Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in daraok's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
10:32 am	Note the carefully practised Nixon victory salute http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/4936744.stm Slan libh, Dara (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 13th, 2006
3:53 pm	Go on, ya good thing! http://www.athleticsireland.ie/images/moscow.mpeg Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
Monday, January 16th, 2006
2:33 pm	Zen and the art of shot putting Saturday was National Indoors Masters championships. I'd been asked to turn out for the club team in a big cross country race Sunday, so I was resting up for that. Mireille picked up a shoulder injury in javelin training a few months ago which prevented her from training for the shot putt this winter, so we weren't too hopeful of her being able to compete either. However, we did a test session on Thursday to see if she could throw at all, and it turned out that with her new technique, she could throw with little or no pain. So after a couple of practise throws, I called a halt on the session and pronounced her fit to compete. However, those two throws were well short of what she'd been throwing in practise before her injury, and even short of what she threw in competition in the summer before she changed her technique. So she was quite despondent about her prospects and even whether she should compete. When I started coaching her, and the 400 metre runner I help, I knew that I knew nothing about their events technically, but I assumed that in all other respects it would be the same as coaching a distance runner. All distance runners need to either hype themselves up before a race to prepare for the pain, or have someone else do it for them, so they fully realise the importance of maximum focus and effort once the starter's gun sounds. I assumed this was true of other athletes, and it is true for the 400 metre runner: she needs to be calmly hyped up, constantly reminded of the importance of the event. Like distance runners, she performs to a higher level in competition than she ever will in training. Throwers, however, seem to be different, or at least Mireille is. She beats herself up over every lacklustre training session, and as a competition approaches, every negative thought imaginable pops into her head and it all threatens to overwhelm her. This is so out of character for her when you compare it to her approach to everything else in life that it really took me by surprise. My initial assumption was I should hype her up for the battle, talk up her chances, dispel the negative thoughts. But that didn't seem to work. So this time, I had decided on a different tack, even before her injury. As she voiced her fears that her injury and lack of recent training was a recipe for disaster, my response was "What happens happens. All you can do is do your best and if it's not good enough, so be it. You've lots of readymade excuses". I kept this low key approach going right up to the competition. As we hung around the call room waiting for it to start, I told her not to worry, that whatever was going to happen would, nobody would die and the world would not end. All she really had to think about was her technique and trying her best: the rest was outside her control. In her last competitive outing (her first with the new technique), one of her throws was called illegal by the judge. This upset her enormously and placed doubts in her mind about the technique. To be honest, her foul throw looked perfectly legal to me. Admittedly, I'm no expert, but my feeling was and still is that she simply felt foul of an arsehole who had been given some power and was determined to throw it around. There may also have been an element of sexism at work: the technique she now employs is used by a lot of the top men, but almost none of the top women, and absolutely none of the Masters women. As the women did their warmup throws on Saturday, they were warned by the judge to watch their technique or he'd call a foul. I could see this just added to Mireille's woes. I decided to go talk to the judge, and after a friendly chat about life in general, I told him my beloved was a bit worried about her technique and asked if he could look at her warmup throws to see if there were likely to be any problems. She took her first warmup throw, and he called to her "Perfect, no problems there". She was surprised because she didn't realise I'd spoken to him so wasn't expecting any feedback, but I could see her instantly relaxed. She then took another practise throw, and though these practice throws are never measured, I could see she was throwing much farther today than she had on Thursday. I crossed my fingers and hoped this would be the first time she'd throw at least as well in competition as in recent training. She asked me how her throw was, and I decided not to tell her she was throwing it very far today. Instead, I just said "Technically perfect". In all her competitions since her comeback, I observed that she seemed to allow herself to be intimidated before the competition started. The other competitors, realising she was relatively new to competition and somewhat ill at ease as a result, would invariably approach her, ostensibly for a friendly chat, but managing to leave her with the feeling she was an impostor. So this time I stood between her and her competitors throughout the preliminaries, and when they approached and tried to talk to her or ask her a question, I simply answered for her. Yes, it's very cold in here today, no, there are not many people from our club here today, yes I'm sure she wishes you the best of luck too, and yes I'm sure she remembers you cfrom the Outdoors last summer too. Once the competition got started, I told her to ignore the throws of the others and just prepare mentally for her own. She was last to throw, and as it transpired, the competition was effectively over after her first throw. I sensed she was unusually relaxed as she went to the circle for her first throw. She took her starting position, did the backward hop with great spring, executed a beautiful pirouette, and flung it out long. I knew it was long from 20 metres away, and my mind instantly compiled a list of her longest ever throws in training, ready to compare it with this one once it was measured. When they called it, I knew it was up there with her best. She came back and asked me "How was that?" Numbers seem to confuse her in the heat of battle so rather than giving her the distance, I just said "I'm pretty sure you've already won. You threw it a good bit farther than any of your competitors ever have in their lives". In all her other contests, her second throw was always her best. It's like the first one is a loosener, the second one gets everything, and then she can't replicate that. After the successful first effort, we decided to pass the next round to give her more time to recover and prepare for the all important second throw. By the time she stepped into the circle again, it was pretty clear to me that her first throw was going to be enough to win the competition. Nevertheless, I crossed my fingers and hoped she could extract another few centimetres just to make absolutely certain. Normally, she has a tendency to rush her throws in competition, but this time she stood in the start position