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Im surprised how addictive this running lark is. I started (from a very unfit position) on the 10th of January and ran 1.5 miles which nearly killed me. I stuck at it and have gradually upped the distance over 3 or 4 nights a week to 4.5 miles with no stops the past two nights. There is a fair oul thrill after you've done the running and i honestly cant believe that i am in a position where i am actually looking forward to going for a run.

My times arent great (just under 30 mins for 3 miles) but im more concerned with just trying to get further each week. The free MAPMYRUN app for the Iphone is a good job by the way, tracks your route and distance, gives time and distance updates every mile (or km) and also tells you how many calories youv'e burned.

Dont ramp up too quick.

Make sure you have at least a day rest between runs. Two or three day rests would be better at this point in your career.

I agree with Orior, each to their own, but the best advice I can give is to get as much rest as runs at this stage or you will get start to get niggles/injuries kicking in when you want them the least.
Everyone is different, but the rule of thumb is to not increase by more than 10% of the previous distance, and total your weekly distances to keep an eye on it

As someone already said, I struggle to connect to these incidents when watching from afar. But you'd have a heart of stone if you weren't moved by that.
My thoughts and prayers are with the family.
Your heart aches for the man, for someone to have to go through his fathers death, Paul McGirr, Cormac MacAnallen and give so much comfort to others, and then deliver that speech is something else. I'd settle for having a fraction of the mans dignity and faith
RIP

mournerambler, as oakleafgael said I'm chatting about the non metered connections and trust me there are a lot. I have been offered countless bribes to reconnect dodgy connections onto new pipes, and on one occasion threatened with "the boys" paying us a visit if we didn't comply.
Commercial metering is a must in my opinion for a large variety of reasons, mainly being you pay for what you get. Also if NI is in line with England and Scotland, business customers get somewhere between 2 weeks and a months notice for planned work which will affect their supply. This makes it a nightmare for contractors, cause even if they get ahead on a job they have to stand waiting on a set date to make a connection.
People think that drinkable water is a birth right, and treat the people that supply it with disdain in my experience. Throughout the boom people have generated a huge sense of their own importance, and you can't win in the infrastructure game. One half see work being done near their land as a cash cow, and claim all sorts of damage etc. The rest don't want the road closed, don't want the pavement closed, don't want work going on during working hours as it causes traffic, don't want work during night as its noisy, don't want work in fields as its their "best field" i.e. $$$, don't want work in parkland cause they have no where to walk the dog 
As oakleafgael said, there are loads of good people who do their best but there are at least the same number if not more deadwood. A lot of people have gotten to high positions through qualifications rather than working from the bottom up. As a result you have people with no clue instructing people who know what they are doing.

The great amusement of all this is the politicians complaining about lack of communication etc. Talk about pot and kettle. I've even seen someone on the news saying that it could take 10 years to update the infrastructure, what a joke, it might take that with unlimited funds but the reality is it would be 15-20+

I've been reading this with great interest over the past few days and thought I'd throw my thoughts down.

The basic problem is, and always will be money. The Water Service or whatever you want to call them now are run by and for people whose main motivation is cash. Same in Scotland, same in England (haven't worked in Wales so can't comment). As someone has said previously, there is a chronic lack of investment in infrastructure and to put the cherry on the cake the capital maintenance is poor to nonexistent.

IMHO the main issues are:

*Leakage (strictly speaking the wrong term but it'll do the job), basically unaccounted for water. The main problem with this is that there are a phenomenal number of illegal connections in NI. We have cattle troughs (for one example) overflowing 365 days that are connected to the mains and if they aren't overflowing they have invariably pipes above ground that go bang as soon as the thaw hits. Does the owner care? No chance, they aren't paying for it
*Metering. As a rule (bar a few private companies in England), the metering UK wide and beyond is woeful. Once authorities start transferring water and supplementing between reservoirs the meters are useless, which as a result means you can't strategically target leaks. Again there is big money spent on Framework Suppliers (the biggest waste of money in history), meters are installed by private companies, who commission them, get handed back to Water Company, get a 1hour presentation, water company pay no money on maintenance, meters stop working, no one knows how to use them, investigation awarded to private company, private company suggest new meters, and the charade starts all over again
*Water Quality. The price we pay for getting the water quality we do, is to increase flow rates to get the water from treatment to tap quickly. Water is better as a result, but pipes are smaller. When something happens, network can't cope and the only location that gets fed water is the burst.
*Accountability. KPI's etc have been tried before, and can help to an extent but its like anything in that people find a way around it very quickly, and work the system. If I say a leak has to be sorted within 24hours, the powers that be soon figure that if we shut the water down that will stop the leak and then it is classed as "in repair".
I have worked on a job where a competitor came in at 33% less. The authority asked us to match the price, we couldn't and warned them that other party could not deliver for that price either. Competitor done it, ends up costing both parties over 120% of our original cost. 6months later I am sitting across the desk from the idiot who awarded the job, preaching about how our costs are again 33% too high. When we pointed out the final cost, yer man hadn't even heard about it going over budget cause too many people were covering their ass

I could go on and on with all the things that are wrong with the system but the main one is, and always will be money.

