Monthly Archives: June 2011

A year of running

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No I'm not going to run solidly for a year … that would be daft. So as I have blogged before I decided that I would run the London Marathon next year. I already had a place for the Great North Run in 2011 and 2012 and have now entered the Silverstone Half Marathon and the Dalby Dash. I'm hoping to get a space in the Brass Monkey in January when the entries open. Than I'd like to finish off with another half marathon in June / July. 

So why am I doing it … mainly to get fit and loose a bit of weight but also to raise some money for charity. For more details of who I am supporting and how to sponsor me see http://www.allars.co.uk/jons-year-of-running/

The Plan

  • September 2011 – Great North Run (13.1 miles) – Entered
  • November 2011 – Dalby Dash (6.2 miles) – Entry sent, place not confirmed
  • January 2012 – Brass Monkey (13.1 miles) – Entries not yet open
  • March 2012 – Silverstone Half Marathon (13.1 miles) – Entered
  • April 2012 – London Marathon (26.2 miles) - Ballot Entered, place not confirmed
  • June/July 2012 – TBC (13.1 miles)
  • September 2012 – Great North Run (13.1 miles) – Entered

Things may change around a bit if I end up doing a different marathon, but I won't know that until October. So this means if all goes to plan I'll be running 97.9 over the year as well as training. 

Marathon Training – Week 3

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This week I have run only run 3 times but a distance of 12.87 miles. 

This weeks runs

1. Monday – 4.38 miles

2. Thursday – 6.25 miles

3. Saturday – 2.24 miles

This weeks rides

None

Weight

After my midweek low I currently weigh 14 stone 9 pounds which given my height of 5'9'' gives me a BMI of 30.27 which means I am still obese (but only just).

Progress…

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This morning I weighed myself and weighed 14 stone 6.5 pounds which given my height of 5'9'' gives me a BMI of 29.90 which means for the first time in a good few years I am only overweight and not obese! Yay! It's probably just dehydration from 6.24 mile run yesterday but I'll take that!

Spoilt for choice

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This last week has been brilliant for Motorsport enthusiasts. We've been spoilt for choice … The TT on the Isle of Man, F1 in Canada, Lemans 24 Hour, MotoGP at Silverstone and FIM Motocross in Portugal. So much going on in fact that I am only catching up with some of it today. 

The TT

I'm new to motorbike racing and this is the first year I have watched the TT. I was hoping to see Guy Martin get his first TT win but that wasn't to be. Even so the 2 weeks of the TT have been fascinating. There has been pretty good coverage on ITV4 and on top of that I've been listening to it all live on the Manx Radio iPhone App and taking advantage of the online live timing. There certainly is something a little more 'edge of your seat' about road racing compared to 'track racing'.

F1 in Canada

A fantastic job by Jenson taking the win even after going through the pits 6 times. Hopefully he can keep up the momentum and stop Vettel running away with it. Hugely disappointed by Lewis this weekend. Now I am a huge fan of Lewis but he isn't going to win another championship if he keeps crashing into people. A little bit of patience and a cool head and he can easily start raking in the wins, just look at Jenson on Sunday. Nobody wants him to stop being a racer and stop pushing, but to win a race you first have to finish the race. Hopefully that'll be dawning on Lewis after this weekend otherwise there'll only be one McLaren, and one British driver, trying to hunt down Vettel at the end of the year. 

Le Mans

I've not watched a lot of the Le Mans coverage yet but so far there is one thing that has been reported more than anything else … Oh my word … that was a BIG crash. 

Installing IBM iSeries Access on Ubuntu 11.04

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Having recently moved back to a Linux machine (running Ubuntu 11.04) I had a few things to get working to be back to working at full speed without needing to use my Windows XP virtual machine all the time. One of these things was access to the iSeries that we use as our development and live machines. 

IBM now provide an RPM based installer for IBM iSeries Access that can be downloaded from the IBM website (login required). Once downloaded the first step is to convert this into a package that is usable on Debian based systems. The utility 'Alien' will convert an RPM into a DEB allowing it to be installed on Ubuntu. All of this needs doing as root (I think anyway … I couldn't get it to work as a standard user) so:

sudo -i

Install some required packages using apt-get or your chosen package manager:

apt-get install alien dpkg-dev debhelper build-essential libmotif-dev libmotif4 libmotif-dbg xfonts-scalable xfonts-utils xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi msttcorefonts -y

Use alien to convert and install the rpm:

alien -i iSeriesAccess-7.1.0-1.0.i386.rpm -cv

Then add some links in order for the relevant packages to be where iSeries Access expects them:

ln -sf /usr/lib/libXm.so.4 /usr/lib/libXm.so.3
ln -sf /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/lib/libcwbcore.so /usr/lib/libcwbcore.so
ln -sf /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/lib/libcwbrc.so /usr/lib/libcwbrc.so

As I am using en_GB as my locale and it doesn't seem to fully exist when installed I needed to generate it:

locale-gen en_GB

Once this was done I was able to start either 

/opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/bin/ibm5250 -LANGID en_GB
/opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/bin/setup5250 -LANGID en_GB

Because I had to install as root I need to run as root in order to pick up the config files created by setup5250. I created a script lauch5250:

#!/bin/bash
/opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/bin/setup5250 -LANGID en_GB

and then added a launcher that runs launch5250 with sudo automagically:

gksudo /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/bin/launch5250

This may not be the neatest or the most 'correct' way to get this working, but it works and I couldn't find a better solution online. 

Marathon Training – Week 2

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This week I have run 11.54 miles. I seem to have a happy limit of about 3 miles at the moment, after that it hurts! I did get some new running shorts this week (Skins A400 three quarter length) and they seem to work quite well. I'm hoping to get myself a road bike, well a flat barred one anyway, so that I can start cross training. Anyway I ran a total of 11.54 miles this week which is more than last week, but I am feeling it this week. Hopefully I haven't done too much too soon, as seems to be my way, I suppose I'll find out later today when I head out for a 3 miler. 

This weeks runs

1. Monday – 2.67 miles

2. Tuesday – 3.05 miles

3. Thursday – 3.14 miles

4. Thursday – 0.93 miles (Testing new shorts!)

5. Sunday – 1.75 miles (It was raining and I couldn't find my GPS so this was a fast one!)

This weeks rides

None

Weight

Currently I weigh 14 stone 10 pounds which given my height of 5'9'' gives me a BMI of 30.42 which means I am still obese (but only just).

Week 9 – Snoozing

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I had hoped that this weeks photo would be a picture of our new baby, but alas he has not decided to show up yet! Here is a picture of what happens to a small excitable girl when you take her swimming, shopping & canoeing in the space of 24 hours!