This year it has officially been 15 years since I started my first job as a web developer. In all these years, I never finished a degree. Since 2021, I’ve been working on a BSc in Information Systems and Information Technology from TU Dublin. The course is modular with several exit paths. One could choose to exit at a Higher Certificate (Level 6/2 years), BSc Ordinary (Level 7/3 years), or BSc Honours (Level 8/4 years). When I started, I was thinking I’d exit at BSc Ordinary but later decided to stick with it for another year just in case I decided to get a Master’s degree in the future.
The view from the Central Quad. I came here for exams every January and May.
The course is fairly modular, you can pick which modules you want to do in every semester at the start of the year. This is unlike most courses at the university and it meant, registration was quite a stressful time every year. While I was never elected the class rep, from the 2nd year onward, I had to step in and talk to the course coordinator regularly at the start of term to get information about the start of classes. We organized ourselves into a Discord server pretty early on and it helped!
The stairs in the Central Quad building. They were always fascinating.
The first 2 years of the course taught us fundamentals. This is probably when I learned the most. The fundamental math and algorithm classes were fun and taught by excellent lecturers. I also got a chance to learn about the theory behind relational databases, networking, and encryption further than I had explored myself. All of these subjects had some great lecturers who went in-depth. In theory, the university would have let me skip some courses, but I explicitly chose not to. I wanted to get a feel for doing the work and allocating time in low stakes courses in the first year. Every semester went something like this: One course were I’m learning new things, 2 courses were what’s being taught is familiar enough and I can probably trivially pick up the new pieces.
Our class started with roughly 18 students. Due to different folks and their availability, not everyone went at the full pace of talking all the subjects in every semester. At the end of the third year, there were 3 of us who were from the start, we adopted 2 more folks who had started before us, but were targeting to finish with us.
The classes were from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm on Tuesdays to Fridays in most years. The last year of the course was chaotic since the days of the week shuffled around. Additionally, we had to do a project and that had its own classes to talk about the report. I also had a meeting with my project supervisor to top off the class about it. If I had a time machine and choice, I’d probably not try doing the project and a full course load. That nearly burned me out at the end of the academic year.
I approached by assignments like an SRE, it was all version controlled in Git and I wrote most of it with LaTeX. The only exception was a math course that took only 15 mins on paper. It would have taken a good hour with LaTeX. I ended up with a standard LaTeX template for my assignments that I kept reusing. The good news is that it looked consistently good across the board!
Standing in line to get my parchment. Disbelief that this is finally over!
At end of October, we graduated finally! The sense of relief among the 6 of us were palpable! Would I got back for a Master’s degree? Not any time soon. I need the distress and burn out of the last 4 years to leave me before I try that again.
The last time I ran a road marathon was 2016. It’s been nearly 10 years since I did one of those. I tried to run the Cork marathon last year, but the timing was terrible. It was right after the end of semester exams for my BSc course and I couldn’t go out to run for a solid 3 weeks before the race. There’s usually a mad rush of assignments, exam prep, actual exam, and recovering from the mental stress.
This year, I set my sights on Longford Marathon as the big event. The last few years, it’s been Ecotrail Wicklow that’s been my big event of the year. This year, the training block was starting just as my exams were finishing, so it was better than my planning for last year. I missed a few training runs here and there but overall, this was the best training block I’ve had heading into a marathon in a long time.
I drove into Longford the previous afternoon. I had a room booked starting Saturday until Tuesday morning. I didn’t want to drive back immediately after the race. I figured, I’d need an extra day to be rested and ready. This was a good decision in the end. The Longford Arms Hotel was one of the event sponsors and the start/finish line was right outside the hotel. This was an excellent decision. The hotel even had breakfast starting at 6 am the day of the race for the runners to have their breakfast well in advance of the race. I found this extremely kind and welcoming of the folks driving into Longford for the race.
Race gear
The morning of the race, I was all set. I was going to take the Precision gels in a little gel flask. I had enough in the flask for about 2.5h in and I took a few extra large packs of it just in case. One of my bottles had water with electrolytes and one was plain water. I had sun glasses on and a hat. The previous day was a very wet drive but the day of the race was dry. Due to past experiences, I prefer to carry a hydration bag with my gels and some water during races. I have had races where they either run of water or I run out of water when I really want water. This turned out to be an excellent idea for the kind of weather it ended up being.
