Back to the airport

We got back to the Isle of Man on Saturday evening but were up again at 5.30 yesterday morning to take Ben to the airport.

What a nice airport it is too when you are greeted by possibly the world's friendliest security officer, Dougie Corkill.

Two years into his medical studies at the Hull York Medical school Ben decided that five years at university was not enough and so he has taken a year out from his principal studies to do a separate degree at Aalborg University in northern Denmark. Quite a brave decision especially as, in contrast to the normal car load of things students take with them these days, he departed with just 15kg in his backpack and 6kg in his hand luggage to last until Christmas.

After training harder last week than for almost a year I've not done anything in the past couple of days and I am ashamed to say the only time I have been out of the house today was to post my "good for age" entry form for the London Marathon earlier this evening. Ashamed? Yes, because I always advocate not leaving these things to the last minute and it has to be on Friday.

I didn't get very far with my email last week and so, although I have been exchanging a few during the past week, those that have been waiting for replies for more than a week are the ones that are still waiting.

With two races in three days this weekend, other commitments permitting, I plan to publish a few long delayed bits and pieces before then.

Later than planned

It was good to be able to read the results of the Great South Run early on Saturday morning thanks to Graham Davies.

Lewis Veale had his photos online by 8.30 pm on Friday night.

Stan Hall sent me some photos on Saturday which I have today used as a front page feature. They certainly show the contrasting weather. Its really helpful when the numbers are shown on the results so that I can identify anyone that I don't know.

Stan's full set of photos are also available now. All links on the front page of www.manxathletics.com

Thanks to Chris Quine for giving Robbie a lift on Friday and also to Dave Walker who made the same offer. Robbie tells me that he could hardly move into the wind and the rain at the end but he still took a bit of time off his PB on his course debut.

73,000 and counting

When I copied my holiday photos from my laptop to my PC this morning I realised just how disorganised my photo collection has become in the past 18 months during the time that I seem to have been either going to events or going off-island (when not at work).

So I started a tidying up exercise that if I had known how long it was going to take me I could never have faced. Its ok having a good system of backups but you need to maintain the order as well. Sometimes when I am in a rush to publish things I just leave default file names rather than give them meaningful names.

At last I have my photos in good order again - all 73,000 of them. I'll try and put off any more such housekeeping jobs for a while and hopefully tomorrow I shall do a photo spread using files sent by Stan Hall from Port Erin on Friday.

Someone said to be recently that they thought I could just go to my computer and type in a name and I could find all the photos of a particular person. If only I had time for that sort of tagging!

But at least I no longer have photos of my mother-in-law named Carraghan Fell Race! Its usually when I take a couple of photos and leave them on the camera just before I take a whole batch that that sort of thing happens.

Head teacher setting the courses for new year

In addition to assuming his new role as head teacher at St Ninians High School, Andy Fox has been working hard behind the scenes to try and get the winter cross country courses finalised.

The proposed dates are currently being finalised to ensure that each club is happy with the plans and the dates and courses will be finalised soon.

Some things don't change in 25 years

25 years ago we got married without inviting anyone other than my brothers and sister, their spouses and children and our parents.

25 years later we are celebrating our anniversary on our own in Cornwall.

And its Robbie Lambie who earns the reputation for being mean!

On the border

This heading isn't just an excuse to get another Eagles song into the blog but rather a reference to an additional caption to one of the photos on the feature by David Griffiths on Olive Loughnane.

He has added the following:

This photo captures history in two very different ways. The first is of course the world-class athlete in the foreground, who has just written her name into World Athletics Championships history. The other is the thin line of cobblestones running across the photo just to the right of the white line in the road. This marks the course of the Berlin Wall that divided the city from 1961 to 1989. Olive is standing in what was formerly East Berlin; everyone else in the photo is in the former West Berlin. The journalists at the back of the press box in the background are sitting in almost the exact spot from which American President Ronald Reagan delivered his famous speech in 1987 - “Mr Gorbachev, open this gate, tear down this wall!”

David is just about keeping the website going this week.

