Richard Osman

I’ve read both the Thursday Murder Club series and the new book We Solve Murders. I enjoy his pace and writing style.

Atlee Pine series from David Baldacci

I haven’t read the first book in the series yet since it’s always had a long wait on the library app. But the remaining ones that I’ve read or listened to are ones I liked. They’re fast paced and hard to put down. I remember staying up until 5 am finishing up the last book!

Carmel Harrington

In my question to listen to more Irish authors, I listened to The Girl from Donegal. The story was captivating and the voice actors were good at the different accents. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy historical fiction, but it was lovely! I went on to read a few more books by the same author. My current favorite is The Moon Over Kilmore Quay. I describe her books as time travel books. There is usually a combination of past and present over time that meet.

Fiona McArthur

I stumbled on Midwife on the Orient Express, most likely because it was a book available without wait. I proceeded to listen to all the books I could find by the author. It was fascinating to read about the remote corners of Australia.

The topic of healthcare and life in remote Australia was fascinating! I went onto read Beth Mcrae’s Outback Midwife detailing her career over 40 years.

Matthew Reilly

I’ve read and owned several of Matthew Reilly’s books in the past. I’m pretty sure I’ve owned Seven Ancient Wonders but I read it so long ago that I had to re-read. I’ve been working my way through that series. It was an excellent read. I tend to think of it as an Indiana Jones style book series.

Patricia Cornwell

The first book I picked up was when in 2004, about 20 years ago. I’ve actually never read the first few books or read the books in an organized manner. This year, I made an effort to read/listen to some of the books in order. It’s somewhat fascinating to hear a book set in the 90s. It took a bit for me to adjust to everyone smoking in their cars, offices, and so on.

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

Yes, you’ve probably heard of the movie. But the audiobook is narrated by David Tenant and he gives a different voice to every character! There are 12 books and I’ve finished all but 2 in the middle. The wait time for those books run up to July 2025! I have them reserved. It is an excellent coming of age series. It is a children’s book, just like Harry Potter is a children’s book. I’d say it’s suitable for all ages!

There were many more excellent books from the last year, but these are the authors I enjoyed reading.

As part of a college course I’m doing, I have a security and cryptography module this year and I decided to try to write the code for that module with Rust. In some particularly tricky sections, I had to write the code in Python first and then figure out how to convert that into Rust. I’m pretty sure my code isn’t the most perfect, it helped me get a sense for using the language constructs and reading a lot of documentation.

Some useful things I learned

• Read the docs. Duh. I also enjoyed Rust by example.
• Clippy helped improve my code into something marginally elegant.
• Learning to write tests early increased my velocity a lot. The code-edit-run cycles are a lot easier if unit tests do the work for you.

Following a book or a full guide bored me a bit, so this was a nice middle ground and I got to submit this for my assignment. The code is at cipher-suite and I can’t really think of any real world use cases for it. It was fun playing around with it.

The Ecotrail Wicklow race was on the last Saturday of September. There were a lot more distances this year than the past years (A new 10K!). The routes for every distance have changed a little bit over the years. This year we went through Kilruddery again. I prefer this route as it’s less technical than the route we took last year through Belmont. Of course, the steady rain made everything messy last year. The last bit of the race had some stairs, but more on that later.

The race started off as a gorgeous day with no rain and beautiful sunshine at the start line. I was listening to the music from Come From Away for the first bit of the race, making friends, and humming along. I didn’t push too hard and took walk breaks when I felt like I needed to slow down. I was not aiming for a specific time. I had a high level goal of trying to come under 8h, but I was not fussed about time this year. I kept telling myself, if I finished this race, it would be the longest I’ve run in my life. I’ve finished 2 marathons in the past and had one DNF for a marathon. It has been 8 years since my last marathon, though, so it’s been a long time since I’ve done this distance.

I breezed my way up Bray Head, down the other side, onward to Kilruddery, and up Little Sugar Loaf. This was the first challenging climb but I was feeling good all through this. I felt strong as I crossed the N11 over to start the Big Sugar Loaf. In the last few years that I’ve run this race, I found the Big Sugar Loaf a bit long and tiring. This year was no different. The uphill trail is tricky and with thorny bushes on both sides. I fell into sync with a group of runners though I could feel myself slow down as I went further. The route was too narrow to let someone pass me. I remember reaching a point and thinking, “when the hell is the right turn to the downhill”.

At this point when I synced up with a group of women who were running together as a group. We’d see each other on and off for the rest of the race. I would overtake them for a bit and then have to take a break and they’d overtake me. I was taking more walking breaks from here on. The next step was Djouce and Powerscourt falls. This bit of the trail was familiar and I could race down, though my quads were starting to be sore from the downhills. The Powerscourt falls was my spiritual halfway mark. I sort of felt good at this point! Hooboy, I was going to get smashed by the climb.