My goal for the event was 5h, it felt like a not too difficult a goal but I knew how much I struggled at Ecotrail last year after the 30K mark. I was cautiously optimistic going into the race. I was nervous all through the morning. I woke up early and went to get breakfast. The place was packed. I managed to eat some toast and drink some tea. The official start time for the race was 9 am. I was down there at 8:30 am and the energy was intense! The half marathon and the marathoners went out together. All my previous marathons, I always went out a little too fast. This is manageable with a half marathon but I really needed to control it for a full marathon. I kept my pace just around 7 min/km. The course took us out into Longford town and around back to the start line. Then it turned off.
The start line of the race.
Once we turned off from the town, people started to thin out as the initial surge of energy wore off and people started slowing down. Very quickly, the marathoners and the half marathoners were split off across 2 sides of the road. The half marathoners turned off at the roundabout ahead while the marathoners pushed on ahead. I stuck to a group of people from around the 5th km and they were around me for most of the race.
At some point, I started chatting with a fellow runner who was going a tad bit faster than me. We were talking and it was easy enough to keep pace with her. Turns out, she was running the Ultra marathon! And she was faster than me trying to run a marathon. I had to slow down after a km or so since I was worried I’d end up crashing and burning.
The best part about this race is the views. I takes you through some gorgeous Irish countryside with sheep and cows grazing along the pastures. At the 11K mark, I saw a few folks who were clearly there to cheer on their friends. They had some great posters. The funniest one was one that said “Speed Van Ahead”. They kept moving along to keep up with their friend, so I saw them at least 3 times along the route and at the finish line. Every time I saw them, I had to smile. They put a spring to my step on the last few km when I saw them.
The gorgeous views
Unusually, I started feeling tired around the 20 km. Even at the slow pace. This was super unusual since I’m usually able to keep at it for about 25 km during training without too much trouble (except for that one time, which we shall not speak about). The aid stations were well stocked with water, though, as someone carrying their own water, I was at a disadvantage. I had to stop, take my bottles off, and refill it. It didn’t help that one of my flasks started having a bad seal during the race, so it would fill up with air as I drank water and slosh around. That got annoying really quickly.
I had to take walk breaks from then on. I tried to 30 sec run/walks for the rest of the race until there was a hill. The race had a bunch of small hills but stretched out over a long distance. That was rather annoying because those bits of the route also had no shade. I was grateful I had a hat. I was strong enough to keep my position but I didn’t feel strong enough to overtake.
It was really tempting to walk at the 32K mark, but I kept remembering Sarah telling me that the goal is to keep moving. At this point, I knew I was not going to hit the pace I planned. I was a little disappointed, but I was trying to look at the positives. I felt tired, but I was not in extreme pain. Usually, at this point, my core hurts to move. None of that this time. It was just a matter of gathering enough energy to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. There were folks overtaking me, all of them were ultra marathoners. And they all cheered me on as I was moving. And I cheered them right back.
Even the cars on the road would honk, lower their windows, and clap as they passed. At some of the sections of the national road, where it was dangerous for runners to be on the side, they closed off an entire lane so that we had enough buffer to run and overtake each other safely.
Zoom in for the “Speed Van Ahead” sign
The last 3 km of the race were the most brutal. There was a huge climb up over a railway bridge and then back down to the ground under either a national road or a motorway. I was too tired to look up which one. I was walking along with yet another ultramarathoner and we were both having a little whine about the long uphill back up to the main road. I knew I had it in me to do a nice fast km or maybe 1.5 km. I figure once the hill was over, I’d start running and see how it felt.
This is when I noticed that I most definitely had blisters on my toes. It felt at the time like the blister had burst. I thought about checking but I realized, there was no point. There was nothing I could do and I’d have to wait until after the race to get it checked. That’s where I’d find paramedics nearby. I started a gentle trot at the end of the hill, testing the feeling in my legs. Every step hurt my toes a little bit, but once I got moving, it felt easy to keep going.