I have just tried to add a table showing the best performances in the World Championships from www.all-athletics.com website but corrupted the home page and quickly recovered the copy from the server to overwrite the "messed-up copy". So I have given up on that.

A little while ago I was running along Penzance Promenade getting soaked by the waves that were lashing over the top. Lovely weather for a holiday!

The run on Friday night back home will be equally close to the see. I am still trying to get a lift for Robbie from Douglas to Port Erin. If anyone is able to help I should be extremely grateful if they would email murray@manxathletics.com

Isle of Scilly became Isles of Illy

We had talked about going for a day trip to the Isles of Scilly this week and after an early morning run yesterday I reported that the weather was better than expected and we decided to do go for the ferry that morning.

Although it appeared calm I was feeling rough and Marie went one step further and returned her breakfast. But it was worth it to see such a small Island - the biggest has a population of just 1500 and there are only 1800 people in total.

It would be a great place to train given the lack if cars but you would have to do lots of laps if training for a marathon!

The eagle eyed among you will have spotted a small change to David's feature on the front page and I have updated the fixture list to take out the fell race (I forgot to yesterday) but other than that there will be nothing new on the website today.

There was a change yesterday on the fell runners site when Nigel Armstrong was put into second position after initially being given a time half an hour too slow.

Nothing silly about son Ben. Without him we wouldn't be here this week as he kindly looked after Marie's mum yesterday (and is back at hospital with her today) after her long awaited eye operation was scheduled for our holiday. Ben is also looking after Robbie in the house.

Sportsmanship not burnt out

I was watching the presentations from the cricket a short time ago and couldn't help being moved by the real sportsmanship between the two teams.

Whilst London and the south east was enjoying the sunshine, the southwest has been miserable but at least it has given me an excuse to watch some of the sport on SkyPlayer (highly recommended to anyone with a Sky subscription, a good internet connection and a laptop).

And I picked up some of the news from the Creg-ny-Baa Fell Race from Nigel Armstrong who described the awful conditions for that event with many runners going astray in the mist and the rain.

Fell running has always been a sport where everyone appreciates the other athletes performances. But with so much as stake, its good to see that the ashes changing hands did not see any of sports traditional standards going up in smoke.

No pirates in Penzance

I've just published a great article by David Griffiths and wonderful photos by Gail Griffiths from their trip to Berlin.

It was really well set up with well named photos complete with captions that were easy to set against the photos. The only editing I had to do was reduce the photo sizes and doing the setup.

Using www.logmein.com I was able to complete the exercise on my PC in less than half an hour without using any pirated software. And there were no other crimes committed either because it takes a woman longer than that to get ready for a day out.

We are staying in the best self catering property I have ever stayed in with the view from the window above. As with every other town these days though, there was a lot of noise last night.

Looking forward to seeing the fell results later. And a few other sports results.

Emails

I forget to say in the last post that I have loads of emails to reply to and hope to catch up whilst on holiday.

Just received one from David Griffiths back from Berlin. Watch the forum over the next few days for his stories from a great week - he met lots of other Manxies there.

Old quay to Newquay

My day will be starting in a few hours time with a 7 am training session starting from the breakwater in Douglas. It will be longest session for two months, although that won't be hard as I haven't been further than 3 miles. Such a contrast to last year when I tackled a 30 miler a week from now.

After breakfast and a quick change I shall be on the way to our cottage for a 10 am kick off (or is it kick out?) but I have the car loaded up with stuff for the amenity site on the way. Out go two of my oldest computers that were decommissioned years ago but have been taking up space in the attic (they probably account for about 0.01% of the things I have to clear out).

I have had to introduce a few labour saving ideas for tomorrow (such as cutting the grass on the way home tonight) as I have an hour less than normal to get the work done.

I have to be on my way back home for a quick change by 3 pm as we are on the way to Newquay at 4.35.

We'll be staying in Penzance for the next week but I would only ever book a holiday where there is internet access so I shall be working on the website as usual.

Stan Hall will be taking photos at both events this week. Thanks Stan.

I've watched this about 20 times already

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/8213185.stm

No YouTube for Olive

At Olive's Loughnane's request, I have removed the 2000 video of the World Championships silver medalist from YouTube.

