No Oktoberfest this year

If you don't like large glasses of beer, lots of food (particularly pork) and loud repetitive music then there is not much point in going to the Oktoberfest. Oh, and you have to stand on the tables to drink/eat/listen. I even came off the wagon after five months last year to enjoy a day there as a treat from my employers for the second year.

I was originally scheduled to go there tomorrow but that was long called off as times became harder. Today has felt like being part of a crew that sailed a ship through rough waters but even the captain was ill before reaching dry land.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be a better day. Instead of sobering up (as with the last couple of "last Thursdays in September") I am planning to spend an hour or two on the website tomorrow evening.

Don't get out much

Since starting work for a small family office in Ballasalla just over a couple of years ago I don't very often get invited to functions so it was nice to be a guest at the West Corporation 40th birthday celebration at the Claremont tonight.

The events of the day were quite eventful and one when I needed to conclude with a drink or three. I've just spent an hour on the computer but it was for my day job and so I am passing on the website tonight.

I could delve in my archives and publish yet another picture from my catologue. But so could many of you on the forum if you add one of your own oldies. Get searching!

Island at its best again

What an incredible three weeks or so of fine weather we have had. What strikes me, and I am sure that Adrian will soon tell me if the facts do not back my observation, is not the mild weather for the time of the year but the lack of wind on most days.

I was really pleased that I made the effort to reschedule things and get to the fell race yesterday. The scenery was breathtaking again and I think I captured some of the best bits, although I did make a couple of mistakes with the video camera. I also had to do quite a bit of running around to get as many people into my shots as I did because I would typically move to one position only for the next runner to appear on a completely different line, I would move to that one and then the next runner would revert to route 1.

I'm sorry that I missed Sarah Curphey, who won the women's race, from the photos but I must have left before she reached me. In an effort to tell the story of the race before the results were published I had assumed that Rose Hooton (pictured above) was the winner. Whilst I understand the idea of allowing some of the slower runners the chance to start early and not to become too isolated, I think that the opposite must have happened on Saturday as Sarah appears to have run on her own throughout the race even though she was only two and five minutes faster than the second and third runners who started early.

I was rather pleased with the snap of Simon Skillicorn, who won the race, which is featured on the front page. I hope that you also like it as it will stay there a bit longer!

I was already completely knackered when I went out yesterday afternoon and my tiredness made it difficult for me to deal with further computer problems when I was trying to edit the video especially I was listening to news that my football team were loosing (after a 24 match unbeaten run it is hard to cope with that!).

I tinkered with the fell race coverage throughout the evening and I was very late getting to bed after having to collect Robbie from a big night out. I wanted to get out to enjoy this weather this afternoon and we ended up walking over parts of the new years day fell running course. Not that I have any plans to run in any fell races - as I observed this afternoon, I can't run up long hills very well these days and I was always rubbish at running down!

But the point is I am too tired to set about any major rehash of the site tonight. I only have a finite amount of energy and work and training tomorrow morning are going to consume the next batch.

Don't forget to click down through the links to other club websites for the news as well as sharing your skeet on the forum.

The memories all came back by the Quarter Bridge

Laxey Fell Race 30 years ago: Murray Lambden (runner up), winner Steve Kelly and third placed Martin Hudson.

I left work at Ballasalla this evening after a hectic couple of days and starting thinking about the weekend. As I drove through the village I thought that if I went running even earlier than normal tomorrow morning, and I started cleaning at the cottage immediately thereafter (the outgoing guests are leaving on a morning plane) then perhaps (with a bit of reorganising) I could make it to the fell race tomorrow afternoon to take some film and some video.

As I reached the Blackboards (I was about to turn off for the Old Castletown Road to call to see our guests before they left) I realised that it was 30 years ago in the Laxey Fell Race that I had what was probably my best ever fell race.

Earlier in 1979 I had made my commitment as a race walker and had got my due rewards with a big PB the previous week in the TT Walk (about 6.04 I think). After recovering from that I decided to run in Laxey and on Thursday night I did my only training - but it was up one of the sharpest climbs in the Isle of Man. I ran through Ballalona and up to the summit of Slieau Freoaghane.

As a drove up and down the hills of the Old Castletown Road I remembered the hugely competitive race I enjoyed with Steve Kelly, who was running 2.27 marathons at the time, and Martin Hudson, a top UK fell runner. We chopped and changed places but Steve got away in the last couple of miles whilst I held Martin off.

