7th of October, I did a little run…well about 2km and then 9 to 10km around Grundewald
Overview of Grunewald in relation to the city:
Approximate route of run - don’t actually know cos I followed a group and there were many little paths.
There are actually wild pigs in this forest - should make for interesting running. There is an american radar tower too, used in the past to keep an eye on everything in Eastern Germany presumably….
The map is now up at
http://www.freeforum101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&mforum=universityarena
Entry Form:
http://rhw.ul.ie/universityarena/plassey10k/entryform.pdf
Overview map:
http://rhw.ul.ie/universityarena/plassey10k/plassey10kmap.pdf
Detailed map:
http://rhw.ul.ie/universityarena/plassey10k/plassey10kmap1.pdf
Best of luck to everyone who is in training!!!
Yesterday I really didn’t feel like doing the run - the weather was cat but Aoife was still enthusiastic and I’m so glad I went. Today was almost perfect - dry with a nice breeze and not that cold at all. The time - 42:01 which I’m very happy with considering the training I’ve done and the course - a nice few ups and downs and one large puddle. Dorel was there too and did a very good time, finishing well ahead of me, Kevin and Aoife were behind me then. And Dorel’s little baby did the course in his buggy too! Afterwards we went back to the town hall which looks like a blast from the past but I was very glad of the tea and sandwiches. I was nearly gone when they started drawing spot prizes and as luck would have it, I won Sunday Brunch for 2 in the Woodlands - very nice indeed.
Oh yeah I still saw most the Grand Prix at Emilia’s place. As expected Renault won by strategy and consistency, Ferrari came out very strong and even Jim Rosenthal said how they were an unknown quantity till this race. McLaren car looks interesting to day the least, Raikkonen is still my favourite of the two and if they’re consistent then we could have a good three-way battle on our hands but we certainly have two teams at the top. Even the midfield was full of battles between teams and I loved watching all those passes and pushing and shoving. Nico Rosberg seems to have done brilliantly setting the fastest lap time of the race, coming up from the back of the grid after a spin and he’s only 20!
To clarify - I’m talking about the new F1 season starting in Bahrain this weekend, should be interesting to see how well the teams have done over the Winter, the new teams, driver lineups and the new qualifying setup.
Did you know that it’s Spring here in Ireland but Winter everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere - they all wait till the equinox on the 21st Mar before declaring it to be Spring - article in Wikipedia
Back to the F1 anyway - I suspect Renault will continue to be consistent finishers and near the front, McLaren will be very fast a lot of the time but suffer from reliability problems and other incidents, Ferrari may or may not come back to the front and Honda are sounding good too.
So I think I’m going to do the Adare 10K on Sunday - just found out about it on Thursday but it’s a very manageable distance for me at this stage - not looking for any medals or anything. Aoife and I went to the gym yesterday since the weather was pretty poor. Now Aoife and I have been out a couple of times a weeks for the last few weeks and I had no trouble running, but in the gym without and ipod and the whirring of other treadmills it wasn’t all that interesting - might get some headphones and borrow someone’s mp3 player next time. But fair play to Aoife she started running and didn’t stop for well over and hour and a half - I started on a machine at the other end of the gym cos it was busy, moved over when there was one free, got bored and tried some of the weight machines. That was good actually cos I think I’ve got powerful legs and puny arms from indoor soccer and running. Then I came back to the treadmill and did a bit more.
Driving-wise I am now set to do the test in Limerick, probably will be due at the start of August if the waiting list is accurate. Both lessons went well this week - went out to Raheen on Tue and Moylish on Thu. Moylish is where one of the test centres is and I was surprised at how different it was. Firstly the area has quite a few hills, secondly the road outside the test centre is narrow and has cars parked on both sides and there’s a dip at the entrance. But it was also the first time I came across a crossroads with traffic lights and instead of a yellow box, they have a little white box to pull into for turning right - you either wait for a gap in the traffic or the green arrow…. I’d prefer a roundabout.
