Cooling down

The weather has been cooler here today although we have been lucky as we've only had a little rain and, until today, little wind. All of that opening sentence refers to the weather and not my personal hygiene although one of Newlyn's largest portions of fish for lunch today left me rather bloated.

So with the autumn approaching I have just been reviewing up and coming events.

Have just listed the entrants to date for the End to End Walk - at 353 these look promising.

Have just noticed that the Isle of Man Veteran Athletes' Club now have entry forms for their autumn handicap and the Syd Quirk half marathon. I shall extend the list of fixtures tomorrow and update the links.

I can't see any news on the relevant club websites for the Junior Fell Running Championships (1 October) or Western 10 (2 October) - I will link to these as soon as they are available.

In fact there are several events due to kick off in October for which full details are not yet available:

2 September	Scott Physiotherapy Dave Philips Road Races	Not required
25 September	Ramsey Bakery End to End Walk	Here
1 October	Junior Hill Running Championships	Not required
2 October	Western 10 Miles	Not available
6 October	Ramsey Bakery Firemans' Run - round 1	Not required
8 October	Hill Running League - round 1	Not required
9 October	Welbeck Hotel & Restaurant 1 Hour Walk	Not required
16 October	Isle of Man Cross Country League - round 1	Not available
20 October	Veterans Autumn Handicap
23 October	Isle of Man Bank Peel to Douglas Trail Run	Not required
30 October	Winter League Race Walking League - round 1	Not required

Interest in these events is warming up!

People are soon forgotten

When I travel around, I am fascinated by what used to be somewhere. Whether it is railway lines, pubs, chapels or petrol stations, I am addicted to trying to work out what used to be in a particular place.

By researching former mine workings I have today learnt a lot about mining in the Isle of Man - one thing leads to another.

This fascination extends to rock singers, footballers and athletes.

Often when I am watching a track & field meeting on TV I will suddenly think; "Whatever happened to so and so".

Here is a good example of how quickly people are forgotten.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/14667422.stm

Athletics, just as other sport, recreation and the arts can bring a great quality to people's lives. But these activities can leave people with shattered lives too.

There have been an abundance of motivational speakers in recent years. And how many people have been motivated by Mo Farah's performance in the world championships? But we have to add some realism to our dreams. What happens when we wake up?

I don't subscribe to the theory that finishing second is failure. I think it is wonderful when athletes, like Mo Farah, can admit that they were beaten by a better man on the day.

By all means try and win but for most people the remainder of our lives will be spent realising that we have not achieved all we set out to achieve. And I hope that not too many people will end up in Andrew Steele's position. Not everyone has my fascination for researching the past and even if we did it is unlikely to help him.

My views don't change

It doesn't matter which way I approach our favourite sights in Cornwall they look just as good.

There have been a number of controversies in the world championship and I've seen nothing to change my mind about what I think of the rules.

On one of them, false starts, I won't give away my view as I am going to put a poll on the website and I don't want to influence the result of that.

On another rule, I would love to know how the eyes of the race walking judges could see that the early leader of the 20km was not maintaining contact with the ground but they could not see that the rest of the field were also breaking contact.

The rules of race walking should be much more objective. Either technology is used to determine whether or not walkers are "lifting", or it is accepted that they are (coaches encourage walkers to minimise the airbourne phase) and change the rule so that the straightening of the leg is the only difference between running and walking.

Nobody who tells me that one walker deserved to be disqualified more than any other in the world championships with the current rules will persuade me. If the mist came down on the Cornish coast it wouldn't change what was behind it. Disqualifying some of the walkers will not change the subjectivity of the race walking rules.

I know that the scenery will still be there behind the mist and I know that what is happening behind the rules of race walking will still be there behind the selective yellow and red cards - a rule that is totally inconsistent and lacks credibility.

World championships have best in world

Best quote from Channel 4 so far came from Dean Macey during the pole vault yesterday when referring to British vaulter Steve Lewis. "He is up against some of the best vaulters in the world".

Had to avoid own website

When we were out walking this morning and early afternoon I had to avoid radio and television as there was so much sport that I wanted to avoid hearing the results from. When I did tune into the athletics I had to avoid my own website for fear that my enjoyment might be spoilt if I saw the wrong headline.

Before I watched the "as live" programmes I watched the big football match as a neutral. That was the start of hours of indulgence that kept me away from my website for about 6 hours - and even my emails until just now.