As I got out of the car at the cottage I expected to be stiff (as I relived my dream) and barely able to move. Because that was how I was for the rest of the week in 1979. The stiffest I have ever been in any race in my life, I recalled.

But when I got back into the car and drove the final stretch of the Old Castletown Road and up to the Road Island Roundabout I was sure the car started to thud as other memories came back. Surely I was worse with my first Parish Walk in 1976 when I walked on stage with a walking stick.

And as the traffic ground to a halt at the Quarter Bridge I remembered walking to work (in Douglas in those days) the day after running 2.45.01 in Cardiff the day after my 50th birthday three years ago. My usual 10 minute stroll became 25 minutes.

As I took my turn to face the two extremes of Manx drivers at roundabouts (those that sit and have a picnic and those that think giving way to the right gives them licence to put their foot down 30 yards before they even reach the roundabout) I realised that I could call all three of them my worst - for fell running, walking and road running.

I'm going to choose my music for tomorrow now. I can't face my email.

Amuse yourself with the forum

I'm unlikely to do very much with the site tomorrow.

Such as the relative success of my revived early morning running in recent weeks that I have lost the opportunity to do much in the morning (other than during my first 10 minutes of web access whilst building up to by pre-training ritual).

I am going to be out of the office tomorrow lunchtime on a family commitment and I have work commitments that are going to take me right through to late in the evening.

So if you have not previously done so, its a good time to start sharing your thoughts about the sport on the new forum.

I'll check out any new registrations a couple of times during the day. Incidentally, I get a lot more information about user access with the new system and I can see that (after a slow start) people are visiting more and more frequently. More than half of the registered users have logged in today and more than 75% in the past 48 hours. What is more, the number of people logging on three or more times a day is increasing.

But most of you are still quite shy!

3 in one tonight

I wanted to get started early tonight because, although I have had to put off fixing my main computer, I have another written job to do unrelated to sport but actually more important.

I decided to feature the top 10 female finishers in the End to End Walk as quite a few of them have not featured here before. That was the most time consuming bit trawling through the pictures to get them as varied as possible. Although the ones on the coast road have the best scenery, I didn't want them all from the same place.

Top of the bill is the late James Coulson who is missed so much by so many people.

I've also published a photo of Bethany Clague in the 24 hour race to add to the one of Ben Scott at the finish. I have some more from Nigel Armstrong which I will use later in the week.

Didn't feel like communicating

From my side of things, everything went seamlessly for the End to End Walk. Eventually.

Although I just missed the leaders at Bride (my intended first stop) I took more than 800 photos and got more than an hour of video "in the can".

Using Manx Telecom's ADSL2 broadband service I uploaded all the photos in about 40 minutes including changing the file names and creating smaller copies of each one for uploading. If anyone notices that each file name has the superfluous word "church" in it, this relates to my previous use of the camera when I took two sets of photos at a wedding - one at the reception and the other at the church. When I edited the file name by adding a difference prefix to the last use and changing the date, I failed to delete the word church in the file name.

I started editing the video at lunchtime and returned to it the evening. The edited versions raced up the line compared to previous speeds.

That was technology working at its best, although it was a good job that I have a laptop as well as a desktop. The latter (or my network) let me down big time on Saturday and I spent hours virus testing, going back to restore points, forking out on registry clean up software all to no avail. I shall be returning to the task of fixing the network (the wireless works fine) tonight.

The difficulty of working on a laptop when nearly all my files are elsewhere tested (and failed) my patience and it was a contributory factor in not doing any work on the site last night. It was good to have some visitors too, one of them being Nigel Armstrong with photos and stories from Keswick.

Now that I started resumed my communication I shall try to maintain it. I just hope my computer wants to communicate as much as I do.

End to End feature up and running

After a long day doing all sorts of things, I had the same thoughts as last night about updating the site, especially when I started watching one of many re-runs of the Royle Family at 9 am felt as lazy as them for half an hour.

But I've managed to dig out some photos of the four walkers that most people are tipping to do well and added quite a smart little free poll for you to vote for the favourite.

I wonder if there is an outsider such as Chris Cale or Tony Okell. I don't think that the four names identified in the feature (and in the poll) will fill the top four places but I do think the winner will be from those four.

