Easter record

I can't believe its not even two weeks yet since the Virgin London Marathon. So much seems to have happened since then.

The only personal best I set in the week that followed was filing my online tax return by 20 April. Its the sort of thing that, if I don't attend to straight away it just gets pushed aside by  the demands of the websites and yet it doesn't take any more time to do in April than on 4 October.

I challenge anyone to have seen more of the Isle of Man than I did over the Easter weekend.

On Good Friday I started with 12 miles running around Baldwin with the roads to myself.

After breakfast I headed south with Marie for a walk at the Sound. We ended up parking at Cregneash and heading for the Chasms. I have said this a few times but I am amazed when visitors to the Isle of Man tell us that they have seen everything in a week. I am ashamed to say that I had never been to the Chasms before and it is a wonderful place.

After lunch we were out in the car with Robbie and my mother-in-law round the back roads to Peel and through Little London and the mountains back to Douglas.

Then in the evening I was out again with Robbie to the Easter Festival Road Race.

The rest of the evening was taken with the website and editing video.

Saturday morning started with a short run around Douglas after a quick update on the website.

Then it was off to North Barrule to take photos of the Manx Mountain Marathon. I had forgotten how steep the climb was (and I wasn't running 30 miles) but it was misty and I was soon cold at the top. As soon as the leaders were through I started my descent but after a  tumble I was not enjoying the MMM as much as some years when I have managed some good shots from North Barrule.

So I turned the car into a hothouse between Barrule and Injebreck as I tried to warm up and dry out.

I took up my usual spot by the river crossing but this time I had to help one of the runners out of the stream after he slipped down the waterfall.

Next it was a dash home to upload photos, dash into the shower to warm up, change my clothes, start the video editing and thank Marie for some wonderful home made soup.

I've never managed to get to the start of the Half Manx Mountain Marathon so I thought I would do that for a change before going to the Peel Hill Race. The problem was that I didn't check the start time and when I arrived at 1.25, thinking I was in perfect time for a 1.30 start, the runners were already 25 minutes into the race. So on I went to the Round Table to get some more photos of the fell runners.

I then got engrossed in a conversation with Tony Varley and realised that for the second time in an hour I was going to miss the start of a race. I stopped at the Raggett and ran up the back of Peel Hill in time to see Lloyd Taggart heading the field and grabbed some more photos. I had to pretend that I had always planned to go to a slightly different spot.

 I had a bit more time to compose myself (I was finally warm) before the women's race.

It was obviously an easier run back down to the car but I wanted to get back home as quickly as possible so that I could upload photos, edit video, take a break to watch some football and then spend the rest of the evening doing video.

Up early on Sunday morning to go on a 12 mile run around the Marine Drive and the promenades, Summer Hill etc (sorry I didn't take any photos) before heading taking Robbie to the promenade for the relays.

But first it was filming of the women's 5km.

There was the usual buzz on the prom for the relays.

Marie wasn't well and had developed a stinking cold which meant that we couldn't go out in the afternoon - but it meant more time for website and videos for the rest of the day.

Monday began with my first run up Richmond Hill for many a year. Just under 10 miles by the time I went around the Oatlands Road, and the Old Castletown Road.

Later in the morning it was a drive around the south of the Island with my mother in law and after lunch I had a walk with Robbie from East Baldwin to the top of Creg-y-Cowin.

Finally I had a chance to go for a walk with Marie late on Monday afternoon and we headed to her favourite spring time venue at Ballaglass,

We moved onto Ramsey for a cuppa and a walk in the park and a drive via the Curraghs and Tholy-Y-Will back to Douglas.

The next few days were spent trying to sort out the chaos on my computer with files everywhere and trying to share some of the best bits on the website. And then another long bank holiday weekend. Thankfully I am not attending any events this weekend and I have not travelled quite as far.

Video delay

I unwittingly chose quite a large file size tonight and it is taking ages to format and will be even later uploading. I won't be up long enough to see it. I guess it will be about 2 am before it appears.

What a week

I gather that the weather is not going to be quite so good at the weekend as it has been this week. It couldn't last for ever. All the more good reason to put enjoyable walks ahead of the computer for the third day this week. I could get used to three days weeks - I have another next week.

Before then the website will be one of the main priorities, four events in about 40 hours.

Fifty quid for one digital image

Not that I really want to see myself running so slowly but the cost of a single download is fifty quid.

I do exaggerate of course. I would get 5p change!

