaper. My favourite feature is the detailed player ratings, I think this would work really well for rating people in races, John Meade 6/10, Michael Herlihy 5/10 etc along with a paragraph tearing their performance to pieces. Gazzetta seemed to be involved in promoting the half marathon as on the start line an influencer was doing a piece to camera for Instagram for which I tried to get my new makeshift Glanmire A.C Fiorentina inspired purple singlet in the background

6. Moto

I think that the start of the race was great fun. The competitive 10k which Rhona had opted for went off 5 minutes before the half marathon so after about a mile we ran into the back of the 10k. We had two fellas on motorbikes who seemed to enjoy greatly clearing a path through the 10k runners for the front of the half marathon. Eventually it became too crowed for the motorbike, so we were left to weave our way through the 10k on our own.

7. Cinque

I think that I was too happy with 5th place in the race. I had looked up the regulations before hand and saw that there were cash prizes down to 5th with €400 for first. The front three quickly opened a gap while I was left with a fella in a red singlet with some sort of dragon on the back of it in fourth and fifth. After about 10k as we turned back to run out the road to Fertillia for the second time the red singlet fella made a move and left me firmly in fifth.

8. Mistral

I think that the mistral is a very unusual wind. It comes off the land in France and comes at the north of Sardinia, as we found out for the 5k between Alghero and Fertilla it is quite a strong wind. My friend in the red dragon singlet somehow managed to bridge across to second and third into the wind while I watched my kilometer splits drift from 3:30 to 3:40 remaining firmly stuck in fifth as was confirmed by Julius who was passing on the other side of the road in the competitive noncompetitive 10k.

9. Scirocco

I think it is great that the opposite wind to the Mistral is the Scirocco which is my favourite car. Once we turned in Fertillia at 15k the Mistral became my friend. Suddenly I felt good and the Adidas Pro 4s that I had packed started to work. 3:40s returned to high 3:20s and the gap to the group of second, third and fourth slowly closed. I thought I would catch fourth but despite closing to within five seconds as I passed Rhona’s Camino friend Pino who provided the best Italian support on the course, I could only finish 5th.

10. Podiums, Champagne and Forms

I think that the most important thing when doing a race on holidays is to make the podium. Luckily for me the podium in Alghero had five places. The premiazione took place in the same place as the registration with free Peroni beer on tap and as much food as at the prize giving in Coolagown. On the podium I received two bottles of champagne, local olive oil and some shower gel. I thought that was it but then the fella with the red dragon singlet who ended up second came up to me and told me about the desk where you fill out a form with your bank details to get the cash prize which was very kind.

10 Things I Think About The Seville Half Marathon 2025

1. Escaping Éowyn

I think that Ryanair have a great can do attitude. Only Ryanair will get you to Seville no matter the weather. Going to bed Thursday night I was pretty sure that a flight to Seville scheduled to take off in the midst of a red weather warning was both unwise and unlikely. Luckily there was some winter fat in the Ryanair schedule so the only impact of the storm was a welcome lie in and a three hour delay in departure.

2. Unsevillean Weather

I think that I was probably overdue some rain in Spain. Seville to me means blue skies, no wind and air so light it makes running almost effortless. Unfortunately on this occasion Seville resembled Cork on a soft damp day in May. Wet, humid, almost warm and a little windy.

3. Sub Elite Cajón Rojo

I think I’d be better off if I had never experienced what it is like to be in the elite start. Somehow the last time I did the Seville Half they gave me an elite number so I didn’t have to queue up with everyone else. This time I had to make do with the first corral of sub 1:20 runners along with my great enemy, friend and rival John Meade who was terribly disappointed when I told him that he hadn’t a hope in the M45 category because of Reyes Estevez who has run 2:16 for the marathon at 48.

4. In the Trenches

I think that the only issue with having to line up with the masses is that you have to experience what it is like to stand huddled nervously for about 15 minutes with mainly other men. It is mildly unpleasant but would make you appreciate that you were born in 1986 rather than 1886. I will never understand why so many people have to sprint the first 400m of a 21 kilometer race. The pushing and shoving is totally unnecessary, at least the roads are good and wide so it only lasts for a minute or too before normality is resumed.

5. Woman + Man = Pacemaker

I think that the great thing about big city half marathons is that there are always pacemakers to run with. They aren’t actually advertised easily identifiable pacemakers but if you see a woman running side by side with a man in the same shoes and uniform you know that you have a professional steady pace to follow for the entire race. It took me about 3k to find my Asics pace group which was moving along at a relatively metronomic 3:25 per kilometer. I got myself comfortable and tried to turn off my brain which is very difficult if not impossible.

6. Inoperable Water

I think that it is amazing how much trouble water causes in races. The trouble in Seville was the bottles. The bottles were very unusual with a weird cap so hard to open that it would have been easier if the water was in Calpol bottles. Then to cap it all off the fella in front had a nasty habit of just dropping his bottle onto the ground without any consideration for the people behind. Luckily my agility and nimbleness of foot is at its peak it being cross country season.

7. Juan Meade

I think that I had a good fifty minutes of running without sight or sound of John Meade. I was expecting him to turn up at some stage as he had completed an impressively intense week of crash training the week before with nearly 30 miles at or below 6 minute mile pace which was two miles more than I had managed to do. As I passed the 13k marker I was convinced that I could hear him behind so without looking I said hello John Meade, to my surprise the man making the exact same foot and breathing sounds as John Meade was not John Meade but a Spanish runner of similar stature and stride. Phew I thought.

8. The Water Trick

I think that I should be better at resisting the spirit crushing tactics of John Meade. Three kilometers after my initial misdiagnosis of John Meade I was horrified to be greeted by actual John Meade just after the water station at the 10 mile mark. He could clearly see that I had managed to open the unopenable water bottle but being the astute racer that he is he offered me a drink from his bottle almost as if to say “you look terrible, here have my water which I don’t need as I am fine”. I declined the water and watched horrified as the St Finbarr’s singlet surged ahead making impossible inroads into the many groups scattered along the road by the unsevillean wind.

9. 100m, SOS

I think that there is no beating John Meade if he passes you late in a race. You are in big big trouble. It doesn’t matter who you are, if John Meade gets within a mile of the finish you are in trouble. I could see from his stride that he was delighted with himself having passed me out. I did my best to hold the gap but as we ran down Ryan Creech’s beloved cobblestone road past the giant mushroom the gap began to open to the length of at least six shops.

10. A Monk Swimming

I think that the last kilometre of the race was a little odd. It was like I was running in a race that I didn’t belong in. All of the men had been filtered out and I was left in a battle I didn’t want to fight with five women all but one of whom outsprinted me. Once across the line I said Well Done John Meade, collected my medal, before commencing a slow jog back to the apartment with the winner discussing the ridiculousness of going all the way to Seville to race only each other. Well Done John Meade.