Category Archives: Ireland

Run-A-Muck Challenge … awesome fun

After being coaxed into it by a mate on the football team I partook in the inaugural Run-A-Muck Challenge in Clonkeeran House, Co. Kildare. It was probably the most fun race I have ever “competed” in. It was just like when myself and my brother went mountain running in Norway except there was a shit loads more mud and 748 more people!

It was a 9km race around fields through ditches, swamps, under bridges, woods and over purpose built obstacles. I got in a awful state running around but managed to come in 6th position which is my highest race position to date.

RunAMuck

RunAMuck

RunAMuck

There are some more photos @ actionphotography.ie and on flickr too. A very well organised event – I’ll definitely be doing it again.

Dublin- Clare in just over 2 hours

The new motorway between Dublin and Galway is now complete and open all the way down now. Because of this I managed to get down from Dublin to my Dad’s place near Ballyvaughan in just over two hours. Only a few years ago the journey used to take over 4 hours. For once I saw the justification of my road tax.

Gleninagh Quay

Homeward bound.. yet again

I’ve been back in Wales for 11 months but the time has come to venture back to Dublin again. Various reasons led to my decision to head back, the commute for one was getting too expensive and with GAA season starting again soon I’d be going back every weekend again.

The biggest reason however was the opportunity arose to join Ticket-Text. A couple of friends for my time at Ammado are part of the core team there. I start on Monday and can’t wait to get stuck into Python, Django and JQuery.

Before that though I’m off to Leeds for my buddy Enda’s stag weekend… oh dear!!!!

29

Thanks to all for coming out on Saturday night to celebrate my 29th year on this god forsaken credit crunching land. It turned into a bit of a lads fest with a trip to the dog track and getting blind drunk in town. I’m only one away from the triocha now….. arghh!!!!!!

Lads showing off their Mo's

The lads were showing off their Mos too. Congrats to all of them

SMS goodness

Today I had to book a ticket so I can go and help my Dad with some building work he is doing. The wonderful Aer Arann have a flight from Manchester to Galway so I figured I’d get that. I found a flight for the Friday night and booked it. A few seconds later I received a text message with the flight details and my booking number. Super, no need to print anything.
I then had to book a train ticket to get to Manchester airport (which very conveniently has a train station), I searched National Rail and was able to SMS the itinerary to my phone, awesome. I  didn’t buy my ticket from National Rail as I already have an account with The Train Line so I bought my ticket from them instead. Shortly after I received a text message with my order details.

I think using SMS like that is absolutely brilliant, I don’t have to print anything, check my email or remember to bring anything at all with me. I do like to see progress like this. Good work

Marathonfoto.com rip off

I posted a reply on the boards.ie Dublin Marathon 2008 thread and through I’d cross post here.

Hi guys, I’ve not read all the posts yet but well done to all. It was a great day.

It was my first and with a injury from the half marathon I struggled across in 4.07, sooooo happy to finish.

Throughout the whole adidas series I’ve been outraged at the price of the marathonfoto.com photos, €25 per download is insane!! You can get a CD with all your photos for €35 (which makes no sense at all) but you’ve got to wait about two weeks for that.

So in the interim I’ve managed to sniff the url for the higer res images (used in the flash based image cropper [which they seem to have disabled for this race]).

If your thumbnail page URL is

http://www.marathonfoto.com/order_assigned_photos.cfm?BFI=c32mk37rje&OID=22272008F1&BibNumber=7265&CustomerNumber=S24G12&Currency=EUR&Language=EN

you need to extract the customer number from it, mine is S24G12.

When viewing this page you can see all your photos with a number to the right. This is the photos number. The first one on my page is 55798583.

Using this photos number and my customer number I can download a much higher res version of the photo than the crappy thumbnail

http://www.marathonfoto.com/image_server.cfm?image_type=PhotoProof&customer_number=S24G12&negs_number=55798583&Orientation=P

Where you replace S24G12 with your customer number and 55798583 with your photo number.