Oh yeah, this week we took on Ogra in outdoor soccer - the astroturf wasn’t booked properly so we had a kick-around in the bowl.It was 7-aside, YFG took the lead, then a second, ogra pulled one back, then two, then got a third. YFG equalized again and then noticed that Ogra were playing with an extra player! We applealed for their last goal to be disallowed but they got to play with 6 players for a while instead and it finished 3-all. A tug of war had been arranged too but didn’t go ahead cos Ogra didn’t want to do it on the grass, the road or the running track - I thought I smelled fear in the air…
Okay - Bebo isn’t fond of usernames with dots in them so try this link instead
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=363248643
I also made a nice little purchase over the weekend from Elverys www.elverys.ie - Asics Gel Fusion runners. I had heard that Asics were THE shoes for running but there was so much jargon it was unbelievable. Thankfully Dec put me right and now I hope to bounce along faster and longer than before
Fri 17th - Driving lesson in and around UL, look out everyone! The car has big ISM letters and a little pyramid - I’m glad that people know that there’s danger approaching….
Monday - good talk by a man called Albert on a wireless network based on UMTS in South Africa. They basically gave people something like ASDL over the air using 3G. He spoke about nationwide coverage and the number of masts they had but the reality is more like it plans to be nationwide - currently just major cities and towns. Some good insights into the attidudes and practices of operators though.
Tue - driving lesson into O’Connell St, down Henry St, out to Corbally and Raheen and back to UL. Indoor soccer - scored a goal or two
Wed - no soccer - missing bodies due to meetings and other circumstances
Thu - went for a 10K run
Fri - went up to my sister’s place in Dublin for the weekend
Monday - Some time ago, Nov 04, there was a car crash outside our house. One young man was killed and my brother and I were summonsed to the inquest as we were the first on the scene. The accident was late at night - 1am and the car went up on a ditch, flipped some way or other and the roof was damaged badly. We called the emergency services, helped the other two out of the car but the guy in the back was unconscious and died at the scene shortly afterwards. Another local man stopped to help and he was tremendous - he thought of looking around to find anyone who might have been thrown out, tried to wake the guy in the back of the car and started CPR when he stopped breathing. The ambulance and fire-brigade came as soon as possible and did everything they could quickly and professionally. However that is little consolation to the family of that young man and the driver of the car and so many friends and neighbours. I would like to express my sympathy to them all. The inquest itself was straight forward - each witness stepped up, was sworn in, the superintendent read most statements, there were no furhter questions and no ammendments normally. The main purpose was to establish how rather that why the death occurred. It was very hard for many of those involved. I too was somewhat affected, not only by that case but also the case beforehand which was another tragic accident involving local people.
Tue - had another driving lesson in and around limerick, O’Connell St, out to Raheen and down Henry St - had arranged lessons before I knew about inquest. Indoor soccer too - decided to get back into routine asap. Injured Ronan in the process - sorry! Had the cheek then to go to Ronan’s pancake party. That was a really nice night - plenty of pancakes, friends from the group, tasty fillings and a good rant about films and the like till late.
Wed - soccer again - getting steadily better at it I think but we lost that game.
Thu - the other driving lesson I had booked - O’Connell St, out to Raheen did a nice bit of reversing and hill-starts, down Henry St and back to UL. In the evening then we lengthened the run to a disputed distance. To resolve it we decided to measure it - in my car!!! So under the guidance of Tom and 1 very nervous passenger and driver we did a tour around milford grange, the industrial estate, newtown, monaleen and milford again - 7.4 miles (almost 12K) plus 0.4 miles to get from the house to the starting spot. The car is really pleasant to drive - easy to change gears and steer. I was very cautious approaching the roundabouts, so much so that Damien spotted me and a string of cars behind me! Still though, I’m quite proud of that drive. I felt a little silly then cycling in to UL to a YFG meeting - they did brilliantly at the National Conference, securing all 4 seats contested on the National Exec. - an unprecedented feat.
