Douglas Ireland

Tag: glasgow

  • The Race I Wasn’t Ready For (I Was Ready For)

    Soundtrack to this post.

    Who gets a cold in August? Me, apparently.

    Wednesday, three days out, I woke up with that first sniffle that you know is going somewhere bad. By Thursday I was fully snotty and sneezy, and Friday wasn’t much better. I very nearly pulled a sickie from work. Then it occurred to me that phoning in sick on Friday and then bragging about a 10K on Monday wasn’t a good look, so I persevered instead.

    I don’t get colds. I’ve always thought I had a strong immune system, right up until I got diagnosed with MS and started to wonder if that same immune system turning on itself was the reason I got MS in the first place. And the medication I take for it works by knocking back part of that immune system on purpose. So I looked it up, and it turns out that’s not just me being dramatic: picking up more colds is a known side effect of the drug. Which was a strange thing to make peace with three days before a race.

    Anyway. The cold had cleared by the time I woke up on Saturday morning. Lucky.

    Douglas standing in front of an Up and Running Events photo backdrop, holding a printed sign reading 'I'm only here for the medal'.
    Setting expectations early.

    I got to Bellahouston Park in good time, picked up my number, took the obligatory daft photo with the sign, and then had about forty minutes of standing around trying not to think about it too hard.

    Close-up of Douglas standing among other runners under trees at the start area, wearing a cap and glasses, looking slightly tense.
    One minute to go.

    I’ve written before about why I signed up for this one at all and how I built the plan to get round it: run nine minutes, walk one, repeat, and don’t chase anybody in the first kilometre. Two laps of the park. I knew the plan. I’d tested the plan all week. Standing at the start line a minute before the start, none of that made me feel any less nervous.

    The start came. I stuck to it. First lap felt exactly as easy as it was supposed to.

    Douglas running along a tree-lined park path, smiling, with race barriers and other runners visible behind him.
    Still enjoying myself at this point.

    Nobody warned me about the hill just after the start line. It’s nothing on lap one, legs fresh, you barely notice it’s there. On lap two, with five kilometres already in my legs, it was a different story entirely. That hill, second time round, was the closest I came to just stopping and walking the rest of the way in. I didn’t. I put my head down, shortened my stride, and got up it.

    Douglas running with a strained, focused expression along a leaf-covered path lined with event barriers.
    Pushing it, last stretch.

    After that it was just a case of holding on. The last kilometre or so I ran the whole thing in, no more walk breaks, because by that point stopping felt harder than not stopping.

    Bellahouston Park 10K 299
    Official finish time
    1:06:05
    chip timed
    Distance10 km
    Course2 laps
    Date22 Aug 2026
    VenueBellahouston Park, Glasgow
    Up and Running Events · Perfect Timing Scotland

    Official chip time: 1:06:05. My phone had me at 1:06:29, so somehow I ran faster than I thought I did, which has never happened to me before and may never happen again.

    Douglas standing on grass near the finish area, smiling and holding up his medal, with his race number still pinned on and a water bottle in his other hand.
    Well chuffed.

    None of this happens without Stephanie. This whole thing was her idea, not mine. I wasn’t sure about it when she first suggested it, if I’m honest, ten kilometres felt like a lot to sign up for off the back of nothing. She talked me into it anyway, and then she stood in the cold at the start line at half past nine on a Saturday morning to see me off, and was there again at the finish.

    Douglas in his running kit and race number with his arm around Stephanie, who is wearing a hoodie and holding a long cane, on the path near the start line.
    Waiting around at the start. She was cold even then.

    And here’s the thing: she’d picked up my cold off me the day before. So the woman who talked me into this stood outside in August, unwell, to cheer on someone who was only running because she’d talked him into it. I’m genuinely glad she pushed me into this, because I’d never have signed up for it on my own.

    Douglas sitting in a café booth drinking from a cup, still wearing his finisher's medal over a hoodie.
    Kept the medal on for the coffee. No regrets.

    Three months ago I couldn’t run for three minutes without stopping. Today I ran ten kilometres. Whatever comes next in the run-up to Paisley, I’ll take that.

  • Bellahouston 10K plan

    Soundtrack to this post.