Blame the TT

I sat next to a Sky News cameraman on the plane the other day and I had a great chat with him. I gained lots of insights into the way that they work.

He was on his way (with the reporter and director) to make a report on the 3D film launch and also to interview Guy Martin. I told him that it would be interesting! The result certainly is:

Go here  http://news.sky.com/skynews/video and  type TT in the search box (top right).

I spent more time than ever this year collating data for the media re the London Marathon but I was warned in advance that space was going to be short. Blame the TT!

Alternative blogging

Another stroll at lunchtime at the expense of emails, webediting and publishing. With the great weather continuing I offer no apologies.

And it is only in the last half hour that I got back to the aforementioned tasks. And it is largely at the expense of this site as I have focused on my alternative blog:

http://parishwalk2011.blogspot.com/

Entries are starting to roll in for the Parish Walk.

By the way, runners who have in the past taken part in the Millennium Way Relay might recognise today's photo - but they will not be used to seeing such colour.

Website records

There have been more visitors to the website in the last three days than at any time since the Scottish Widows Parish Walk last year, in fact I think they may be the highest ever apart from the Parish:

Sunday - 491

Monday - 513

Tuesday - 435

Going slowly

If I didn't get out of the office at lunchtime today I never would do. What a beautiful day for a walk around the footpaths of Ballasalla.

I was only walking slowly. I was only running slowly this morning. I have only been webediting slowly. But there is a new photo from the Sara Killey Memorial Walk, the main feature has been tidied up and I have some more photos from the event from Steve Partington in reserve.

Three days from now the Easter Festival will be under way so I have also directed visitors to the Festival site and the site for the Manx Mountain Marathon.

I don't think the tractor has moved for a while - even slowly.

Finally caught up

I compiled a feature on the Sara Killey Memorial Walk late last night. I've just reviewed it again and made a few small changes as I have to the "final" version of the London Marathon coverage.

Thanks to Graham Young for writing the report and providing photos and also to my sister, Margaid Gosschalk, who was staying in Peel with her family for the week finishing on Sunday, and sent photos from the start.

Embedding problem

I've had one of those crazy problems you get when you are too tired to work.

Chris Quine kindly sent me a link for a video of Keith Gerrard's 5000 metres race but when I tried to embed it it wouldn't work. When I undid the changes I screwed up the whole of the front page and had to re-build it.

In the end I published the video link via a headline rather than embedding the link. After I did that I worked out what I had done in the first place but it will have to stay now.

London final

I've published the top female performances since 2002 and the same for the men extended to include half way splits and comparisons.

That's all from London until early 2012 when I start the next list.

Thanks to all who have helped me this year.

Murray

Time for coffee

Since my previous blog update I have been working on the London Marathon stuff.

I had to incorporate this:

Sue Furner- IOMVAC 24299 4.48.53 ran

Julia Furner unatt 20673 6.04.09 ran 12 miles and walked the rest

Claire Furner unatt 34266 6.39.56 walked for Action on Pre-Eclampsia

When I looked the latest editions and posted them to my spreadsheet they did not link correctly. The London Website had added another field (which was there in previous years) for the club name so I had to re-link everything.

I thought it best to double check the lists using the club field to search for "Isle" and "Manx". I found Andrew Todd as a member of Western AC and that took my list to 43.

I have clearly failed over the past three months to get the world spread widely enough about this exercise I do every year if there are members of our clubs not identified.

I discovered that the 2011 list was headed 2010 so I have changed this.

I had some corruption with the full 2002 to 2011 list because some of the overall positions and gender positions were corrupted. I think I have fixed this.

I have added several extra photos.

I have corrected the fastest by year list to show Mark Clague in 2008 instead of Nigel Armstrong. 

I have re-published the list of times on the marathon page (as opposed to the pdf file with all the splits). 

Fingers crossed that there are no further additions or it will be more than coffee I will need.

The photo above of some of the Manx coffee drinkers was taken at Excel on Saturday morning.

Best part of leaving Island is coming back

Marie has been enjoying a couple of weeks off work and so with my second (and last day) of my own break from work I wanted to spend some time with her this afternoon. I walk around the headlands at Laxey and a cup of tea on the sea front fitted the bill well.

Having dealt with our family priorities I'm about to get back to the website.

I've got some more names for the London Marathon lists but I'm going to have republish the all of the feature.

I've got a video link of Keith Gerrard's latest record breaking performance.

