Another two years of AW

Have just reviewed my subscription for Athletics Weekly - that will mean to about 36 years as a subscriber.

Look who is in this week.

https://subscribeme.to/athletics-weekly

Forum spam

If ever you wonder why you don't get admitted to the forum without a real name, you should bear in mind that I get several emails a day on average, some days as many as 40, from people in Russia and third world countries applying to join the forum, presumably as a way as harvesting personal details. The above is an example of the emails received in the past few days re the forum although I have just approved one Manx one with a real name.

93, 94 & 95

Its almost 20 years ago that we had the offer for our house accepted and soon after we moved into a new building close to the centre of town. That was 93.

I couldn't remember when I wrote the letter, to Race Walking Record, where I advocated the change of rules. But during my scanning marathon (no pun intended) I found the letter and I have published it on the manxathletics.com site tonight. It was in 94.

I couldn't remember how many houses they planned to build behind the school at Kirk Michael. Despite my delight at buying a new home in 93, I did not want to see this green field site at Kirk Michael built upon. I was delighted to hear that all the houses had been tuned down. That was 95.

I wonder how many houses have been build in the village since these photos were taken in the 60s - probably about 96.

Best of Port Soderick

I had too many visits to Port Soderick at the end of last week when the boiler at the cottage started playing up during the worst of the weather. Last night was spent dealing with a complaint from someone whose perception changed within a day or two of our cottage being the best they had ever stayed in to finding every fault under the sun.

Oh well. At least there wasn't a fault under the sun to be found at Port Soderick on Saturday morning as the photo above shows when I walked along the Marine Drive with Robbie.

It appeared that half of the Isle of Man's dogs were there too. I've been with Marie and our dog to Ramsey this evening - believe it or not it is on a course of physiotherapy.

The scanner remains silent tonight. I've done on a few things for the Parish Walk site but not sure if I will manage the one planned for the tonight.

I didn't plan anything to do with Port Soderick but plenty of people are. We've taken an amazing number of bookings in the past couple of weeks including one an hour ago.

No repeat of this

Its a couple of weeks short of two years since I got my hands in the condition above. That was when I got frostbite running in Germany and they were pretty sore for some time until the skin came off and then I lost my finger nails.

I was only about 10% of the way there yesterday on the top of Slieau Ruy. I got to the point where I couldn't move the camera shutter with my gloves on so I took them off - and fairly soon after I couldn't do much again. The top of my "shutter" finger is still numb, although as I am managing to type what you see here I am obviously not at death's door!

I lost my heat fairly quickly yesterday despite having six layers on my top half, partly because I got warm walking uphill for a couple of miles to get to my spot, secondly because I fell over on the way and so had damp clothes and thirdly because my hands go white at the best of times.

Apart from having a laugh at my own expense, the reason for writing this is just to emphasise the need to ensure that, when going on the fells, you not only follow the organisers instructions but you treat their safety requirements as a minimum.

A twisted ankle in freezing conditions and you would loose your heat a lot quicker than I did and have far fewer layers to protect you. After I deserted Ben Corkhill at the top of the mountain I jogged down and was able to generate some warmth of  my own in the process. With a twisted ankle you wouldn't have that most natural of remedies available to you.

Multi tasking

I might have slagged off Microsoft for its handling of its Windows 8 launch for Isle of Man customers the other day, but tonight has been one of those nights when I remember just how many things you can do at once on a computer.

I'm almost through my two year quota of Race Walking Record scanning for the night (just about to do December 1994) but whilst it has been doing its OCR bit at the end of every magazine I have been updating the manxathletics.com website and reviewing the Parish Walk entries (349 when I did that bit a few minutes ago).

Found a very significant letter of mine to Race Walking Record from 1994 which I shall reproduce next week.

Not the photos he wanted

I think I confused a few people this morning when I made reference to the wrong years in the old Commonwealth Games photos. I have now corrected them.

It was good to hear from former Isle of Man Newspapers editor Lionel Cowin recently although it has taken me a few weeks to include his appeal for his missing 1974 team photo on the front page.

Lionel was involved in the Commonwealth Games for many years, in both team management and as a journalist, so he is in a good position to publish a book

I have just sent him three photos from 1994 in which he features which he has probably not seen before. I was the athletics team manager at Victoria, Canada on that occasion. The one I have featured of him above shows him climbing the wall of the team accommodation - I can't remember why.