Marathon Update - July 2006

In April I watched a program on BBC1 called 'Run for Glory' which inspired me to want to run the 2007 London Marathon.

Unfortunately in my early training (Walking 4 miles to get to work) I suffered a stress fracture on my toe and was injured for most of May and all of June. The toe still doesn't feel completely right now.

Having not been able to determine what caused the stress fracture in the first place, I've not restarted my walks to work for fear of repeating the injury.

Although I've only lost 2-3 months, it feels more like 5-6 as I've been going backwards whilst not doing any training.

Therefore I've taken the difficult decision to put back my full marathon attempt until 2008. I will instead run a half marathon in Plymouth in the summer of 2007 and possibly another half marathon (if it is an annual event) in Bicton (North Devon) in November 2007.

I had initially intended to run the Bicton half marathon this November but have had to accept the fact that there isn't enough time for me to prepare for it (i.e. get fit).

Although I could theoretically get fit enough in time for the London Marathon itself, I think it would be potentially dangerous to take part without successfully completing a shorter event beforehand. I don't want to fail like Jade Goody did due to insufficient preperation.

Having not suffered a physical injury since I was about three (which I can't remember) this whole experience has been uncharted territory for me. I don't know how well my own body heals and now I have doubts as to how durable it is.

To sum it up, I've given myself more time to get rid of the excessive weight I'm carrying. So that when I do return to impact sports, my feet will be put through less stress and I will be far less likely to suffer a repeat injury.

The Turn of the Tide

Being a Villa fan has been difficult over the last five years. They've gone from consistently fighting for a place in Europe to regularly fighting for Premier League survival.

A week ago today seemed to be an all time low for me personally. The manager had been sacked*, the players were starting to revolt, the club was cutting back costs more than ever and the new season was looking the bleakest I've seen. At that point I could see nothing other than relegation on the horizon.

At the point of writing this, there have been three parties expressing an interest in buying Aston Villa. Little is known about Athole Still's consortium but Randy Lerner is a billionaire and Michael Neville has made a £64 million bid with a (new) consortium of his own.

Could this be the changing of the wind?

Could years of deflation and embarrassment be replaced by pride and shear delight?

One thing is for sure, I won't believe it until the club is sold and a new manager is appointed.

If we do have some money for the new manager then there's a real chance we could get Martin O'Neill. Not only is he one of the finest managers in the land (though apparently not fine enough to manage England) but in hiring him there would be the added bonus of hiring a manager that rejected to work for both Manchester United and Chelsea.

As I've said, nothing is certain yet but I do have something I haven't had for almost five years... hope.

* No one has actually said the manager was sacked but I doubt he'd walk out on the job and loose all that compensation. Confidentiality agreements prevent DO'L from saying what really happened so we'll probably never know for sure. It's a fair assumption to say he was sacked though.

STOP PRESS

Lerner has just pulled out, this is a bit disappointing to say the least (Billionaires are usually better than millionaires) but as long as there is at least one interested party things are still looking up.

For the record

The wife and I are off on holiday for the next week (Going to Germany) but before I go I just want to record my absolute disgust at the situation in Lebanon.

What the Israelis are doing (Destroying public infrastructure, killing innocent people) is known as collective punishment. This is illegal. You can't hold a nation responsible for a terrorist organisation that has infiltrated it.

What's more, they keep talking about the kidnapped soldiers as if this is a new thing. Even the father of one of them said that this has happened before and he doesn't understand why the IDF is using it as an 'excuse' to attack Lebanon. Even so, the Israeli military are ligitimate targets to a terrorist organisation. Israel has imprisoned thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian people over the years (including women and children) but that's ok.

And the thing that upsets me the most is that Israel has now started attacking the Lebanese military. They accuse them of colluding with the terrorists (which there is no evidence of) and they've already killed Lebanese soldiers who were clearly showing signs of aggression by being in their own barracks whilst it was being shelled.

Fortunately the Lebanese government seems to be a bit more savvy than the Israeli's and refuses to engage them - keeping the moral high ground.

My opinion (and just about everyone else that I've spoken to) - Israel is looking for an excuse to start a war. And then it can justify an invasion where it can do a land grab all over again.

Blair and co. should take their thumb out of their arse (and their tongue out of Dubya's) and stop the conflict. You may ask how - bombing the crap out of Israeli military installations would be a good start.

If a bunch of Israeli terrorists started firing home made rockets into Syria and it decided to attack Israel as a 'response' do you think Dubya would say:
"How Syria defends itself is it's business"

Bollocks would he!

Fuck Israel and fuck George Bush. The more this carries on, the worse things will get for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (and possibly the rest of us over here)

Auf Wiedersehen

On yer bike!

A friend of mine showed me this story about a cyclist that got knicked for going through a red light.

I can't believe he even bothered contesting it. Stupid twat.

His arguement that it would discourage people from cycling is flawed. I used to cycle but I don't anymore because I seemed to suffer the wrath of car drivers as a result of stupid cockheads like him winding them up and giving good cyclists a bad name. - plus I'm a lazy git.

Personally I'd like to see more crap cyclists getting knicked, it'd reduce the motivation for car drivers to screw cyclists over all the time and therefore encourage more proper cyclists to ride to work.

Well done Bristol.

Oh and as far as the 'early morning' issue is concerned, who cares?

If a car speeds past a school at 3am, the driver will still get knicked for speeding* and the proximity of the school will still be used in their prosecution.

* If someone catches them.

Flags galore

So now that we're out everyone will probably be thinking about what to do with there St. George's flags. The BBC have a few suggestions.

Personally I think that since England getting kicked out of major tournaments in 'dubious' circumstances is such a regular occurance, we should have a special flag for it. What do you think?

Conspiracy Theory

I remember in 2003 that Alpay wanted away from Villa. He'd fallen out with most of the players (He'd even had a full-on punch up with Angel on the training ground) and felt that since he was a 2002 World XI player he was worth more.

When England went to play Turkey for the Euro 2004 qualifier Alpay had a big bust up with David Beckham on and off the pitch. Because of the public rage that ensued, his place at Villa had become untenable. He was released by mutual consent and went back to Turkey to play for whoever he felt like.

I can't help but feel he did the whole thing on purpose.

I'm fairly sure that the rumours and 'quotes' linking Ronaldo with a move to Real Madrid happened after Portugal had beaten the Netherlands last Sunday. By which time he would have known that he'd be playing England on Saturday... Makes you wonder doesn't it?