Well here it is – in a completely unsorted fashion over 4 hours of cheese, pop, rock, rap, dance garage, trance and all forms of tacky music.

No doubt more tracks will be added before now and Sunday but here is the initial breakdown.

1. Eye of the Tiger – Rocky Soundtrack
2. Dont Stop Me Now – Queen
3. Now You’re Gone (Radio Edit) – Basshunter
4. Flux – Bloc Party
5. Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough – Michael Jackson
6. Homecoming – Kanye West
7. American Boy – Estelle Feat. Kanye West
8. You’ll Find A Way – Santogold
9. Time To Pretend - MGMT

» Continue reading “The Big Day Playlist”

If you have a website and would like to embed my marathon route code seen here I am trialing a piece of code that you can embed. This may not work so be please be patient with me – I wrote the code to work on my own site environment and not to embed.

If you run wordpress you need to paste the following block:

<code><iframe src=http://neillock.co.uk/embed.php?hh=4&mm=10&ss=10&&name=neil%20lock&number=1242 frameborder=0 height=720px width=820px scrolling=”no”></code>

If you just use a normal site you don’t need the code tags so just:

<iframe src=http://neillock.co.uk/embed.php?hh=4&mm=10&ss=10&&name=neil%20lock&number=1242 frameborder=0 height=720px width=820px scrolling=”no”>

If you look at both of the above snipetts the code calls a webpage: http://neillock.co.uk/embed.php?hh=4&mm=10&ss=10&&name=neil%20lock&number=1242 if you change the values after hh=(hour), mm=(minutes), ss=(seconds), name=(name that appears in the box nb %20 is equal to a space) and number=(your vest number).

Hopefully it will embed and play nice – who knows. Your site will need to be at least 800px wide otherwise it will hang over the edge. If you want it to fit you can technically play around with the  height=720px width=820px values and set scrolling=”yes”.

If you do embed this PLEASE can you give me a mention / shoutback just so I know who has used this!

Neil

Much like last week, I decided it would be nice to run part of the course and having done the second half it seemed only sensible to attempt the first half.

I don’t know Greenwich at all or to be honest any of that part of the course, fortunately however Laura’s dad volunteered to get his bike out and ride alongside me. At 1030 on a dull and wet Good Friday we were all set to go, stood in Blackheath Common.

Perhaps much like the second half of the route there are long areas of dullish and scenery-less roads, it is also very flat which is nice! The only hill I really encountered was on a street aptly names “Hillreach” a few miles in but following that it descended again and remained flat.

After a few detours off the route, to avoid a busy Cutty Sark area and also a one-way road system that Martin could not go down on his bike we arrived at Surrey Quays, unfortunately having missed the earlier right and thus the extra 2mile loop. After 10 miles I decided it was fine to call it a day, my legs were fine I had energy in me and all was promising. Just another 25 mins and I would be at Tower Bridge and heading over for the second half I did last week…

See below the route I took. This will most likely be the last route I publish before the big day as baring a NikeTown Run which is already featured I wont be doing many more street runs.
» Continue reading “10 Mile – First half(ish) of Marathon route…”

I just logged onto Nike+ and got told I hit the 1000km mark and am 3 runs away from 100 over the last year and a month give or take all of those runs that didn’t log due to tech issues…

NB When I posted this blog I thought I would update this code base a little more – as there was limited (read none) feedback and requests for it I stopped working on it. Should you want some info about the code feel free to ping me a comment on this thread and ill get back to you!

I am a developer by trade and one of the reasons I bought this Garmin device was to play with what extra stuff I could get above and beyond my Nike+.

When I searched google I couldn’t really find any form of api to interact with the data so I cobbled together a first draft of stuff. Currently the code is used to pull the TCX file from the garmin site extract the raw data and create an embeddable google map (see below). I will provide the JS file and some code for others to embed on there own blog very soon and will attempt to update the php classes when I need to update them for my own benefit!

Please find all code classes in this folder: http://neillock.co.uk/code/php/. This code is *roughly* commented. For simplicity I have also created phps files for you to look at before downloading here
http://neillock.co.uk/code/phps/.

If you do look at, use, sniff at any of my code can you give me a shout – it would be cool to see what others have done with it! Also if I have been beaten to the mark and there is better api out there shout cause I couldn’t find it!!!

Neil

It’s a weekend so that means its run day. Since starting my training I was set on running the last half of the marathon so I knew what, after Tower Bridge was awaiting me. With only a few more weeks to go (3 weeks and a day!) the opportunity to run this was dwindling. Hence, I decided today was the day.

After arriving in Victoria I dumped my kit in the local fitness first (a gym I appear to be using more and more just for its shower facilities!) and set off. Maybe, given hindsight a Sunny Saturday during school holidays was not the best time to head to Buckingham Palace! Trying to avoid the mental crowds that were out I just put my head down and went for it – crossing a road when the little man was on red. This is the first time in my training I have ever been pulled over by a policeman! The guy told me not to cross on a red man as apparently it encourages others to do the same! It was early in my run, I couldnt be bothered to be lippy, and he was a policeman so I nodded and got on my way!

The first few miles flew by and running along the Thames with the sun in my face has to be one of the better reasons to run! Around docklands it was stunning and really nice to be out…that was before mile 10(ish).

At about mile ten my right quad started to feel a bit tight. The pain continued on in a similar vain for the next 7miles. However, I pushed on and actually maintained a fairly reasonable speed with most of the following miles averaging around the 9min mile kind of time.

So 17miles later I have run the last half of the Marathon (and some!). I know what is coming up, what things to look out for and milestones along the route. I ran past where I suspect my family will be standing twice and also ran part of the canary wharf bit (albeit slightly different).

Next weekend I *think* I may attempt the first half of the course as a 13miler so I have in essence completed the whole route. The miles need to start dropping now so that means I have, before the big day completed:

• 1 Twenty Mile Run
• 1 Eighteen Mile Run
• 1 Seventeen Mile Run
• 2 Sixteen Mile Runs
• Plus many many more shorter ones…

21 days to go…both exciting and scary!
» Continue reading “One sunny Saturday in London, and the last half of the marathon…”

A repeat of a route I have done before. Almost a whole month later, and over 90miles of running, it was time to repeat the run.

Having only just finished a 20miler a few days before I was a little cautious – my legs at the start felt a few twinges but with hindsight I believe that maybe more to do with not doing any proper stretches and it being a bit colder than I had, in my head, thought it would be!

Anyway as there was nothing new to my route there is not much to describe really – a couple of weeks ago I went past what I thought was a Banksy on Essex Road, I watched out for it again and was correct in my thinking – Sadly it doesnt quite look like that anymore as the owner of the shop has added perspex to the front, to provide vandalism I assume?!

The last few miles went pretty well – sun was out and all was grand! I was certainly not done (which i suppose is a good thing!) and had a few more miles in my legs… bring on the next run!
» Continue reading “Home – Dads Office…again!”