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.
Life has been pretty mad recently. And by recently I mean the past 40 years or so. Even our wedding anniversary itself was filled with rushing around with work and meetings. But we did manage to carve out an hour or two for some takeaway food and watching an episode of Glow. And what more could one want than teriyaki duck and an episode of a wrestling show that contains no wrestling?
This year, we did a cinema party for Venla’s birthday. We watched Trolls followed by pizza. Trying to manage 14 children was not something I was particularly looking forward to but thankfully a few other parents stuck around to help out and nobody died so I think we can count that as a success.
Last week we did a club ride around Phoenix Park. Hugh got some amazing photos at dusk. It was more night time by the time I got there but still lovely to ride around mostly traffic-free or low-traffic roads.
Worrying Is Optional is a self-help book by Ben Eckstein. It uses third-wave cognitive behavioural therapy, drawing on acceptance and commitment therapy and metacognitive therapy to help people reduce their worrying. it’s written in a light-hearted way that should be accessible to everyone and takes you through understanding worry, other ways to deal with worry, retraining your attention and practical exercises for changing your relationship with worry.
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!
Getting something out of this race meant a lot to me.
I only just found out about the event after the registration deadline in 2022. I was in great form from IRONMAN Copenhagen but alas, it wasn’t to be.
So I signed up for the 80k in 2023 and decided to make that my A-race of the year. Health problems got in the way of training and I dropped down to the 47k but in the end I was too ill to run at all for two months and missed the race.
When 2024 rolled around, I opted to register for the 47k as that seemed straightforward. But continuing health issues meant I couldn’t train and even though I dropped down to the 30k, I still wasn’t in any form to complete the race. This year, though, they added a 10k option. I missed the deadline to switch down so ended up having two separate registrations: one for the 30k and one for the 10k. But I made it to the start line.
I wasn’t feeling much better on the day. I was still having stomach issues and my latest attempt to find shorts that did not chafe had ended in failure. Luckily, Bray had clean public toilets.
The race starts by running along the sea front and then heads straight up Bray Head. It’s a climb of just under 200 vertical metres. As we went up, I found my vision got quite blurry. I’m not sure whether it is the low light under the trees as a similar thing happened on the way down where I woul have had a lower heart rate.
The views from the top are beautiful and I stopped to take a few pictures. We then follow the track around the headline for another beautiful view of Greystones before descending into the valley on the far side. There is then a road section into town before climbing and descending Bray Head a second time.
I was so relieved to cross the finish line after battling my stomach, my vision and my nerves. It’s bean a unpleasant descent from IRONMAN triathlete to struggling to run a 10k. But I did run it and I made it to the end. I wasn’t aiming for any kind of time but for the record it was:
1:21:57
It’s a beautiful race and well worth checking out if you like mountains and sea views.
A month ago I read Ender’s Game and it was superb. It sounded too violent for me but it’s actually a brilliant story. Ender’s Shadow is another book by Orson Scott Card that tells the same story from Bean’s point-of-view. It’s equally excellent.
I’ve been struggling with a lot of stress-related injuries recently which have made racing very challenging. But that doesn’t mean that I cannot compete vicariously. I’m back coaching with DUCC. We got a few swim sessions together last year but this year we have a much stronger schedule with three swims per week. We also have a track day coming up in a few weeks so I am looking forward to that.
Yesterday, my total number of Udemy students ticked over 100,000.
It’s a cool landmark. Udemy isn’t the only platform I teach on so I’ve been at this number in totaL for a while. But great to reach it on an influential platform like Udemy alone.
It’s been quite a year for 100,000s as Running For Beginners reached this number in January and Triathlon For Beginners reached this number in April.