Where did I put that video

I was going to watch some of the Champions League match on TV last night but I started to prepare the article that I published at the end of the evening. I was looking for a photo of the late Cavin Woodward and I was going to try and take a still picture from a video from his 1984 20 miles.

My photo collection is well organised. My video collection is not, or at least it wasn't until last night when I started to put it in good order. By the time I finished that the football was over. I eventually found and scanned a photo of Cavin from an old scrap book and every time I open them I always get distracted. As well as really enjoying looking at old newspaper cuttings I always think of ideas for their use on the website.

It was almost midnight when I finally I got my reflective piece finished. I knew the weather was not going to be nice today but in some ways it was worse than during the coldest days. The snow and the wind was most unpleasant as I ran around the promenade. It was just as well I only intended to go slowly.

Wish you were there

Allan Callow (above) was smiling with Roger Black at the Manx Museum yesterday.

In fact just about everyone who attended the session with Roger was smiling yesterday. But it was a shame that there were so many empty seats.

I'll take the blame.

Back in November I had a lengthly chat with the sponsorship manager at Scottish Widows at the Parish Walk and I think I formed a good relationship for the website. She mentioned that Roger was working for Scottish Widows and I suggested that, if their budget allowed it they brought him over to the island for a motivational talk midway between entries opening and closing but that the talk should only be open to people who had entered that by the date of the talk. I also suggested he could do a number of other things with different groups whilst on the island.

Well, they followed up the idea and when the entries came flooding in last week I thought it was working. But clearly they were not entering to hear the talk.

Its a shame that the empty seats were not filled by people who would have been inspired and of course it could have been open to everyone.

But he did inspire some people - twice.

One walker who attended has decided to train for the 4 x 400 metres instead of the Parish Walk! But then he had been inspired previously to beat Roger Black who (with a lot of winding up by a group of people "in on the act") thought that he really was training to go under 16 hours and that our inspired walker would have to go that fast to beat him.

24 hours to see the light of day

I finished my coverage of Roger Black's visit last night and this morning.

I promised to contact a lot of people yesterday with copies of photos etc. Please give me another 24 hours before you chase me.

I was more pleased with some of the things I produced than others. I wasn't expecting to interview Roger until after his talk and when I got a slot beforehand I didn't give enough thought to the light. The first cut of the question and answer session came out at 10 minutes and 28 seconds (YouTube restricts you to 10 minutes) so I had to trim it again but I was very pleased with the outcome of that one.

It was a great day and as I am about to go and run in the rain I'll find out if he motivated me.

M 10k H01 (Williams 28:34, 2010 Stanford Invite) 10k | 2010 Stanford Invitational on Flotrack

M 10k H01 (Williams 28:34, 2010 Stanford Invite) 10k | 2010 Stanford Invitational on Flotrack

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Two words

I had a few things I was going to write about and add to the site today. But since picking up Andy Fox's email early this afternoon the other things can wait.

The first word together is "Keith" and the second is "Gerrard". Enjoy the video.

Managed to get ahead

I sneaked away from the family to do a household chore an hour ago and after checking my email I ended up tidying up the home page and getting the promotion for the Ramsey Park runs setup - things I had been going to do in the morning.

It took a line in Coronation Street to remind me that the clocks go forward this weekend - bad news for this weekend (especially as we will be on Saturday) but another good sign that the winter will soon be in the past.

Ramsey Park Runs in 3 weeks. Mind you its 9 months until Christmas - how soon before some shops start playing Christmas music? Then again even that is preferable to one seasonal advert that gets played on Manx Radio at 8.14 every morning (and about 300 times throughout the day no doubt) that has me reaching for the off switch.

No overtaking in the Middle East

There are two Formula 1 races scheduled for the next two weeks. So after being very short of sleep recently I know that I will have a chance to catch up soon!

For the last couple of years whilst I have been working in Ballasalla grid position has been all important. You follow the rest of the cars and you have just one place to overtake. But if you used this overtaking opportunity all that happens is you use a bit more fuel and the tyres maybe work a bit harder but you stick in a line for the rest of the way.

This year they have taken away the only overtaking place so everyone just follows one another in the grid positions to save fuel and tyre wear.

Making the Richmond Hill single track has had exactly the same impact as banning refuelling in Formula 1. The grid positions are in the middle east are at the Quarter Bridge.

Bethany's appeal

Just time to get another move another charity appeal from my inbox to the website this morning.

Not a very nice day with the rain. I was out running around Baldwin very early trying to remind myself of what I would have given for daylight and milder temperatures a few weeks ago.

Unthanks

It sounds as if I am just about to have a rant about people who don't appreciate officials.

