I have an owwiee

Rather foolishly, a couple of weeks ago, I allowed myself to be goaded into challenging a "friend" to a 10k race. Our race will coincide with the Great BUPA Ireland Run in the Phoenix Park (which we're both signed up for) on 9 April this year. I said I'd do it in under 45 minutes. Not 45 minutes. Under. 45. minutes.

I've been in training ever since. Luckily for me, I like to run and there are plenty of nice places for me to go at work and at home. I've been going out at least twice and mostly 3 times a week.

I did a drive around at home over the weekend and realised that I'm going to have to train a bit harder. My main route takes me around 25 minutes to complete, but it's only 5.5k.

So I decided to ramp up my efforts today. I did this circuit in 30 minutes, but I'm not sure how far the route is, because there's no scale on the map. Anyway, I feel like it's a lot further than I normally go and that I did it at a quicker pace than I normally run, because Oh My God, my legs are like jelly this afternoon. I am exhausted.

I suppose that it's all good - another couple of days like it and maybe even 10k in under 40 minutes will be looking promising!

Gerry, are you listening? The gauntlet is being thrown back at you!

Ballot Stuffing

The Irish have always been good at stuffing on-line ballots. Case-in-point, when the Wolfe Tones' 'Only the Rivers in Ireland Run Free' was voted Best Song Ever in an on-line ballot run by the (British) Times newspaper. Maybe you've got to be Irish to understand why that's funny, but it is.

Anyway, Irish Blogs are currently running the Irish Blog Awards and I want all my loyal reader [sic] to join in the ballot stuffing effort as detailed below...

One of my husband Conor's posts on his blog has been nominated in the category of 'Most Humorous Post', while my friend Gerry's blog has been nominated for 'Best Personal Blog'.

It's only at the shortlisting stage at the moment, but your votes are still important. So get your browser to the Irish Blog Awards site and vote.

Insomniac ShitList: Advertisements

I'm not down on advertisements per se, but there are certain ones that I really don't like:

Item Two (added 9 February 2006)
Lucozade.
What was wrong with the old "Replaces lost ener-geeeeeeeeeee!" jingle?
Now we've got some funky dancing zombies, with missing body parts. What's the subtext? Drinking Lucozade will rot your insides, make your arms fall off your body and your eyes fall out of your head. No-one else in the shopping centre will want to hang out with you, except for other creepy-looking Lucozade-drinking zombies, who just want to eat what's left of your brains anyway. Hmmm, it just doesn't hit the right note with me... even if the jingle is better.

Item One (added 19 October 2004)
Harvey-bloody-Norman.
Have you heard the latest ad? Listen to this crap. What I would like to know is, what alternative does this Antipodean addle-pate suggest to "electrical computers"? I tried (though not very hard) to find the Harvey Norman website, but a google search for "Harvey Norman Superstore" (pages from Ireland) gave me this beautiful rant instead

Decommissioning, mk ii

I'm just catching up with myself (a year later, almost) and I'm going to keep the posts from Insomniac ShitList and Insomniac Baby, but I'm going to incorporate them into Insomniac Tirade. So, they'll be buried in here somewhere. Unfortunately, any comments posted (and there were a few, though not many) will not be making the move.

Once I'm done sorting that out, I might even get to a spot of blogging today. Or maybe tomorrow. Don't want to wear myself out, now do I?!