Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

The other thing that has kept my blog relatively quiet over January is that Elina had surgery. It was a success but recovery hasn’t been as smooth as we hoped so it has been a busy time caring for both Elina and Venla and still attend to work, studying and my own wellbeing.

I’m delighted to have her back home with us. She is the centre of my world and I love her so much.

Her health insurance covered her to recover on a private ward. Check out how nice it is:

This is a good place to recover. It’s quiet enough that you can get some rest. Food comes with vegetables. And staff don’t tell you off if you have a panic attack. Everyone deserves this level of care.

One of the main reasons there is nothing on my blog this month is that I have my head burried in writing a research paper. Even though I’m not at the writing stage yet. The paper is on mental health in ultra-endurance athletes and I’m currently on the data analysis stage. Watch this space. But not too closely because it’s a slow process.

I’m old. How old? In January I ran my first masters race. Masters is a running category for those over 35. With age comes infirmity and I was ill for quite a lot of the month. But I did attend Mark Knopfer’s guitar auction and Running For Beginners reached 100,000 members.

The San Francisco 49ers were back at the Super Bowl in February. Even though they lost it was an excellent game. I ran at the Dublin Universities colours xc race and did not come last. We managed to fit in a family hike up Three Rock. Unfortunately, my ankle was causing me problems so that was the last run for a while.

There was snow in March. Despite not being able to run, I got plenty of parkrun tourism in, walking Poppintree, Tolka Valley and Malahide. We celebrated Elina’s birthday and St Patrick’s Day. Jasmin Paris became the first woman to complete the Barkley Marathons. Vaughan Gething became First Minister of Wales, making it the first time all four home nations leaders were women or persons of colour.

I launched my strength and conditioning course on on Udemy in April and set my parkrun walking pb at Royal Canal parkrun, finishing in 33:38. We took a trip to Westport where unfortunately I was a DNF at Westport marathon. I did some more parkrun tourism at River Valley and Donabate. Sean Conway came to town and Triathlon For Beginners reached 100,000 members.

I celebrated my 350th parkrun in May. I also completed the Blackrock 5k, Sandyford 5k, and the fourth edition of Around The Park, Around The Clock. We visited Ardgillan Castle for some more parkrun tourism. Jonas Deichmann started his attempt to complete 120 full distance triathlons in 120 days. Tadej Poga?ar dominated the Giro, Leeds lost another play-off final and British were relegated at the ice hockey world championships. Switzerland lost in the final but made up for it by winning Eurovision.

After three months of the bike shop trying to fix my bike, I finally got it back in June. I did more parkrun tourism at Russborough, Carlow, Kilkenny and Vicarstown. The latter earned me my 50th different event. I also ran the Thoroughbred 10k. We visited the national reptile zoo and, more importantly, the Chocolate Garden just in time for Father’s Day. I launched my Emotion-Focused Therapy course. We said goodbye to Michael Mosley and hello to the new Anxiety Leeds portal.

I tried to make the most of having my bike back in July and we were delighted to host Elina’s mum and Pauli. I also started a movement streak to see how it would impact my mental health. We visited Belfast and took in the zoo, Ulster Folk Museum and Queen’s parkrun. I also took a trip to Oldbridge parkrun. England’s men’s team made it to another final at Euro 2024 and Mark Cavendish broke the all time record for most stage wins at the Tour de France. Julian Assange was freed.

Venla and I made the most of the summer holidays in August, visiting the funfair and the Explorium. We also took trips to Flamingo Land, Bolton Abbey and Bunratty Castle. We celebrated Gran’s birthday with a garden party. I took part in the Cycle Against Suicide sportive and did some parkrun tourism at Thorp Perrow and Illaunmanagh, completing the namely challenge. The other half of the month was a blur of watching the Oympics.

We relaunched DUCC in September and watched even more sport with the Paralympics. I launched my Occupational Psychology course and reached 100,000 students on Udemy. Jonas Deichmann successfully completed Challenge 120.

Despite a long of illness in September I managed to stumble around the 10k at EcoTrail Wicklow and completed one of the most challenging races in my life at Dublin marathon. There was lots more to celebrate with our wedding anniversary, Venla’s birthday, my birthday, Halloween and Kim’s wedding. We finally found the club bikes and got some autumn cycling done.

We visited Galway in November and yes, there was a parkrun. I ticked off University of Galway as well as Edwin Carolan Community earlier in the month. UoG allowed me to tick off the spell “parkrun” challenge. It was a busy month for DUCC, too, with our first track day of the year and hosting a mini triathlon.

Finally, in December, we kept active with hiking and parkrun tourism, as well as celebrating the launch of a new junior parkrun event. All of that added up to me completing the parkrun obsessive achievement by doing 50 parkruns in the same year. We also finished the triathlon year with a swim video analysis session. Then we did Christmassy things including meeting Santa, Venla’s winter concert, baking and plenty of time with family and friends.

What’s the standard unit of measurement for evelvation gain? TrainingPeaks has gone with giraffes and I’m on board with it.

We hiked up a hill. Classic Snowdon style: drive most of the way up to th highest car park and then walk the last little bit. And I didn’t even summit it as I wasn’t feeling great. Beautiful scenery none the less, though.

We went out for my birthday to a local Thai restaurant. But I didn’t check the opening times and it turns out they don’t open for lunch. Luckily, we found a lovely restaurant just down the street.

Earlier this month, Kim and Steve tied the knot. The wedding was held at Bagden Hall Hotel in Denby Dale and included a cèilidh, hog roast and wedding-themed quiz. Best of all, though, it was a reunion of most of the Thundercats team from Sky and a wonderful opportunity for us to catch up. We also made plentiful use of the photo booth. Thanks so much for the invite Kim and hope you had a brilliant day.

DUCC has a bunch of bikes for members to use. Except that last year the university moved them and didn’t tell us where they had put them. Ans infact, they didn’t seem to know. When I went down there the first time, nobody knew where they were. Luckily, our former captain was still around and led us to to the back of an abandoned pub where there was a locked storage room with a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard”.

We’ve now successfully liberated three of them and tested them out on some club rides!

Bunratty Castle is a castle and folk park that is open to the public. Folk parks are living museums where traditional buildings have been relocated and are often populated with staff playing characters and or demoing 19th century trades. We’ve done St Fagans and Ulster and this one was also good.

Ulster was excellent: great role-plays and lots of cool stuff. But it was quite spread out. Bunratty was all a little more compact and the map was spot on so it was easy to find your way around.

History, countryside, ice cream. Yorkshire at its best.