Its your chance to say who you think is going to win.

Tonight was definitely one of those nights I should not have committed

In my earlier post I committed to updating the site with some publicity for the Western 10.

I've been busy with all sorts of committments tonight and have felt that promise to be hanging over me. So I feel better now that I have got it done.

Get that entry form in now...and then get ready to send the Syd Quirk Half Marathon one off in the next day or two.

I believe that the Commonwealth Championships team are on the ferry tomorrow morning. Log into to the forum to read the messages so far and to wish them well.

End to End Walk

I'm planning some fairly extensive coverage of the End to End walk and I'll also do a preview later in the week.

Before that I plan to do some further promotion for the Western 10 (I have been plugging it throughout the year).

On Sunday my focus will be on getting photos and videos from the early part of the course. Until a couple of years ago I used to provide the results service so I had to be at the finish. Now that I have been freed of that responsibility it is better to add to the traffic congestion on the later parts of the course. I also benefit from the walkers being closer together and so I can get more pictures per hour that I spend on the course.

Don't forget to visit the official End to End Walk website at http://www.endtoendwalk.org/ Adrian Cowin runs the site and he managed to plug the event during his weather forecast this morning. He also has an event weather forecast on the forum.

Registering for the forum

It has been interesting whilst watching the registrations (nearly 100 now) to see the names.

Its not so much those that have registered and those that have not. There are an awful lot of people who used to send me emails complaining that they couldn't get into the old one who have not registered yet.

1973 was a good year for Manx Fell Running

I wasn't going to post anything here tonight as the fruits of my labours tonight are there for you to see on the front page.

But then I looked at the list of entrants in the Commonwealth Fell Running Championships and had to say something.

According to the list, the Manx team were born (like peas from a pod) one every day in April 1973:


Skillicorn Simon
14/04/1973
Cringle Tom
15/04/1973
Taggart Lloyd
16/04/1973
Cannell Andy
17/04/1973
Armstrong Nigel
18/04/1973
Jaimeson Richard
19/04/1973

Nigel looks so much older than 36!

Editing slip

I received this photo from an exiled Manxman but because of his role I don't think I should say who. I think that Sky's editor was definitely in the hot seat.

One or two Great British endurance athletes in this picture

I have just launched the http://www.chrisandfi.com/ website. I did get their permission not to password protect but if anyone else does not want to be included in the public album please let me know.

PS double click to see a much larger version of the photo.

PPS who is the odd one out in the photo? A few different answers!

Five Olympics and a wedding

Famous last words to Chris Maddocks on Friday evening. "See you tomorrow subject to Manx2 and the M5." We made it to the church in Devon with one minute to spare after getting changed in the street close to the church! We were an hour late getting to Gloucester after the fog and roadworks on the M5 cost us almost as much.

I have setup a website at www.chrisandfi.com but the wireless network in our hotel is too slow to upload the photos tonight.

Coldplay

Just been chatting to Peter and Bridget Kaneen and Paul and Marie Jackson; also David and Gill Churcher.

Most of the Isle of Man seem to be going to the Coldplay concert at Old Trafford.

Fog delaying the blog today

Stuck at the airport waiting for a flight to Gloucester.

"Probably" was superfluous

Space is at a premium in the Manx Independent.

But the "chit-chat" column uses the word "probably" for a fact which is not in doubt.

Can anyone work that one out.

Clue: it is beyond all doubt who the Isle of Man's greatest ever 10km and 20km walker is!

Dave Griffin is hard to find....or catch

For a few weeks I thought there must be too Dave Griffins. I bumped into him whilst walking at Baldwin, in the shops and whilst training. I half expected to see him whilst I was on holiday.

Then last week, I climbed to the top of Slieau Freoaghane. Dave was in the race yet somehow I missed him, presumably he had a different route whilst I started to go down the hill a bit to take photos.

Dave was 42nd in the End to End Mountain Bike Challenge last year, one of the top specialist runners. There were 504 finishers last year and he aims to get in the top 10% again this year.

Now here is a bit of trivia for you. Who is the only rider in the race last year to finish in the top 10% but behind two brother-in-laws?

Good luck to all you bikers and I'm really sorry that I won't be there to photo you this year.

