At Long last

Long by mcneilmahon at Garmin Connect – Details.

You might not believe me cos I haven’t got the Garmin proof to prove it but I ran an 8km long on Sunday.  Was planning to run again yesterday and then Thursday leading up to the race on Saturday, but it was the father-in-law’s 75th birthday so that plan was postponed until today, when i managed to add a km and get to 9km in just over an hour.  Means I’m pretty confident I should get to 10 on Saturday.  

I’m improving my form all the time, but it takes a lot of mental effort to get the body to behave itself.  If I’m not thinking of my knees, or my feet, or lifting the quads or pushing forward through the pelvis then they start to slacken or go off centre or pain arrives.  My worry with all this mind over body control is that I’m running too tense and so I’m trying to run relaxed too – so many things to think about that I end up thinking about nothing else.  But it’s all good for me at the end of the day I hope.  

Comment on Fulham 1 Tottenham 3 on Spurs Community

Fulham 1 Tottenham 3

What an excellent win. This season really is shaping up promisingly. 

I’m not convinced Fulham did play better than us. They played better than us in midfield, no doubt about it. And the majority of the game was played in midfield so it looked like they played better than us. They also had more possession than us, also giving the impression they played better than us. But going back to David’s halftime scoreline, they had more quantity than us, but we had the quality. 

We defended well almost throughout the game (Ledley’s header into the back of Younes for their goal apart) – physical, athletic, reading the game well, clearing our lines effectively and a goalkeeper on the top of his game (except for his fumble before Luka’s goaline clearance). Fulham didn’t. 

We attacked very effectively, almost all our chances were on target and we scored from about half of them. Clincal as you like. Fulham weren’t, misssing a host of chances. 

We clearly won two phases out of three of the game – we played better than them and deserved to win. 

And it’s wins like this one and the last one that really show an improvement on last season. An improvement at the back, mostly due to Ledley’s imperial and much more consistent presence. And an improvement up front, mostly due to Ade’s physicality and Defoe’s renewed sharpness (VDV continues to be VDV). And these improvements help us to improve mentally as well. Today we knew we would hang on because we’d done it before and recently. And hanging on today will bring a further growth in confidence for the games ahead. 

Well played everyone today, in one way or another. Keep the run going boys, entertaining times ahead.

Very Professionally Developing

Click here for slides IHBsAsProfessionallyDeveloping

I was asked to give a workshop today for the teachers at International House Recoleta and Belgrano based on the talk I did at the ABS Conference for Coordinators back in August.  Since I was confident they are already doing lots of the development ideas I addressed in the original talk, I wanted to attempt to make it a more personal and specific experience by adding in more interactive tasks and giving them summaries of the different tools on a plate, so to speak.

I enjoyed the journey they took me on and a lot of interesting ideas came out of it.  Hopefully some of them will go on to discover Suggestopedia in an experimental practice lesson or do some Action Research to improve their FCE learners listening skills.  Or at the very least they’ll come and comment on my blog.

Enjoy the slides and the handouts and I hope they help you to decide where to take your own Continuous Professional Develoment next.

Click here for the handouts  Professionally Developing

Dreaming of me

And everything’s happening at the same time again

You’re with someone and guess who’ve I’ve seen

And everyone’s happy with everything that’s happening

But I wish she would smile and be here with me.

 

I tell you to be what you are and it’s working

But what do I do about her and about me?

I tell you to fake it and see how it’s going

But I don’t think she’s even noticed I’m me

 

So you win from the two of us and I’m left here alone

Dreaming of gorgeousness dreaming of me

So you leave me alone praying my dreams come true

Dreams that are gorgeous and dreams that are me

But they never come true and I know that they lie to me

But what can I do that will save me again

I know that I’m left with a life full of dreams

Dreams of the day when I see the one that was meant to be

With me. 

My slowest, shortest Fast – an achievement all the same

Fast by mcneilmahon at Garmin Connect – Details.

Seems a bit odd to call last night’s run a fast one since I averaged around 6:30/km, not to mention the fact I only ran 5.3k.  But this all just goes to show how far I went and how far behind I now am.  The important thing is I managed to run 5k as fast as I can now without giving up and without injuring myself.

I managed to go 8 days without a run beforehand, which wasn’t part of the plan.  I need to be stricter with the days when Mer can’t run and go anyway.  The Nike 10k is only 10 days away now and I’ve only managed to run half the distance.  I need to go out every other day between now and the race, which is doable: Friday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday and try and get up to at least 8k during these races.  It will actually be fun to not have run 10k before the big day, a long way away from the days of running 20k three days before a 10k race, but then it was overdoing it like that that got me injured and where I’m at now anyway.

Today the foot doctor, tomorrow the knee doctor.  Let’s hope they give me the all clear and I can continue the comeback.

Last night’s thoughts: what do I have to do nd when do I have to do it.  Professionally Developing talk for IH Recoleta?belgrano on Friday, needs to be finished off tomorrow.  It’s going to be completely different to the times I’ve done it before in Mexico and ABS, since the audience will have heard of almost if not all the means of developing, so it’s gonna be more of a refelction on what suits each of us best.

Feedback Fiesta for Montevideo on the 19th November.  Again, very different since a three hour talk instead of an hour.  Lots more time to focus on error correction and separate out the three types of feedback and look at each in more detail.  Will need quite a bit of work mind to get it ready, though that will have to wait until the weekend after next, since this weekend is dedicated to preparing for the first IH Teachers Online Conference on Friday 25th November.  Really exciting project, I just hope the teachers hear about it and decide to come share with us.