Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A new sport - Bike Polo


Bike polo
Originally uploaded by Brian O'Donovan
While I was travelling through the Phoenix Park last weekend I saw a sign announcing the international bike polo competition. I went along to have a look and it looks like an interesting sport - basically horse polo played on a bike.

The crowd was not exactly huge for an international tournament. The supporters were outnumbered by the players. But I suppose every sport must start out small.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Dixie Chick goes on her first trip of 2009

The weather in Ireland was lovely this weekend so I decided to bring Dixie Chick on her first trip of the year.

I did not take her out of the water this winter and so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she was not too badly shaken by the experience. The engine started after about 3 attempts and then we took her for a short trip down to Banagher and back.

I tried out the Sports Tracker application on my Nokia phone. It seemed to work a treat and I was able to produce the little map below showing where exactly we went.


View Dixie Chick's Maiden Voyage of 2009 in a larger map

There is a slight mis-match between the Google Map and the coordinated from my GPS which make it seem that we travelled across dry land for a while, but overall I think you can get the idea. I must use this feature more often.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Phoenix Park Race last week

I just got confirmation of my finishing time in the Phoenix Park 10km race. This year I finished in 54 minutes and 21 seconds which is an improvement on my time from last year of 57 minutes and 3 seconds.

Overall my race position was #3,144 which is not bad considering that there were over 11,000 competitors in total. What makes it sound even better was that I was in position #142 for my age group (although I don't know exactly how wide they make the age group or how many people in my age group competed).