The last km ended up being the fastest of the entire race. I was surprised I had so much strength left in me. I picked up the medal and walked straight into my room. I didn’t feel like food or water. In fact, I felt like throwing up. But first, I had to confront one of the only downsides to the hotel — I had to walk up a flight of stairs to my room.
Despite not meting my goal pace, I still ran my fastest marathon so far at 5h39m. This was fun. I was texting my coach once I felt better about what I wanted to do for 2026. I’m setting myself up for some loftier goals — A half marathon faster than 2h and a full marathon faster than 4h30m.
In 2023, I had a modest goal of 26 books, and I managed 19. In 2024, I had a more ambitious goal of 52 books and finished 53 books. Most of my reading was a combination of e-books and audiobooks from my local library. While this isn’t all the authors, these are some of the authors I found notable and a great read.
Richard Osman
I’ve read both the Thursday Murder Club series and the new book We Solve Murders. I enjoy his pace and writing style.
Atlee Pine series from David Baldacci
I haven’t read the first book in the series yet since it’s always had a long wait on the library app. But the remaining ones that I’ve read or listened to are ones I liked. They’re fast paced and hard to put down. I remember staying up until 5 am finishing up the last book!
Carmel Harrington
In my question to listen to more Irish authors, I listened to The Girl from Donegal. The story was captivating and the voice actors were good at the different accents. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy historical fiction, but it was lovely! I went on to read a few more books by the same author. My current favorite is The Moon Over Kilmore Quay. I describe her books as time travel books. There is usually a combination of past and present over time that meet.
Fiona McArthur
I stumbled on Midwife on the Orient Express, most likely because it was a book available without wait. I proceeded to listen to all the books I could find by the author. It was fascinating to read about the remote corners of Australia.
The topic of healthcare and life in remote Australia was fascinating! I went onto read Beth Mcrae’s Outback Midwife detailing her career over 40 years.
Matthew Reilly
I’ve read and owned several of Matthew Reilly’s books in the past. I’m pretty sure I’ve owned Seven Ancient Wonders but I read it so long ago that I had to re-read. I’ve been working my way through that series. It was an excellent read. I tend to think of it as an Indiana Jones style book series.
Patricia Cornwell
The first book I picked up was when in 2004, about 20 years ago. I’ve actually never read the first few books or read the books in an organized manner. This year, I made an effort to read/listen to some of the books in order. It’s somewhat fascinating to hear a book set in the 90s. It took a bit for me to adjust to everyone smoking in their cars, offices, and so on.
How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
Yes, you’ve probably heard of the movie. But the audiobook is narrated by David Tenant and he gives a different voice to every character! There are 12 books and I’ve finished all but 2 in the middle. The wait time for those books run up to July 2025! I have them reserved. It is an excellent coming of age series. It is a children’s book, just like Harry Potter is a children’s book. I’d say it’s suitable for all ages!
There were many more excellent books from the last year, but these are the authors I enjoyed reading.
Learning a new programming language is rough without using it regularly. When I tried to learn Go a while ago, I struggled because I was not using it a lot. Then I my team at work started using Go and it clicked into place really well. When I decided to pick up Rust, I ran into the same challenge. This time, work wasn’t going to save me. I decided to challenge myself to write all new personal code in Rust.
As part of a college course I’m doing, I have a security and cryptography module this year and I decided to try to write the code for that module with Rust. In some particularly tricky sections, I had to write the code in Python first and then figure out how to convert that into Rust. I’m pretty sure my code isn’t the most perfect, it helped me get a sense for using the language constructs and reading a lot of documentation.
Clippy helped improve my code into something marginally elegant.
Learning to write tests early increased my velocity a lot. The code-edit-run cycles are a lot easier if unit tests do the work for you.
Following a book or a full guide bored me a bit, so this was a nice middle ground and I got to submit this for my assignment. The code is at cipher-suite and I can’t really think of any real world use cases for it. It was fun playing around with it.
It’s been a few weeks now and I can process this race a lot better than I could after finishing it. The last 2h of the race has memories of pain. Two years ago, I remember looking at the 47K and thinking to myself, “Oh boy, that looks scary and impossible.”