I've got several items relating to the Sara Killey Memorial walk.

Starting now.

Update

Back home a short time ago. Just realised that although I produced a new file last night I didn't actually publish it but I have done now:

http://www.manxathletics.com/VLM2011.pdf

A marathon day

I've spent the last couple of hours that the media have sufficient information for tomorrow. I have also added two more runners to the list - they had not finished when I compiled the first list.

Simon Lowe contacted me to stay that he was sadly a non starter due to illness and so it is only Debbie Findlay that I have not accounted for.

I've accounted for around 20 hours now as that is the time that has passed since I got up this morning and I didn't even get a pre-race snooze.

I had already told friends that I was planning my 13th London Marathon next year and I also have a time for 2013.

I have been involved in every event since 1995 as a runner or spectator and I also watched in 1983 and 1984.

The logistics are usually wonderful but there was a problem with the baggage reclaim today because all of the good for age runners were arriving close together. We were  standing in the heat in an exhausted state for about 20 minutes and the inevitable happened. The guy behind me collapsed and knocked me into those in front.

The first aid posts were busy and among the visitors at the finish was a certain 18 times finisher from the Isle of Man.

A hard day

I've spent all afternoon compiling the special feature on the Marathon and I've just had time to look at my Garmin splits before we go out for a meal.

These tell me story pretty accurately:

00:06:39:  00:06:31:  00:06:32:  00:06:34:  00:06:39:  00:06:44:  00:06:49:  00:06:43:  00:06:53:  00:06:51:  00:06:50:  00:06:46:  00:06:51:  00:06:55:  00:06:55:  00:07:43:  00:07:43:  00:07:53:  00:08:08:  00:08:15:  00:08:34:  00:08:16:  00:08:38:  00:08:37:  00:08:32:  00:08:00:  00:02:00


I wanted to run for 2.55 which means that you run 6.40 per mile but carry a few a few seconds per mile on the fast few miles. It was tough in the heat and I had one or two mitigating circumstances but in the end I was just not fit enough this year. It took as much motivation as anything I have  ever done to keep running and I managed to find something to ensure I got inside the important 3.15 time qualification for the next two years.


Media reporting later when we get back,

All well in London

Although its forecast to be a little warm today, the starting conditions should be excellent. At 7 am its a little hazy as this photo past Excel towards the O2 shows.

I'm about to lock my laptop away in the room safe before ensuring that one of the most important parts of the preparation is complete.

Fewer starters

35,643 people have registered for the marathon, that is 1300 less than started last year. No doubt a few more of the registrations will fail to make the start line so we should get a bit more space.

Decision time

There are less than 11 hours to go until the start of the Virgin London Marathon. One thing doesn’t change when I am in London. I have spent much longer on my website than I planned tonight.

But now it’s all set up and I am ready to start compiling the results tomorrow afternoon.

Before than I need some sleep and to run a marathon!

It’s my 12^th London since I decided to run it as a one off in 1995!  My 11 runs are fairly neatly grouped into three.

I’ve run five that I have been very pleased with. Four of these were between 2.43 and 2.45 (I conveniently ignore the seconds) and one was just inside 2.50 but I was 53 last year and so I happy with that.

Four have been bad ones between 3.04 and 3.21. There were also reasons why I was slow but in each case I failed to sufficiently take account of my injury or illness when determining my pace.

And there were two controlled races when I recognised that I was not at my best but controlled and judged my pace to finish just inside three hours. That is what I must do tomorrow. I’ve run under three hours in training so, even with a couple of excuses up my sleeve (if I wasn’t wearing a vest), it will be a failure if I am over 3 hours.

For the last two years I have predicted by time within a few seconds. So here goes. I am intending to run at 2.55 pace but think I will lose a little so I will predict my own time as 2.57.30. Of course I will be happy to be proved wrong if I am one side of it and take the flak if I am on the other.

There is one common factor in my 11 London Marathons to date. In none of them did I start too slowly.

In search of the Manxies

We are staying at my favourite hotels, the Ramada Suites, in Docklands. I went for a stroll this morning and took some photos of the docklands before returning via Excel.

Registration is at Excel and it made me realise how good it is to arrive on Friday - it was packed today. I had just given up hope of seeing any Manxies and was on my way back to the hotel when I received a shout from Barry Moore, Roy Crellin, Jo Glassey and Debby Ashe. Had a good chat with them.