Chance to upgrade Fotopic on the cheap

Fotopic are offering an upgrade to a premium service for just £10 on Sunday:

http://fotopic.net/news/news267.html

Might be worth it some of you photographers?

Another website launched

Another to add to my collection, although I have to admit that this one was put together quickly.

I registered the domain last night and spent all of 10 minutes on the front page tonight.

All will be revealed sometime tomorrow afternoon from my location for the weekend.

No blogging yesterday lunchtime

I spent yesterday lunchtime tidying up the features page (although I had started it off it off in the early hours). I retain virtually all the content of the website although I think the majority of people only really look at the current stuff.

A lot of the time the organisation of the features page merely consists of cutting and pasting the shortcuts to remove them from the front page when that gets too cluttered. Yesterday's efforts consisted of tidying them into a consistent format and double checking the links.

Having done that I thought it was worth reminding people that all the old features are there for their enjoyment which was why I decided to make them a feature by themselves on the front page.

But when I came to give this explanation, the Blogger site was out of action.

Things have moved already with a little bit of coverage from the Veterans handicap last night. Chatted to quite a few people down there so I have a few more stories to all those that I say I am going to write about but probably never will!

Deliberate policy not to provide new material

Everyone has been telling me (over the past few months) how important the forum is to them so I have left you alone for the past 48 hours and given you a chance to play.

I have still been staring at a computer for most of my spare time, other than watching England tonight, and trying to learn about phpBB (the software which the forum is written in).

I've been continuing to scan old documents too, which will all help the website in the long term.

Back to the forum, it seems to be a game where everyone is watching each other waiting to make the early moves.

Waiting for my PayPal account to be blocked

It must have been the positive vibes I got from upgrading the Forum software but I have had a long evening going through all the other software packages that I use, from web editing, through photo editing, and video editing back to another video editing package to upgrade to the latest versions. I paid for everything on PayPal and kept wondering if the next one would be blocked as a suspicious transaction. Why would anyone need so many software upgrades?

Collecting domain names

The first time I ever set up a website was early in July 2000. We wanted to promote our holiday business having bought a second property to let the previous year.

I didn't fully understand the options that were available to us and, in fairness to me, everything was a lot more expensive then than it was now. So I thought that my website would have a page about our holiday properties and then other pages about sport and other interests. It never entered my head that I would be producing multiple websites for each interest and so I registered http://www.murrayandmarie.com/ for our website, to include all our interests and to give us distinctive email addresses.

It was not long before I registered http://www.manxathletics.com/ and http://www.parishwalk.com/ but they all pointed to pages within http://www.murrayandmarie.com/ It was sometime later before I bought full hosting packages for each of those.

Before that I bought a deal from a Canadian company and registered http://www.manxathletics.info/ . This was quite an expensive package but gave me the first paid for forum and loads of other facilities. But it wasn't everything I wanted and after two years I let the subscription lapse and I think this would probably be in 2004 when I started using Bravenet for the forum.

In the years since have bought all sorts of domains, some of them just for special one off events like a birthday. I can even feel one such idea coming on now, for this weekend.

But the latest package I have acquired principally for the forum has seen me buy the same domain http://www.manxathletics.info/ for a second time. Sad or what? I could even give myself another 5000 email addresses if there was any reason to!

Who will be the first to post to the new forum?

I'm about to sign off tonight and see that there are 4 registered users to far but none of them have posted.

Will it change overnight?

Go on, get the ball rolling someone! You have all moaned enough when you have not been able to use the forum!

The pain is nearly over the forum users

When somebody was asking me about the forum problems on Friday evening I told them that I intended to start a new forum and put the problems of the old one (I still can't prove who is to blame) behind me. But it wouldn't be for a while because I had so many other things on my plate.

But I just couldn't put it aside and after a lot of frustrations and a determination to chose the right service I have today subscribed for a three year service at http://www.hostmonster.com/

If I change the forum I want it to be something better than ever before and I think it will be.

But I want to spend a few days refining the settings before releasing it.

Watch this space.

One innovation I will share is that, although you will be able to use a short cut from the www.manxathletics.com website as in the past, it will also have an easy to remember domain name of its own.

I hope that everyone uses the new service when launched after appearing to show all the signs of addicts when it has not been available!

