The bad ambassador

My favourite blog is now The Bad Ambassador, its new, its entertaining and yes, he is "really spoiling us"….

Vista Home premium edition not good enough for .Net developer

I recently wrote a blog entry about upgrading my laptop from XP to Vista home premium which I received free from Sony from the Vista Express upgrade program. I thought that the Home Premium edition would be sufficient for development of software as I do not usually connect to a windows domain.

This proved to be wishful thinking however and I recently upgraded to Vista Ultimate edition to allow me to be able to do my day to day development. This has simplified things greatly.

The main reason I had to perform this upgrade is because of the lack of Authentication options in IIS web server. With the home edition you do not have the option to enable "Integrated Authentication" as a result I could not accurately test a lot of the web applications that I am developing and maintaining. I was able to get so far using "Basic Authentication" on the home edition but there were still problems even trying various impersonation settings. When working with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2005 it would not work for me until the "Integrated Authentication" option was used.

In addition to this connecting to network shares and networked printers has become simplicity itself. Even though I am not logged onto the windows server domain when I first enter a username and password to connect to these network resources Vista then remembers this and never prompts me for this again. There is a new "manage your network passwords" option in "User Accounts" section of the control panel that looks after these passwords for you. With Home premium I had to repeatedly enter these passwords again after every reboot of the laptop.

Oh, and on the gimmick front, you get Texas holdem poker and DreamScene, which allows you to have small looped video clips as your desktop wallpaper, such as a waterfall or clouds moving.

Dublin City Marathon

Well I did the marathon on the monday, and feel every bit of it today. The day started with an unnatural 6am start. Then because I didn't know when the traffic restrictions were going to kick with road closures in I left about 6:45 to get into town. They say you should be there 1 hour early but I have no idea why they want to you stand around for an hour beforehand in shorts and a t-shirt in October weather. It only took me 15 minutes to get into St. Stephens green car park. So I was there 2 hours early. Anyway, stayed in the car to keep warm then off to the start to stand around Fitzwilliam square for an hour, managed to get a spot between buildings where the sun was peaking through and got chatting with a lady from Boston who looked like a storm trooper with a utility belt of water bottles around her. She was in great form and had good fun slagging off the "serious runners" that where doing pre-race stretching. She was waiting at the end of the pack so I moved up a bit further in an effort to stay warmer and keep out of the wind in the huddle with all the others. By coincidence the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan was standing beside me, he was hoping to do it in 5 hours and lots of people recognised him and wished him well, I think he finished in 5:45 in the end. Must be tough being famous and in pain.

The weather was cool with a clear sky, enough to keep warm when the sun hit you but the wind was strong-ish. Thankfully it was nothing like a few days earlier when it was gale force so I counted my blessings.

So after the elite women and men we were off at 9:10am. Great feeling to be finally under way, everyone throwing away their bin bags, gloves and fleeces into the air, I kept trying to run slowly and keep it to 9 min miles. I was laughing at the amount of men going to the toilet at the 1^st turn at Holles street maternity hospital, it would have made a great picture. Then up O'Connell street and on to the north circular road, then into my old training ground, the phoenix park. Here I met a friend Mike Scally who had come out to cheer me on (he did a 3:20ish marathon 2 years before). He ended up running along beside me to chat for a few minutes. It was great to see a friendly face and help break up the distance, he had a whopping hangover though so didn't run beside me for too long.

