Days 26 27 28 Dublin and the half-marathon

 26 got quite frustrated with that Easyjet booking, so decided to leave it. Switched hotels and was surprised to learn we had been upgraded to a 4 bedroom cottage all to ourselves. It was beautiful, so I unpacked and waited for LOTB to arrive, which she duly did after having trouble with the one way system in Dublin, as they had made many changes since she was here last time, installing trams and making it almost all one way streets in the city centre. 

.Went out to dinner at Thunder Road … An American style restaurant  although owned by an Irish guy. 

27 Race day. Got to the start about 7 45 am, big atmosphere down there. LOTB was my support crew. Some runners were in fancy costumes, I saw Elvis and had my photo taken with my arm around a French guy in a red leotard and boobs! I was in the last corral, 14, so there was quite a wait to cross the line. all of a sudden I started running and kept running for 9 miles. Every mile there was a rock band playing. Walked the last 4 miles but ran the last couple of hundred meters. LOTB spotted me at the finish line and we enjoyed the hype of the finish….. And my time going by the computer chip was 2 hours 50 minutes and 8 seconds. This was quite a bit faster than my speed for the Wharf to Wharf and for the Rotorua marathon. 

 We had a celebratory lunch at TGIF, another American style diner. And then I crashed and had a sleep. In the evening we walked around the city centre again and grabbed a pizza to share at a local cafe.  

28 Today LOTB took me on a drive down to the Wicklow mountains, my first real taste of the Irish countryside. We saw some historic buildings which were part of an old church at Glendalough. I must have missed quite a lot on the way home, as I was very tired from yesterday’s run, and dozed off leaving LOTB to navigate. We found our way fairly easily back to our hotel and now we are about to go out for dinner at a pizza restaurant for which LOTB has a voucher. Tomorrow we are off on our 3 day tour of some of Ireland’s beautiful spots, ending up in Belfast on Friday night.