Also this such and such has to go, his position is untenable cr*p is part of the problem. No one wants to make a decision in case they get the blame, and so no proper decisions get made. People are employed in high positions that have absolutely no clue how water networks, demand, pressure etc works and laughably they are deciding how money is spent. When in reality they shouldn't be allowed to lift their head from their own spreadsheet.

Rant finished

Not in the category of 'Favourite' song but the one I will never ever forget is when Juliet Turner sang the song Broken Things during the peace rally following the Omagh bomb. The most emotional public moment I have ever experienced.

As you say, not exactly sure if favourite is the best word, but definitely one of the most poignant musical moments I have witnessed in my lifetime

Fortune on

To be fair I think Mulgrew in the two games so far has looked like the one outlet ball, but when you look up and you have no pass to play you are put in a difficult situation constantly.
I personally don't understand why he got the likes of Murphy who doesn't seem as if he will be first choice. I don't see what the point is in buying older players if you aren't buying them as certain starters

After the Ross County game Lennon came out with a statement about some of the players not being there next season whether he was or not. Most people that I knew took one of these to be Samaras, yet not only does he seem to be keeping him but he seems to have been promoted to first choice striker. He is the ultimate luxury player, if its a sunny day, low tempo with no pressure he looks great, the other 360 days a year he is a 5/6 out of 10 player.
Does Lennon actually know what he wants yet? Or is this a bit of a scatter gun approach that he's going with

Does anyone else get a sore lower back when they run on the roads, I also used to get a pain around my knees but the running shoes have sorted that out. I don't know what it is, i never get it running on grass. Often it stops me running as far as I would like too.

It may sound basic, but it might be your running stance. If you run slightly leaning forward with your forearms more than 90 degrees from your upperarms it might ease off. I had the same sequence of niggles that you describe an thats what works for me

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sennheiser-PMX80SPORT-ECO-Neckband-Headphones/dp/B001IKKDL2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1279054490&sr=1-4

Have the older version of these, and are by far the best sports headphones I have bought

Well done Fermanagh and all the best against Monaghan. Disappointed in our 2nd half and very annoyed that the ref kept ye in the game n the 1st half with some of the softest frees in the history of football but nothing new there when 2 of Ulsters weaker team play some shite ref might as well get blooded. We needed to bring on abig man for FF in the 2nd half when Fermanagh played 2 sweepers and instead our genius of a manager got the smallest guy on the panel and brought him on. Carr is done for now and no harm.

To be fair, we kept Cavan in the game by kicking frees into the keepers hands and wide from easy/stupid positions

I can't see anything other than a Monaghan win by 7+ points

Spotted this tweet from the BBC - good luck to this guy!

bbcchampionship    Fermanagh supporter Aidan Gilroy walking from Ederney to Breffni Park today for charity - that's 50 miles. See him on BBC 2 at 5pm #GAA

If its the same fella i'm thinking off, he'd stop for 'refreshments' a fair few times!!! All seriousness, hope he raises plenty

Haven't been to any Fermanagh games this year, so its hard to say what way men are playing from second hand knowledge and reports but yet again (year after year) championship time brings the absolute worst blind faith out!
Its hard to call this one, we are relying on a lot of things to fall into place for us to win.

Bogue doing a job on Johnson (I have a funny feeling he won't sacrifice clucker, could be wrong), Sherry finally attending a championship game as the player he looks in other games, McGrath being up to the pace, Gallagher releasing the ball to 'lesser' players when they are in better positions, and finally imo what Quigley turns up. As everyone else has said, we have been crying out for some bigger forwards since Maguire left and now we seem to have got both Carson & Quigley to commit to it. Both will be hugely important today, and Quigley can be magnificent when hes in the mood but the moods don't always seem to be great

Fermanagh by 2 (i never learn )

How and why is everything Mowbrays fault?

Team Today;
Strachan's signings Zaluska, Hinkel, Naylor, Brown, Samaras;
Homegrown players McGeady, O'Dea;
Mowbrays signings Thompson, N'Guemo, Fortune
Plus 2 of the 3 subs were Strachans signings.

Fair enough there's an argument that he was rash in getting so many out the door at one time, but if you go through them
McManus, lost count of the number of times that I have heard Celtic fans bemoan how poor he is and how he should be dropped/sold etc and then when he leaves he is suddenly Baresi
Caldwell was going at the end of the season on his bosman. Decent player and if injury situation was predicted would have stayed to the summer. But again, Celtic (and Hibs) fans were calling him a liability for an age.
Hartley was on the way downhill when he joined Celtic, had his peak at Hearts and although a reliable head I don't believe he would have stemmed the flow today
Robson & McDonald were 2 I would have kept, although in saying that McDonald seemed to believe that he had a right to be in the Celtic team every week and when he was on the bench threw the toys out of the pram.#

Like someone else said, I think getting rid of Mowbray was a mistake. For all the talk about Lennon installing passion etc, if you don't have it in you, the manager can't give it to you on the way out of the changing rooms.
The team today was a joke, Keane on his own upfront with Samaras wandering about lost (when he managed to stay on his feet), subbing N'Guemo a ballwinner in the first half and bringing on Crosas who never looks comfortable in frantic games. McGeady & Fortune not interested. Celtic got what they deserved