I received an email from David Griffiths who is in Berlin and met her last night. Apparently she has had a lot of comment about her collapse at the finish of the 2000 race which formed a part of the film.

Too much studio talk on BBC is not a new complaint

Whilst scanning some more documents I found this one:

http://www.manxathletics.com/forms/1995tv.pdf

I wrote to Athletics Weekly (and it was published) about TV coverage of the world championships and too much studio chat was mentioned.

Polling withdrawn

I had a couple of attempts to set up a poll last night. The one I used was so slow to respond this morning that I have withdrawn it. I'll come back to the subject raised in the next day or two.

Such a miserable morning today. I've just added a picture of Peel Castle I took whilst watching the Western 10 last year as a promotional tool for this year's event in six weeks time.

Go to http://www.westernac.org/ for more information.

Black days

I remember, when I took Robbie to see what were still called the AAA Championships in Birmingham in 2002, how emotional it was.



The three years that had preceeded it were extremely challenging but he was thrilled to be photographed with some of the stars of the era. Best of all was Olympic silver medallist Roger Black (above) who at that time was working for the BBC.



Little did we think that one of the photos that we took, with Phillips Idowu, would end up a rank higher.



What can you say about a man who sets a personal best time to win a world championship? The same as we said 7 years ago. "Thanks Phillips".

Repair your slow running for $15

I thought I had found the answer to my problems today when I read the above as the heading to an email. Then I saw "PC" between "running" and "for"!

26.45 for 10,000 metres only an average time

Did anyone hear that lovely moment on the BBC coverage of the world championships last night when they worked out that Kenenisa Bekele's winning time of 26.45 was exactly the average of his previous 11 races at 10,000 metres?

"Shall I tell him or you, Brendan, that he has only run an average time?" said Steve Cram.

Blame that nice young man from the Ascot

Nothing new added to the website tonight although I have just done the dreaded tidy up and there is now a separate page (with links to each of the others) for every event last week.

Salclear Isle of Man Marathon and Half Marathon

Peel Hill Race

Northern 10km

Anna Maria Cutillo Foxdale 6 miles

Heritage Trail Race

I might have done a little more but when I went out for a walk earlier I met Dave Mackay and I heard his injury story for four hours! Seriously, I really enjoyed chatting to Dave and only wish that he was able to compete in the End to End Walk and had not been forced to pull out of the Parish Walk at Rushen.

Squared eyed

I'm not sure if it is a saying that is still used, but they used to say that if you watched too much TV you would end up squared eyed.

Unlike Keith Gerrard, who said in his interview last week that he didn't have much interest in sport on TV, I could watch it all day if I had time (but I wouldn't get this website done if I did).

After yet another "slowest runs of my life" sessions first thing in the morning I set about watching Match of The Day and all the action from the World Championships yesterday (it can be reduced dramatically with the aid of the 30 times forward if you are watching BBC) in between the various motor cycle races. Family duty this afternoon prevented me from watching all the football but what a fantastic night of athletics, which I watched live.

The reason that I write about this was because although I have so much of a backlog of things to write about, the news that Olive Loughnane had won a silver medal in the world championships changed all my plans for the site.

When people achieve fame there is a tendancy to suddenly only remember all the good points about them and rather like the scene from "Chariots of Fire" we suddenly all claim to have predicted what they were going to achieve.

I am not going to do this. It was through the coaching work of Michael Lane and the hospitality of Allan & Gladys Callow that Olive first came to the old Manx Airlines meeting in 1996.

I always enjoyed meeting the Irish Walkers and in 2000 I recorded the interview which I published on YouTube last year. The film included her collapse at the end of the 20km walk in which she set the qualifying time for Sydney Olympics.

She raced here again in 2005 and returned with company in 2006. Not only did she bring her sister Ann to walk but she was also expecting. It was that year that I was on the same table as her at a Manx Harriers social and Marie and I enjoyed a long chat with her.

If she had never race walked again I would only ever have had nice things to say about her. Olive is as kind and thoughtful person as you could ever meet.