for what seemed like an eternity. Then she sprung back like a cat, pirouetted with the grace of a ballerina, and shrieked as she unleashed with all the power she could summon. When I saw it land and heard the gasps of astonishment from everyone around, my mind immediately dumped the numbers of what she had ever thrown in training. It was clear this throw was in a whole different league. Instead, I tried to recall what the Irish Masters national record was. When they called her throw, she looked at me inquiringly and I said to her "I think you just smashed the national record". Turns out she had, and by over 50 centimetres. She had little time to recover before her third and final throw. It fell well short of her second, and short of her first too, but was still longer than anything any of her competitors threw all year. In a few minutes she had thrown the three longest of anyone in Ireland all year. Once she'd got her gold medal, the new National Indoor Champion and her adoring husband sped away from the stadium to paint the town red. And there are few nicer towns to paint red than Nenagh: the locals all live life like it's something to be relished at every instant. The following day, he plodded around a mucky field in Dublin on his way to a respectable but unremarkable 35th place in the Dublin Masters Championships, happy that his wife was the toast of the club. Slan libh, Dara (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 23rd, 2005
12:29 pm	Going back Yesterday afternoon, Mireille and I collected Oisin from school, then headed for Dalkey. Mireille and Oisin headed down to the sea while I headed off to do a hill repeat session. They looked so cute, I was kicking myself I didn't have a camera. A real opportunity missed for a classic "Alsatian Mother and her Irish Son, circa the turn of the millenium" picture. We were living in Ballybrack in the mid 90s when I started running regularly. I headed for the hill where I did my first ever hill repeats, thinking it would still be perfect, because it used to take me 2 minutes to sprint up it. But then I sprinted up it in 1 minutes 20, so it's only about 300 metres long. Still as steep as I remember it. I ended up going further down and adding another 500 metres of not quite so steep uphill. Afterwards, we drove around a little, and headed to our favourite pub, Baker's Corner, for some food. Oisin was so hungry he ate all his sausages and chips and half my pizza. He's in an extremely affectionate phase at the moment, wanting to be nuzzled, carressed or hugged every couple of minutes. Also in a great mood: nearly always a big happy smile on his face, the type of smile that just cheers everybody up. It's always a strange feeling returning to a place where you lived for a long time. In your mind, it becomes stuck in that time, like it doesn't exist any more. Then you go back and shock horror, it's still there, and getting on fine without you. I thought about the different places I worked back then. One thing I noticed is that when you look back, the things you remember that make a particular job good or bad are absolutely not the things you focus on at the time. At the time, it's how much does it pay, and how does it advance my career. Whereas looking back, it's the characters you worked with, the memorable anecdotal moments, the atmosphere, what the place was like and so forth. Happy Christmas y'all. Slan libh, Dara (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 11th, 2005
7:16 pm	Pro Boxing Last night, the TV offered up a veritable feast of pro boxing. Along with distance runners, boxers are the sportsmen I admire the most. Both share a passion for incessant training, and both prepare for 3 or 4 months for a single morning or night's work. Anyway, RTE (the Irish National broadcaster) brought us promising (and undefeated) Irish prospect, Bernard Dunne, who was fighting a decent Romanian on the undercard of the IBF Middlweight title fight between Abraham and Ikeke. Dunne started boxing at the age of 5 in the club run by the guy who owns the shop where we buy all our sports gear (he was on TV as one of the pundits). Dunne won handily enough, despite a cut from a clash of heads. He basically wore the guy down with body punches, and it was a body punch that ended the fight. A real purist's boxer. The main event was preceded by the most bizarre spectacle I've ever witnessed at a boxing match. It's not unusual for boxers to pump themselves up (or more importantly, the crowd) by walking to the ring as Theme for Rocky or Simply The Best blares out from the speakers. So musical accompaniment was not unexpected, but not what we got. What we got was Papa Smurf and a few Smurfettes singing the Smurf song. This seemed to go on forever and just as you were rubbing your eyes wondering if you'd had too much mulled wine, out came would be champ Abraham.....dressed as a smurf! Mireille remarked how different German boxing crowds appear to British ones. In Britain, the whole thing has a decidely low rent working class appeal, but I guess the same class distinctions don't apply in Deutschland. They even had a femle string quartet playing the national anthems. Which seemed to go on forever: first we got the Stars and Stripes (for the IBF), then Oh Canada (for Ikeke), and then Deutschland Uber Alles. I'm sure those girls' parents think all the Deutschmarks spent on violin lessons and putting them through the conservatory was money well spent now they've seen them play Deutschland Uber Alles in a boxing ring. The title fight itself went pretty much to script. This was a title fight in name only: Bernard Hopkins was stripped of one of his four titles for refusing to fight a mandatory defence against Abraham and choosing instead to defend against Howard Eastman (and wipe the floor with him). Every non-German boxing fan thinks Eastman beat Abraham in the eliminator in Germany, but Abraham got the home town decision. Abraham is a very limited boxer who moves as gracefully as a tank with a huge punch, one of which finally did for Ikeke. There's talk of a unification fight with Hopkins two times conqueror, Jermaine Taylor, which should be good fun who likes to see black men beating white ones senseless. So that was the German programme. The British one started with one of the funniest fights I've ever seen. It wasn't a serious contest - Britain's finest prospect and Olympic silver medalist, Amir Khan, up against a journeyman pro who has crammed 64 fights into a 4 year career, 45 of them losses. To make it even more of a mismatch, Khan's handlers employed the "get a guy from a lower weight division to make our guy look even better" trick, except they went down more than one division. It really looked like a big boy beating a little one up. The journeyman knew what kind of fight it was, and did everything he could to play up his role. Basically, he came across as a street brawler whose idea of paradise is getting paid to get into a ring and fight, even if you lose. He apparently could not even box. Unencumbered by the boxer's decision processes: "Do I throw a left hook or a right uppercut?", he concentrated on trying to decide whether to throw the left elbow or the right one, or which WWF move might unsettle Khan. And unsettle Khan he did for one whole round. Funniest moment of the night was when Khan knocked him down in the second, and he tried to spring