Ireland day 0597. Thursday 18 May 2023- Pace *

Ireland day 0597. Thursday 18 May 2023- Pace

Today’s summary	Val was at work and I went to the gym then on a power-walk up Paddy’s Hill to try and increase my pace. Some progress made.
Today’s weather	Overcast but bright and dry all day, with some sunny intervals. Light westerly wind. Appx 16C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Paddy's Hill pace improvement

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

Another working day for Val, and as I was pretty much up to date on the domestic chores, I used the first part of the morning to catch up on the news and start some Spanish revision.

Now that the second year of classes has finished, I wanted to see how much I could remember from the classes at beginning of the first year. The answer was – not much. Once that slightly dispiriting discovery had been made, I decided to spend a couple of hours at the gym. Essentially it was a bit of a re-run of Tuesday, and I enjoyed it.

On the way back after the gym, I did a bit of shopping then on return to the flat I had lunch and contemplated the afternoon. After a few moments reflection, I concluded that I needed to do some work on my walking pace. Before my hip started giving me trouble, I used to be able maintain 9m30s/km (appx 4 mph) over reasonably long walks. But by the time I had the operation that pace had probably halved. So today since most of the pain seems to have gone (famous last words) I wanted to start getting the pace back up again and thought I would have a go by speeding up the Paddy’s Hill circuit a bit.

It turned out to be an enjoyable walk – not too cold or windy, and lots of bright flowers – and in the end I managed 10m24s over the 7.5km loop. I felt that was definitely heading in the right direction, but clearly with some room for improvement still. But pleased with progress so far anyway, especially as I didn’t use poles today.

Now Val is back from work, but out on a power-walk round the demesne (will be interesting to see if she can beat my 10m24s/km) and then I’m going to heat some Tesco pop-pop ready meals for dinner. Yes. I know it’s cheating, but they were on offer half price so how could I say no?

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Vast wide open spaces – the playing fields near the St Sylvester’s end of the demesne	I love the way the path from the Jameson Estate to Paddy’s Hill seems to lead direct to the sea. Reminds me of sunny summery beach holidays, even in the winter

Looking over to the Jameson Orchard from Paddy’s Hill	Lambay in all its splendour

From the top of the hill, looking across the Malahide estuary towards Portrane	This seems to be an iconic view from Malahide beach at low tide, looking over to Lambay. At least I assume it’s iconic, as I’ve seen large scale prints of it for sale in art galleries in Malahide

The abandoned vessel in Malahide harbour seems to be decaying right before our eyes. Now the deck is becoming semi-submerged at high tide