Dave Philips Road Races Results

The final results are available at http://www.westernac.org

The Beatles

I've been watching some of the programmes about the Beatles on BBC2 tonight (as well as listening to some of the bank holiday programmes on Radio 2 last Monday).

I boought by first Beatles record when I was only 7 - I was influenced by having two older brothers who would have been 11 and 15 at the time. I've been trying to compare the impact that they had on society at the time compared to what is changing things at the current time and the best that I can come up with is Facebook.

Before the Beatles there was "pop" music but the Beatles opened it up to a wider audience just as much as Facebook has widened the internet usage is a very short space of time.

The reason I write about my distraction by the Beatles was that I was on the point of making a major investment in the website by subscribing for a new three year package for a new forum (I've been fed up with the life and death matter that the forum has become for some people). I thought that I had researched the options fairly well and had chosen a new host and I was going to start setting it up tonight after the Beatles programmes had finished. But I became suspicious of the site when I received a phone call saying that they would need a copy of my ID by email and that I would have to phone my bank to verify the payment.

http://www.siteground.com/ won't be the new host for the forum.

Well deserved victory for the webmaster

But not this one!

Rob Parslow won the 2009 Scott Physiotherapy Sponsored Dave Philips Road Races last night. The Western AC webmaster accumulated the most points from the 6 races (best four to count) of the 4.75 mile handicapped series.

Thanks to all the marshals and officials from Western AC for organising the event and last night's buffet presentation.

I lost out in a big family battle. Last time I passed Robbie with about quarter of a mile to go with a 4 minute difference in handicap. This time my handicap was up to 4.20 so I knew it was going to be tough. I caught him at about the same point this time just as scratch man Ben Scott was passing me. Robbie speeded up and followed Ben through the field a little. Although I finally got past Robbie entering the old station car park I knew it was only going to end one way and he sprinted past me again! We think he had a PB of about 33.52 and I was about 28.34 which is not a big improvement over my previous one.

I've checked Rob's Western AC a few times today but the results are not there yet.

End to End Walk memories

After publishing a feature on the End to End Walk last night, and particularly after checking the stats for 27 times finisher Ron Ronan, I found that I couldn't get to sleep.

My mind went back to 1974 when I first completed the course - 35 years ago when I was only 17.

I don't remember how many starters there were (about 12 I think) but there were nine finishers which I have extracted from my database:

Ian Turnbull 07:08:30
John Cannell 07:18:08
Ron Ronan 07:25:11
Murray Lambden 07:29:20
John Corrin 07:39:33
Irene Corlett 07:54:55
Dave Wilkinson 08:03:27
Arthur Jones 08:37:54
Colin Watterson 08:50:31

After a very steady start I remember passing Arthur Jones before Bride and being amazed at him walking in sandals.

I soon caught up with Ron Ronan who was a very experienced walker compared to me - he had one finish from the previous year! He was also a Parish Walk finisher though. As we chatted I think he helped me by preventing me from going too fast.

But after hill after hill after hill, I started to tire and Ron finally dropped me on the Castletown bypass. Although the distance of 39.5 miles was almost the same as I had covered to Kirk Michael in the Parish Walk 4 months earlier, the last two or three miles took their toll and I was struggling.

Ron Ronan went on to complete the old course via Ramsey, Laxey, Douglas and Ballasalla 25 times. I only had three more finishes. I only improved by 12:57 in the next two years before knocking a further 1:25:34 when I returned in 1980.

It was a great day for Ian Turnbull who took victory on his fourth finish after completing the very first walk in 1961 and having two second places.

John Cannell also finished the 1961 event and it was the fourth time he had finished second. In fact he finished second 7 times before he finally won in 1986 in the third fastest time ever of 6:15:04.

This was during JC's late career peak and he was to win it five times:

1985 06:15:04
1987 06:17:20
1988 06:19:49
1989 06:54:15
1994 07:06:25

More stories another day.

Flooding

I went down to the NSC this morning and there was some serious flooding of the roadway.

The TT Access Road was also flooded under Braddan Bridge.

I'm sure that there will be similar problems around the island.

Fotopic website down this morning

I've noticed that if you try and log onto any of the fotopic.net site sites (where many of the athletics photos are hosted) you cannot see any of the galleries.

I've had a look at the Google user group for Fotopic and it is a known problem and should be available again later this morning.