Reaching the ultra marathon distance

Even on holiday it is hard to find enough time to watch all of the world championships on TV. I've only just finished the morning (overnight) session.

After my run this morning and I walk along the beautiful Cornish coastline (see above) we visited the outdoor Minack theatre. I had seen it on TV before (Coast) but hadn't appreciated the work of a single lady in building it. She continued to work on it into her 80s. Marie caught me doing some hill repetitions on the steps!

Actually, just walking from the bottom to the top felt like a marathon but we have now passed the marathon distance. We are going out shortly having reached our 27th milestone today.

A hoe there

I had my first visit to Plymouth yesterday since 1978.

Naturally we visited the famous Plymouth Hoe from where the above photo was taken.

My previous visit was to take part in the Plymouth to Dawlish walking race. I travelled down from Manchester which I think was a 6 hour journey by train.

At the time I was studying for a Business Studies degree in Stoke-on-Trent but working for BRS (British Road Services) in Manchester. They used to call it a sandwich course - these days they would have to speak as if they were American and call it an internship - and no doubt it would have to be robust and leveraging the skills that we learnt at college! Mind you, even in those days the jargon was bad - I was doing a thin sandwich course (2 six month work periods in years 1 & 3) rather than a thick sandwich (one year).

I couldn't remember where the walk had started and I had to contact Chris Maddocks, who won that race in 1978 and who I met for the first time that day, to find out that it was in the Cidadel.

I had hoped to see Chris and his family whilst we were in the South West but unfortunately that has not been possible. The five times Olympic walker has a bigger family than when we met them at this time last year.

11 weeks ago, Chris and Fi became proud parents and I recently updated the website that I set up for them in 2009. You can see Ellie there. www.chrisandfi.com

The adverts for the Plymouth to Dawlish Walk used to highlight the free Devon Cream Tea at the end of 42 miles. I've had one or two of the Cornish variety in the last few days.

Technologies continue to amaze

I read today that it is 30 years since the launch of the IBM PC. It was massively expensive and only companies and people who were serious about computing could hope to afford one. Long before Windows, it saw the introduction of Microsoft's DOS (disk operating system). Who would have thought that 30 years later people would own multiple computers and be able to use a portable one on holiday, never mind carry a notepad around in their everyday life?

Even less likely, when it was launched 10 years before that, was that I would be able to listen to a TV show on the aforesaid laptop using clips from 1971 with other music recorded this week but played at the time of my choice (now) whilst working on the website. (The Old Grey Whistle Test).

And here is another "nobody would have thought this possible a few years ago". My Athletics Weekly will have been delivered at home but I have been able to read it online so that I am not as far behind as usual when the World Athletics Championships start in three and half hours time.

I have embedded three websites within the manxathletics.com site to ease your navigation.

With so much technology at their fingertips let's cross them and hope that Channel 4 do a great job - it has to be better than their presentations of the UK athletics before it reverted to the BBC.

The Channel 4 website looks good. Who would have thought we could replay the action, watch live on our phones or have adverts on the World Championships coverage?

I'm sorry if you are at work

Just had a lovely run (despite almost being put off by the rain during the night) and had breakfast with this view from our balcony.

Hearing double, seeing treble

I'm a bit confused tonight as I have had two separate football matches playing on my laptop.

At the same time I have been posting the entries for the End to End Walk - I don't think I have included the Arsenal & Liverpool lineups by mistake.

Entries for the End to End Walk opened on 1 February and so there is no excuse for missing the deadline on 11 September.

It was also in that first week in February that we booked to come back to Cornwall for a third year. There is no confusion seeing the sights for a third time but I am still confused by the two commentaries that I can hear now.

PS We saw the cottage that is perched on the edge of the cliff (double click photo above to see) advertised in an estate agent's window today. Its only (!) £940 per week, does not have a TV, radio and mobile phone reception. Is it worth booking for another year? No chance - it doesn't have an internet connection!

Which one is ours?

I've got more than my share of stories about meeting people by chance when travelling so this story is a slight variation.

What are the chances of flying to Bristol, hiring a car, driving to a holiday apartment in Penzance only to find that the person parked next to you and will spend the next week on the other side of the wall has travelled from Ireland, booked a car from the same hire company and has an identical car distinguished only by one character on the registration plate?