Dublin looked spectacular on the day, the autumn sun lit the leaves on the tree lined streets and the phoenix park looked beautiful. It was really stunning and I spent the first half of the race taking it all in and feeling incredibly fortunate. The reception we got from the supporters along the course was amazing. There were people out everywhere clapping, cheering us on, handing out biscuits and jellies and sliced oranges, there were kids lining the roads with their hands out for high fives, to which I duly obliged, there were home made signs and whistles and bells and clappers. It was a terrific atmosphere and I was amazed how quickly the first 14 miles flew past. My wife Denise and brother in-laws Ian and Kevin met me near the KCR at mile 15, my children Conor and Hannah had made signs "go dad no. 1" which gave me a great lift to see them caught up in the occasion too. I grabbed some much needed supplies, a nutri-grain bar, 2 bottles of sports drink and had a quick chat before running on again. I felt great at this stage and it was nice easy running at sub 9 minute miles after this down Templeogue road, into Terenure and through Rathgar and Milltown. Then the long gradual uphill at Clonskeagh, this went on for a few miles with the last big hill at 20.5 this is where everyone hit a bit of a wall, a lot of people dropped into a walk, others stopping to try and stretch cramp out of their legs. It really was a race of 2 parts, 1^st up to 20 miles ok, then 20-26 varying levels of pain for everyone. It is as if the human body can do 20 but the last 6 are beyond it. My legs and hips where murmuring to me to stop around 20, this built up to a scream around mile 23 to stop. When I had to lift my legs to run up on the kerb at one point I realised how tight my leg muscles had become. Everyone at the side of the road is shouting, "come on, only 3 to go" but 3 seemed like a mountain at this point. I was determined not to break into a walk because I didn't think it would help all that much anyway and I would be disappointed afterwards so I kept plodding on, the mile times had gone right down at was doing 9:40+ for these miles. A lot of people were shouting at themselves either in pain or to try and motivate themselves to keep going. I found myself muttering "keep running, just to the next corner" etc. which only vaguely helped. I can only imagine what the spectators thought of us at this point in the race, everyone must have looked a right state. I would highly recommend Hal Higdon's training plans because sticking to it (as much as possible) was probably the reason I did not suffer from cramp and prepared me well for the day.

On the 25th mile we turned back onto Pearse Street and I started to get some white clouding appearing in my vision in the sunshine. I knew this was a bad sign of dehydration and could mean that I was nearing passing out so, I slowed down a bit and it eased off. Then we turned the corner at college green and onto the final straight at Nassau Street. It's a pity the finish line was hidden around a corner in Merrion square because it would have been a great morale lift to see it off in the distance. About half way down the street I started to get a buzz and almost visualise finishing, the pain seemed to go away briefly and I was able to accelerate again so I was nearly sprinting by the time I turned to corner to see the finish line, thank god it wasn't too far around the corner or it could have been embarrassing as I ran out of steam. I wasn't able to see anyone at this point the crowds were a blur as I tried to focus on the finish and mask out the pain, I knew I was close to being under the 4 hour mark, but not sure how close, then relief as I crossed the line and broke into a hobbling walk something akin to a John Wayne swagger. I was hoping to finish under 4 hours, the chip time in the end was 4 hours and 34 seconds, damn, but I didn't care, I could not have run those last few miles any faster, my overall place was 3,282 out of the approx 11,000 participants.

You get the medal and finisher t-shirt and are then herded through baggage collection areas. I could not find Denise, Ian and Kevin anywhere so I walked back to the car and rang them from there. I was fairly hobbling at this stage but I think the fact that I kept walking has probably aided by recovery in the subsequent days. The spectators standing around were congratulating me on the street as you hobble past them which adds to the sense of achievement. I did sit down for a few minutes on a bench in the Merrion square park and the relief of taking the weight off my legs was like a warm blanket. I met up with the family in Sinnotts pub under Stephens green where I ordered the best pint of Guinness I think I have ever tasted, it was a poor choice of pub though given the 3 flights of steps to get into it and more steps to get to the toilet. Stairs are not your friends after running that distance. There were several other marathon runners there obviously with the same idea I had. We all looked pretty smug with our medals on and pint in hand.

Apparently now that I have done a marathon it is quite addictive and a lot of people go on to do other marathons in subsequent years travelling around the world doing the iconic London and New York marathons. I heard quite a few people along the way listing off other marathons they had done that year and how they compare to the Dublin one. I am not even considering this yet though. I have heard the experience likened to childbirth, you would not even consider doing it again until the memory of the last time has faded away.

I saw Tommy Tiernan interviewed on RTE news after he finished, they asked him "Would you do it again?", his reply was "yea, sure, I'd do it again now if you keep the roads closed til Christmas", fair play Tommy, quick thinking on tired feet.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the whole day, the last few miles were tougher than I expected and it was certainly nothing I experienced during my training plan. This did not take away from the overall enjoyment it though. As a nice added benefit of it all I also raised over €1000 for Parkinsons association of Ireland, many thanks to all the friends, family and co-workers that sponsored me.