The above is actually the name of the band I have been to see at the Centenary Centre in Peel.

No time to update the website tonight although I am just going to update the Parish Walk blog with another batch of entries.

Bradash

I received some publicity from Angie Aire recently regarding this year Bradash.

I've now done a promotion on the front page so you can follow the links to www.bradash.com or read Angie's blog at www.parishwalk.com

Doing a Paula

I've spent hours tonight trying to reply to some of my emails but I never get much below the 200 mark. So if you are still waiting for something from me its going to take a while longer as I not going to that for a while.

You wouldn't believe the subject matter I receive. Taking a pit stop in a race was renamed "doing a Paula" after Ms Radcliffe's famous London Marathon comfort break. This photo from Aaron Quinn shows what happens when you try and avoid the call of nature.

http://www.manxathletics.com/Midden.jpg

Don't follow the link if you are easily offended. By the way I did say it was from Aaron and not of Aaron!

Parish blogging

My main emphasis tonight has been at http://parishwalkwebsite2010.blogspot.com/ - quite a few stats.

Tempted to accept a lap short

How many laps do you run? The fastest local marathon runners in Ireland, Britain and Germany in recent years chat after the 20 miles.

I was passing the Manx Harriers clubhouse during the Leinster Management 20 miles this morning with 11 laps to go when Nigel Armstrong shouted out "10 laps to go". "Oh no, there are not" I replied pantomime style. As each remaining lap passed Nigel continued to try and convince me that I was wrong but eventually conceded that I was right - there was an error on the lap scoring sheets (one lap was missing).

This may sound awful to some people who would be delighted with my time, but I haven't spent the winter running around in the cold mornings to run around 2:09:36 for 20 miles. Had I run a lap less my time would have improved by more than 3 minutes.

I'll try not to dwell on my stuff for now though and just want to thank Marie Jackson and all the helpers this morning. The weather was better than expected, the rain stopped just before the start. I was in the lead for around 12 miles (I even lapped Ed Gumbley at one stage) as he stuck to his plan to restrict his workout to 15 miles.

Lots of new faces and personal bests too. And I'm sure they all ran 40 laps.

No cameras

If I take any photos of the 20 miles tomorrow it will be bad news for me as I am supposed to be running it.

Adrian Cowin has provided excellent coverage of the Leinster Management 20 miles in recent years so I hope that he is there tomorrow.

So that I am free to prepare in the morning I have already updated the site as if it is tomorrow.

I got finished at the cottage ahead of schedule and the evening went really fast listening to Manx Radio's excellent coverage of the TT launch. There were a couple of breaks in transmission when their live link dropped but I had two further breaks switching the radio off when the world's most overused advert came on "in the meantime".

Look what Robbie has don

When I got home last night, Robbie was talking 20 words to the dozen when he suddenly said:

"You'll never guess what I have done?".

"Oh no, what now" I replied, expecting to hear that he had bought another copy of the Porsche Owners Club magazine or Reptiles World or some other publication based upon a packaged gift.

"I've gone and won the bl**dy Ramsey Fireman's runs" he told me.

Robbie had never taken part until the second round this year when Laurence Dyer showed him the way around (Robbie was worried about the course and the dark) only for Robbie to put the boot in during the last lap and leave Laurence behind.

Robbie has since improved with ever round and so hard did he try in the last race that he slept most of the weekend to recover. He is listed as Lambdon rather than Lambden and here is his improvement:

Firemans_3_Lap

DATE POS NAME SURNAME TIME HCAP

12/11/2009 47 Robbie Lambdon 39.51 50.51

03/12/2009 1 Robbie Lambdon 36.51 43.51

14/01/2010 13 Robbie Lambdon 36.30 47.10

04/02/2010 6 Robbie Lambdon 35.37 45.57

11/03/2010 14 Robbie Lambdon 35.08 46.28

We weren't able to stay for the presentations last Thursday and amazingly for the Isle of Man nobody had told us of his success. And Robbie read the Manx Independent at his Gran's house before I had bought our copy and the "b" word was used there too when he saw the headline.

The headline this morning is for the Easter Festival. You must get your entry in by tomorrow, which means posting it today. You can offer to help at any time but the sooner the better.

Fixture list updated

Earlier tonight I updated the fixture list on the front page to include the final winter league walk (nobody had told me I had missed it), the Great South Runs (I have linked to Graham's site although I can't actually see the information there yet) and the fixtures through September and October (considering the congestion in earlier months there is actually a healthy break at the end of August although perhaps there will be some track and field events scheduled yet.