I think the chance is even less than me winning the lottery - and I've never ever bought a ticket!

PS - ours in the left - but would only be able to tell from where we parked it!

At summit at 42

I thought it was time to clear the front page tonight and start some more promotional stuff for some of the winter events. I'm also hoping to do a few old photos and newspaper cuttings in the next few weeks too.

But then I checked today's email and among the 42 I had received was one from Rich Sille about a 42 year old. Lloyd Taggart has won the English Fell Running Championships.

Well done Lloyd. That's all I'm doing for tonight.

Bracing ourselves down here for storms tonight. The ferry from the Isle of Scilly is just coming into the harbour as I write - great view from our apartment. Which is why we like it - and the wi-fi of course. I'm going to use that to watch the underdogs win tonight.

Surprises running by the sea

A year ago I really enjoyed running in the Peel Heritage Trail race. It was my best race of the No rest for the Wicked Series and probably my best non-marathon run since the same event two years earlier. A couple of weeks later I started our holiday (for the second year) in Cornwall and within a couple of days the rest of my year (and plans to properly race in Amsterdam) were dashed.

For the next six months I barely raced and, despite some promising weeks in June, my form has been poor. The effort I have put in since April has not shown up in races.

So I was really pleased to extend some gaps and shorten others on Friday. As I turned onto the coastal path I saw Paul Sykes and Jordan Cain not too far away but the next time I looked I saw no one.

The wind was in our faces as we raced to Peel and so I couldn't hear anything behind me. I thought I was getting more encouragement than normal as I did my best to sprint for the finish. Imagine my surprise when just as I crossed the line Paul appeared alongside me.

We are now installed in Penzance for double our previous quota - two weeks. I was really looking forward to my first run here this morning. Within 10 minutes I was in Newlyn and after about 23 I was at Mousehole - one of our favourite spots to where we walked again for lunch today. Still 7 minutes to go on my 30 minutes out and then return run. And then another surprise running alongside the coast. I had forgotten how tough the climb out of Mousehole (seen in picture was). Tomorrow's hill is even worse.

Before I went out this morning I put the link to Peter's video on the site and watched it later. A real innovation for Manx athletics - and it captured my nasty surprise at the end of the race.

90 minutes of twaddle

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to record my favourite football team on my Sky+ at home whilst travelling on holiday and then watch it over the internet using my Slingbox. I wish I hadn't bothered with the sound - 90 minutes of Chris Twaddle is more than any football supporter can take. ESPN have the worst commentator AND they have Kevin Keegan in the studio.

I need to get out more! I will tomorrow - after I have put another of Peter Bradley's videos on the front page.

Not much time for blogging this week

As I lay on the grass after an awful  marathon five days ago I said "I'm going to have to have an easy week after that".

Here I am now with four races and five morning training sessions in my legs feeling somewhat more positive.

We are off on holiday tomorrow lunchtime with some work to be done cleaning the apartment first. Tonight I have had some more paperwork to do before we go.

Just posted Peter Bradley's video but that's about all for tonight.

I didn't photograph Robbie's shoes after the run tonight - they were red with blood from his ultra long toe nails. So much for self sufficiency.

Bernie Ecclestone used my idea

Earlier in the year, a suggestion by Bernie Ecclestone that Formula 1 tracks should be artificially dampened to make racing interesting was not well received by the teams or the fans.

It has taken him 12 years to take up my suggestion. I've located a copy of a letter I sent to Autosport in 1999 when I argued that it was the only way to improve Formula 1 - and help Bernie sell umbrellas!

First time for everything

Apologies to anyone I showed disrespect to last night by passing them whilst filming with a video camera. I planned to jog around at the back and stop to take film of the leaders coming down but as usual, once I started overtaking people, I got competitive and ran almost as hard as I could.

I have finished as high as second in that race (a long time ago) but had never managed to run all the way around, resorting to hands on knees brisk walking at the top. Last night I managed to keep going all the way around and set a PB by a minute and a half - a PB whilst carrying a camera that is.

Photo thanks to Stan Hall.

Cycling alert

I receive email messages when anyone posts a comment about a video I have published.

