What if they pay you, you are delayed transferring the entry and the payment starts accruing interest?
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Yep thatâs it exactly
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Iâve formally switched to the Lisbon half marathon on 6 October & sold my Dublin marathon ticket too. Havenât had much chance to run this week due to life & had a rotten 45 minute easy run there. Iâll aim for 100 minutes on Sunday after 90 minutes last weekend & might try some tempo or interval stuff next week for the first time in nearly 2 months. Iâm told to train to my current level of fitness so these will be conservative paces. Hard to be patient when even easy runs feel hard & youâre not seeing any progress.
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Forget about the fast stuff for now. The body is not ready and you are inviting a setback. Plenty of very easy runs and build up slowly.
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Dingle Half Marathon in morning, wonât be breaking any records after a very short training block but looking forward to running the route.
The elevation profile is stacked against the half marathon too, but thatâs outweighed by the finish at Krugers pub 
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Mine is 55. Thatâs down from 62 a year ago.
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Great run this morning, well done. Lots of elevation on that course but scenery must be something else. You would break 90 mins for the half with a full training block.
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Cheers, ya very happy with it, 4:35 - 4:40 was where I felt I was at, but finished strong bar a bit of cramp at the top of the hill on km 19. Weather was unreal, itâs a phenomenal route but definitely not a half or marathon youâd be targeting for time.
This is the elevation profile of the half.
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About 3km I was tipping along keeping left, pretty much on the dotted yellow line, when some prick decided to needlessly barge up my inside.
Well I spotted the prick up ahead with a KM to go so I made it my mission to catch him, and gave a discreet Eamonn Coughlan fist pump as I left him for dust.
Iâd be petty that way.
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No point being from limerick if you canât be petty
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Good advice here for lads who want to run faster and shit themselves whilst out for a jog cc @Bandage
Cathal Dennehy: Settled guts equal glory now that bicarb juice is worâŚ
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âBicarb has been around a long time and the performance benefits have been known, but thereâs always been this huge risk because of the GI issuesâŚexplosive diarrhea is one of the symptoms.â
BICARB ON THE MENU: Great Britainâs Keely Hodgkinson with her gold medal following victory in the Womenâs 800m Final at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in France. Pic: PA Wire
Mon, 09 Sep, 2024 - 06:55
For many of the worldâs best athletes, the race sometimes starts at the finish line. Once theyâve done their thing on the track, drawn their breath, the next port of call is often the nearest bathroom.
This was the case at one major championship I attended this year, an Irish athlete apologising for a frantic dash through the mixed zone and after returning, they explained they had an urgent need to â how do I put this? â shit themselves.
The reason? They were among the growing number of athletes who, in their search for a performance edge, is consuming sodium bicarbonate before races. Better known as baking soda, its performance benefits have long been known and going back to the 1980s, athletes were using it to counteract the rising acidity in their muscles during events like the 800 metres.
But for many years, the gastrointestinal issues caused by bicarb meant the juice was often not worth the squeeze. But thatâs changed over the past year, utterly, with improved methods of delivery that reduce GI distress. As a result, bicarb is now the hottest supplement in town in many sports, and itâs perfectly legal.
At the warm-up track at major athletics events, many athletes can be seen mixing a yoghurt-like substance in a plastic bowl and getting it down the hatch about 90 minutes before races. Itâs called Bicarb System, and was created by Swedish sports nutrition company Maurten, which made its name with the hydrogel technology that offered a more effective way to consume carbohydrates during intense exercise.
That technology allows carbs to bypass the stomach and be delivered directly to the small intestine, where they can be absorbed for fast-acting energy during races. Maurten quickly realised hydrogel could be applied in other areas and after years of research, they launched Bicarb System last year, which retails at âŹ70 for four servings.
Word has since spread like wildfire and its efficacy has been backed up by two recent studies: one which showed a drastic reduction in GI issues compared to other bicarb supplements, and another that suggests a performance benefit of 1.4% during a 40km cycling time trial.
