Thanks to Marathon-Photos.com

For those that don’t know, my eldest daughter Emma Berry Goodman passed away in September 2008 from Motor Neurone Disease. Whilst she was with us we were greatly helped by three fantastic charities: MND Scotland, Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Childrens Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS).

For the last three years I have dedicated a years fundraising to each of these charities. This year my challenge was to run 1,000km in 2011 for Marie Curie Cancer Care.
If everything goes to plan then I will achieve my 1,000th kilometer when I run in Strathclyde Parkrun -  event number 86 on Saturday 17th December.

I know that this is an expensive time of year but if you could see your way to giving a donation at https://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011 or by texting “Ross70 £5″ to 70070 – feel free to adjust the amount as you see fit!
Every £20 raised helps to provide 1 hour of nursing care and I can personally vouch for how invaluable the Marie Curie are!

Thank you all for your donations and your support and encouragement in this past year!

If you would like to see just how far 1,000km actually is have a look here.

I had hoped to be able to raise £1000. Every £20 raise helps provide an hour’s nursing, £1,000 would equate to 50 hours care! Unfortunately I’m only at £766 or 76% of target. I am putting a big push in, I’m planning to run every day in December to guarantee that I hit my km target but I need some help from you to make sure that I hit my £ target!

I understand that these are financially trying times and December is an expensive month but this is exactly when we should be thinking of others. Any donations at all will be gratefully received at https://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011 or you can donate via your mobile phone by texting “Ross70 £5” to 70070

Whilst I don’t always chase the latest and greatest geek toys or gadgets I do like to try and find a practical application of how technology can help me. This is a side effect of being a Business Intelligence consultant where I am striving to maximise (and measure) the benefits for my clients.

During a quiet moment I pondered – If I was to build a dashboard to measure/motivate/incentivise “ME” what would be on it?

photo credit: churl

After an admitedly quick brain dump this is what I came up with:

Health
No Chocolate
No Fizzy Drinks
Sleep 6.5 hours

Fitness
Run 4 times per week
Strength 2 times per week
Run 20km per week

Social
Work Blog once per week
Personal Blog once per week
EMail an “old” friend once per week

Development
2 hours personal reading per week
2 hours work reading per week
Take a “nice” photo per week

What are your thoughts?

What have I missed?

Of course I already have an idea as to how to capture and present this but that’s for another blog post.

I created a dataset that contained two columns of numbers that I wanted to quickly get into excel. I choose, export in CSV format to clipboard so that I could quickly paste it into an existing spreadsheet.

My dataset contained:

1234, 5678
2345, 6789
3456, 7890

The data that was exported was:

12,345,678
23,456,789
34,567,890

Have to export to an xls file, open it then copy and paste – YAWN !

I’m using Office 2003 SP3 on XP Pro SP3.

Turns out that there is a VERY easy fix – don’t maximise the VBA code editor.
If the editor is maximised, it appears on unlock, if it is not maximised it does not appear automatically on unlock.

Create a macro:

sub MakeUpper()

for each myCell in Selection

  myCell.Value = UCase(myCell.value)

next myCell

end sub

Add a menu item to your toolbar and then assign this macro to it.

Select the cells you want to upper case then press the button!

To just add an extra element to the marathon my friend Andy from Reynard Nursery asked me to tweet every mile. I knew every mile would be very offputtingbut I thought I would give it a go. My marathon day tweets start here. I had experimented with VLingo for my BlackBerry which I was carrying anyway. My pre race day tests were all fine – press a button – speak – translated into text – press a button to confirm sending it to Twitter – easy. On the day, being a little breathless and having a howling gale (more of that later) things didn’t go quite to plan. “Four Miles” was translated as “F******* Hell” and “Five Miles and Feeling Good” was translated as “Hi Smiles and Feeling Good”. I reverted to typing after that.

Race Day

I had done a lot more preparation for the marathon this year over last year and also appreciated the benifit of the positive mental attitute. Having done one – there was no fear – I knew I could do another – I just had to do it slightly faster. The start was well organised as usual (I’m sure it was down to the sterling efforts of the Jammies : thanks Moira and John). Just as I dropped my bag off, the heavens opened – thank heavens for my Marie Curie poncho!

The scariest part of the day had been the weather forecast – 20+mph south westerly winds and intermittent showers. Rain I can live with but wind ……..

The first three quarters of the race were great – everything went to plan – had a nice chat with a few people (it’s only recently I have actually slowed down enough to be capable of having a conversations). Of course I was not heeding the warning signs – you NEVER feel a wind when it’s on your back!

The Twinge

Just before mile 17, the turn at the furthest point, as Gosforth House, when the wind was on my back and coming off the water my legs got really cold and I got a slight pull in my left calf. Nothing serious but I had to pull up and stretch it. With hindsight I should have worn long bottoms rather than my shorts but…. Just after the turn we head into the grounds of Gosforth House, nice and sheltered but I have now resorted to alternated running/walking but at this point it’s more walking than running.

As you emerge from the grounds just before mile 19 we get the first taste of the wind directly in our faces – NOT GOOD. Everyone in front of me, as soon as they take the left hand back onto the main road are stopped in their tracks and reduced to a walk.

