Snap Happy

Hi,

I've spent the past three weeks in America. I went there on a training camp to Atlanta. I also did a couple of pre season races. I never, ever race in May but this year my coaches decided to change it up and race whilst I was away. The races were good training for me and my ego had to accept the crappy results. May is not the time of year I shine! I got to do some hurdles sessions with the super fast Nia Ali which was great fun.

My buddy Karen Shinkins who is married to Paul Doyle, my race agent, was a great stand in coach whilst I was out of the country. Karen happens to be a photographer so she was either videoing hurdle runs or taking photos. I'm godmother to her and Paul's adorable baby Keane so of course he may pop up in a picture or two!

I really enjoyed my trip to America. Back to the grind in Ireland now and get ready for the season in a few weeks.
DOR XOXO

Indoors Outings

I'm currently finding myself in the middle of an indoor season. To everyone this may seem perfectly normal but to me it is quite a pleasant surprise. For lots of reasons I didn't plan to do many indoor races. All of those reasons were bad ones, being sick and a little bit injured at times etc. But the lovely people who coach me kept the idea of running a few races on the table and we dealt with each training day as it happened. Some days great whilst others were very tough.

Eventually I found myself on the start line in the British indoor championships. I felt two things about this, one was excited because the whole point of training is to race and secondly a little bit worried at the unconventional way I had prepared to be there (I think about 4 hurdle sessions). I surprised myself a little and ran average to well. Then in the next few days I found myself in France and back in the U.K. All in all it was 5 races in 6 days with 6 flights lots of hotel rooms and lots of time on buses. The end result was enough to make the decision to participate in the European indoor championships.

I'm very excited about this. It feels like a big bonus for me. It feels great to have a chance to go to Gothenburg and put it all out there in a championship. I'm part of an Irish team that has huge medal chances. Brian Gregan is European number 1 as is Ciaran O'Lionaird plus double European cross country champion Fionnuala Britton is racing. I'm personally not going in there with a fast time or with my usual preparations but I'm going happy to run as hard as I can.

Fingers and toes crossed that the great city of Gothenburg is a good luck charm for Irish athletes in a weeks time.

Slan,

DOR X

A little hello..

Sometimes when I blog I have certain things that I want to blog about and things that seem interesting/funny but right now I find that is not the case.

I'm just rambling along fairly content. I've been training quite hard but I've had to adapt in the past week as my groin was a bit tight. Thankfully it seems very good now and I can go back to hurdles. I've been moonlighting as a sprinter the past few days which is always fun, it's nice to come out of blocks and not be faced with a barrier. I do miss my barriers a little bit though and will be happy to go back to them tomorrow.

I'll look for an interesting blog topic and get back to you soon.
Bye Bye,
Derval.

Slow and Steady wins the race

Hi All,

Feeling better...
When I last blogged I was still feeling quite bad and trying hard to get better. Thankfully I am starting to feel a bit better. I have finished my anti-biotics and I'm back to doing a little training. The plan is to take training each day as it comes and to start making decisions about indoor racing in the coming weeks. I need to feel 100% healthy before I can think about racing.


Week one of Cookery Class...
This week was the first week of the healthy cooking course at Dublin Cookery School. I was worried that I might not feel up too it but thankfully I was feeling ok and was able to be at the first evening. I really enjoyed the night and it was great to be back in the school cooking. Lynda Booth was doing the demonstrating of the recipes and I was chatting away about different ingredients and the types of food I like to eat. I like to eat healthy food but it needs to be tasty so the aim of the course is healthy and delicious recipes. I think we achieved that in the first week.

Recipe of the Week...
One of the recipes for the first week was spiced carrot and lentil soup with gremolata. On the night we decided to leave out the gremolata, if you are making this feel free to leave it in or out. I also changed the sunflower oil to olive oil. Here is a couple of pictures of the recipe. This recipe comes from the kitchen of Lynda Booth at Dublin Cookery School. Enjoy!
Derv x

2013 you are no fun!

Here we are in 2013 and I swear I approached it with pure positivity. But then the evil gods of sinus pain attacked me and now I'm in a world of negativity. Let me go back a couple of weeks first.

Right before Christmas I got sick. I picked up a sinus infection which in turn made my breathing bad (which is bad at at the best of times as I am asthmatic). I had to stay in bed and just try to get better for over a week. Then during Christmas I started to feel good again and resumed full training. Unfortunately two days ago I got a pain coming out through my face as if someone was in my face trying to hammer their way out. I couldn't decide if it was my sinus infection back or if maybe I was getting a really bad tooth ache. After trips to the doctor and the dentist it was decided that my sinus had flared up again. Now I am on a whole new antibiotic and in pain again. This was definitely not the plan for 2013.