back up to show he wasn't hurt, but failed and ended up back on the ground. The Harrison-Williams fight at the top of the bill was a snoozefest. There were doubts over both men's stamina: Harrison has never gone 12 rounds, and Williams is the type of power puncher who usually runs out of steam after 6 rounds. To counteract this, both men decided to throw almost nothing for 9 long boring rounds to boos from the crowd. Harrison backed off, throwing the occasional flick jab, while Williams followed him around, throwing the occasional wannabe haymaker. The last three rounds provided some entertainment when Williams finally landed a haymaker, knocking Harrison down for the first time in his career. Harrison barely hung on, but then came out for the 11th looking like a man who had only now realised that you can't win a fight unless you throw a few punches. He came close to a knockout, or at least a knockdown, but Williams hung on, survived the twelfth, and got a deserved points win. This was apparently a genuine grudge match: the antipathy between them goes back a few years. Which just goes to prove that a lot of hatred does not a good boxing match make. Williams pre-match taunts that Olympic gold medalist Audley Harrison was a celebrity boxer interested in the status but not the graft rung true though. Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
3:48 pm	The A team My recent quietude is down to nothing more interesting going on than work and running. The running has been a bit dispiriting. I ran a series of shorter races, and routinely ended up 10-15 seconds slower a mile than my best. The important thing, though, is to keep going, and not let negative thoughts like "It's called aging, sonny" creep in. Particularly alarming was a 5K race last weekend 38 seconds slower than the same race on the same course last year (a life time best time). Mireille helped keep my spirits up pointing out I still had the half marathon (and maybe the marathon) in my legs and it would come. Former Olympic great Pat Hooper advised me to ease back on the long stuff and get some speed back into my legs over Xmas. Pat's interest in and willingness (and ability) to advise non-elites like me is extremely unusual and heartening. He never says more than a sentence, but it's always exactly the right one for that time. So I did some 100s on Monday, and a few more on Tuesday. Then I ran a 2 miler on Wednesday, to more or less the same standard as I've been running recently. There are no instant fixes in this game. Yesterday I showed up for a 5K hoping to improve on last week by 10 or 15 seconds. Maybe even dip under 18 minutes if it went really well. The race itself was a bit of a shambles. There were no distance markers so you had no idea how you were going timewise. To make matters worse, the race was basically in and around an industrial estate, which gave the surroundings an awful sameness so you felt like you kept running past the same buildings. Of course, with the heart monitor, strictly speaking the absence of distance markers shouldn't make that much difference since I use the monitor to judge my effort and pace. Anyway, no real idea of how I was going, though the sight of the bum of one of Ireland's elite female distance runners in the distance should have been a clue I was going better than normal (normal being losing sight of her early in the race). Turns out she was running a lot slower than normal (still hasn't recovered from the Dublin marathon, she said after), and I was running a lot faster than my recent form. I ended up 38 seconds faster than my 5K the previous week, which is a staggering improvement 7 day improvement. Some runners can race themselves into top shape, while others need to back off the racing and concentrate on quality speed training. History suggests I'm in the first group, and so it would appear again. I was only 4 seconds outside my lifetime best. Had there been distance markers and I'd realised I was that close, I might have been able to squeeze the extra 5 seconds. Or I might have blown up in the attempt. Afterwards, I found out to my bemusement that the Athletics Association has just re-categorised me as an "elite runner". After a few years in the novice/fun-runner Grade D category, they shifted me up to Grade C (which roughly means "good club runner"). Last year they move me to Grade B (semi-elite), and thanks mainly to consistency rather than any one great performance, I finished up second overall for the year of the 200 or so runners in that category. Hence the shift up, I guess. As Mireille pointed out, "In his 41st year, they reclassified him as an elite runner" just sounds like an improbable first line in a novel. Anyway, the silver lining is I got transferred to an elite team. This year, I've been the "good runner" on a Grade C team, the IT team. It figures that IT geeks do not good runners made, and I ended up being first scorer on a particularly bad team battling for nothing else other than the pride of beating at least one other Grade C team. Some races not enough computer geeks even showed up to make up the numbers for a team (of three!). No more. Now I'm on the crack Engineering team. Engineers kick ass in a running sense, apparently. I was the third scorer on the winning team. Go us. The A team. I think I'll start referring to my team mates as BA and Murdoch and insist they call me Hannibal. Slan libh, Dara (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
10:14 am	Stonehenge It has to be said: in the flesh (or stone), it's pretty unimpressive. Salisbury, however, is a bit of a hidden gem. It reminded me of Galway, combining friendly people and small size with a nevertheless sophisticated city feel. We flew in to the grandly named Bournemouth International Airport, which turned out to be just a collection of sheds with a strong stench of sewage. On the first day, we went to a pub/restaurant that has been there since the 14th century. I ate venison for the first time in my life. We also got talking to an elderly English couple at the next time who had that hilarious mix of formal politeness and utter frankness the English specialise in. Within about a minute of getting talking, the old guy was telling us an anecdote about George Best's sexual prowess, the old dear was telling us why the best looking women in the world are Polish, and the old guy was speculating on the sexual orientation of 110 metres hurdle world record holder Colin Jackson. On the Saturday, we drove over the course for the race. Just as well, because it turned out to be much hillier than expected. There was a steady 2 mile climb from just after 2 miles, and about 3 more miles of long climbs spread throughout the rest of the course. I immediately started to feel ill, and we had to stop the car. I'm not sure whether it was something I ate, car sickness (the car we rented disagreed with both of us) or a panic attack faced with the prospect of racing up some serious hills after a long hard year of racing. Anyway, it passed, and it was better to have a day to prepare myself mentally rather than be shocked in the middle of the race. I lowered my time expectations (from 1'21 exceptional, 1'22 good, 1'23 decent to 1'24 exceptional, 1'25 good, 1'26 decent). The race started from a WW1 Memorial Hall. One of the real differences between our two countries is how we see our WW1 dead. Ireland had more