Exploring another new parkrun in Dublin. Brickfields is not too far from Rathmines and a bit smaller than Bushy: the course consists of four laps of the top part of the park. The surface is good although there are lots of leaves, and it is flat.
Last week, I launched my first course looking at psychodynamics. It focuses on Transactional Analysis, a form of psychotherapy that uses our interactions with ourselves and others to gain insight into ourselves and our relationships.
You can preview the course here or watch the trailer below.
Howth is a beautiful peninsula that makes up the top of Dublin bay. The Howth Summit 10k is a Gaelforce event that takes you over the top of it.
The start line and car parking is down at Howth Castle (the train station is also close at hand for those not heading straight to Tesco for the weekly shop after the race) but number collection is at the golf course further up the hill so you’ve climbed one hill before you even start 😂. It took a bit of time to find registration but it eventually turned up around the back of the building.
The route starts with a 3km climb uphill. Some of it is just steep. Other bits of it get technical. A lot of it is single-track through the woods. A few of the sections require scrambling, including one extended section that comes out of the top of the woods and gives you a beautiful view over Portmarnock.
Or at least it would if I had dared to look. It was steep and the soil and gravel were loose. Very much outside of my comfort zone so I decided it would be a bad idea to look down. Once we made it to the top I decided to take a breather and take in some of the beautiful views.
After this, things got easier. We went down for a kilometre and then back up for another kilometre, taking us to the radio mast at the very top of Howth. Completely panoramic views from here including Dublin Bay, Portmarnock, the rest of Howth, Ireland’s Eye and even Lambay Castle in the distance.
The next three kilometres took us downhill on better trail that was easier to run on. I usually lose places on the downhill but I managed to hold my own here and even go past a few people. This section takes you down from the mast all the way ho the coastline. A short road section then follows before the climb up past Howth Castle to the finish line at the Deer Park golf club.
My finish time was:
1:03:22
That was good enough for 184 out of 519 but what I am most proud of is that I took the time to stop and admire the views and pull my pace back when I wanted to. I want to enjoy races like this rather than just blast them as quickly as possible and I think allowing myself to take over an hour to do a 10k is a good step in that direction.
That’s right, I’ve done Bushy parkrun! But not that Bushy parkrun. Bushy park in London is where parkrun started. Bushy park in Dublin also has a lot going for it. It has been running for four years and the course is beautiful. Along the river and through the park. It is almost all in the shade of the trees but still on good-quality tarmac paths and one “hill” that creates less elevation gain than Woodhouse Moor.
Another week, another new parkrun. This one in Poolbeg, which is a park in Sandymount, Dublin. Sandymount is part of Dublin Bay and the course goes along the water for quite a bit of it so the views are beautiful.
There is a single path with runners going ways so overtaking is difficult. If you want a fast time, you will want to position yourself towards the front. The website describes it as mixed surface but it is almost all tarmac or good-quality gravel.
As Chrissie Wellington always says “just because you’re homeless in a foreign country, you can still do a triathlon.” She’s never said those words exactly but I think the sentiment is implied. So, being in Dublin, I signed up for the Swim Smoith Naas Triathlon, a sprint distance race that takes place at the end of September.
It’s pool-based but still includes a 750m (30-length) swim followed by a 20k bike and 5k run. I had hoped that Trinity Triathlon Club would be racing there so there would be some friendly faces but they were off doing a freshers’ week bike ride so a solo adventure it would be (with my cheering squad in the car, of course!). Registration opened at 6:30 and bib numbers were handed out in order so I was number three. I then sat in my car for a while because I couldn’t find transition. Some poor lass was wandering backwards and forwards trying to find it before eventually a crowd gathered and led the way. There was supposed to be a map in the race handbook but it had been missed off.
Most of my triathlon gear is in the UK so I had to improvise: with no race belt I had to safety pin my number to a t-shirt I could pull on after the swim. I only received one number and four safety pins. Two of which I then dropped down the side of my gear stick to disappear forever. Which meant I had to pin my number to the front with only two pins and hope for the best.