I have had two reactions to this situation.

Reaction 1: To be completely rational and just accept that I'm sick. To do the things that will help me recover such as diet etc. It's just the way it goes and there are people out there who are 1 billion times worse off than I am. Really it is not the end of the world

Reaction 2: To cry uncontrollable and complain that life is completely unfair when all I want to do is train to get ready to race. To be certain that yes in fact it is the end of the world and my face will never ever (in a Taylor Swift sing song voice) feel good again.

Thats the update for 2013 so far. I do hope from here on out to be nothing but positive and full of joy in 2013.

Bye bye,

DOR X

A Christmas Tail

I mentioned in my blog that we are fostering a puppy called Chloe from the DSPCA. Here is her Christmas tail:

I spent almost a year volunteering at the DSPCA. It was a way for me to do something different from the world of sport and also try to give a little back. During my time in the Vet clinic I learned loads about animal welfare and saw all the great work that was done in the DSPCA. I was sad to end my time volunteering there but decided when possible myself and Peter would foster dogs that needed some love before being re-homed.

3 weeks ago we took home a 12 week old puppy by the name of Chloe. She was picked up by the DSPCA and wasn't very well. She had some wounds on her and had rickets (Insufficient levels of calcium or vitamin D that affect the bones). I brought her home and after a few hours she settled in great in our house. Our own dog, Berlino, was a tad bit put out at another dog being in the house but she soon got over this.

Myself and Peter were really focused on getting the puppy as healthy and house trained as possible in order to make it easier for the DSPCA to re-home her. Within a few days she learned to go to the bathroom outside. Her legs which were very bent from the rickets started to straighten out and she began to get much stronger on them. It was great to see her doing so well

During our three weeks of fostering her we took a trip to Cork to see our families. Needless to say they all fell in love with this little puppy. Everyone just melted around her. I think the fact that she didn't have the best of starts in life coupled with how loving she is made everyone just want to cuddle her.
She was due to go back to the DSPCA last Friday and the plan was for them to look for a new home for her.

On Thursday night Peter looked at me and announced "We need to talk". Most of you don't know Peter so I will fill you in a little on him. He is my other half (he will officially be my husband in 2013!) and ridiculously kind. He adores animals and when I was volunteering in the DSPCA he just wanted every animal I told him about to have a happy ever after story and if they did not he would look so pained by it that eventually I just stopped telling him the bad stories. If I ever tell him anything bad he just says "how can I fix it". So as you can imagine when he announced "We need to talk" last Thursday night I knew it was about the Puppy's imminent departure.

Peter explained to me that he was worried about the puppy going back after 3 weeks of love and care in our house. He felt that she had made such amazing progress that he couldn't handle the thought of not knowing how she was doing or where she would end up. He had spent two days mulling it over in his head and he had a solution. Obviously at this point I thought the solution was we were keeping the puppy. No that was not his solution.

Peter had chatted to his Mum and they had decided that if permitted by the DSPCA she would love to adopt Chloe. They have one dog currently in their house and their second dog died last Christmas. It was just enough time for them to be ready to have a new addition.

We explained all this to the DSPCA and they were delighted to hear that Chloe would have such a great home. All that needs to be done now is the paper work. That is the Christmas tail of Chloe. I will blog again at some point on how life in Cork is going for the furry rescue baby!

Just to finish if you ever are considering getting an animal please do check places such as the DSPCA, Dogs trust or you're local animal rescue centre. There are so many animals that need to be given a second chance and that have so much love to offer.

DOR XOXO

Bit of cooking perhaps???

Hi All,

Hope everyone is in great form. As I mentioned in my blog already after the Olympics I spent time in full time cookery school. Outside of it being super fun I learned loads. Lynda Booth who runs the school was great and really interested in cooking for healthy living. We spent loads of time talking about different tasty and healthy food. As a result she has decided to run an evening course in January for healthy eating and I'm going to be cooking with her. It will run for four wednesday evenings. I'm really excited because it's going to be great to be back in cookery school cooking and learning more about making tasty, healthy food. It's such a lovely place to cook and learn. The evening will consist of a demonstration, then everyone will cook followed by dinner. If you are interested have a look at the link below.

Thanks!
Derv

http://www.dublincookeryschool.ie/Courses.aspx

http://www.dublincookeryschool.ie/Courses.aspx