I have a headline for the morning but I won't have time to do any updates tomorrow night as I am going straight to the cottage after work and don't expect to get home until about 11 - not much time to pasta load for the 20!

I'll be checking the Parish Walk entries though.

Statistics are frightening

The entries are well and truly flooding in for the Parish Walk. 488 up to a few minutes ago. Is the third time today that I have analysed the entries and its becoming a full time job commentating on my other blog at: http://parishwalkwebsite2010.blogspot.com/

One of the new entries since I updated at lunchtime today is Tony Okell who is the first name listed on the MA website at the moment for his stunning time 20 mile time of 1.46.31 in 2001. I finished second in that race in a personal best time, half a minute inside the two hour barrier. But when Tony finished I still had more than four laps to go!

What the statistics for the 20 miles don't show are the variable weather conditions. In 1997 it was so windy that the electronic clock was blown over several times. In 2006 the event was postponed due to snow but was held on one of the hottest mornings of the summer.

Needless to say Paul Curphey did both of those years plus all the others when the weather has been good. Here is his record:

Position Year Time

3 1990 2:04:37

2 1994 2:01:02

1 1995 1:59:00

2 1996 1:58:31

2 1997 1:58:38

3 1998 2:02:57

1 1999 2:02:14

3 2000 2:07:19

3 2001 2:02:27

1 2002 2:04:49

2 2003 2:06:11

2 2004 2:04:35

3 2005 2:08:48

1 2006 2:14:45

4 20072:13:38

7 2008 2:17:28

11 2009 2:26:16

Hardest preparation for the 20 miles?

Our elder son Robbie decided at Christmas that he wants to run a marathon this year and it the true style of marathon under-estimation he reckons that it should be easy - if he can run a half marathon then all he needs to do to run twice the distance is go a little slower! Oh boy, how many people have made that mistake!

But I told him that if he is going to attempt it he had to do some longer runs and it would help if he could run in the 20 miles in March. Nearly three months have gone by since then with little sign of any longer runs and so I have been dreading Saturday's 20 miles, not just because of my own fear of those 40 laps, but because of fear that Robbie will go to fast and suffer.

We've spent the evening chatting about his race tactics and he is so keen to try and get under 3 hours that he has accepted all my suggestions about following sound good reliable competitors of that standard and getting his drinks at prescribed distances.

So my heading is probably a little bit over the top - listening to Robbie planning each lap for the 50th time was not really as hard as those early morning runs.

Regular visitors to the website will know that it started mainly for the publication of statistics so its great to delve into them tonight as we ease down towards those 40 laps. My task tonight was to list the fastest 50 finishes of all time and there are many stories buried within them.

But let's stick to statistics. Steve Kelly's first 6 finishes averaged 1:51:31 and it was only his solitary race around the NSC in 1996 that dropped his overall average down to 1:53:53. Shocking!

1:54:16 1982

1:49:38 1983

1:50:15 1984

1:50:09 1985

1:50:24 1986

1:54:22 1988

2:08:05 1996

Updates completed

I moved all of the Snaefell Fell Race feature onto a separate page last night but forgot to publish it so if you tried to follow the link in the past 9 hours or so it would not work.

This morning I have moved the promotion for the Roger Black talk from the homepage on the manxathletics.com site to a special "landing" page at parishwalk.com. On the latter site you will now be reminded of how many days there are left to enter (only 11) to qualify before entering the main site.

Keep using the forum although I intend to feature a couple of things that have been posted there on the front page tonight.

Fund raising events

I promised that I would be putting something different on the website tonight and it was in the form on the promotion for the Isle of Man Children's Centre events.

I hope that a few of you will rise to the challenge.

I've had the information about these events for nearly three weeks (it arrived just when we were setting off for Denmark) and although I will do my best to help publicise events, the extra ones can sometimes be the "straw that breaks...." and I already had a pretty full agenda.

Sticky toffee pudding and mustard

I'm going to put something completely different on the website this evening.

But I didn't go near a computer yesterday between about 8 am and 11 pm as I was involved in meetings at work and we took our guests out to dinner at the Station Hotel in Port St Mary in the evening.

I couldn't resist the sticky toffee pudding to complete my over indulgence and this choice fascinated one of our German visitors. He had seen something similar before but not with cream. "Do people sometimes eat that with mustard?" he asked.

Of course he meant custard!

No mustard tonight but news of a few events that are a little bit out of the ordinary.

Defar ahead

With such lovely weather last week I went unprepared for the chill of the wind at the top of Snaefell yesterday. I wouldn't have liked to have stood up there for long had it been really cold!