per head of population than England, but we tend to see them as pawns duped by imperialists into pointless sacrifices, whereas the English for obvious reasons have a different view and commemmorate their dead. The race itself was pretty straightforward. I more or less ran the perfect race. Not my fastest ever, but for the course and the shape I'm in, maybe my best race ever. I was 7th as we left the village, and 7th when we returned. In between, I dropped as low as 10th at one point (and with a pack of another dozen or so gaining on me). I ran the first 5 miles conservatively in view of the 2 mile climb, in 33 minutes. However, I was very strong on the hill, which surprised me (I started it in 10th, with 9th about 100 metres up on me and 8th out of sight, and ended it in 8th). I ran a very good second five miles in 31 minutes 30, and then kept it going all the way home to finish in 1 hour 24. My heart rate was never dropped below 170 once I got going, was around 75 most of the time and got up over 180 a few times, and I did have the sense of pushing along more or less at my limit. So, all in all, a good end to the season, with a top 10 finish from the 200 or so starters. Aside from the race, it was a good break away from home. It was our first trip to the UK in winter, and while the cold and lack of daylight eats away Mireille's desire to sightsee, there are other benefits. By which I mean mainly we lay around our room, watching TV and shagging each other senseless. The TV was a bit lacking, just the 5 basic UK channels, and wall-to-wall "George Best, still dead" coverage (why do the Brits go so OTT when a famous person dies?). But the shagging each other senseless part was top notch. And Mireille's comments on the whole Bestmania phenomenon (like her dismissal of his long string of blonde conquests as "looking like the kind of girls with nothing between their ears beyond a mouth able to accommodate 10 dicks at once") made for great entertainment too. No pictures this time, because we both forgot our cameras. Aren't we silly? Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 17th, 2005
1:19 pm	Strays Mireille hates humanity in theory, but loves humans in practice. So while she'll rail and rant at great length and accuracy on the stupidity of the human race, it comes as no surprise to me when she brings back strays to the house, as she did yesterday. Our latest couple of strays are a mother-daughter Brazilian combination. The mother left Brazil as a young widow and made a life for herself as a biochemist in Germany. After a couple of years of recession and unemployment, she decided to look into the possibility of moving to Ireland to find work. Ireland's the best place in Europe (probably the world) to look for any kind of hi tech employment. I find it increasingly hard to relate the Ireland of today (boomtown) with the economically depressed one I grew up in. The Government, with more tax funds than they know what to do with, just announced they're going to spend 40 billion upgrading public transport in Dublin, so there are more major changes ahead. People are flooding into the country from all over Europe. In 10 years Dublin has become a genuinely cosmopolitan city. It's still bizarre to me that people are leaving France and Germany to come here for economic reasons, but a French guy I work with predicted a few years ago that Dublin would be effectively the tech capital of Europe within a decade. Anyway, our latest strays are delightfully Brazilian and charming. Mireille found a school for the daughter yesterday. Today's project is somewhere for them to live permanently, then tomorrow, a job for the mother. Slan libh, Dara (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
11:30 am	Yesterday I can tell this entry is going to ramble. Yesterday I went to collect Fiona from school. Notwithstanding it was her suggestion, I felt some trepidation. I struggled to remember what I'd have thought of my parents showing up to collect me from school when I was 13. I couldn't quite remember 13 year old me, but I was pretty sure he would have been sullen and unimpressed, and that every innocent action of the parent involved would have been seen as a deeply embarrassing oversight. And with today's jaded mobile phone generation, surely there was the potential for even worse. Anyway, I was right to feel trepidatious, though for the wrong reason. Fiona reacted to me like a visiting dignitary to be fawned on, oohed and aahed at. And as I quickly found out, Fiona doing this made it de facto so for the entire school. The first shock was to discover how many friends Fiona has. I mean, she's always been popular and charismatic, but this was seriously mind-blowing. Kids of all ages, shapes and sizes were popping up to greet her and goggle in amazement at her Father (the way she said it, the capital F was obvious). One of her sixth year friends, sensing my bewilderment at the moving mob scene that surrounds my daughter, smiled sweetly and said "Fiona's like our Queen or something". She's a first year. She started secondary school a couple of months ago. How can this have happened so fast? On the way home, she raised the small matter of supplementary parental funding for purchasing Xmas presents for her friends. We reached agreement in principle that she could give a gift only to kids who were gifting her, and that the spend on any one gift should not exceed 5 Euro, regardless of how much the friend's gift to her cost. Then later she came with a list of the friends she was certain to receive gifts from. There were 147 names on there. "And that's not counting Internet friends", she added, darkly hinting at a whole other Pandora's box ready to spring open. Sealing that one off firmly with an arbitrary "No gifts for Internet friends" rule, I did the math and saw I was being asked to come up with about 750 Euro or so. Just for Xmas gifts. We talked around the problem and eventually decided that a lot of these "friends" could be fobbed off with friendship necklaces. So today she's buying a "necklace making set" (lots of string and lots of beads, I'm thinking). Then in the evening, I had a track race. This was my first since the marathon, and again the predominant emotion was trepidation, for a number of reasons. Not just the proximity to the marathon, but also I've been running slow in training (including a short shuffle yesterday morning designed to test if my various niggles were minor enough to risk a taxing track workout), and yesterday I had a stomach bug. The club were keen that I turn out, so I figured why not. None of my running friends were there. I've noticed that I essentially divide runners into three groups: (1) Top class runners (naturally, genetically so) (2) Experienced average runners who have been around long enough to remember when I was slower than them (3) Inexperienced average runners Group 2 is the one I seem to pull all my friends from. Group 1 runners tend to be pretty self obsessed anyway, and even the more social ones regard me as something of an anomaly, not really one of them. Group 3 looks on me the same way they do any runner they regard as top class: not one of them either. But group 2 is the one that looks on me as one of their own, the one who made the ultimate leap from outside the top 1000 nationally all the way up to the top 50. I think the fact that they know it has