Category: general

Happy New Year

All the best for 2007, I hope it treats you well. Good luck with all of your resolutions!

Ooops, my apologies – what I mean to say is:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday (or summer if below equator), practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make this country great (not to imply that Ireland is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting the following terms:

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Disclaimer: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.

Alastair.

Dublin Port Tunnel 10k run

Dublin Port Tunnel entrance

Thanks to the guys over at the Geared Up blog who posted about the Dublin Port Tunnel Run . They admit to being late with the news, but hell, I sit 100 metres from the tunnel entrance at work and I didn’t know!

Anyway it’s on Sunday December 10th at 11:00am and you can register here. It’s 25 euros to enter and you need to do so by the November 29th or even before if it fills up too quick.

Oh great, that’s the day after I’ve planned to have a major Christmas party… run off the hangover? Hmmm, I might have to rethink this plan!

Sponsor my sis for Amnesty International

Amnesty might just be there to save your bacon (or bring you a cup of water) when you get shipped off to Guantanamo Bay as an “unlawful enemy combatant” after you smuggle contact lens solution onto a flight.

Help them out now by sponsoring my sister on her 3 day holid trek in Scotland:

I’m doing a sponsored 3 day trek for charity (http://www.amnesty.ie/content/view/full/5101/) and I have created a fundraising page on www.mycharity.ie. The Amnesty International is a very worthy cause and I would very much appreciate your support in helping me to raise funds for this charity.

Click on the link below and see what I am doing and when I am doing it.

www.mycharity.ie

You can sponsor me by credit or debit card through the www.mycharity.ie webpage that I have created. Don’t worry, the site is very secure and your credit card information is very safe. Please give as generously as you can. Or you can always sponsor me the old fashioned way – any donations would be greatly appreciated guys!!

Make your own sports drinks – cheap and tasty DIY solutions

I remember reading about a DIY sports drink a couple of years back and it caught my interest because I was going through a lot of powdered Gatorade which is next to impossible to find in Ireland, or spending too much money on Lucozade Sport or equivalent sports energy drinks. Athletes drink a lot in training and I wanted to make my own sports drinks to save money and also because I can tailor the ingredients better to my needs.

The important ingredients of a sports drink are:

  • water keep the body hydrated,
  • salts to both
    • aid in that hydration (salt makes the solution isotonic) and to
    • replace some (but not all) of the lost salts from sweat, and
  • carbohydrates (sugars) for energy.

It’s pretty easy to figure out a simple recipe if you want to make your own sports drink. Mess with the amounts to make it taste ok but don’t over do the sugar or salt:

  • 70% water
  • 30% orange juice
  • small amount of sugar to your energy and taste needs
  • pinch of salt (sodium is good, great if you can get some with potassium also)

That’s it. Simple, eh? Covers the basics, is dead cheap and tastes just fine. So that’s a bit basic, what else can you make?

One I’ve heard of cyclists using a lot years ago is flat coke, they shake it up to remove the gas which can interfere with digestion. I don’t know if they add salt but would make sense. This explains why a lot of pro-cyclists have bad teeth 🙂

Here’s another energy drink do it yourself receipe from Mike Greary:

1. Make a big iced tea mixture using green tea, white tea, and yerba mate tea. I like to add a little fruit flavor, so I’ll use 1 tea bag of a raspberry or blueberry hibiscus tea, and then use 2-3 green and/or white tea bags, and 2-3 yerba mate tea bags, and make a gallon container of iced tea. I just use a small amount of stevia to lightly sweeten the batch of tea.

2. I buy a container of organic coconut water from a health food store, or buy fresh coconuts to obtain the coconut water from the inside.

3. For my healthy energy drink, I mix a half of a glass of the white/green/yerba mate iced tea mixture and fill the rest of the glass with the coconut water.

This is actually a delicious and truly healthy energy drink instead of the chemical-laden crappy energy drinks that everybody is getting suckered into buying these days.

Here’s another DIY energy drink recipe which I saw over at Yaniverse – (s)he calls “EnerT”. The ingredients for 1000ml:

  • 2 Tea Bags
  • 6 level teaspoon sugar (24 grams)
  • A pinch of salt (0.5 grams)
  • 2 oz lemon juice (about 55 grams)
  • 30 oz boiling water

I opted for tea as caffeine has a beneficial workout benefit, and tea provides a low-level caffeine, striking my personally preferred balanced between ‘waking’ and ‘wired’. Any level of sugars under 8% is acceptable, but I find Gatorade to be overly caloric for those of us trying to balance increased workout performance with weight loss/maintenance.

Good point on the caffeine, and the sugar content is interesting too, I didn’t realise Gatorade was so high in calories.

Further reading: