Ireland day 1190. Tuesday 31 December 2024- 2778 km

Today’s summary	We both did some more exercise focusing on distance and pace today – Val did a 10k run and I did a 12k walk though her pace at 8:41/km was better than mine at 8:59. I have some catching up to do. This was my last walk of 2024 and brought my total hiked for the year to 2778 km / 1726 mi. My best since 2021. Received my free travel confirmation letter, then had the last of the turkey curry for dinner and watched “Citizen Kane” on Amazon to bring in the new year
Today’s weather	Rain all day. Moderate to strong south westerly wind. Appx 10c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange 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): 2778 km NB the “pace” shown on the screenshot is faster than the “pace” I quote in the text, because the former ignores periods when I was stationary (eg to take a photo) whereas the latter includes them

Commentary

After yesterday’s jog-hike trial, I expected to wake up feeling sore this morning – but, to my surprise, I didn’t feel too bad. As it was another blissful day when neither of us had any commitments, we both decided to take advantage of the freedom and the fact that we felt quite good, to go out and continue working on pace and distance improvement. But because our training styles are different, we elected to go out separately. Val wanted to focus on a longer, gentle, jog whereas I wanted to skip the jogging bit, in the interests of hip-reservation, and just walk as fast as I could over a decent distance.

In the end, Val did better than me, covering 10.62km at 8:41m/km whereas I did 12.70km at 8:59m/km. So there’s plenty of room for improvement in 2025, and a little competition never did anyone any harm! And it was a pretty wet miserable day today, with a bit of a headwind in parts, so I probably wasn’t at my peak performance.

But my effort at speed-walking today was my last hike of 2024. It brought my total walked for the year to 2778 km (1726 mi) which was my best effort since 2021. Last year, I “only” managed 2138 km though in my defence, I did take some time out in March that year to get my hip replaced.

I finished my walk at the An Post in Malahide, as I needed to get some stamps and birthday cards. Then when I got back to Malahide, I got a nice New Year surprise. The postman had delivered a letter from the Department of Social Welfare, confirming that my application for free travel, now that I am 66, had been approved. I will shortly received a card which I can use to travel on all of RoIreland’s trains and buses for free. It almost makes it worthwhile to be an OAP!

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent warming up after our chilly wet excursions, finishing off the turkey curry, and watching “Citizen Kane” – a classic we’ve never seen – on Amazon. Then maybe even a “wee dram” to see in the New Year.

Here’s to 2025!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Full of enthusiasm – and dry – at the start. All that had changed by the end	Relatively mild and wet weather has seen a few toadstools popping up in the playing fields

Returning along the Malahide beach, from the recently-exposed steps. Not many people about	Finished my walk at the Post Office, by SuperValu, as I had to get some stamps

I really like the customisable dashboard on Locus Maps. I’ve set it to show average pace since the start of the walk (in red) which is very handy for ensuring you are on track to meet your target	Woo-Hoo – the best New Year news. As I am over 66 now, I am entitled to free travel in Ireland! One of the dubious benefits of being an OAP I suppose

Portmarnock town centre looking very wet (though nobody has ever been able to tell me where the centre of Portmarnock actually is)