    Race week Bellahouston Park 10K · Sat 22 Aug
    1. Sat 15 rest A walk if I fancy it.
    2. Sun 16 Long run, outdoors 40 to 45 min, 9 run / 1 walk. Roughly 6.5 to 7 km at about 7:00/km. The one session this week that changes anything.
    3. Mon 17 rest
    4. Tue 18 Easy 30 min Outdoors, same 9 / 1 rhythm. Keeping my legs turning over, nothing more.
    5. Wed 19 rest
    6. Thu 20 Shakeout, 20 min Very gentle. I cut it short or skip it if it feels like effort.
    7. Fri 21 rest Kit out, start time checked, water on.
    8. Sat 22 Bellahouston 10K Two laps of the park. First one should feel too easy.
    Pace band 9 run / 1 walk · target 70 min
    Clock Doing Roughly at
    0:00 to 9:00Run1.4 km
    9:00 to 10:00walk
    10:00 to 19:00Run2.9 km
    19:00 to 20:00walk
    20:00 to 29:00Run4.3 km
    29:00 to 30:00walk
    30:00 to 39:00Run5.8 km
    5K around 35:00
    39:00 to 40:00walk
    40:00 to 49:00Run7.2 km
    49:00 to 50:00walk
    50:00 to 59:00Run8.7 km
    59:00 to 60:00walk
    60:00 onwardsRun it in10 km
    I take the first walk break at 9 minutes even though I will not want to.
    I walk briskly. I do not stop, and I start running the second the minute is up.
    If 9 minutes feels long on the second lap, I drop to 5 run / 1 walk and keep going.
    If the phone fails no audio cues · course signs only
    1. 2km
    2. 4km
    3. 6km
    4. 8km
    I walk for one minute after each of these markers. Four breaks, read off the course signage.
    Two laps of the same 5 km loop, so the 6 km break is at the sign marked 1 km on my second lap, and the 8 km break is at the sign marked 3 km. Worth working out which physical signs those are before the start.
    A walk minute that runs to seventy seconds costs me nothing.
    Between breaks I run at whatever feels conversational.
    From the 8 km break I run the last 2 km all the way in.

  • A Race I’m Not Ready For

    Soundtrack to this post.

    I signed up for the Bellahouston Park 10K this evening, and I regretted it almost immediately.

    It wasn’t my idea. Stephanie talked me into it0, though I won’t pretend the bespoke finisher’s medal didn’t help. I’ve never had a running medal before, and there’s something almost embarrassing about how effective that turned out to be as an incentive.

    Her reasoning went something like this: I’m not going to run it in fifty minutes, or even an hour, so there’s no point going in with any real expectations. But that’s exactly what makes it useful. It’s a fixed point on the calendar, a number I can look back at in a year and measure everything else against. Not a race to win, just a race to have run.

    I’m seven weeks into Couch to 5K. Last week I ran my fastest ever Linwood parkrun, 29:15, a proper PB and comfortably inside the 30-minute 5K target I set myself. That’s the good news. The less good news is that Bellahouston Park is a 10K, on the 22nd of August, and I’ve still got two weeks of Couch to 5K left to run. The race lands right as I finish the programme, not after it.

    Couch to 5K Week 7
    • ✓ Day 1 completed
    • ✓ Day 2 completed
    • ✓ Day 3 completed
    WEEK 7 COMPLETE

    So the honest arithmetic looks like this: double a 29:15 5K and you get somewhere near 58 minutes for 10K, if pace held perfectly over double the distance, which it never does. Distance takes more out of you than a calculator thinks it will, and I’m still closer to the start of a training plan than the middle of one. An hour is not a sensible target for the 22nd of August. It might not even be a realistic one.

    But that’s sort of the point, and it’s why I said yes even while I was regretting it. This whole year is built around one number: a sub-50-minute Paisley 10K, twelve months from now. I’ve written before about starting that plan from a standing stop, and about the parkrun that turned into an unplanned checkpoint along the way. Bellahouston is the first time the plan has been tested against the actual distance rather than a fraction of it. It’s not a rehearsal I chose for myself. It got handed to me, earlier than I’d have picked, at a stage of training where I have no business expecting a good time.

    And that’s exactly why it’s a benchmark and not a race. A benchmark only tells you anything if the first reading is allowed to be a bit rough. If I waited until I felt ready to run a 10K, I’d never get a number down early enough for it to mean anything later. Stephanie’s version of that idea was kinder than mine, when I put it that way to her, she pushed back: “Yeah but can we make it a wee bit more positive? My thought process wasn’t that you were going to be fabulous, you have done really well but this is to see how far you will go.” She wasn’t wrong, and it’s a better way of putting it than mine was. The value isn’t in the time on the day. It’s in having a time at all, from this exact point in the plan, to set against whatever I run in the months after.

