And I'm back

From snowboarding in Italy for a week. I was over in Cervinia near the Swiss border. It's a pretty good resort, no runs were too taxing or steep, but there was enough there to keep us all busy especially as it snowed heavily for 4 days.

The first day we got to ski had a beautiful clear sky and great visibility, but some of the runs were a bit bare. I lost New Years day entirely due to being sick from partying too hard the night before, but the second was snowy and the pass into Switzerland was closed. This was to be a common theme as it was closed for the rest of the week that we were there!

I learnt quite quickly how to ski through powder as deep as my knees but did manage to stop dead a few times and others to actually crash and spray powder everywhere including down my trousers.

Overall it was a great week of relaxing and taking a break from work, but as usual, I want to go back...now. I did feel the effects of the altitude a little bit, seeing as Cervinia is at 2050m and we were skiing from 3360m high.

Now it's time for bed and to read part of a book on triathlon swimming to get a few ideas on training for swimming.

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.

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