That may sound small, but at elite level itâd be colossal. In the menâs 800m on the track, itâd mean an improvement of 1.4 seconds for the worldâs best â the difference between first and seventh in this yearâs Olympic final. In the menâs Olympic cycling time trial in Paris, it would have equated to a 30-second benefit â the difference between first and fifth.
One elite-level coach I spoke to estimates 50-60% of top-level 400m sprinters are now taking bicarb before races, while in the 800m itâs been estimated at 80%. Itâs also hugely popular in rowing, cycling and other sports where muscle acidosis is a limiting factor.
Of course, the thinking has changed in this sphere in recent decades. For a long time, the build-up of lactic acid was believed to be the chief driver of fatigue and if you watch top-level athletics, cycling or swimming today, youâll still hear athletes and commentators speak about it as the villain. But thatâs an outdated, incorrect assumption. Itâs now well understood that lactate â the base component of lactic acid â is a fuel source and itâs actually the excess of hydrogen ions created during intense exercise that causes the burn we feel in races or while maxing out in a weights session.
Bicarb helps to neutralise the hydrogen ionsâ ability to interfere with muscle contractions, which ultimately delays that wading-through-treacle fatigue we see at the end of a 400m or 800m.
Since Maurten released Bicarb System last year, thereâs been a notable reduction in 800m times. If we take the quickest and 10th-quickest performances on the menâs and womenâs sides and compare 2024 to 2023, the average improvement has been just over a second. Of course, correlation does not equal causation and there are other possible explanations, from it being Olympic year to improvements in spike technology, track surfaces and the potential use of banned substances.
But still, itâs notable that Keely Hodgkinson, the womenâs 800m Olympic champion, is a bicarb user, her coach Trevor Painter telling The Telegraph in July he âcouldnât recommend it strongly enoughâ while menâs Olympic 800m silver medallist Marco Arop said he tried it because âeverybody else is using itâ and that it was âworking wondersâ.
Traditionally, bicarb was consumed in large capsules that were broken down in the gut, but Maurten developed a way of delivering it in mini-pills that athletes mix into a hydrogel âsoup,â according to Robbie Lawless, an Irishman who is the companyâs head of marketing and communications.
âBicarb has been around a long time and the performance benefits have been known, but thereâs always been this huge risk in taking it because of the GI issues that come from taking bicarb and mixing it with your stomach acid,â he says. âExplosive diarrhea is one of the symptoms.â
Lawless says their product allows the bicarb mini-tablets to âpass through the stomach without dissolvingâ and go âstraight into the intestines where theyâre absorbed into the bloodstream.â Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee is among those who use it, along with the Dutch Olympic rowing team, which won eight medals at the Paris Games. âJudging by the buzz itâs creating at track events and talking to athletes, it feels like a bit of a bicarb frenzy,â says Lawless. âAt least 50% of the 800m finalists in Paris used bicarb. Thatâs repeated in rowing, track cycling, with the sprinters and climbers in the pro peloton.
âItâs really early days with this, but weâre seeing athletes are using it even up to ultra events. We canât really say yet how thatâs affecting performance, there isnât really scientific research being done. But what we do know is in the 800m, right on the cusp of that line between sprint and endurance, those events where you still have to deal with the anaerobic effects of hydrogen ions, itâs having a real impact.â
Lawless says itâs also âused widelyâ in the pro cycling peloton when short-to-medium-length efforts are needed like in mountaintop finishes, time trials or for sprint finishes. âItâs still focused on power-based sports, but the potential is bigger than that. Weâll see that over the next months and years.â
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One athletics manager I spoke with said the effects vary by event and individual, noting one of the Olympic champions he works with saw a huge benefit from taking bicarb while another world-beater, who plies their trade at a longer distance, felt no advantage and has stopped using it.
The side effects also vary by person, and an Olympic-level coach I spoke to was sceptical that the old issue of GI distress has been almost eliminated, given many athletes heâs worked with who take the supplement still have to make that post-race dash to a toilet.
Still, in trying to get to the finish line faster, thatâs a small price theyâre happy to pay. Bicarb is not the only reason athletes are running faster this year, but itâs certainly one of them. As such, it seems this is no fad. At sportâs top tier, bicarb is here to stay.
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