On Saturday I took the children to the Phoenix Park to find that it was closed to cars because there was a half marathon. We parked outside the gates and walked while carrying mountains of kit (me), cycled (Michael deploying new found skills), roller-bladed (herself) and solo-ed (Daniel) 2 kms into the playground at which point we were only fit to turn around and soldier back to the car so that we could get home for lunch.
Then, this morning we dropped Mr. Waffle to the airport (he’s in exotic Finland for work) and went on to a playground in the grounds of a big house nearby. The car park and grounds were full to overflowing. Yes, indeed, another wretched run ruining our weekend.
Some further indications of the national interest in running: the Irish Times is now doing special running articles; lots of my relatives run including ones you might safely assume were a little old for this kind of thing; my colleague who started running a couple of years ago got a bunch of people at work interested and now they’ve gone and won a race – they have a trophy, it’s unmissable; and further the stand-up comedian we went to see the other night is running. I am a little concerned that I may be the one person in Ireland who isn’t running. Look, I had shin splints in 1989 and I’m not going to risk that again.