Then along came Ian Callister who came back with me for a coffee and a chat for an hour or more.

Olympics in sight

This is as close as I'll make it to the Olympics. This is part of the view from my hotel.

Nige finds religion?

At first sight I thought Nigel Armstrong was praying.

But he was signing the visitors book at the Excel.

Too much running the week before the marathon

I'm just about to sign off as I am getting the "red eye" to London in the morning and I'm picking Paul Curphey up at 6 am.

Not managed any training during the past few days because I have been too much running. Try and work that one out!

I've had a stomach bug which got worse today and I was beginning to wonder if I would make the start line on Sunday after not eating for 24 hours up to 7 pm tonight.

Hopefully I'll be ready to start the carbo loading tomorrow - at about 5.30 am.

Boys walk

Yesterday I checked out the course for the Easter Festival Hill Race and today I went over the course of the fell race that follows Easter, the Carraghan.

What perfect weather. And it was a rare occasion that I had our two sons together.

Navigation bar update

I've mentioned a couple of times that I was struggling to update the navigation bars to include Kevin Deake's Sportsdesk site and David Griffiths's Island Games blog. Then I noticed that they were working ok on the features page so I just copied and pasted from one to the other.

Kevin's site continues to improve and now has linked to race videos were available.

I'll try and get the photo links updated soon too.

Top marks for Brighton

One of my pet hates is to go to a website on the race day only to find details, not of the race, but of how to enter - particularly if entries closed a long time ago.

It was therefore a delight to check out the Brighton Marathon site http://brightonmarathon.co.uk/index.html to find the results and a report just hours afterwards.

Brighton a year ago today - it didn't impress me as a city as much as the marathon website has done.

That's all

Saved some of the clutter from the front page to three separate pages and published. That will do for today.

Sleep walking

In contrast to the last couple of days when I have had ultra late nights with the website I have been keeping it to a minimum today. I didn't get to bed until 2 am last night and when I hit the road for Baldwin at 7 am I was only asleep for 4 and half hours. After a few hours at the cottage I headed with Ben to  Peel for a late and large lunch at the Creek Inn in Peel with some excellent guest ale. After a few miles of the best walking that Peel has to offer I was dead on my feet and a snooze ended as half as long as my night sleep.

Training for the Parish Walk

Its been good practice the last couple of nights. I'm signing off now and there will be much less tomorrow.

But I'll be back to cover another event on Sunday. The fixtures have been reduced??????

If only

Needless to say I took far more video than I intended tonight even though I switched the camera off for three laps.

I had an awful lot of problems with the sun and the changing light tonight. I dumped a load of photos but I still left a few sub-standard ones in my collection if they featured people who would otherwise be missed. Or just looked funny!

Ben is only about a quarter of an hour away from home soil now and at least the delay allowed him to have dinner with Marie and her friend in Liverpool. Having (no doubt) eased the financial problems for Liverpool's shops today she is off to Aintree tomorrow.

PS You must double click the photo of John Wattie to see the best of it. That will teach him for publishing photos of  me with my eyes closed!

Beautiful day

Rather than blogging, I opted for my first "summer" walk of the year at lunchtime today. The Rushen Abbey to  Silverdale area is just beginning to add some colour.

Off to the racing at St Johns tonight but going to try not to take too much video. Mind you it could be a late night and Ben was due to arrive from Liverpool at 21.30 but is now scheduled for 01:15.

Beautiful fog on the Mersey today.

And a new owner for the Steam Packet arrived out of the mist.

Roger Black

If I had mentioned Roger Black in the last post, as I meant to, I would have said what a thoroughly nice bloke he  is. As I knew from 2002 when I took Robbie to the AAA championships in Birmingham after a particularly bad period in his life and Roger was so willing to pose with him as he dashed to the TV studios.

Chip timing

I'm on my own in the house for the next three nights so what do I do?

Edit and upload video all night. About an hour ago I remembered that I hadn't eaten tonight and went to the chippy for a short break and washed them down with some red wine.

So much for all the advice on nutrition at the Walk Talk tonight.

The second video is still uploading and at this rate it might have to wait until I get up in the morning before I link it to the website.

Rising for the moon

One of my favourite bands, Fairport Convention, recently recorded the above song, written by ex member the late Sandy Denny, for their latest album.

