Home Sweet Home!
Ok, I made it back!! What an awesome amazing beautiful trip - and I am soooooo happy to be home! 
Ireland was (is) beautiful, especially the west coast where the glacial movement that formed this island are evident in the limestone covered land, the rocky coast and the cliffs that rise hundreds and hundreds of feet up from the wild Atlantic. I dropped 9 rolls of film off to be developed today so I hope to have some pictures to share by the weekend!! Flights were smooth and on time, the weather was better than I would have ever dreamed to hope (it only rained 1 day!), and I made some awesome new friends (more on that later).
As for running - well my only regret is that I didn’t schlep my camera along for that too. While in Dublin, our hotel was just a couple of blocks from Herbert Park so I had a couple of opportunities to run around a lovely park complete with duck pond, horseshoe pits, and a football (as in soccer) field. My running was very relaxed as I stopped often to check out various sites and games that were going on, pet dogs, etc.
As luck would have it, when we moved on to Killarney, our hotel was right across the street from an entrance to the Killarney National Park . Now this is no cute lil’ park in the center of town, this is a 24,000 acre park with castles, gardens, lakes, and mountains. I only saw about 2 miles of that - but it was a great 2 miles! Actually, the first time there I only went a short way in, until I got to the area were the path became more narrow and tree lined as it was getting on to evening, moved out onto the road and headed back to town on the sidewalk. The next time, it was morning and there were plenty of people and horse drawn carts out so I felt easier about going into the woodsier path that ran along the river. I followed the river for about 1/2 mile and detoured off onto a dirt trail that ran down to the lake. I kept thinking I think I’m totally getting what Chris is talking about! . Running on a narrow dirt path, all alone (so much for caution), along side the lake, jumping roots and dodging tree branches. It was kind of a primal feeling, very exhilerating, just me and this amazing space surrounding me, and I suddenly felt like I was exerting no effort at all. Surreal. Unreal. Ultra-real. When I came out of the woods and back onto the gravel path, I cut across a field and just happened to look to my right where Mangerton Mountain was rising up in the distance - and I just had to stop and look for awhile.
Sadly, the area that we visited that I loved the most and found to be the most astonishingly beautiful (Galway Bay) just had no place nearby for a viable run. The road out front had no sidewalk and I was not about to run on the street - I won’t go into the boring details of how crazy the driving is in Ireland but at the very least, the 2 lane roads there are about the width of 1 lane here and whoever gets the right of way is whoever doesn’t back down. On the other side was the beach, but by beach I mean to say miles and miles of large broken stone - beautiful to look at but needing definate care to navigate. There was a gym with a treadmill at the hotel but I decided that I’d rather spend my time outside, even if it wasn’t running. Lord knows there was plenty of hiking - over stones, up hills, across cliffs - this is the first vacation I have ever gone on where I lost weight!! (Probably the other reason is that my belly was so often full of Guinness that I didn’t have room for food! ).
As for my ankle, it did bother slightly - interestingly it would be sore the day after the run but not during the run or later after it. It’s not constant, just an occasional crampy feeling in the achilles, less so than before I left. Otherwise, I tolerated 5 min. running/1 min. walking x 5 - 6 reps just fine (though alot of the time it was more or less as I ran and walked and stopped spontaneously to take in the sights). This week I will stick with that schedule and see how it plays out before I move on to 7:1.
Oh, lastly, on one of my new friends - she lives outside of Philadelphia and she runs! She didn’t run with me on the trip because she forgot to pack her gear (which she frequently lamented). She has invited me to come her way and run The Broad Street Run and I have invited her to come here in July for The Boilermaker ! We are looking forward to being virtual running partners over the next several months.
I am also looking forward to trying to catch up on everyone’s blogs though it may take awhile. This weekend I hope to return all the RBF links to my sidebar as some recent attempts to modify my template went terribly awry. Happily, Mark was able to clean up my mess yet again