Today - all quiet so far, thinking of going canvassing for the election - yes, election fever already - and maybe a drive somewhere
PS for anyone on Bebo - I’m now http://Joseph.Johnson.ie.bebo.com
I’m sorry to say that my aunt passed away this day last week. It was very sudden and my heart goes out to her family and my aunts and uncles. I went to the funeral of course and met all the cousins, heard some more stories from people who knew my mother and met some more grandchildren - the next generation.
It was difficult getting back to work for the rest of the week and Friday was dominated by my driving lesson. That went well actually, the instructor is very good and everyone gives me a wide berth when they see the huge ISM letters on the door and sign on the roof. We actually covered pretty much the same route we run sometimes - down the dublin rd, in and around the college (lookout for me and then duck for cover) and up the industrial estate. Also went up by Synotts and Newtown.
Speaking of running, as you can imagine my head was all over the place on Sunday but I had arranged to go for a run and we went ahead with it - cleared my head a bit, about 5 miles. Didn’t go for another run till yesterday but we did go up to about 10k or almost 6.2 miles
As you can also see, I’ve changed the look of the site again - main reason being that there’s a matching theme for the photo gallery. I also didn’t like the way the links were uncategorised and hard to read in the last theme. Also, clicking on the little oval will minimise each entry - nice little touch
Interesting how some people get worked up over a rock (literally). I was doing the crossword in the Indo and one of the clues referred to a disputed island off the coast of Donegal which really surprised me: Rockall. Interesting points - the island was annexed by the UK, just to be sure in 1955, possibly to prevent other countries installing monitoring equipment there. Turns out Greenpeace were the expansionist empire that unilaterally decided to illegally occupy the place forcing god knows how many birds and periwinkles to be disclocated, starve and perish. They called it “Waveland”, the British government were the pacifists in this case and in the end in-fighting led to their withdrawal after something like 42 days - may the birds live in peace once again.
Anyway, back to more serious matters, I’ve run a couple of times again. The usual new year’s resolution of get fit & go swimming is going alright - I’ve been to the Arena either doing Trak Attack or indoor soccer 2 times a week and now I’ve started back running - about 4 miles yesterday and 4 miles on Sunday with a couple of friends. There’s the Plassey 10K to look forward to and perhaps the connemarathon
Happy new year one week back and all is well at the moment. One week back in UL and I think I’ve made some good progress on my literature review and background reading.
Went into Limerick at the weekend for some optibags - no luck, office closed but it was nice to have a walk through the market - it puts Tralee and Listowel to shame really.
Oh dear - I’ve started playing PGR3 - brilliant graphics, cars are quite nice to drive, tracks get a bit repetitive and I’ve suffered 1 Xbox crash after playing for a few hours. It’s cool the way you can play and chat online with friends - not the ones in the same house, rather the ones at the other side of the country.
Mmm, made some burgers today - easy and tasty, all that’s in them is mince, breadcrumbs, an egg and some onion.
Well what did I do over Christmas - we had a 16lb turkey between 4 boys. That was waaay too large - it works out at 1lb per person for 4 days, that’s just too much! It was recommended by someone else….The lads made a great hand at cooking the whole thing and the house was well stocked.
I sat around the kitchen/living room mostly doing the odd bit here and there,
read the new Ross O’Carroll Kelly book (enjoyed that a lot i must say),
watched TV (bog 1/2/3 & 4),
bought a nice new jacket,
went for a run on St. Stephens’s Day where I met the hunt and fell quite silly standing there in shorts,
went for the same run a few days later but it rained at the half-way stage,
Catherine & Joey brought 2 ducks for us and we had a georgous meal and an important lesson - ducks are tasty but mostly bone and horrendous amounts of fat.
The race is run and I was delighted with my time & place (provisional) - 32m 19s and 8th place!
That is the fastest time I’ve ever run 5 miles and the main reason is that I hung onto the coat-tails of Dorel & Sean and a couple of others. The ground was wet but most importantly the drizzle had stopped and there was little or no wind.
Well done to everyone who raised money and took part - either running or stewarding or even supporting us. I think I’ll hang up my running shoes for now and join the swimming pool - need to learn how to swim!