Picture taken during a wee cycle

Since my last post I’ve managed to get in a few cycles which climbed a lot of hills!! I haven’t been exercising as much as I should have and have only really started training properly again last week, with a couple of swims, a couple of cycles and a couple of runs.

Last weekend I was at a Christian Conference in Castlewellan Castle, @TheCastle is a great bible teaching weekend and well worth going to. We were looking at 2 Timothy and I was really challenged about how I approach my leadership roles.

Dave at Spelga

This weekend coming I have my first cycling event of the year. The Coastal Challenge is a 100Km cycling round the Ards peninsula. It’s my first time doing this run but with 700 people I’m sure I’ll find a group going at my speed to sit with. I’m not even gonna try and keep up with Nev, Steve and co.

My Car was due it’s MOT  yesterday and I don’t have a date for it until tomorrow so I’m making the most of the good weather by cycling to work. It’s lovely but would be better without the wind, when did Northern Ireland get so windy, it was never like this when I was a lad and wanted to play with my stunt kite.

Chai Seed with Weetabix

So you’ve read the title and you’re wondering what Chia is? Well it’s a type of seed. It’s a wonder food with lots of great stuff in it. Read here for more info at Raw Living, Healthy Fuel and I bought it at Funky Raw. The great thing about them is the slow releasing energy, this is great for long events or even just to help me not snack.

I’ve found it’s best to take it on it’s own after the food but it’s great when added to a smoothy.

Swim - Run - Cycle

With Easter almost upon us and hopefully some good weather on it’s way (they’ve promised a BBQ summer again) it’s time to ramp up the training. I’ve a couple of events next week, Monday a 5Mile running road race in Whitehead (I’m not sure if I’ll finish this let alone do well) and on Saturday 10th April just days before my 33rd birthday I’ll be taking part in the Portlaoise Sprint Try-athlon.

While I’m not overtly fund raising this year (since you were all so generous last year) I have asked for some sponsorship around work and will be doing next week’s event to raise money for a small charity called Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group if you would like to give money to this worthy cause you can do so on their donation’s page or see me before this Monday. Hopefully Dave R and Mark T will be joining me on Monday and also David Marshall , who’s wife got me into the run.

Tri an Mhi 09 - Run

For the triathlon I’m on my own so if anyone fancies a 4:30am start you’re welcome to come down with me. After that I’ve a about 6weeks before the Roe Valley Sprint Triathlon and then the next one I’m down for will be on 1st August in Lisburn. One week later I hope to do my first Olympic Triathlon in Castlewellan, (I’ve a feeling the cycle in this one might be a killer). Then I have the final and now annual trip to the Tri an Mhi Quarryman Triathlon hopefully Mart T, Dave R, Stephen A, Niall J and Ian C will be joining me for this one. I’ll be hoping to improve on last year’s 104th position.

All that only leaves July without an event so I’ll be joining Nev & co in the Coastal Challenge, 100Km round the Ards Peninsula.

Anyway as you can see my life and therefore Blog / Twitter / Facebook updates will continue to be pretty boring and nerdy sports updates but hey it’s better than your posts about coffee, traffic jams, Glee etc. (well to me anyway).

Dermo meets Andrew Shanks

A few years back I tried to switch my blog over to WordPress but I got complaints that it ran too slowly. Lately I’ve been testing it again for work as I feel it would work great as a newsletter style interface. Nicely there are also people out the doing great work to make it do fancy things like take a large image in the text and make it a thumbnail on the home page. On top of that it now runs much quicker. Sweet Action!!!

So I’m switching back over to WordPress for the next wee while, with an added bonus being the ability to write posts on my phone and add pictures from my phone.

Since I’m talking about new beginnings I would like to welcome Andrew Ross Shanks to the world of my blogs, he is the son of Ross and Louise.  He came into the world a few weeks ago and is coming on fine. He should be about my height in 9-10years if his dad is anything to go by.

Muddy Dermo on Focus

Last week I started another new beginning in the form of mountain biking. An eventful first ride seen me following Nev around the forest above Carrick and falling of just over a half dozen times and also going over the handlebars a few times. It was awesome!!