The fact that she has achieved even greater success in recent years shows that we must all stick to our targets even though the end result usually takes far longer than we imagine.

So although I don't know Olive as well as many others from the Isle of Man, and didn't predict her success, hearing of it made me think how happy all those that are really close to her must be for her if I felt so pleased.

So as soon as the athletics coverage was over, I disconnected my square eyes from the TV to find some photos of Olive and dedicate the website to her today.

To hell with all the other things I was going to do.

It was just a shame that when I wanted to flatter her I could only find very unflattering photos, like this one.

Kevin slower than last year

Kevin Loundes was 5 seconds slower than last year when he won the Heritage Trail Race.

Last year I ran 41.57 a time which would have placed second last night. Although I was a heck of lot fitter 12 months ago I don't think the 3 minutes and 45 seconds that I have lost in a year is all down to fitness levels.

It was windy and slippery last night and I think that overall times were slower. I know that it is easy to make excuses when we get slower. But there is no way that that Kevin would have put a 10% gap on a pretty decent field unless he had improved compared to last year.

On corrected time, as they like to say in the TT, I think he was much faster. One way or another he is undefeated.



Kevin Loundes on his way to victory (by Stan Hall)

Heritage trail race

A great event tonight. Thanks to everyone at Western AC.

I've not seen the results yet nor has Stan Hall (who was definitely taking photos) uploaded them yet. Hope to have more links in the morning.

So for tonight I'll go back to an old theme about the steam trains that used to travel along the first couple of miles of tonight's course.

Numbers fall at alarming rate

I mentioned in the last post what a good job Steve Kelly does for Northern AC.

Ditto Paul Jackson for Manx Harriers.

Once again people waited until the event (Foxdale 6) was close to cancellation before coming forward to volunteer. In the end the marshalling was a credit to the sport.

But there were only 27 runners compared to an average of 47 for the last three years which in itself was well below the numbers in the peak years (more research another day).

The fixture list needs a radical overhaul.

Caution runners part 2

As if seven athletics events in nine days was not crazy enough, on one of the only two days when there was no running event there was a duathlon in Ramsey.

It was based in the Mooragh Park in Ramsey on Tuesday evening. So was the 10km on Wednesday.

Steve Kelly, who does such a wonderful job of organising the Northern AC events, went around the course a couple of hours before the 10km erecting "Caution Runners" signs. But before the start of the race someone else went around taking the signs down from the previous evening. Or so they thought - they also took some of the 10km signs down!

The other Gerrard

I've often heard people, who do not follow sport very closely, say that "We've got a good young runner over here, haven't we? Steven Gerrard is it?".

Well this one is not a drinker and is very well behaved and certainly doesn't earn as much money but he is a lot faster than Steven.

I grabbed Keith after the Foxdale 6 tonight and asked him a few questions. I hope that you find the interview interesting when it appears on YouTube in a few minutes.

Its 19 hours since I first sat at this computer today so as soon as the video is live I shall be signing off for the day.

Lots of things to say another day.

Ben Scott's marathon day

I've put together all the video I had of Ben Scott winning the marathon together with an interview and all the photos that I took of him.

The features are all here

I've just spent some time moving the features on the first two of the six events this week from the front page to separate pages and also moved the other links onto the features page:

http://www.manxathletics.com/Features.htm

The formatting of the features page leaves a lot to be desired but it is going to take a lot of time to tidy it up. I tend to put my main effort into the current events where visitors to the site spend 95% of their time.

Don't forget that you can also search all the Manx sites through the manxathletics.com Google search which is on the front page and also here:

Search all Manx sites

When the first IOMAA website was launched

I just found this page when I was tidying up some files on the server:

http://manxathletics.com/Indexbefore.htm

No time to reflect

Although I am drawn into taking the easy route and racing too much this week, one of the problems I have with the concept is the pressure it puts on officials and their families, never mind the athletes.

What is more, no matter how much time you put into the online media it is not enough to do justice to all the performances. At least I have a week after the Parish Walk to select a few. But with the Marathon and Half Marathon, it is like a boxer trying to recover from a big punch and being knocked down before he gets up.

