Bounce

This wasn't a great week. First off I got a head cold at the start and it has taken most of the week to shift. Then there were christmas parties to go to. Two specifically with work, on Wednesday and Thursday.

Then the weekend kinda went in a blur. I spent yesterday christmas shopping and managed to get all my presents bought. Last night, I went to see Kerbdog in Whelans. Their annual gig at this stage, and it rocked. Boy was I glad I brought a spare t-shirt with me!

Got woken up this morning by Waggers with a cup of coffee and porridge. Then I remembered I promised Greg that I would go out mountain biking with himself, Pauline and Waggers. My first time on any sort of mountain biking trail, and I really enjoyed it. We went up to Wicklow and I borrowed Greg's full suspension bike. It took me a while to get used to it and then to being offroad, but by the end of it I was letting go and getting some good speed up. We were out for about 2 and a half hours and then went for food. We could have eaten the place out of all the stew they had I think!

Tomorrow I have to go to work, though hopefully I won't have to hang around too long. Then it's a drive back to Cavan for christmas.

Some training at last

I finally did it! I went for a run today after talking about it for all of yesterday. It was cold all day, but when I decided to start running it wasn't too bad.

I managed 8.5km in just under 40 minutes and felt good after it. I'm still trying out some protein and carbohydrate recovery drinks so I mixed one up after the run. Then it was time for a nice dinner of home made potato cakes with salami. Mmmmmm, tasty.

I don't feel too stiff now, but I'll have to wait until the morning to see how much the run affected me.

Boo

Well, my plan failed.

I am just back from two consecutive nights out partying. Last night was the christmas party for DCUCC, except that some older people thought it more prudent to go to Wagamamas where they have better food. Then on to Captain Planets (I mean Americas) to meet the students before heading to Messr Maguires for more fun and games.

Tonight was Frederiks last night in Dublin so we brought him to the Foggy Dew and Bruxelles.

Tomorrow is Friday and I have to go to the afters of a wedding. I think I should bring gear to go for a run or two seeing as though I have been bad at getting out recently. But I have a small problem. The battery on my Polar watch died this week, so I need to get it replaced. I have to send it away to England to do that so it might be sometime after Christmas before I get it back.

Next week is going to have to be more structured because I have 4 nights out planned, from Wednesday to Saturday. I want to do some sessions in the morning or at lunch next week. More details to follwo on Sunday.

After a long break

Well, it's time to get back into talking about what I have been doing.

I've been a bit lax with all the training recently, seeing as I was busy for all the weekends, and recovering during the week. I have been in Scotland for paddling, Oslo for a weekend break with Louise and then went home to test out the new camper van that I bought.

I also took it down to Killarney where I was working for two days last week. It was a bit of an epic trip what with the van deciding that it definitely didn't like Kerry. It broke down on the way down there, wouldn't start properly while there, even after getting a new battery. But then since it got back to Dublin, it's been fine. It needs to go for a service to make sure that that doesn't happen again!

We had more Muster league again last night and went down in Louise's car. The roof rack decided that it liked it more off the car than on it, so we had to stop a couple of times to refix it on to the roof. Then we gave the boats to Simon and Moya (thanks guys) to bring back for us. While down there we won all three of our matches, so it was good.

Today was spent with more paddling, five of us went out and did the Glenmacnass and the Dargle. On the McNasty, Fred lost my paddle, but after some diving under the undercut, we got them back for him. Then on the Dargle, Junior decided that he wanted to suspend gravity and stop half way down the main drop! So after he swam out and we recovered his boat, we did the rest of it with no problems at all. Then it was out to Johnnie Foxes pub for some grub and a pint.

This week I have great intentions of actually going back to at least do a bit of swimming. I have been cycling to work every day so that's going well. I'm going to say that I will do two swim sessions this week. Tomorrow night and Wednesday before the christmas party. I'll have to read through the swim manual to get two sessions to do though.

Wow, that was a long update, I must make sure that I update it more regularly and then I won't need such large updates each time :)

Munster League and DCPL

What a weekend of polo!

On Friday night we won one and lost one match in the DCPL. I didn't play well, but Louise pulled it out of the bag with a hat trick in the first match!

On Saturday night, we headed to Limerick again. We had three matches, against Kamikaze, Swink and Carnage. We beat Kamikaze 6-0 and Swink by one goal. We were confident going into the Carnage match and went 1-0 up pretty quickly. They only had 4 players, so we thought it would be easy enough. They equalised shortly after, but coming up to half time, I put us 2-1 up. But then it all caved in, we let in two second half goals and missed a few long range chances to lose 3-2 overall.

