Beautiful parkrun. Located at Ardgillan Castle, the stately home overlooks large grounds that trail down to the sea. Meaning you get beautiful architecture, country grounds and a sea view all in one. It’s hilly, though. Not quite as bad as Temple Newsam but then very few courses are.
I got a lovely welcome from the parkrun team and there was a nice cafe for refreshments after the run. Recommended!
This was the final parkrun I needed to complete my set of County Dublin so pretty chuffed to have achieved that.
Sandyford 5k is an evening race that loops around the Sandyford business district. I wasn’t pushing too hard given my ankle is still a problem so was happy to get home in 25:30. Cabinteely enters a bunch of teams, though, and they picked up prizes in both the mixed and ladies teams!
Too hot! But under 24 minutes. Got a bit caught up from taking it easy. I did turn up with some homemade biscuits and they all got eaten so I’m taking that as a victory. Thanks to all of the volunteers and Rob for directing.
In 2015, James Lawrence, also known as the Iron Cowboy, set the world record for number of full distance triathlons completed on consecutive days: 50. In 2021, he raised the bar to 100 and then in 2023, Sean Conway raised the bar to 105.
Last week, Jonas Deichmann kicked off Challenge 120: an attempt to complete 120 full distance triathlons in 120 days. For reference, that is a 3.8 km swim, 180 km cycle and a 42.2 km run (full marathon) each day. You can follow him each day on his live tracker and there are daily updates on Instagram, too.
Not a real milestone. My running form looks pretty good, though. Thanks Dermot for the photo.
Donabate parkrun takes place at Newbridge House & Farm. It’s a beautiful country house and the drive in passes a ruined tower, plenty of trees and open grass. The house looks lovely from the front (see below) but not quite as nice from the side (see above).
The run is one large lap and then one shorter lap so you don’t repeat too much. There is a nice cafe for on-site snacks after the run, too.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life is an inspiration-style self-help book by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is part auto-biography with each rule taken from his life and illustrated by the success it brought him.
The rules are typical for what you would expect in this kind of book: set a vision and work your arse off to get it. But Schwarzenegger places an emphasis on humility and listening, documenting his failures as much as his successes. For example, he hates the term “self-made man” because it ignores all of the people who helped him.
There is a dichotomy in the message. You have to ignore the nay-sayers. But you also have to work together and build consensus with others.
People without vision are threatened by those who have it
It is written in a very conversational style, or at least read this way. Schwarzenegger narrates the audiobook and it is peppered with jokes, apologies if his dog makes any noise and a sense of wonder at some of the amazing people’s stories he uses in the book.
I did take exception when he talked about Reg Park coming from a “small industrial town” in the north of England. Reg Park came from Leeds. It is the second biggest city in the sixth largest economy in the world. And we didn’t even get a name-drop 😆.
Counselling Adolescents: The Proactive Approach is a textbook on youth counselling by Geldard & Geldard. It’s one of the classic textbooks on counselling young people.
It’s an interegrative counselling philosophy. There are bits of SFBT, Person-Centred, Transactional Analysis, psychodynamic and behavioural approaches in here. It’s also a little dated but not out-of-date. That said, I didn’t find it quite as useful as many of my colleagues have.
Last weekend I went to River Valley parkrun. It is a lovely course: two laps of the park including running along the stream in the middle of the park. There is a hill but it is nothing compared to Temple Newsam.
I hadn’t run since Westport marathon so I was pretty pleased to be just over 26 minutes. This one takes me to 348, so only two to go until the next unofficial milestone. I did get sunburnt, though! It hasn’t stopped raining since October and at 9:30 am I managed to catch the sun.
Sean Conway is an ultra-endurance athlete. But he is also a pretty normal guy. Until 30 he was a photographer before deciding his life as boring and quitting to do cool stuff. He cycled around the world, completed a triathlon along the entire British coastline and last year set the world record when he completed 105 full distance triathlons in 105 days.
The talk was him telling his life story which was highly entertaining. Plus I got a signed book.
If you like following this kind of thing, Sean said Jonas Deichmann is going for 120 triathlons this year. Sean and Jonas have been friends since Sean took the self-supported cycling across Europe record off Jonas: some friendly competition going on at the moment!