    The Doric portico from the demolished Ibroxhill House, standing in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.
    The portico from the demolished Ibroxhill House, now standing in Bellahouston Park, where I’ll be running on the 22nd of August
    Photo: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    So on the 22nd of August I’ll turn up at Bellahouston Park having just finished Couch to 5K, and run further than I’ve ever run in one go, at whatever pace that turns out to mean. I expect it to be slow, and probably uncomfortable somewhere around the seven or eight kilometre mark where the programme hasn’t taken me yet. I’m not signing up to do well. I’m signing up so that next summer, on the actual Paisley start line, I’ve got something honest to compare it to.

    I’m still not entirely sure I should have said yes. But I think Stephanie was right to talk me into it anyway.

  • Kare Burosu at Wagamama, Silverburn

    Soundtrack to this post.

    A black bowl of Kare Burosu, thick udon noodles in a golden curry broth with mushrooms, red chillies, shredded carrot and coriander, with a piece of silken tofu held between chopsticks
    Lifting a piece of silken tofu out of the broth. Kare Burosu at Wagamama, Silverburn, Glasgow, July 2026.
    “Kare Burosu at Wagamama Silverburn” by Douglas Ireland, licensed CC BY 4.0.

    That is me lifting a piece of silken tofu out of a bowl of Kare Burosu at Wagamama in Silverburn, and yes, I am posting a picture of my tea on the internet.

    I do not have much in the way of social media. What I do have is this blog, and it turns out a blog does the job perfectly well. Anyone subscribed by RSS gets this popping up in their reader the same way a photo of somebody’s carbonara appears in a Facebook or Instagram feed. Same picture, same daft caption, no middleman.

    Owning the feed

    The difference is who is holding the steering wheel.

    On the proprietary platforms, you do not get a feed, you get a feed that has been arranged for you. The order is decided by an algorithm, the ads are slotted in between your pals, and the whole thing is tuned to keep you scrolling rather than to show you what you actually asked to see. If you follow somebody, there is no guarantee you will see their posts. If you post something, there is no guarantee your followers will see it.

    RSS is boring by comparison, and boring is the entire point. You subscribe to a site, you get everything that site publishes, in the order it was published, with nothing wedged in between. No ranking, no promoted posts, no “you might also like”. If you get sick of me you unsubscribe and I never find out, which is a much healthier arrangement than a follower count.

    The other bit that matters is the archive. Everything I write lives at my own domain, in files I control, on hosting I pay for. Platforms change their rules, get sold, get shut down, or quietly decide your account is no longer worth keeping. This post will still be here at the same address in ten years because the only person who can take it down is me. That is worth more than reach.

    So yep, this is my Instagram now. Get used to the food photos.

    The scran

    Kare Burosu is a lovely bit of cooking. Thick udon noodles in a golden curry broth, silken tofu, mushrooms, shredded carrot, coriander and a fair scattering of red chillies, and it is plant based from top to bottom. The broth is the star. It has that gentle coconut sweetness underneath and enough spice coming through to make you sit up.

    Nutrition panel for one portion of Kare Burosu showing 706 kcal, with a doughnut chart splitting the calories into 54 per cent carbs, 28 per cent fat and 17 per cent protein, and a table listing 94.8g carbs, 21.9g fat and 30g protein
    The meal logged in Nourish, my own calorie counter. One portion, 706 kcal, 30g of plant based protein.
    “Kare Burosu logged in Nourish” by Douglas Ireland, licensed CC BY 4.0. Nutrition figures are Wagamama’s own published data.

    Regular readers will know I am a recovering food addict. I have written about that properly over in I’ll Start Tomorrow, so I will not go over the whole thing again here, but the short version is that eating out used to be a guessing game I would rather not play.

    This is where Wagamama deserve credit. Their website has the full nutrition for every dish on the menu, so I could sit down knowing exactly what I was ordering and log it properly afterwards in Nourish, my own calorie counter. 706 kcal, 30g of protein, and all of that protein plant based. Thirty grams from a bowl of noodles is not to be sniffed at.

    Restaurants that publish their numbers make life enormously easier for anyone who tracks what they eat, for whatever reason. It costs them nothing and it means people like me can order confidently instead of picking the safest looking thing on the menu and hoping.

    Double spicy

    Kare Burosu is Stephanie’s dish. She has been ordering it for years and she is the reason I had it at all, because I looked at the menu, remembered how good hers always smells, and asked for the same. These last couple of years she has taken to lifting the chillies out before she starts, and last night they came across into my bowl. Her broth ended up pitched where she likes it, mine ended up with double the heat, and we both got the dinner we wanted out of it.

    Reader, I loved it. Nose running, but I loved it.

    A great evening out, a great bowl of noodles, and a picture of it posted somewhere I actually own.