This was definately the low point for me – you always know the last five or six miles will be hard, but with a slight twinge and the full fury of The Anemoi all conspiring against me this was not an uphill struggle, it was an upwind struggle.

I took a breather on the little detour up Lyars Road and got a big cheer from some of the Strathclyde Parkrun regulars and a quick chat with a few runners from Marie Curie and MND Scotland. Spirits raised, mile 20 marked turning into the wind for the home “stretch”.

The Crawl

My mind was actually in a much better point at this time: I knew I would finish, I was certain I would get a PB I just had to push through the wind. I was still alternating walk/run but I was determined to run more than walk so head down and push on. At this point the race was in carnage – I think only about a dozen runners passed me in the last 6 miles – it was just a constant stream of people with their heads down, leaning into the wind and walking.

To put the wind into perspective, during the gusts, the metal barriers to separate the runners from the cars were blowing over. The stronger gusts (around Cockenzie) would actually stop you dead in your tracks. My neck and shoulders were in agony at this point, I was having to turn my had to the side to actually be able to get a breath – great technique for a front crawl, not for the last six miles of a marathon!

My technique at this point was to simply spot a gaggle of walkers – reel them in and pass them, have a quick strech – and repeat.

The Finish

At 26 miles you come to the big roundabout and you get an enormous cheer from the crowd! THANK YOU EVERYONE!! There is only 0.2 of a mile to go – but then the atmosphere died – where did everyone go? Last year the finish was in the racecourse, this year it was in the street outside, but the public were not allowed into the finish straight !?!?!?!

I crossed the line in 5 hours 43minutes – 50 minutes faster than last year – Woo Hoo. I had a HUGE sense of achievement. A few years ago I could not contemplate running for 50 minutes let alone running a race where a 50 minute improvement was possible.

But then it went downhill. Last year, you finished, you got your medal, you got your goodie bag stuffed with all you needed, you crossed the road and you were in the park meeting your friends families and charities. This year, you got your medal, then a bananna, then a sports drink, then some water, then a big queue for your T-Shirt. OH, but there were no marathon T-Shirts left – would I like a Half Marathon one instead ? NO THANKS ! You would have through they would have known how many runners were registered – I seem to remember even telling them my size! Then another queue for my goodie bag. Why not just put everything I need in a bag – give it to me and let me get on my way? I’ve had quite a busy day so far!

The walk into the park seemed to take ages but no where near as long as the walk to the bus back to Edinburgh.

In Summary

I ran the race much better than last year but this year the wind took it’s toll rather than the sun from last year.

Will I do it again – I’m already pre-registered!

Will I try another marathon – Loch Ness in October!

My fundraising page http://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011 is still active until the end of the year and as of tonight my first run since Edinburgh I have reached half way 502km.

As you should know by now I’m running the Edinburgh Marathon to raise funds for Marie Curie Cancer Care. This event is part of my challenge of running 1,000km in 2011. Every £20 raised for Marie Curie helps provide one hour of nursing care. Marie Curie were a fantastic help with my daughter Emma before we lost her to MND.

If you are feeling generous I will be accepting donations until the end of the year at http://www.justgiving.com/1000k-in-2011

If you would like to follow me during my marathon I have set up my phone so you can track my progress:

Another way you can track my progress is via Twitter: https://twitter.com/rossgoodman

I will be attempting to live tweet during the run using VLingo on my phone which should tweet whatever I speak to it. Who knows how well it will work when I’m a bit “breathless”.

I use both the built in fields e.g. Author, Version, Title and custom fields e.g. Project Code. I set the values once in the document properties and then insert the field codes in the document rather than the text. All is well. If you change the value of a field you can press F9 and all of the fields update to the latest value EXCEPT if you have used the fields in the document header or footer, these do not get updated for some reason. I would classify this as a bug, why would I not want all instances of the same field to be in sync throughout my document.

The solution is remarkably simple. Create the following macro:

Sub UpdateAll()
Dim oStory As Range
Dim oField As Field
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
For Each oField In oStory.Fields
oField.Update
Next oField
Next oStory
End Sub

This can be saved in your normal.dot file and will be available in all your word documents.

The problem is, the football clubs are a business and unless everyone is involved, shareholders included, then this will go nowhere. There is also the problem as to how to make this fair and equitable for smaller clubs as well as the very top tier.

My Solution:

The Players
Any player recieves a yellow card they forfeit 1 weeks pay.
A red card – forfeit two weeks pay.
i.e. two yellows and a red is four weeks pay forfeited.
Even if a player recieves a red and then continues to protest the ref can issue another yellow or red as he sees fit.

The Management
The referee or another official has the ability to issue yellow and red cards to the touchline management staff with the same forfeit as above.
Now the management will loose their pay if their behaviour is not up to scratch.

The Team
A yellow card equates to one point, a red gives two points. If a team (players and management) accrue over 5 points in a single game, they forfeit their share of the  gate money for the match. If the team accrue over 8 points in a single match they loose all income from the match gate, TV, food etc.

Who Benefits
The teams do not get to choose, the SFA or public can choose a charity every week or month and all fines get paid to them. This way the team is still out of pocket as they have to pay the player’s wage even though the player will not recieve it.

Lets see how long it takes for the teams to get their act together and play in a responsibe, respectful and sportsman like manner.