Let there be light

Hi All,

I hope everyone is in good form. Ireland is in the middle of major financial issues involving all kinds of parties which to be honest is really sad and depressing for Irish people but this is not a blog about the economic status of the country so I will avoid all talk relating to letters such as IMF, EU or ECB.

There has been lots going in the past while. Last week was a tough training week but it was good. I got through it well. Ailis is officially finished work so I'm super excited that we will be able to do all our running sessions together. Apart from her speediness, it's just good craic to be training with Ailis. We are trying to organise our training camps pre indoors at the moment. It's a good distraction from the cold and wind in Dublin. We are hoping to do a week in December and 3 weeks in January.

Yesterday I did a random thing. I got to turn on the christmas lights on Grafton Street in Dublin. I was asked to do this a few weeks ago and said yes for two reasons firstly it's Christmas and turning on the lights is a cool thing to be asked to do and secondly I got to donate money to a charity of my choice. I was assisted by Santa who had very kindly taken time out of his busy schedule to pop into Dublin city centre. There was a wonderful choir from Ballyphehane school in Cork (the girls won the all Ireland choir competition recently) on hand to sing and the whole thing was very festive and lovely.

In other random news there was a drama in my house this morning. Last night I left a chicken carcass on the counter top to cool so that I could make some chicken stock today. The counter is fairly high and I thought out of reach of the dog. This morning the carcass was on the kitchen floor mangled and there was a very guilty looking dog by the name of Berlino. During the night the dog had decided to have a chicken feast. The problem is that it is impossible to know whether she ate any bones so I had to ring the vet and get advice. The vet said because the chicken was cooked she was probably fine but to keep an eye on her and make sure she wasn't just lying in her bed depressed. I don't know about you but it's kinda hard to judge whether a dog is depressed or not! I was so paranoid that I brought her to the gym today so that I would be able to keep an eye on her. Thankfully she seems fine in fact she seems to be having the time of her life. She was loving saying hi to everyone in sportsmed (she did get put in the car for the session!) plus the vet said to feed her so she is getting loads of treats and on top of all that she has a belly full of chicken. From Berlino's point of view this was a great plan. Note to self do not leave food on counter tops.

I made the yummiest chocolate brownies last night. Alas I can't really devour them and try to jump over the hurdles at speed (chocolate brownies=chunky monster) so the brownies got left in the gym today for everyone there. I love cooking and wanted to try this recipe so even though I wasn't able to eat them at least I got to make them.

I'm off to have a little sleep. Part of my session today was 4 sets of 10 squats which makes Derval a tired girl.

Byeeeeeeeee

DOR

Quickie

I'm sorry this has gotta be quick. But I figured better to do a quick blog than none at all.

last weekend was the national athletics awards. I won overall athlete of the year which I am very pleased about. The Irish athletes are performing really well at the moment so I take it as a big compliment. Also Ailis won inspirational performance of the year, go team Cahill go.

More importantly training is cracking on as usual. This is week three of this phase which means it's tough. Last week for a variety of reasons I felt a bit battered but this week I feel good in the sessions. Lifting well and running well. It's still a long cold winter to go so day by day week by week.

Gotta go get some needles stuck into me, a fairly typical wednesday evening for an athlete type.

Later

D X

The John Murray show- Roy Keane interview

Hello Hello,

Hope everyone is in good form. I'm tired from training but it's November so that's just the way it goes. No moaning allowed!

In other news. I mentioned that I went to Ipswich last week to interview Roy Keane. I was on the John Murray show on RTE Radio one to chat about it.

Considering you are reading the blog I figure you might like a link to the interview or perhaps you are just super bored and want to listen to me ramble on and on. Either way here is the link.

http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2010/pc/pod-v-10111021m36stjmsdervalroy.mp3

Later

Derval

Blog of too much to talk about..

There is way too much to talk about and I feel wrecked after running up hills today so here is a summary:

-I finally went to meet and interview Roy Keane. It was an amazing experience. Very very impressive person. He could not have been nicer. I could blog all day long about him and how super he was but as stated above the hurdler is tired. I will say though KEANO KEANO KEANO

-Thank you to the IRFU. A few weeks back the IRFU offered to send me tickets to the first international rugby game in the new Aviva. I was delighted and asked my Dad to come with me. Turns out the tickets were in the presidents box (this was one of those great surprises)! I got to watch Ireland play South Africa from the best seats in the house. I love big sporting occasions so it was brill. Pity about the result but full credit to ROG for coming on and turning the game around in his 100th cap for Ireland.

- The weather is kicking off big time here in the Pale. As I was driving home from hills there were council vans everywhere putting down sandbags to try to stop flooding. Right now the wind is howling outside and it is lashing rain. The only place its safe is the leaba!

I need to sleep....

DOR X

Rain rain go away

Today was a track session, intervals at 75% effort. Since I've been back training Ailis and I haven't been able to do many sessions together. This has been crap because I miss running with the speed queen that is Ailis but today we were able to train together. Yipee! Add in to this mixture the lovely Ian McDonald and it was just party time at the track. Sadly something rained on our parade. Quite simply the rain. it lashed down today. It just rained and rained and rained. No amount of explaining to the sky that we were having a training reunion session and had time targets to hit would stop the rain. But we did the usual (extra clothes and moaning about the rain) and got through the session. Luckily for us we had Terrie at the track to time the runs and shout instructions at us during the rain soaked session. All the targets came quite easy and despite being totally soaked through the session was great.

Go team.