I'll try and get a few features on a few more performances in the weeks (years?) ahead and I am planning a marathon special at some point this winter.

In the meantime (as in the words of that awful Manx Radio advert) I've added a bit more about the Peel Hill Race last night.

I was in pain after running that. I was up at 5.30 this morning and managed a decent blast at 7 am but I am getting stiffer by the minute from last night. I can't believe that less than half an hour of exercise can do so much damage. But on reflection I haven't run up a hill like that for a few years. I need time to reflect; and hope that I don't normally look as old as I do on the video!

Trip advisor

I often use sites such as Trip Advisor to assess hotels. Because I have travelled a lot this year my mailbox had loads of emails from laterooms.com , hotelsclick.com etc and I feel a duty to put something back to them. So I have finally achieved this (and done the same for tripadvisor.com) tonight along with lots of emails.

So before anyone asks me why I wasn't at Ramsey for the Duathlon when there were lots of runners taking part, spend the time writing a hotel review for someone else's benefit.

A choice of viewing

I was really cheesed off on Sunday when, after uploading all my marathon photos to the fotopic site I discovered that due to a technical problem at the fotopic end (which I was able to verify via Googlegroup that I am a member of) that I couldn't create any new photo albums.

Between the other things that I was trying to do around the house I started uploading them to FlickR and Picasa and finding new problems with each of them. I eventually chose Picasa as the reserve site only for the uploading to stop about 400 photos short of my 1018 collection.

The problem at fotopic was sorted out yesterday morning and I have now worked how to use the Picasa site better than I previously was. So all photos are now on both sites (links on front page).

I still like the fotopic site when it works, and I am a paid up premium member under January 2012), but if there are problems another time I can switch a lot quicker.

What made it doubly frustrating was that the previous day I had updated to ADSL2 which in theory gives me upload speeds three times faster. But that is no help if nobody can see the photos when they are uploaded!

The missing bits

I've had my second attempt to use music that I thought was ok but was blocked by YouTube for video number 4 this morning. I'll have one more go to add a new soundtrack.

The Fotopic site is still not working properly so, I have written on the main site, I shall try later.

I can't get the remaining 408 photos to upload to Picasa either. I've tried FlickR too but I would prefer to get back to Fotopic.

Like the London Marathon

I'm just back from one of my short sharp runs down along the promenade and there were runners everywhere. They were appearing from all the hotels and walking along to the special buses that take them to the marathon in Ramsey. Little did most of them know, as they saw me gasping, that I would be seeing them in the same state in a few hours as I capture the event on film.

Caution runners

I was reliably informed (by Kevin Vondy) today that the band playing as we chatted at the agricultural show were called Caution Runners. I've also been told that they promote themselves against the road signs! I have to say, its a great name.

I've got to return my marathon trophies tomorrow (open race and Manx Championship). When I took them down from the display a short time ago I initially couldn't bear to look at my name as it is the end of the only year of my life in which I am likely to be a marathon champion. But in the end I got Ben to take a photo of me with them as I thought it would be a shame not to have a record of them.

I'm picking Andy Garrett up on the way to the marathon in the morning. He is staying with his family in Willaston and running in the half. His entry inspired Robbie to enter too and he is convinced that he is going to beat Andy. I am just hoping that he starts steadily.

I'm going to get a few shots of the runners congregating then going to the end of Ramsey Promenade to get some shots and some action film of the runners with Ramsey harbour for a backdrop.

See lots of you there. Good luck to everyone taking part.

Well done to Christine Bathgate and the team from the IOMVAC for all their excellent work.

Fresh look from Graham

If you have not already seen it, the http://www.iomathletics.co.uk/ site by Graham Davies looks much fresher for a re-design.

Long day tomorrow

I'll be up at 5.30 tomorrow to do my Saturday job to finish at lunchtime with a trip to the Royal Show before entertaining friends tomorrow night. I'll have my camera in the afternoon looking for athletes but the pictures may not all be used straightaway.