The climb up into the Wicklow Way from Powerscourt was steep and I felt drained at the top. I had overtaken the group of women in the flats around here and we went uphill together as I struggled. The hiking stick helped but it did not stop me from feeling completely drained of energy when I got uphill. I need to sit down and ran into Ellie (of Tough Soles) who was also not having a good time. We chatted for a bit while I caught my breath. The group of women were fantastic and they checked that we were both fine and had everything we needed. I had a gel and waited for my body to catch up with the sugar before I went on. I walked for some more time with some bits of running.

There’s a long downhill followed by a long uphill near Djouce and I enjoyed this bit during my training runs. Both the uphill and downhill are technical and I enjoyed them both despite being quite worn out. I got a big kick of inspiration as I made the turn heading back. The fourth placed 80k runner (first woman) crossed me. She was like a blaze of lighting. Despite it being a flat and downhill section, I did not see her again. These folks had already finished over 50K of their race and had been running for 1.5h more than I had been. The rest of the way was downhill and I was able to pick up pace for a bit. I came to a clearing where I ran into the group of women again We had a chat while I refilled my drink mix. This was tricky enough that sitting down and doing it saves more time and mess than trying to hurry it up.

I was quite sore and feeling like I “hit the wall”. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of having enough gels with the correct frequency. The combination of the energy drink mix and the gel were not sitting well with me and I felt a bit queasy. I cannot express in words the relief I felt getting back to the Big Sugar Loaf parking lot. There was less than 20 km left and I knew I could finish it even I had to walk. I considered DNF at this point, but I told myself I could do it. The last marathon I ran was a DNF and I hadn’t done that distance again. I knew I had to challenge myself to finish.

Once I got moving though, all the fears were gone and I could keep going. This section of Big Sugar Loaf is the most difficult of the lot because it’s a sharp downhill with a turn. Maintaining balance while going downhill fast is Type 2 Fun. Finally, the end was in sight, it was flat again. I chatted with a couple along the way and we were motivating each other to keep going. As someone said recently about trail running, all you have to do is keep moving. As long as you’re moving, you’re making progress.

During and after this year’s race is that the only part of body that hurt was my quads. Unfortunately, they were quite sore, so both uphills and downhills hurt. I was taking a break along the climb to little sugar loaf when I saw Ellie again. I was glad she managed to catch up! We ran (who am I kidding? We walked) together for a little bit. Every single year, the Little Sugar Loaf kills me. It’s less than 10 km from the finish line, but the climb is steep and I struggle climbing up. This year was no different. Ellie had to go on ahead without me about half way up the hill. I was better last year, but this year, my energy management didn’t work well. The rest of the Little Sugar Loaf was somehow past me. I ran through Belmont and then the next bit of the route was completely alien to me. I had no idea what it was like.

I wanted to run but my body didn’t have the energy for more than a few seconds of running at a time. There was a climb I struggled with, because I had to first go up to Bray head and my legs couldn’t do it. A couple of the 80K runners passing me encouraged me to keep going at it. I could hear the announcer from the finish line and it kept me moving. Besides, I was too close to the finish line to quit. Finally, I could see the end, I got to Bray head and now it was downhill all the way. Except for the 10K participants.

The 10K had started a few minutes ago and they were running up the routes I’d use to go down. There were a lot of cursing from the non-runners on Bray head. I had to be not nice and force my way through some of the tighter spots so I could head to the finish line. And then, I arrived at the stairs. These stairs have been unused for a while and had been recently cleared by the race organizers. My quads were not happy with the stairs. I could not climb them down like a normal person. I had to do one stair at a time. It almost felt never ending.

The last bit by the sea was the best. There were people clapping and cheering me on. As I got closer more and more louder cheers. I finished the race!

Oh, that 80K sure looks scary and impossible.

We started as soon as the horn went off. From South Quay, around the little rectangle around Bridge St, Church St, Wooden Bridge Rd, Bachelor’s Walk, and ended back at Bridge St, but this time turning towards the sea. The route went on towards Rathnew (again a lot of familiar roads and hills), Magheramore, and back into Wicklow Town with the finish line at the Wicklow Goal. This is the first race I’ve done in Ireland where people come out to cheer on the streets. I’ve done the Clontarf Half Marathon twice before and the atmosphere was nowhere close to this one.