I have posted a couple I shouldn't have done - using a recording. The comment on this one is worth reading or even encouraging with a response:

Speed test

I've just done a speed test on our broadband connection and it is currently 13,275 kbps - a pretty good speed which is probably among the best in the British Isles. But when I tried to use it last night it was only about 1/100th of this speed and unusable which is one of the reasons I didn't update the site.

It seemed that some things did not want to work at their normal speed yesterday - including my body when it came to running. Another personal worst of 3.36.12. After passing half way in a conservative 1.29.25 I got slower and slower, like our broadband connection last night.

29 years ago last month I set my personal best time for 50km as a race walker. A quick calculation from the split times I kept from that race suggest I must have gone through the marathon distance at about the same time as I "ran" it yesterday!

Supreme champion poses for manxathletics.com

I think that when the supreme champion at the agricultural show is photographed, you should normally go for a different side. It was good of owner Ashley Kinvig to pose in a more conventional way. He was looking good for a man who nearly lost his life last year when attacked by his bull. His son Michael was a promising sprinter a few years ago but has given up the sport.

Here are more photos from the show: http://murraylambden.zenfolio.com/p416780372

Have been to Peel for the second time today (passed through this afternoon) to a birthday party and it is time i was getting some sleep as I shall be up at 6. Thanks to Bridget and Peter I have a Manx Harriers club vest to run in.

Coming of age?

The picture of me above was taken in London in 1995 after I had run the London Marathon as a "one off". So far I have run 20 in races and as least as many again in training.

London - 13
Isle of Man - 4
Abingdon - 1
Cardiff - 1
Amsterdam - 1

Back in 1995 I would have said that the chances of me reaching 21 were about as playing the Beach Volley in the Olympic Games in the area behind me. Life is full of surprises.

AAAs marathons

This time tomorrow I should be more than half way through my first Manx Marathon in an even year. I have previously run in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

In fact I used to say I would not run a marathon in the summer because I didn't think I could cope with the heat. Well, here we are in August and its a pretty awful day.

Such a contrast to running in London in April when the sun came out to surprise us. The problem is that, when I ran badly in London, I used the heat as an excuse. What I can use tomorrow?

Even though my running year has not got to plan this year I decided at Christmas that the marathon in Amsterdam was my priority this year. Twice I have entered before and twice I have injured myself when my hamstring has given out during the first weekend in September.

I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit that I want to beat "so and so" and not be too far behind "x" but my main aim is to run at a steady pace throughout. Immediately after the race I have to recover Robbie and take him home before returning to see the prize presentation.

I have the trophy for the local championship ready to go. Boy was I embarrassed when I saw that I had been given number one to race in.  Priority number one tomorrow morning though is to get Robbie up for me to get to the start line with time to spare.

Not really the things that matter

The website has really spoken for itself this week.

I've been building up the Salclear Marathon and Half Marathon and the Laxey Partners No Rest for the Wicked running series and it was very positive to receive confirmation from Kevin Deakes that the new website was up and running just in time.

I was pleased to send a cheque for £300 to Hospice this week as the first donation from the profits from my new photo website. It will probably be a while before I am able to make another distribution because the Scottish Widows Parish Walk is by far the biggest event for photos.

It was when I contacted the fund raising department at Hospice that I came up with idea of promoting their fund raising efforts in the Dublin Marathon - whilst we are enjoying marathon perspiration (well its hardly fever!) in the Isle of Man.

I'd been wanting to help plug the need for new blood on the organising committee of the Easter Athletics Festival for a while and I thought of a good link when I had the athletics on the BBCi Player whilst cleaning the cottage last Saturday. Seeing two of the top guys from recent Easter Festivals running in front of 20,000 people and setting personal bests reinforced the message that, although there is a lot of beer swilling and fun at the festival, the standard at the front is pretty high by British standards.

Virtually every day has seen my pension fund lose the equivalent of a month's salary but like most financial assets the real "value" probably didn't exist in the first place.

The things that really matter have been on our TV and computer screens all day. So many people deciding that they were entitled to help themselves to other people's property without making any contribution to society. In didn't appear to be inspired by drunkenness but the problem has been brewing for a long time.

Despite the weather it has been a week when it is a joy to live in the Isle of Man. We may have selfish people here too but surely we the events I have been featuring on the website -  the organisation of hospice, the  marathon and Easter Festival - demonstrate that, as much as anywhere I know the majority contribute to the society they live in.