As it was I was grateful to Nigel Armstrong for helping, I thrust my camera onto him leaving me free to concentrate on video (I'm not sure that my numb hands could have done both), and to Lloyd Taggart for running so fast. His record breaking speed meant that we didn't have to wait long to see the first runner.

I was expecting to get some good shots of the snow covered hills but most of filming was instead of the mist covered hills! The breaks in the cloud gradually became longer as the race progressed.

I got the photos published pretty quickly when I got back home as I usually organise my folders and programs before I go out but as always the video took longer than planned. I try to set a deadline for completion to avoid the exercise taking over too much family time but it is hard to ignore phone calls and I ended up publishing the film much later than planned.

It was first time for many years that I have not watched a good chunk of the Inter Counties Cross Country live but I ended up with about 8 hours of athletics recorded yesterday after setting Sky+ for the World indoors as well.

It is great to read about the Manx performances in Birmingham (see manxharriers.com and the forum) and Gemma Astin was prominent on TV in the early stages. I didn't get the chance to convert the film from Sky+ into something suitable for the website.

In fact much of my viewing of of events had to be done as fast forward or I would have had no time left today. Good to see Jessica Ennis and Dwain Chambers taking gold but whilst writing this I have just realised that I have forgotten to record today's action so I don't know any other results yet.

A remarkable performance by Defar to win the 3,000 metres for the fourth times. Defar ahead made me think back to the Snaefell Race - Lloyd Taggart was Sofar ahead.

Didn't know that I was talking to a hero

On Wednesday evening, just before I left work, I took a call from the police.

They had completed their investigations into the crash on 20 February when a car had been driven into our cottage garden after the driver had lost control on the ice and snow. The police constable was supplying me with the name and address of the driver and giving me his insurance details.

In true Manx style I knew the driver, indeed he will be known to many on this site as someone who competed regularly during his teenage years in cross country, handicap road runs at Peel and track and field until relatively recently.

The main thing was that nobody was badly injured and it was "one of those things" in the sense that it could have happened to anyone. The extra work created for us in getting repairs carried out and doing the paperwork would have been begrudged had it been an accident involving speed or alcohol.

It was the same PC who phoned as had awoken us in the early hours of 20 February so his name was known to me.

But his name is much better known now. A few hours after talking to me he saved the life of the man who had to be rescued from Douglas Harbour. Adam Hawkes is a hero and thank goodness there are people still prepared to take such risks for the good of the community.

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Brave-bobby-swims-to-rescue.6145378.jp

Felt like 40 miles

I completed my coverage of the HSBC Manx Harriers open meeting last night by publishing a number of files containing details of just about every performance in fastest time, name and year order for each distance.

It was 30 years ago that I first competed in the event and the tedium of last night's exercise made it feel like I was doing the one and only 40 mile race that was held at the meeting.

At least I was rewarded with a piece of my mother-in-law's 86th birthday cake and a good laugh at the 1984 videos which I brought to the front page again at the end of the exercise.

I have taken another morning off work to clean the cottage yet again but first I have a session on the super surface at the NSC as I try and get my pace sorted out for the 20 miles a week on Saturday.

I've been paying the price for burning the candle at both end this week with extreme tiredness but there are still a number of people trying to get hold of me for one thing or another that will have to wait.

I'm glad to see that PW entries reached 400 last night and there has been 1 more overnight. Keep them coming.

MT

Sorry guys. I intended to do some work on the website tonight but I had to make a start on all the paperwork that has been building up at my "home office". Didn't even get near to the emails.

My brain is suffering through overuse and lack of sleep so I am not starting anything at this time. I only have one other evening at home this week (tomorrow) before taking Robbie to the Ramsey Fireman's and going to the Young Farmer's Concert on Friday.

Long before the days of text speak I remember someone coming up with O I C U R MT (Oh, I see you are empty). The MT refers to by brain and certainly not to Porto's net (I seemed to be turning around every five minutes to see another goal from Arsenal).

If you are fed up with looking at the same stuff on the website you can always add some of interest to the forum.

Hold the front page

I went straight out from home as soon as I returned from work last night to attend a dinner at Milntown with Marie in her work capacity. As a result of that and my training I have been reduced to five hours sleep so, other than a quick reminder of events planned for the next month, the front page will be unchanged until at least this evening as I have to attend a meeting in Douglas at lunchtime today.

10km photos

The downside of competing in the 10km on Saturday was that I wasn't able to take photos. Does anyone have any?

I got off to a bad start this morning when I realised that I had screwed up my database my pasting forenames and surnames into the opposite columns to previous years. But I got the disappointment of wasting time correcting this after a run around the frosty streets of Douglas when I remembered that the meeting I thought I had on this lunchtime has been put back until tomorrow so I might have a little bit of time for the website later.