My two previous times for a half marathon in Ireland have been 02:28:45 and 02:27:25. I didn’t do well in either of those races compared to how well I’d trained. I remember feeling quite disappointed. There’s the added fun where the route in Clontarf is flat, but oh boy, the headwinds are brutal. The race this past weekend was hilly but the breeze was gentle and comforting rather than pushing me around.

Since I started working with Sarah, I’ve trained fairly consistently except for a bit in the early days where I was struggling to make time to train. With the layoffs in the last year and general life events, I’ve made a more conscious effort to put my health first. The last year or so has been super consistent. In the last year, I’ve only taken 2 weeks off from running completely. Both those times, I’d fallen sick and took time to fully recover.

The familiar roads of this race felt easy even when the terrain was not. I pushed myself to keep running. I didn’t focus much on my pace. I kept telling myself that this is just a training run. Just keep moving and focus on not bonking. In Ecotrail last year, I distinctly remember feeling completely out of energy going up the Little Sugar Loaf. To prevent that situation, this time, I planned to have a gel every 30 mins and boy did that work! The taste of the gel was a bit disgusting towards the end, but I didn’t feel super weak at any point. In the future, I might alternate caffeinated gels with non-caffeinated gels. I only had one flavor so I had to make do this time.

The weather was perfect for T-shirt and tights. Briefly, I wished I wore a pair of shorts instead. It was a bit of a warm day. The last few races, I’ve always I had to take a walk break. On the trail races, it’s inevitable, because the terrain gets tricky all the time and the safe thing to do is to walk it. On road races, I haven’t been fit enough to run the whole thing in the past. I distinctly remember at the 19 km mark, I was a bit surprised that there was only 2.1 km or so to go. I was feeling well enough to push harder!

I finished this hilly and sunny run in 02:12:11. It is a superb improvement from my past performance. In addition to just the improvement in time, I’m glad I made great strides in my fueling strategy.

Wicklow Town really embraced this race. There were people on the road cheering and clapping with signs. There were old ladies on the street telling us, “You just have one short hill and it’s downhill all the way”, and the finish area was packed with people cheering everyone on! Some funny posters I saw included one that said, “Run like you’re being chased”, “Run like you stole something”, and my favorite, “You run better than this government” held up by a little kid.

I think I will swap Clontarf Half Marathon for the Wicklow event in the years to come.

Inching Closer to a Degree

A big thing that has been eating into my time from 2021 has been starting a degree program at TU Dublin. It’s a part-time course that runs for 13 weeks each semester with 3 courses every semester. I’m finishing up the first half of year 3 shortly after I pass the exams.

It is rough handling a full-time job and classes in the evening. The big advantage has been that classes are online, so I just need to be home by 6:30 pm and focus for another 3 hours. The assignment schedules are supposed to be centrally coordinated, but some times thing go wrong and I have two tests the same week. The use of ChatGPT/Bard has meant that there are fewer take home assignments and more in-class tests. Not the worst thing, but it does make scheduling tricky.

Running

I’ve been working with Sarah for over a year now and the consistency is beginning to pay off. In 2023, I ran about 840 km and did 23 strength workouts. I ran a half marathon, attempting to set a new PB, but that was not be. I re-ran the Ecotrail Wicklow 30K in terrible conditions this year and managed to improve my time by 30 mins! Early in the year, I set a new 5K PB of 26:26. The next goal is to see if I can get to below the 25-min mark.

Not Laid Off (yet)

My employer, like most tech employers, did a round of layoffs early this year. It was a shock to wake up to not being able to even say goodbye to some of my American colleagues. It took a while for the decisions to be made in Ireland. Many close friends were laid off and it was a stark reminder that we’re just a cog in the wheel.

Between the time that I wrote a draft of this post and now, there’s been a second round of layoffs. We’re yet to get a concrete statement on what will happen in this round in Ireland.

Roadtrips

This year has been a year of many road trips. Early in the year, we did a Ring of Kerry trip with a friend. It was gorgeous but utterly exhausting. Remind me never to drive 1000+ km across 3 days ever again. We took a trip to West Cork in February. It helped us go all around West Cork and see some sights. On our way back, we stopped in Cork and Waterford for a quick meet with a friend. Later in the year, we visited Waterford again, for the Booze, Blas, and Banter festival.

Hiking

This year, I had set myself the goal of going out hiking some more. I’ve not done any since 2020, when I went across the Dublin Mountain Way. I went around the Big Sugar Loaf with a friend as a route reccee for the Ecotrail race, did the Spinc and Glenealo Valley Walk in Glendalough on my own, and did the Howth hike, this time with colleagues as a big group.

2024

It’s been a slow start to the year, but I’m looking forward to more running and hiking. The layoff stress continues, but I’m hoping to somehow life my life irrespective of whatever happens.