The scanner is still working flat out on some of my late night sessions to digitise more of my old files and I'm continuing to work on face tagging my photos. This photo (double click to see the detail) has no face but it leads us to much of the sporting action in the North of the island. The marathon and half marathon runners will run past those houses on Sunday morning, the fell runners climbed the mountain just 12 days ago and in another 9 the bikes of the Manx Grand Prix will start climbing a good part of it.

Emerging stats

I've spent more than a few hours over the weekend on my "face tagging project".

Picasa tells me that I have a total of 93,430 photos on my computer and there are 147,663 unidentified faces. And that is not the whole story because on lots of photos (particularly the older scanned ones) the faces are not highlighted and have to be added manually.

The database of people within the photos has increased to 672 which means that more and more people start to be recognised from each collection of photos.

Outside of my family, Michael George has been identified most - I can currently locate 443 photos with his face!

The face tagging will not be published - the object is to build a resource so that I can quickly find photos of a particular person. Hopefully I'll also be contributing to history (and for my friends at the museum, yes I will give you a copy when its finished!).

How long will it take to finish. That's one stat I don't have to hand.

Related?

This job I have started, tagging photos, is going to take much longer than I hoped. It is rewarding but just so time consuming.

Among the many people the Picasa program confuses are these two. As the Independent would say (when they spot lookalikes), Alan Kelly and Stan Sille (really the other way around)

Only another 156.500 to go

The Picasa software is brilliant for face recognition software. Now I know who all the Santas are in the Christmas races! And I would have never have recognised this one of Paul Sykes in the 2008 Parish Walk without it.

One thing leads to another

A few days ago I started trying to solve a mystery. There were some photos on my Parish walk blog which were not on my main albums. My conclusion, regrettably, was that I must have accidentally deleted some of the original files. I was constantly switching my memory cards around and basically I must have messed up.

But the ones on the blog can be downloaded. They are stored as an album in Picasa which like Blogger is owned by Google. To do so I had to install the desktop version of Picasa which I duly did and downloaded the Parish Walk files fairly quickly.

I have used Picasa before but it is so much better than when I last did. It started indexing the photos and invited me to add tags to the 173,000 faces it found on my photos. I couldn't resist.

All my spare time now is going on working on this new project. Its amazing how when you add a batch of photos to a person's album how quickly it offers more suggestions. Lots of tales to tell though of some of the lookalikes it has suggested.  

I only have 161,000 more to match! Thereafter it will be wonderful when I am looking for a photo to be able to search by name. One of my friends assumed that I already had such organisation. Quite where I was going to get the time from in the past I don't know.

UK trials

I don't get a chance to feature many of the off Island events. Although I am always proud to read about any successes by Manx athletes off the Island I usually rely on the reports elsewhere, and frankly there is no point in publishing the same report on several websites.

But I had a bit more time that normal to indulge on TV sport this weekend and I watched most of the UK trials and had a curiosity to find out how the Manx athletes had got on. I was delighted to find out that Harriet Pryke had set another Manx record. I started a feature first thing this morning and eventually got the links to the results of the three Manx athletes I could find published at lunchtime.

The event, which used to incorporate the AAA Championships is a great favourite of mine and I went to watch three times in the early 90s and three times again 2002 to 2004.

I thought I would look through my photos to see if there were athletes still competing. Almost - Philips Idowu was in the triple jump not the crowd in 2002!

The photo that captured by eye was this one showing that anyone who broke a British record won the keys to a Rover Car. A what?

A sorry tale

I really enjoyed my venture up North Barrule on Saturday afternoon although it was just as well that I had not run quite as far as I had hoped in the morning. 16 miles in my legs made the climb hard work. But what great weather.

And it was so good to see so many young runners at the front of the race. When was the last time that three under the age of 21 finished in the top four in an open race in the Isle of Man?

Although I am always a little cautious about my photo captions when I don't know the end result, I had assumed that Andrew Kaighin had held on to win. I described him as being "peerless" which was suggesting he was superior to the opposition but also a reference to the piers in the background.

So I got a shock when I saw the results later and saw that Olly Lockley had won. Sorry about that but well done to Olly.

Not that his mother was any the wiser. I had the pleasure of Margaret's company on the descent and she had no idea that her son had won. But she was on hand when I couldn't find the camera on the hill and also to pick me up when I fell with cameras going left, right and centre as the video shows. A sorry tale.