been done heartens them somehow. You'd think there might be some envy or bitterness there, but actually there's never anything but warmth and playful jesting ("What are you doing over here talking to us? You should be with the flyers finding out what drugs to take"). The race itself went a lot better than expected. In the warmup I felt relaxed but focused. There was no real pressure. Then the race started and it seemed like the whole field swept by me going round the first bend. I had to actually look around to reassure myself there were still people behind me. The race settled down and I settled in behind a couple of guys running a decent pace for me. After a few laps of that I felt strong so I went by them with one of my trademark surges (which, according to my friend Johnny, "would frighten the Bejesused living shite out of anyone"). The rest of the race was me slowly running down and then surging by one other guy to finish 9th of the 23 starters. The time was a lot better than I expected: only 8 seconds down on my lifetime best, and 7 seconds faster than the same race last year (which was a lifetime best at the time). Slan libh, Dara (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 14th, 2005
11:59 am	Dublin marathon pics This one was clearly taken in the Phoenix Park. I think the rain has just stopped and I'm starting to feel good... This one is from the Park too. It looks like the approach to Chapelizod Gate, around the 8 mile mark. I was feeling very strong at the point, and the next 4 miles were my fastest of the race... Fast forward to the 26 mile mark, and I'm toiling to wind up my finishing sprint... Eyes on the line, body in pain... Over the line. Now to find somewhere to lie down, cry and puke... Slan libh, Dara (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 13th, 2005
5:46 pm	Barry I encounter a lot of Africans on a regular basis here, mainly because Mireille works as an interpreter for asylum seekers. She ends up befriending a lot of them and they follow her home, so to speak. These are people whose entire lives are literally beyond my experience (almost beyond my imagination). Take Barry, the most regular visitor. Barry comes from Guinea. He's well educated (qualified civil engineer) and politically savvy. His family were politically active in the labour movement. So one day the Government decided they'd had enough of the family and locked them all up. His father and two brothers were tortured and killed. He was tortured, but escaped death because one of his wife's relatives was an Army general. He used his contacts to spring him for prison a few hours before he was to be executed. He fled, and ended up here in Ireland, via France. I remember at the time he applied for asylum status here, I helped Mireille translate his written application (he speaks little or no English, Guinea having been colonised by the French). It's a little bizarre reading such a harrowing account, and then meeting the person regularly. I guess he knows it's the first thing I think of every time I see him now, even after three or four years. He's still carrying around the baggage, though he's trying to get on with his life as best he can. The other day we were talking about some current political thing and he said "The rich and powerful always find the best way to hold on to what they have, no matter how little they really need it, and how much someone else does". I said "Yes, I suppose it's the same the world over", to which his reply was "At least here they don't torture you". Slan libh, Dara (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 12th, 2005
11:20 am	Beware the politically aware 13 year old I haven't had much work this week, so mostly I've been chilling. Whenever I'm worked to my tonsils, I always think "When I get a break, it'll be great. I'll have all that time to surf the web, read all my friends journals, contribute to all my favourite sites". And I usually do all those things for a day or two once the fog clears. But then I end up spending even less time on the Web than I normally do. It seems that without the necessity of work to drag me to the computer, I'd always rather be doing other things. I've slipped fairly comfortably back into training two or three times a day. The only slight worry was the right knee, which seemed to have both of the classic distance running knee injuries (runner's knee, and iliotibial band syndrome) simultaneously. I've been strapping on ice packs obsessively, half an hour for every waking hour, and it seems to be working. I've been able to continue training, and the knee seems to be down to a very mild case of runner's knee now. I've selected my next target: a half marathon in England in two weeks. A bit too aggressive just 4 weeks after Dublin perhaps, but I couldn't find anything later this side of Xmas. I also toyed with the idea of making my long anticipated ultra debut in a six hour race in the Netherlands at the end of December, but the thought of messing up the Christmas period for all involved dissuaded me. Maybe next year. The half is in Salisbury, a part of England I haven't been before. Both Mireille and I are looking forward to what will be a long weekend away together. Thanks to Ryanair, Dublin is now a ridiculously cheap place to fly to and from, and you can get to anywhere in the UK for pennies (quite literally, the actual fare of the flights to Bournemouth was 1 cent each, though once you add in tax and insurance it gets up to around 20 Euro, which is still ridiculously cheap). In other news, Fiona met Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. He was at their school for some kind of glorified photo op (there's an election just round the corner). My uncle (who served as a Junior Cabinet Minister in a couple of Ahern's Governments) said that Ahern has a remarkable knack of instantly picking out the most charismatic kid in a crowd. Whether this is true or not, he zoned in on Fiona, and the following exchange took place in front of the cameras: "What's your name?" "Fiona O'Kearney" "Do you know who I am?" "Yes. You're Bertie Ahern". "But you can call me Taoiseach" "Not for much longer, hopefully" According to Fiona's friend Michael who told me this whole story (Fiona was so blase she didn't even mention it), Bertie's mouth dropped open, his face froze in an "Oh shit" expression, then he stayed there with his mouth open for another few seconds (presumably trying to come up with a suitably witty comeback) before his aides whisked him away from the scene of embarrassment. Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
Friday, November 11th, 2005
1:27 pm	"We must be more like Ireland" The words of would be English Prime Minister, Conservative David Davis, last night on BBC. I bet you never thought you'd see the day when an English Conservative would be casting envious eyes at Ireland. Of course, his envy is very selective. In fact, pretty much restricted to the low taxation regime, the fact that we've managed to lower taxes repeatedly over the past 20 years while increasing Government spending (thanks to the economic boom, less is more). He doesn't envy our membership of the Euro, or the fact that we allow in more asylum seekers per head of population than any other country in Europe. He also apparently doesn't envy our foreign policy philosophy of not invading other countries, or of not being Bush's poodle but remaining studiously neutral. Does it even occur to him that a big part of the reason our economy is in such good shape might be that we don't blow a fortune every year on the military? Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 5th, 2005