I've just read that another ex-member of the band, the great fiddler Dave Swarbrick, is 70 today. Nothing remarkable about that you might think....except that his obituary was published in the Daily Telegraph in 1999! After two major illnesses and a double lung transplant he is still going strong. Perhaps they should record Rising from the Dead.

I don't think think this site ever reached its last legs but yesterday's 354 unique visitors was the the highest for four weeks and has only been higher this year on:

1/1 - 389
2/1 - 402
23/1 - 381
30/1 - 425
6/2 - 384
13/3 - 387

Too much time badly used

I had more time than usual this weekend as I have hardly been doing any running whilst trying to nurse my hamstring through to London in two weeks time. And there was no cleaning at the holiday cottage and no social events.

"I'm not going to waste the time" I told Marie. "I'm going to get up at my normal time and clear some of my paperwork and emails."

I did get up early as usual and I did clear some of those jobs. But nowhere near enough as those of you waiting for replies to emails will know. A couple of the incoming emails were nice ones. Bad news.

After being told that people had enjoyed the coverage of the fell race yesterday I then proceeded to produce a photo special this morning and the commentary required a bit of research. And spelling corrections. This meant that I was tampering with it much of the day and then tonight trying to organise all the video I took yesterday. The easiest thing would have been to have binned all but the four minutes I published but then my library would be smaller for compilations in the future.

We did at least have a great drive around some of my favourite country roads this afternoon with a cup of tea on Peel   breakwater, as the photo above proves (double click it and you will see loads of detail). Marie has been recovering from shingles which she has had on numerous occasions so we couldn't do much walking. But Robbie did the talking for us instead.

Ban me from eBay please

I bought a Panasonic video camera with a hard disk in the summer of 2008 but just over a year later it started to give me problems (just out of guarantee) when sometimes the power doesn't transmit to the display. I think the problem may be caused by me using a second non standard battery. On a number of times I thought I would not be able to take video only for it to start working at the last minute.

I decided before Christmas to buy an identical camera on eBay to prepare for the day it wouldn't work. After getting outbid a few times I bought one for about £80 (compared to the £250 for my original one). But I got the bug and started bidding for more and bought a third one for £52 a couple of weeks ago!

True to form the original one took several minutes to get to work at the top of Snaefell today with the consequence that when it did start I didn't really focus it very well. It did produce a few extra clips. Number 2 was put to good use at the finish but again it was not focused enough on the finish line. Number 3, the hand held one (juggled with my SLR for the stills) was the main input for my filming.

The reality of course is that the extra enjoyment I can provide to others by having hours of film is not that great compared to just filming in one or two spots but to me it is natural to always try and improve.

It was my temper I needed to improve by the end of the afternoon. I left the house at 1.30 with the country's least favourite football team losing 2-0. When I finished editing the video at 6.40, the aforementioned team had won 4-2 and the team I support had been fortunate to scrape a draw against the team I used to watch.

And my first video cut was far too long for the music I had chosen and my second cut was too short.

So all attempts to leave the wine bottle alone failed. But now that it is empty things don't seem so bad but I need someone to block the eBay page. I don't need any cameras. I bought another one there recently too. It was a replica of my first digital camera (which cost £325 in 2002) but I bought it for £1.25.

It runs in the family.

Reading other blogs

Although I nominally follow a lot of blogs, I am so busy churning out my ow stuff that I can't keep up with my reading.

I am keen to follow those that I commissioned, such as Richard Spenceley's on the Parish Walk site, but Richard is so prolific that I can't keep up. That's great for me in a way because the busier the bloggers are the less the visitors to the site notice how far I am behind with all the things that I have been meaning to do.

http://richardsparishblog.blogspot.com/

At the risk of being accused by another hotelier of helping his self publicity, another good read is Michael George's Welbeck Hotel blog. Is you get annoyed about credit card charges then this one is well worth a read:

http://michaelswelbeckblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/fly-high-with-electron.html

Parish Walk publicity

I have been posting all of the Parish Walk publicity on the Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Parish-Walk/172294956132698

and also on my Parish Walk blog:

http://parishwalk2011.blogspot.com/

Ironman is 32nd in London list

Western AC's Simon Lowe is the latest to be confirmed for the Virgin London Marathon.

You can see the latest list at:

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

And don't forget that most of the 32 names are linked to Kevin Deakes's website so that you can see many of the performances by each athlete. I've also linked the runners to their clubs (where known) and charities (if told about). You can have the charity link as specific as you like (eg to your own fundraising page rather than the charity's own site) if you like.