I need to get all my cameras charged up ready for Sunday morning as I am trying to get as much coverage as possible on Sunday and there are a crazy number of events next week.

Since running in St Johns tonight by nose is streaming - just as well I am not running on Sunday.

Good conditions tonight. Fairly small field. Hard to believe that I was fastest in around 28.47 (I think) as not run more than 3 miles in training yet. Sneeze.

Bethany flying

The last week has flown by and its already 7 days since I took the picture above (and a couple of others) of Bethany Clague at the airport.

She has run both a 100 mile event and a 24 track race recently and one of her stories was prominently featured on Adrian Cowin's http://www.iomvac.co.uk/ website.

Last weekend she was flying to Gloucester and over the weekend she was running more than 50 miles on both Saturday and Sunday over part of the course she will travel next Spring when she completes the Lands End to John O'Groats course.

At the time she wasn't sure if she was to be selected for the Commonwealth Ultra Distance Championships but that was confirmed earlier in the week.

The next 8 days will be as hectic as any that there have ever been in the Isle of Man. I am going to be at many of the events starting at St Johns tonight. See some of you there.

A couple of changes

Thanks to Marie Jackson for letting me know about the changes to the veterans Autumn Handicap races. They have been brought forward to 10 September to beat the resurfacing of the NSC roadway.

I've also changed the event of 6 September from the Narradale Fell Race to the Ellan Vannin Fell Race. I've had the latter listed for many months (from the official fixture list) but nobody let me know that this was incorrect.

As if....

I got a few jobs out of the way tonight ready to do a few things on the site but then I started watching one or two of my better videos with Ben.

It was a shame that the audio from the Winter Hill League at St Johns was blocked due to YouTube's fall out with Warner Music because Paul Simon's "Slip Sliding' Away" fitted so well. I decided that I would republish it with some new music but although Oasis's Slideaway is good it couldn't get close to the original. So I started surfing for some alternatives and soon the time was gone (without success)/

So I shall sign off with another photo from the weekend. I saw this sign at the Excel centre. Do you really think that someone who is antisocial is going to follow the polite sign?

I'd hate to live in London but...

I love the sights.

I left Marie in Greenwich Park for 15 minutes at Sunday lunch time and jogged to the to top. I came back with dozens of photos of the landmarks.

Tidy up complete

I've started the day with the but that I hate by tidying up the bits and pieces from the front page to make room for new material. It would be easy if I just wiped them but I always try and keep nearly all the published material.

At least it is a lot easier editing from my home PC rather than doing it remotely as I was at the weekend.

Streets of London

Have just launched a final appeal for marshals for the marathon next weekend.

I'm going to be offline for the next 10 hours or so as we are going to check out of hotel and wander the streets for the rest of the day.

Tri-ing hard to get a picture

They look rather like ants in the photo but they are actually some of the swimmers in the Mazda London Triathlon just a few minutes ago taken from our hotel window.

Its been quiet a weird event as, for me, despite the numbers taking part it has lacked atmosphere. Interesting rather than exciting was how I described it yesterday. There seem to have been two days of bikers of all shapes and sizes on the roads around here but apart from the transition areas very few spectators.

A couple more photos from yesterday.

Gone to London to meet the Manxies

We saw several Manx people that we hadn't seen for a while at a party last night - but we had to come to London to do so.

When you are doing your everyday things you often miss out on the chance to chat to people, something you can do so much better if you get your self away from everything but the laptop.

I've already written about Jean and Vernon Thomas on the front page. We have missed them for about the last three years when they have been visiting the Isle of Man so this time we made sure we saw them on their own patch.

We got off the DLR at Greenwich Cutty Sark station and it was weird to be there without the marathon. But we ended up walking at least a 10th of a marathon when we walked past the venue of their 40th birthday party and carried on along the banks of the Thames.

Those of you who know Vernon will know that he has a wicked sense of humour and so he got a taste of his own last night when he said that (with so many friends around him) he felt a lot younger than he is to which I quickly shouted out that he looked as old his age!

The picture above was taken when he was getting his own back and shouting something at me as I approached with the camera! Actually they were nice words.