12:22 pm	Self preservation (My latest crackpot theory) Evidence suggests that men are probably the weaker sex in our current urban jungle. At least statistically. And we all know statistics never lie. Women live longer, for one thing. Although I believe the difference in life expectancy is closing as men and women become more interchangeable and are living the same kind of lives and doing the same kind of work. However, there's no good reason for us to continue living in urban jungles, which are a product of the industrial age, but an anachronism in the technological one. Once we realise that, we're likely to disperse from our overcrowded overpopulated jungles. So while women may be better equipped to deal with the current jungle, we have to look at what's coming. Pre-Industrial Revolution, strong but stupid was more likely to procreate than physically frail but intelligent. Futurists (among them Brian Eno) suggest that the future for humanity will involve people living in self-contained self-sufficient isolated "pods". They will interact with each other only through technology. Viruses will ravage us to the point where physical contact will no longer be deemed safe. The technological complexity required to drive this world will require intense specialisation (it can be argued that we're already there: there are almost no generalists any more in science or technology, only specialists). Describe that scenario to most people and they'd say "That would be Hell. We couldn't live like that". They're right, but there is one type of person who could. There is one type of person, in fact, for whom this lifestyle of physical isolation, intense interaction with technology, and freedom from the emotional whims and follies of other human beings would be Heaven rather than Hell, and that is the autist. The highly tuned autistic mind shuns the world of human emotion and religious supersition in favour of the inexorable logic of science and technology. It is widely believed that the man who ushered in the modern age of physics, Einstein, was autistic. He may simpy have been the first of the coming dominant strain. As humans, we tend to see ourselves as the end point of evolution. But of course we're not. Assuming we don't nuke each other all in a fit of emotional pique or to prove whose religious superstition is the correct one, or pollute ourselves to extinction, or succumb to some deadly virus before we realise that the way of the future is to withdraw from each other physically, then we will mutate genetically into something else. Something better equipped to live in the new changed world. Might this mutation already have started? All the evidence suggests that the "problem" of autism is going through almost explosive growth. If the new changed world is to be one of emotional and physical detachment, and technological specialisation, then who better to live in such a world than the high-functioning autist? It's now generally believed by the experts that autism is genetic. This means it has all the requirements to replicate and ultimately dominate. We tend to see autism as a genetic abnormality, a mistake of nature, but perhaps it is merely the next step in evolution, Nature removing something that we no longer need, emotional inconsistency. Technology has removed the need for sex to procreate. Much has been written and thought about how this frees women up from needing men, but that's a sword that cuts both ways. Any future race could replicate without sex. Science fiction writers have always portrayed fictional species more advanced than us as having not just better technology, but also less emotion. Perhaps they were unknowingly anticipating the coming of the next type of human, the self-sufficient sexless autist. Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
3:58 pm	I still really have nothing of interest to say But on the other hand, for the first time in months, maybe years, I don't have much work to do, so I might as well bung in a BLU (Boring Life Update). 48 hours after the race, my legs are still totally shot. Particularly bad dose of DOMS. Mireille said to Sean when they saw me hobbling out of the massage tent after the race that it was the worst she'd seen me after a race in many a year, and that trend has continued. In a way, it's comforting, as it means I gave it my all, left it all out there on the road. It would be a lot worse to be hopping around like a baby rabbit today with the season over and a feeling that I didn't push myself hard enough. Supposedly marathoners go through a post-race depression similar to that of mothers after they give birth. For me, mostly it's just relief at the chance to go back to being a normal person, eating normally, not being Howard Hughes about germs any more. Yesterday I finally got my flu shot for the winter. I was even able to sit in the waiting room as dozens of sick people coughed on me without fretting about what they might have that they might be giving me. Slan libh, Dara (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005
4:08 pm	Around and about the race Around the race... Dublin has the reputation of being just about the friendliest of the big city marathons. Never having run any other big city marathons, I'm not sure if that's true, but there certainly is a friendly atmosphere around it. Nothing exemplified this better yesterday than the two homeless guys standing outside the Gaiety Theatre smiling broadly and wishing everyone good luck in the race loudly as the crowds of runners streamed past them. We arrived later this year, so as not to have too much standing about. The club had organised changing facilities about 100 metres from the starting line. There was great camaraderie as the 20 or so runners representing the club went through our final preparations. The weather was the worst it's been since the storm of 2000. Heavy rain, and once we got out on the course, pretty heavy winds. I lined up near the front with the better club runners, just behind the elites. The crowds were a bit thinner on the ground than usual. The weather was partly to blame, I'm guessing. Another bigger factor was the dwindling number of Americans who run the race. Up to a five or six years ago, Americans made up almost 50% of participants. Now it's down to 5 or 10%. The great thing about Americans is they bring supporters, and they are the best cheerleaders in the world. Irish people will, by and large, stand there cheering anyone they know. Americans, on the other hand, will cheer anything that moves, and are a lot louder and noisier. So these American supporters groups have always been a big part of the atmosphere. Sadly, that's not the case any more: the few Americans that do still travel didn't seem to have supporters with them. As the number of Americans has dwindled, the number of continental Europeans has exploded exponentially. For some reason, there were a lot of French in particular, who also added colour and a cosmopolitan feel to the occasion. About the race... Going into the race, my aim was to try to run 2 hour 50 pace, and then if I felt really good, try and pick it up and maybe challenge my PB of 2 hours 46. 