Three things

Brilliant job by all concerned at the HSBC Securities Services Manx Harriers open yesterday.

Thanks to PJ for forwarding the results.

As a token effort I have added the 10km results to my database and published the fastest ever 10km runs to the front page but no time for anything else today and pretty restricted tomorrow too.

Priority on Manx Harriers meeting

Not much time for the website yesterday. I attended the Parish Walk lunch which Clerical Medical host for co-sponsors and the media and I'll have a few tales from this another day.

Had a great night at the Fairport Convention concert last night at which we were joined by several athletes.

I've got to get the front page tidied up to publish photos and video of the Manx Harriers meeting tomorrow. My coverage will be additional to the main coverage by Paul Jackson at www.manxharriers.com. Paul is publishing the results etc from the clubhouse.

Bridget Kaneen is still looking for a few more helpers for the day - see the Manx Harriers website.

I'm also having a run tomorrow afternoon at the expense of my average time. I have done the 10km run 7 times and my times have only varied by 46 seconds from 34.57 to 35.43. I am going to be a lot slower tomorrow and whilst chatting to Martin Malone at the lunch yesterday, I asked him not to lap me.

We've got guests arriving at the cottage tomorrow and I have only half cleaned it yet and almost forgot to finish it off. So I am doing that tonight so that I have tomorrow completely clear for the Manx Harriers meeting.

Status Quo to support Fairport Convention

It was announced today that Status Quo are to play at the Villa Marina on 7 July.

It was announced some months ago that Fairport Convention are to play at the Gaiety Theatre on 4 March (tomorrow night).

But did you know that the former are playing second fiddle (pun intended) to Quo in August? Mind you it is Fairport's own festival so they have to top the bill.

Fairport were due to play their farewell gig at Croperdy in 1979. So successful was the open air concert that it became an annual festival in Oxfordshire attracting crowds of 20,000 odd each August. Its a tradition that ex-members of the band, and people like Robert Plant who was briefly in the same band as Fairporter Dave Pegg, join the festival. This year Quo headline on the first of three days.

Last night, after finishing on the website, I spent quite a while watching old YouTube videos of Fairport to get me in the mood for tomorrow night. When Marie was urging me not to stay up too late I said that I just wanted to find a happy song to finish with. "Oh no" she said. "You are going to be very late."

Actually they are a very happy bunch and five fine musicians. I just hope that it is not like the Slade concert, where people expected to see Noddy Holder, with people asking where Sandy Denny is - someone did last year -its nearly 41 years since she left the first time and almost 31years since she died.

In and around watching footie tonight I got the second film from the National Cross Country published with less hassle than the first. I hope to get a final upload done but not sure when yet.

I haven't managed to delve as deeply into my stats for the Manx Harriers open meeting as I intended.

Saved from James Blunt

As mentioned last night, I had two music tracks rejected by YouTube, which added to the delays with the cross country video - I had already taken too long to set up the music in the first place. the problem is that if one of the tracks offends YouTube's licencing then they remove all the audio including the background noises.

I had thought that YouTube were back on good terms with Warner Music but it seems only as far as them publishing their own videos. You cannot use their music for soundtrack.

Oh well, you were saved from James Blunt, but sadly, from Elvis Costello too.

All the big names at Roundhay Park

Its more than 20 years since I went to Roundhay Park in Leeds, travelling with Dougie Corkill (pictured above).

I managed this as a link on the website a few minutes ago when I listed the fastest ever performers in the Manx Harriers 20km walk and used a picture of Mark Easton, the fastest not to have won, from Leeds in 1989.

I went to try the new (and brilliant) surface on the NSC roadway at 6 am this morning. Its a different skill to run multiple laps around there from the hillier courses I have been using of late and, particularly after all the travel at the weekend, I struggled and I am knackered now so I am quitting the website in a few minutes after a quick review of the Parish Walk entries.

Like most things we take for granted

It had been a while since YouTube had blocked any audio so it has really frustrated me to have another one blocked tonight.

So I have finally got the first part of the cross country published with a soundtrack leaving no time for the second one tonight.

I have got more to do on the websites though.

Video audio blocked

I thought I was over the copyright problems with the audio for the videos but the first half of my production of David Griffiths National Cross Country film this evening has gone astray. Its a shame because it took me three attempts to get something I was happy with in the first place.

Time is up for tonight so you can either watch it without the video or wait until tomorrow evening for a new version.

Thanks to David for travelling, filming, editing and copying the film onto DVD before delivering it to me.