But we are still top of the league so far.

On Sunday, I was supposed to go paddling on the Boyne, but ended up having to re construct the nose of my boat after a nose to nose with Vinny in the second sprint on Saturday night.

Right now, I am just after upgrading my laptop to Leopard and losing all my information. Luckily I had some backups of my photos and most of my music on my iPod. Time now for some sleep before climbing and a pool session tomorrow.

Phew

Well, I think I am finally over Achill. We went there last weekend with the canoe club and there was much drinking, falling over and some surfing. For the first time in ages the surf was actually good but I only managed about an hour and a half on the water. The rest of the day was spent trying to stop the world from spinning!

Myself and Junior were playing with our cameras over the weekend too, so here are some photos:
Mine and Juniors

So because of that, I have been in recovery mode all week. I went for a swim last night and only managed 500m before the sauna beckoned me in because I had the mother of all headaches. I know, I know, not the best idea to go to the sauna with a headache.

But on the upside, I am still cycling into work every day, so I'm averaging about 17-18km per day. Not a lot but it all adds up and I am managing to throw some sprints in there too. Yesterday I did nearly manage to plough into the back of a UPS truck though. As a bus pulled out, I decided it was a good idea to pull in behind it and cut into the cycle lane. Except there was a UPS van, right in front of me! After locking the back wheel and resigning myself to face planting, I got traction again and managed to skirt around the edge of it. It put the jitters up me, that's for sure.

This weekend we have Munster League again, and DCPL on Friday night too. I think we are playing the same teams in the Munster League as we did the last weekend, but what the hey, it's polo.

Technorati Tags: canoe polo, cycle

Training this week

I had a bit of a head cold all week, so I didn't get a whole pile of training done. I have been cycling into work every day though. It's been nice weather, dry and cold, perfect for cycling.

Today I met up with the DCU cycling club for a spin out to the Phoenix Park. There were four of us, Greg, Sean, Diarmuid and myself. I decided it would be a good day to finally try out Pauline's tri bars seeing as she left them here for me to try out almost a month and a half ago.

We went around the proposed route for the cycling intervarsities to test out what it was like. It's a nice fast 8km loop with long downhill stretches and no real killer climbs. We did 4 loops on that and then headed back to DCU. Myself and Greg decided to stop off for a coffee and we got chatting about general training for next year and the logistics of the Ironman itself.

I remembered that I got talking to a Niall from Cork about Ironmans at the Munster League a few weeks ago. He is training to become a coach and has finished a few Ironmans too. I have to mail him and see if I can get some tips from him.

Tomorrow I will be doing a river trip on the Liffey, bringing out some of the DCU canoe club. There probably won't be too much water, but we might be able to hone some of the basic skills that never really get worked on.

And before that, I am going to head over to Peter's house to help him lay some flooring. And get a beer for every hour worked :)

Technorati Tags: 70.3, cycle, Ironman, training

New job and back swimming

I started a new job on Tuesday so I missed the swim and gym session on Monday night. I was too tired to go and a bit sore after the weekend anyway.
I'm working in the National Museum as IT support. It seems like a good job, lots of work to keep us busy trying to get everything ship shape and find out where everything is.

I went for a swim last night to get back on track. I did a 500m warm up and then 5 100m bursts (whatever you call them!) on 2:15. I was bushed afterwards so I went to the sauna :)

I got home and got some food and then Louise called to say it was Marie Claire's birthday so we had to go out for a few drinks to that.

Last football match of the year tomorrow evening against Kill in Kill. I hope it goes well for us, it would be a shame to end it all on a downer.

Technorati Tags: football, swim, job

Munster League and a run

Last weekend we had the first round of the Munster Canoe Polo League. I am playing on Sandycows as Muppets didn't get entered. We had 4 matches and did quite well, winning 2 and drawing 2. After that we headed to Lahinch as some of the guys wanted to go surfing on Sunday. I decided to give it a miss as I still have a sore elbow.

I went for a run instead and did about 10km. I felt good during it, despite having been up until 4am playing Ibble Dibble with the others in the van :)

We went and got food when everyone got off the water and headed for home. I wanted to stop on the way and watch the rugby world cup semi final, so into a quiet local pub in Roscrea. Gerry and Yvonne decided to go home through Galway. We got home about midnight, tired and in need of a good sleep!