The race briefing was late, which was great because then I didn’t feel guilty about a free-race wee even though I was supposed to be on the pool deck by then. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one. The start was a little chaotic. There were four people in each of the five lanes. But it was a mass start. And there are no overtaking mid-lane. I suggested we arrange ourselves in predicted swim times and this worked well. Despite the chaos, our lane marshall was lovely and I kept hearing her shout “go Chris” at the end of each lap.
I sprinted the last few lengths to get my heart rate up before emerging into the cool Irish morning air. It was freezing before the race, but luckily up to 8 degrees by the end of the swim. I didn’t have any of my fancy tri shoes so I had to sit down like a chump and tie my laces on the pair of bike shoe I did have in the country. I also pulled on some arm warmers and my race number t-shirt and was on my way. Even with all of that, I think I still went through T1 faster than some of my early races.
The bike course was reasonably flat. I came off the aero bars for a few of the hills but mostly I was able to stick it out. It was a simple out-and-back. Roads were not closed but there were garda at both ends slowing traffic (there wasn’t much) and when I stopped for a red light the marshalls instructed me to go straight through it. The road surface varied. At one point, my bike started shaking and I wondered whether I had a slow rear puncture. But then the road surface went silky smooth again and I realised that was the cause.
T2 involved more lace-tying and then I was off onto the run. This was also a simple out-and-back with very gentle hills. I didn’t have my super-shoes but my Hoka Bondis got me through. I warmed up on the run in my arm warmers and t-shirt over tri top but not to the point I was overheating. And certainly not enough for the old cup of water over the head trick at the 2.5k aid station.
Post-race goodies included a bottle of water, a banana and a t-shirt. It’s a nice technical shirt with thicker fabric on the front and back and more breathable fabric under the arms.
They didn’t hang around dismantling transition after the race. Most people still had their bikes checked in when they took the barriers away. However, it was a more relaxed event than most and there weren’t many expensive bikes in there. I’m used to being dominated by super-bikes but at this, mine was one of the higher end ones.
The race haven’t released any official results but according to my watch my time was:
1:21:37
And my splits were:
| Discipline | Time |
|---|---|
| SUP | 17:10 |
| T1 | 4:34 |
| Bike | 37:50 |
| T2 | 1:40 |
| Run | 20:23 |
Overall, it was a fun event. A little bit more chaotic than British events but plenty of focus on safety: bikes were checked when racking, clear signage on the race course and plenty of marshalls. And all of those marshalls were very friendly. It’s a lovely way to end the season.
Avondale Forest is a park in County Wicklow. It is about a 20-minute drive from Ashford if you find yourself in Ashford. The course features two loops but a single lap with a slight repeat in the middle, so mostly you are running around terrain you haven’t been on before. It’s all off-road using the gravel paths. There are some hills but none of them are overly steep or long.
Corkagh is a park located in the west of Dublin. It’s a good size and the course is two loops of opposite sides so you run back up the straight you ran down initially but beyond that, there are no loops. There are frees, fields and ponds to run past so it’s all very nice.
I’m still feeling under the weather and running in my easy-pace shoes, so I was pretty happy with 22:11.
Recently, I was on an admin system on one of my websites and noticed that some of the AJAX requests had stopped working. They worked for fetching data, and creating it, but I could not update to delete anything. I tried another website. It happened there, too.
Initially, Slim was telling me it was a 405 Method Now Allowed. But I could see I was sending a PUT and the exception said it must be of type PUT. Very weird. In the end, I decided to output the $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_METHOD’] to see what was going on. It said it was a GET request.
I pulled up Paw, my desktop request client, and manually sent a PUT request to a file I had created to print the request method. It too said GET. By this point then, I knew that it probably Apache converting the request from a PUT to a GET. Or more likely that I was sending a PUT but it was returning a 403 Forbidden as a GET request for some reason.
The answer eventually came in the form of Mod Security. It uses something called OWASP ModSecurity 2.9 Core Rule Set v3.3.2 which allows GET and POST requests but denies PUT and DELETE requests. I am not sure why this is as they are legitimate verbs to be using, but when I altered this to allow PUT requests, everything started working fine again.
