Night time hill running.

Monday, 7th January  - 14km Hill run - Prince Williams Seat.*
*Unfortunately I only managed to map the return journey from the turnaround point to the car park.
The pathways of Santry and Ballymun can be pretty boring for even a novice, but for someone like me who runs 4+ nights a week along them then you always jump at the chance of doing a run somewhere else, and so it was that the informal boards.ie group (Myself, Digger, Cambo Gueno, Jeawan and his friend) met up at Johnny Fox’s pub after work on Thursday for a jaunt
along part of the Wicklow Way. The route was on open road for the first mile or so before we departed at first onto a minor road before the trail proper.

Overall Run Profile

The start of the uphill brings us around the side of Glencullen Mountain on a fire road up to a junction where we hang left to continue along the Wicklow Way. The trail terrain changes here and now becomes a packed path with lots of rivulets criss-crossing the surface making precise footing all the more important. The climb from the bottom to where it plateaus out on top is 210m over the course of just 2.75km. We continued on to the end of the packed trail to where it changes in nature to large boulders which leads down to Curtlestown Wood. The terrain here is not worth the risk of injury at night time so after a brief break we doubled–back to the start point at Fox’s, but not before taking a slight detour to add a little variety to the route home. 

So, after about 1hr 20mins of enjoyable running and good banter we arrived back at the car park. This kind of training should help strengthen the leg muscles and, particularly by running uphill, add to the leg power for running quickly. 

Hopefully I get to do a lot more hill runs this year in comparison to 2012.


Week 2 Summary (to date):
RTW: 4 from 4 days
DTW: 54.5km
DTY: 103.7km