Today I am planning on going to the gym for a weight session and also into the pool for a light workout and loosening up swim.

Technorati Tags: canoe polo, run

First Fresher trip

Today is the first fresher trip of the college year. They are all being brought down to Wild Water Kayak Club to be thrown into the deep end. I am going to head down with them to help out with the rescue and overseeing of things. I won't be doing too much else as I managed to hurt my elbow again last night at the pool. It's gone all stiff again today. I was hoping to get to the pool for a light swim session today, but I think I might be better to leave that until tomorrow now.

Myself and Junior will also be bringing down cameras to capture the moment. I hope to learn a few things from him while we are there too :)

As promised

I put up some photos of the victorious U14 Shannon Gaels team on Picasa. You can see them by following this link

Technorati Tags: football

Now it's official

I entered the Ironman 70.3 today. Now I've no excuses left, it's time to get busy. Greg informs me it's only 240 days away now!

First off is nutrition, so as it's nearly lunchtime, it's time to make some food. :)

Technorati Tags: 70.3, Ironman

Gutted but happier now

The Junior championship final was yesterday. We were playing against Killeshandra, and we lost. We lost by 3 points in the end, but they were 8 points up after about 10 minutes of the second half. We fell asleep badly and were never able to recover.

So there it is for another year. We have 3 league matches left starting with Killeshandra again on Saturday night. I can only hope that they will have been celebrating all week...

After the match there were lots of discussions about what went wrong and what we can do to make things right next year, all accompanied by quite a large amount of alcoholic beverages. We got some answers but I'm not sure if we can remember everything now :)

I was back in Breffni park this evening to see the U14 team do what we weren't able to do yesterday. They beat Ballymachugh by 5 points in a really good match under floodlights. It was wet and slippy but that didn't stop either side from playing really attractive football. There was a big crowd from Blacklion there to see them, including a lot from the Junior team. I took a few photos and I'll stick them up online tomorrow.

When I was leaving Breffni, I thought the van wasn't handling the best. I was right, a quick check showed that I had a flat. So I set about trying to fix it. I have to say thanks to Brendan Corrigan who stopped and gave me a dig out, I don't think I could have gotten it changed without his help. But at least I now know how to change a tyre on the van.

Now the hard work of trying to define some goals and get a training program written out has to start.

Technorati Tags: championship, football

We're in the final

Well we won the semi final today. The game finished 2-9 to 1-11 in our favour so we are through to the final against Killeshandra. Killeshandra beat Cornafean in the match before ours. We didn't get to see it and I don't even know what the score was.

Our match was a closely fought affair. We scored first, through a free, but then there was a long break before the next score. We were ahead at half time by 2 points, 0-7 to 0-5. In the second half, Arva came out storming and got a penalty which they scored. We were on the back foot then, behind by a one and points were traded before we got our first goal through Enda McHugh. A long ball went in and he punched it in past the keeper. He got another goal soon after that after some intricate play and lots of passes. Somehow he managed to chip the keeper from only a few metres out and that set us up.

To us it seemed that the referee wanted a draw, but after coming under fierce pressure and forcing Arva to shoot wide we pulled through by one.

I was playing centre half back for the entire match, which is an odd one for me, as I usually end up being moved around the pitch depending on how things are going in other positions. I was reasonably happy with my performance, except for a couple of balls in the first half that I really should have at least attempted to get.

So it's back to training now for another three weeks before the big one.

Technorati Tags: championship, football

The quiet before the storm

This week has been spent relaxing and waiting for the Junior championship semi final to come around. I will be going home today and training tonight. Then on Sunday it's off to Breffni Park to play against Arva.

Ours is the second semi, with Killeshandra playing Cornafean in the other one before us. So with a bit of luck we will still be in the running come Sunday evening.

Technorati Tags: football

Follow on from Andy's comment

I think Andy might have uncovered something that I was trying to hide for a while :)
And now that Una wants to stick magnets (http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~canoe/minibb/index.php?action=vthread&forum=1&topic=2553) on to myself, Greg, Pauline and Waggers, our circuits might not take it.

An intro

This site is going to detail the training that I intend to do and actually do in preparation for the Swiss Half Ironman in June of 2008. I will be doing it with Greg, who has already entered, so he has upped the ante already.

My sporting history has been quite varied. I play Gaelic Football for a Junior club in Cavan and have also played Canoe Polo all over the world with the Irish team and various club teams. I think the training for these sports will help me in being stubborn enough to complete the half ironman :)