2 hour 50 pace works out at just under 6 minutes 30 a mile. I started conservatively. After three miles I was 20 seconds down on my goal pace. I covered the first 5 miles in 32 minutes 50. At that stage, I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to pick it up. Despite the worst hills on the course, I ran the next 5 miles in 31 minutes 50 (even allowing for a 20 second pit stop), so I was now 10 seconds up on schedule. And then I started to struggle a bit. The first hint that you're struggling is when other runners start catching you. The winds got up, and the heavy rain was causing that sickened damp through feeling. I struggled through and hit half way in 1 hour 25 minutes, 6 seconds. 6 seconds down on schedule. I covered the third 5 miles in 32 minutes 40, and I was now 5 seconds down on schedule. I pushed for the next 5 and hit 20 miles 6 seconds down on 2 hours 50 pace. At this stage I knew I had to run a sub 40 minute last 10K to break 2 hours 50. Last year I managed to do just that, but it's a lot easier to lift yourself to inflict that sort of pain and damage on your already knackered and glcogen depleted body when you're chasing a lifetime best. Suddenly, the difference between 2 hours 49, 50, 51 or 52 didn't seem all that significant. As we approached 21 miles, a guy standing by the side of the road was shouting positions as we passed. If you ever have to attend a big marathon, and you want to make yourself useful to the runners, this is exactly what you should do. Some people shout projected times, but we runners know better what we're on for in that regard. Some people offer sweets and drinks but runners prefer to stick to the official water and feed stations. The top few runners will know their approximate position, they can keep count of how many are ahead, but the guys from, say, position 20 on down really won't have a clue. But it still matters: most runners have a top X they want to finish in. Top 100, top 500, top 1000 or whatever. I was in 87th position according to the guy (it turned out he'd miscounted though, I was actually 97th). This gave me something to focus on: a second consecutive top 100 finish (last year I was 79th). I was still slowing though, losing 10 or 15 seconds a mile. By mile 24 it was more like 30 seconds. Positionwise, I was almost treading water: I was passing people who had blown up completely, but was being passed by guys who had more left in reserve. As I went through mile 25, I did a mental calculation, and decided I was unlikely to break 2 hours 52. I had decided this was a worthwhile objective: to at least run my second best time ever (I ran 2 hours 52 in Longford). At normal pace I'd need about 1 minutes 22 to cover the last 385 yards. I trudged along, unable to call up the motivation to close on the runners ahead of me, too far ahead of the next guy to have the impetus of being caught. As I passed the 26 mile marker, my watch told me I could break 2 hours 52, but only if I could run the last 385 yards in 1 minute 18. The club's main coach emerged from the thronged crowds screaming ("All the way Dara, all the fucking way till the line"). This kick-started my sprint: as I approached the final bend, I caught and flew by the two runners up ahead. I could now see the finish line and the clock ticking down to 2 hours 52. I sprinted hard as I could and crossed in 2 hours 51 minutes 44 seconds. I'd covered the last 350 metres in 63 seconds, which is more or less my flat out sprint speed. I immediately started paying for it. My legs buckled, and I was overwhelmed by three sensations: a desire to lie down on the road, a desire to puke, and a desire to cry. I managed to keep moving forward, though it took the best part of 10 minutes to totter the 200 metres to the physio tent for the post-race massage. Then a slow totter back to the club changing facilities, and a wait for the rest to come in. So, 2 hours 51, 5 minutes off my best, but my second best. In the days ahead I'll inevitably try to analyse where those 5 minutes went. My suspicion is a number of factors contributed. My preparation was good but not quite as good as last year. Two hard marathons in two months is pushing it. Getting a cold 3 weeks out didn't help either: I lost some training and condition. The weather also didn't help. My teammates said they found the weather okay: the rain kept them cool and the wind didn't bother them greatly. I struggled to understand why it seemed less of a problem for them, until Mireille pointed out that they were all back in the main pack, with the ample shelter that comes from running in a big group. Up where I was, it was mainly runners running in singletons or pairs. Ultimately, I have to be happy enough with how it went. My second best time ever, and a second consecutive top 100 finish (out of 10,500 starters). I was 92nd finisher, 85th man (35th Irish), 14th veteran (8th Irish). I was also the first home for the club, 20 minutes clear of second. The fact that second man home was my friend and former ultra great Eddie, now in his 50s, says something about the changing age profile of the discipline. Most of the veterans performed well: third man home (another Eddie) was another 40 something, and fourth and fifth were also Vets. The younger guys performed poorly. A pleasant surprise at the post-race party that evening was that friend and rival Bernard was there. He was down at the Guinness Jazz Festival in Cork for the weekend, but made it back in time for the party. He's been performing with distinction in shorter races this year, but passed on the marathon. I haven't seen him in a couple of months so we had a good catch up chinwag. As the night wound down, the head coach came over to shake hands with me. Looking at Bernard, he said "Well done, Dara, first man home again. Still the top dog". He repeated "still the top dog" to Bernard's face a few times, trying to elicit a reaction, and getting just a smile through gritted teeth. Slan libh, Dara (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 30th, 2005
8:46 pm	Today is a non-day Got up as late as possible. Got my hair cut. Been stuffing my face all day. The chocolate and jelly beans were a great novelty for a while, but now they're making me jumpy. I feel like a junked-up diabetic. I'm never sure whether I should be thinking about tomorrow, or trying not to. I'm not fun to be with right now. Essentially, I'm withdrawing further and further into myself, and I won't start to come out until I cross the line tomorrow. By 9 AM tomorrow, there will be nothing else to me except "Guy about to run a marathon". When I'm like this, Mireille is pretty much the only person who can either understand me or communicate anything to me. I've lost all objectivity. Either this is the best I've ever been prepared, or the worst. Nothing I did today matters. Or at least, it's all predicated on how tomorrow goes. If I run well, I'll look back on today and dismiss it lightly, thinking "Yes, I was prepared". If I run badly, I'll dissect today over and over. I'll force myself to explain what signs there were today that made a bad performance inevitable. Now there's just the final preparations, the bag, the evening before meal, the sleep, if there is to be any sleep. I may not sleep at all, so I figure the best thing is to tell myself I won't. Prepare for the worst, and if I do sleep, it's a bonus. They say tonight's sleep is less important than last night, and the night before. Both nights I slept ok. Time to go prepare my bag. Slan libh, Dara (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
