Matthew Hutchinson

After months of on-off training and undisciplined gym attendance, I managed to finish the New York City Marathon, November 4th

It was an amazing experience, something I will never forget. The support from the crowds was unbelievable, especially in Brooklyn, which you’re in for almost half of the marathon. Rock and metal bands at every roadside garage, bag pipes from the local fire and police departments, a steel drum band outside a church, and a full orchestra playing Rocky tunes at central park! Without all that I don’t think I could have done it.

Running with two long-time friends from Belfast helped too. A lot of runner had their heads-down, ipods-in blocking out all the atmosphere of the crowds and city. Whereas we had brightly colored vests, with our names on them, and no ipods or baseball caps. Running to the sidewalks (of the extremely wide USA streets) meant everyone cheering you on, shouting your name and giving support. To the point that, when stopping to stretch or drink water, you felt like you were letting them all down.

The first 16 miles were fine, 16-20 was tougher but not painful, then from 20 to the finish (26.2) – it was just ALL pain, and almost ALL uphill. Here’s the route map, elevation guide and simulation. You can also see it all using Google Maps (with mile markers) at Walk Jog Run

During the journey I somehow managed to consume the following;

• 3 bagels a coffee and water waiting to start from 6-10AM
• 3 different ‘boiled sweet’ lollipops
• Jelly babies from the crowd
• Pretzels from the crowd
• A Lucozade carb gel carried from the start
• All the Gatorade I could stomach (once every mile)
• A sachet of salt
• Water

After that, I finished it in 5:09. Although we stopped for toilet queues for at least 15 minutes, so Im telling people I did it in under 5 :) I had hoped for under 4:15 but clearly didn’t put in enough training, and when that became obvious I was just hoping to finish in one piece. I’ve uploaded a few race photos to the flickr which are taken by photographers around the course (without you knowing) This is why you’ll find me walking in most of them.

The next day, I said thats it, never again – but looking back on it now (when my legs don’t seem to be detached from my body) i’m not going to rule it out completely. But if I was to do another marathon somewhere, it would take a lot to top New York.

With only a four day visit to the city, I didn’t really get as long as I would have liked to explore it. My first ever visit to New York was a very short trip too, about 7 years ago. I have to say that I really do like the place, I think it is one city that I does live up to it’s hype. Its on my long list of places to visit again and spend some real time in.

Things have been quiet here on the blog, I’ve been very busy as usual. But I should be back posting a bit more frequently from now on. And I even have a little re-design in the works. (Oh! and I bagged me an iPhone in New York, which works quite happily over here in sunny Ireland)

Just back from an excellent gig in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre, mostly songs from his latest albums and a few I hadn’t heard before. Strangely some of the crowd seemed to give him hassle, over the volume and lack of chat. I’ve also never seen so many people get up and walk around in a seated venue, answering mobiles and generally disturbing the show for everyone else. The musicians life is a hard one.

Here’s a rubbish video clip that captures, well nothing really;

Ray LaMontagne, Olympia, Dublin October 2007

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, have been very busy with a number of projects (and then this just happened today) – at the same time somewhere in Dublin, UPS were kindly delivering a new power adaptor to the wrong address. A new Mac Pro desktop, with Leopard is on the way, photos to follow …

NYC marathon coming up, and just a month to go … what was I thinking !

I choose not to run !

Working on the rails day in and out now, I’ve found the following aliases to come in handy;

# General Commands
alias ls='ls -al'

# TextMate, mate all of current dir and crucial rails folders only
alias et='mate . &'
alias ett='mate app config lib db public test vendor/plugins &'

# RAILS,  (run these from your rails folder)

# rails scripts
alias ss='./script/server'
alias sc='./script/console'
alias sg='./script/generate'
alias sp='./script/plugin'
alias mr='mongrel_rails start'

# rails testing 
alias att='autotest'
alias tu='rake test:units'
alias tf='rake test:functionals'    

# tail logs
alias tl='tail -f ./log/development.log'
alias tt='tail -f ./log/test.log'      

# clean the logs
alias ctl='cp /dev/null ./log/test.log'
alias cdl='cp /dev/null ./log/development.log'

I should credit Peep Code for the idea. To use, (e.g. in OSX) place the above in a ~/.bash_aliases file and in ~/.bash_profile, load it in with this command;

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then . ~/.bash_aliases ; fi

Also, (and before I forget it myself) – here’s a quick session cleaner command to put in your cron, (for day old, mysql session clearage action); rather than build a rake task, or extra controller to clean them out.

#!/bin/bash

cd /u/apps/matthewhutchinson.net/current
echo "<== CRON TASK ==> clear day old sessions data on matthewhutchinson.net" 
ruby script/runner -e production "ActiveRecord::Base.connection.delete(\"DELETE FROM sessions WHERE updated_at < NOW() - INTERVAL 1 DAY\")" 

• #cabal
• [12:37] @davidjrice: here, before you do that! Rails Rumble http://railsrumble.com/
• [12:37] @davidjrice: we needs ta register today cause there have been 101 of 150 applications
• [12:38] @matt: I have no time for the rumble, unless there is wrestling involved)
• [12:38] @matt: like, a royal rumble
• [12:38] @matt:* matt dons cape, mask and goes to summon his Eagle Powers – [link]