I hope the above is useful 🙂

Finally, I don’t want to be too negative so I will say that marathonfoto.com is a great service but your thumbnails suck and your pricing model is bizarre. I have officially complained to them and they will be getting €35 from me when they’ve completed the identification of the race.

Impossible is nothing

“There will be days when you don’t know whether you can run a marathon, but there will be a lifetime knowing that you have – impossible is nothing”

I’ll give a more detailed post soon about the pain of the marathon but suffice to say I managed to finish it.

Impossible is nothing

Mr. and Mrs. Smyth

My two friends, Frank and Nicola, finally got married at the weekend. It was without a doubt one of the best weekends ever. I expect the hangover following the weekend to be equally epic. Well done guys!!!! Sadly I’ve no pictures of the weekend trip to Roundstone as my camera was mysteriously smashed (there’s no mystery really – there’s a 100% chance it was me acting the billy goat).

Frank and Nic

Frank and Nic walk down the aisle as man and wife (FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I can only presume this is the pre-nup they're signing.

I can only presume this is the pre-nup they’re signing.

Me and the beautiful bride
Me and the beautiful bride

All the lads

All the lads

Lake Garadice 2008 (triathlon number 2)

On Sunday last myself and big Frank borrowed my mum’s car (as it has a hitch) and drove across to Leitrim with our bikes and butterflies in our bellies. Frank did the same race last year and said he really enjoyed and it was my first open water race. This was meant to be my first race but I managed to get a place in the Fingal Sprint in the last few days.

It was a great race but I was very very nervous before it as I had never swam that far in open water before. Even the swim to the starting line seemed daunting. The klaxon for the start of the swim went and pandemonium ensued. Most people were forcing their way forward but I think I was the only one pushing people in front of me to try and get as far back as I could. I took it very easy stopping to breast stroke every 30-50 metres to catch my breath. I finally made it to the bike transition (somehow managing to take a minute off my Fingal swim time). It was no wonder the swim was so sluggish when you consider my wetsuit filled with water – thanks Lidl!!!.

I danced and fumbled my way out of my suit and onto my bike and and off down the road. It was a tough bike ride with plenty of hills but I got a good time (taking a minute off Fingal again). The transition from bike to run was easier this time as I had remembered to tie my laces before the race this time. I had a good week of running training before the race and knew I could make some time on the run. That I did – coming tenth over all on the run leg of the race.

My official race results.

0:19:12 (Position in the swim leg – 143rd /152)

0:01:31 transition from swim to bike

0:39:56 (Position in the run leg – 64th /152)

0:00:43 transition from bike to run

0:21:05 (Position in the run leg – 10th /152)

1:22:26 (Overall position 63rd /152)

As you can see my swim needs ALOT of work.

Frank came 34th overall, only 4 outside his personal goal for this year of being in top 20%. The bottom photo is Mark – Sarahs boyfriend who did his first official tri coming an amazing 33rd.

One thing I did learn from the race was that I didn’t eat enough carbs after as I got a little too tipsy too easily on Sunday night and I had a huge sugar low on Monday morning (I was the laughing stock at training) which was quickly fixed with two lion bars, a moro, a pack of skittles and a bottle of Pepsi – I still feel like crap two days later. I haven’t eaten that much sugar in months.

FinishingTriinLakeGaradice

FrankRunTriinLakeGaradice

MarkRunTriinLakeGaradice

3dtri took 444 photos of the event and they’re all up on flickr.

Monster Commute

Late February of this year I started back working for Karova. As I lived in Dublin at the time it meant a monster of a commute every week, staying at a friends during the week and coming back to Dublin at the weekends. I still do the same commute but I now have my own place in Colwyn Bay which is only 2 minutes walk from the train station and about a minute walk to work. When I add up the commute time (which ranges between 11 and 14 hours a week) it is not far off what I spent on the trains when commuting to Dublin city centre and I get to work or watch DVDs on the ferry/train. All in all it’s an enjoyable trip every week. A little tiring but it means I can stay committed to GAA and my triathalon/marathon training. One thing I have learned on my commutes is that Family Guy is absolutely hilarious.