9:23 pm	The final countdown continues Bring your own music this time. The whole Expo thing took longer than expected, and was a lot more exciting than expected. Even up to last year, I just felt like a normal punter. Actually, last year specifically, I felt like an impostor, being hand led by my coach to register in the National Championships (the preserve of the elites and the semi-elites). This year, they knew who I was, even with Oisin's cap for protection (it was raining). I was Ushered Through. Ushered Through is the official term for being told you have to jump the queue. People made a fuss. Other people looked at me wondering why those other people were making a fuss. Other people told them in hushed reverential tones "that's one of the top runners". A few other people who were shooting news footage for TV or the official DVD or something noticed the commotion and came pointing cameras. Other people, ones I knew, came to chat with me, to show they knew me. And get on camera. We Irish love nothing better than being on the television. Or even the official DVD. It was all a bit head-turning and time-consuming. But who will laugh when I crack under the pressure on Monday and end up a broken man shuffling home with the fun runners? (Answer: everyone except me). I spoke to a teammate for a while, trying to ignore the cameras and praying than the mikes on those things weren't picking up our banalities. The team is going to be even weaker than expected. The second best guy broke down in training with Achilles tendonitis. He's out. Damn. The goody bag was derisory. Two bars and an energy drink. Isn't it great what €90 can buy you these days? Thank you Adidas. I've found something new to worry about: the weather. It was so windy as we drove in Mireille had trouble keeping the car going in a straight line. If it's like that on Monday, we can all add 10 or 20 minutes to our times. Though on the plus side it might actually improve my finishing position. For some reason, I run better in a storm than most people. Also, there's been a lot of rain, and there's localised flooding. I wouldn't mind rain on its own on the day (but no wind please!), but having to run around puddles and ponds stretching the 26.2 miles into 27 or 28 would not be cool. The excitement and anticipation is mounting. Hope I can sleep tonight. I've been stuffing my face with chocolate and jelly babies all day. Gotta love that carbo-loading. Clocks go back tonight. Slan libh, Dara (8 Comments |Comment on this)
1:10 pm	The final countdown Let's see if we can get this genius musical accompaniment to work. Bouncing Czechs But yes, it is the final countdown to the biggest race of the year, the Dublin Marathon. There's nothing quite like toeing the line in your home city over the ultimate distance. I've prepared more or less as well as I could. The only real hiccups were a minor cold a couple of weeks ago (thanks, Adam!), and the fact I've been busy with work all this week when I'd be better off resting. But I finished up the work yesterday evening, giving me two days to attempt maximum relaxation. So I just rolled out of bed, and in a minute we'll be off to the Expo in the RDS to pick up my race number. Most years I alternate these last few days between being convinced I'm coming down with a cold, and being convinced some minor ache is a race-threatening injury. This year I seem more chilled. That might not be a good thing ultimately: there's something to be said for geeing yourself up. My long runs and build up races all went well. The times of the last three runs I did this week were a bit disappointing though. When I said this to Mireille, she suggested it was probably just my body holding back, the better to make a bigger effort on the day. Which once again proves that Mireille is the world's best wife, multi-talented, and better than any coach. My nominal coach, on the other hand, hasn't been helping much. He means well, but his constant calls for updates are indistinguishable from badgering, or at the very least pestering. One thing that's different this year is the whole club thing, which brings its own pressures. Last year I was signed up late, and my performance breaking 3 hours and finishing in the top 30 of the National Championships were seen as a total bonus. This year, with my friend and rival Bernard again declining to run this race (he's going for one of the big city marathons in the US), it seems I'm the only realistic prospect they have of breaking 3 hours or making the top 100 nationally. Pressure. In my waters, I'm pretty sure that there's no way I'll break or even get very close to last year's 2:46. That'll mean it will be the first year I've failed to set a new PB in Dublin, except for the year (2000 I think) when the storm knocked 15 or 20 minutes off everybody's time. But I'm hopeful the big day occasion and the cheering crowds on the streets of the city I love will lift me to better at least the 2:52 I ran in Longford a couple of months ago. Longford: that's the other big imponderable. This is the first time I've attempted a marathon that close to another one where I went flat out. If I break 2:50 I'll be ecstatic, and so long as I'm under 3 hours, I won't be too disappointed. I know this has been a dull entry of me wittering on about my running again. But I'm okay with that. Slan libh, Dara (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 28th, 2005
4:08 pm	Conversation with Fiona (Happy Halloween) "So, doing anything for Halloween, Fifi?". "Huh?" "Halloween". "When is it?" "Monday!" "Damn" "Damn why? Don't have time to prepare your costume?" "Is there some medication you're supposed to be taking that you're not, Dad?" "I don't think so. Why?" "When have you ever known me to do anything for Halloween?" "Um, never I guess". "How long have we known each other?" *frantically trying to remember how old she is* "Um....13 years?" "Right. And in those 13 years I've never done a damn thing for Halloween, beyond answering the door to obnoxious kids and giving them candy which will hopefully make them fatter and die sooner". "Well, I thought you might want to do something this year". "OK. There definitely is some medication you're not taking. I think we need to talk to Mom about this". "But wouldn't you like to go trick or treating? Dress up in a costume, get free candy?" "Why would I want to dress up other than when I'm in a play? And go door-to-door like a beggar for candy? I've got too much candy: that's why I give it to other kids who make fools of themselves by dressing up. I'm worried about you Dad. You're a bit young for senile dementia, but maybe we should get you checked out" "I think you might have to go anyway" "Huh?" "Yes. Oisin mentioned something about wanting to dress up as Juniper Lee and go". "He did? Fuck." "Yeah, and if he goes, you have to go too". "OK, let's not talk about this any more and hope he forgets". "He won't forget if I remind him". "He won't forget either if I tell him about the boogeyman who lives under his bed who preys on little boys who dress up as Juniper Lee. You want that, senile old coot?". Slan libh, Dara (4 Comments |Comment on this)