The Ecotrail Wicklow race was on the last Saturday of September. There were a lot more distances this year than the past years (A new 10K!). The routes for every distance have changed a little bit over the years. This year we went through Kilruddery again. I prefer this route as it’s less technical than the route we took last year through Belmont. Of course, the steady rain made everything messy last year. The last bit of the race had some stairs, but more on that later.
The start line an hour or so before the race.
The race started off as a gorgeous day with no rain and beautiful sunshine at the start line. I was listening to the music from Come From Away for the first bit of the race, making friends, and humming along. I didn’t push too hard and took walk breaks when I felt like I needed to slow down. I was not aiming for a specific time. I had a high level goal of trying to come under 8h, but I was not fussed about time this year. I kept telling myself, if I finished this race, it would be the longest I’ve run in my life. I’ve finished 2 marathons in the past and had one DNF for a marathon. It has been 8 years since my last marathon, though, so it’s been a long time since I’ve done this distance.
I breezed my way up Bray Head, down the other side, onward to Kilruddery, and up Little Sugar Loaf. This was the first challenging climb but I was feeling good all through this. I felt strong as I crossed the N11 over to start the Big Sugar Loaf. In the last few years that I’ve run this race, I found the Big Sugar Loaf a bit long and tiring. This year was no different. The uphill trail is tricky and with thorny bushes on both sides. I fell into sync with a group of runners though I could feel myself slow down as I went further. The route was too narrow to let someone pass me. I remember reaching a point and thinking, “when the hell is the right turn to the downhill”.
Through the Ballyremon Commons. Only a hint of route but well marked with yellow flags.
At this point when I synced up with a group of women who were running together as a group. We’d see each other on and off for the rest of the race. I would overtake them for a bit and then have to take a break and they’d overtake me. I was taking more walking breaks from here on. The next step was Djouce and Powerscourt falls. This bit of the trail was familiar and I could race down, though my quads were starting to be sore from the downhills. The Powerscourt falls was my spiritual halfway mark. I sort of felt good at this point! Hooboy, I was going to get smashed by the climb.
The climb up into the Wicklow Way from Powerscourt was steep and I felt drained at the top. I had overtaken the group of women in the flats around here and we went uphill together as I struggled. The hiking stick helped but it did not stop me from feeling completely drained of energy when I got uphill. I need to sit down and ran into Ellie (of Tough Soles) who was also not having a good time. We chatted for a bit while I caught my breath. The group of women were fantastic and they checked that we were both fine and had everything we needed. I had a gel and waited for my body to catch up with the sugar before I went on. I walked for some more time with some bits of running.
At Powerscourt Falls. Feeling good, but about to get worse!
There’s a long downhill followed by a long uphill near Djouce and I enjoyed this bit during my training runs. Both the uphill and downhill are technical and I enjoyed them both despite being quite worn out. I got a big kick of inspiration as I made the turn heading back. The fourth placed 80k runner (first woman) crossed me. She was like a blaze of lighting. Despite it being a flat and downhill section, I did not see her again. These folks had already finished over 50K of their race and had been running for 1.5h more than I had been. The rest of the way was downhill and I was able to pick up pace for a bit. I came to a clearing where I ran into the group of women again 🙂 We had a chat while I refilled my drink mix. This was tricky enough that sitting down and doing it saves more time and mess than trying to hurry it up.
I was quite sore and feeling like I “hit the wall”. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of having enough gels with the correct frequency. The combination of the energy drink mix and the gel were not sitting well with me and I felt a bit queasy. I cannot express in words the relief I felt getting back to the Big Sugar Loaf parking lot. There was less than 20 km left and I knew I could finish it even I had to walk. I considered DNF at this point, but I told myself I could do it. The last marathon I ran was a DNF and I hadn’t done that distance again. I knew I had to challenge myself to finish.
Once I got moving though, all the fears were gone and I could keep going. This section of Big Sugar Loaf is the most difficult of the lot because it’s a sharp downhill with a turn. Maintaining balance while going downhill fast is Type 2 Fun. Finally, the end was in sight, it was flat again. I chatted with a couple along the way and we were motivating each other to keep going. As someone said recently about trail running, all you have to do is keep moving. As long as you’re moving, you’re making progress.
During and after this year’s race is that the only part of body that hurt was my quads. Unfortunately, they were quite sore, so both uphills and downhills hurt. I was taking a break along the climb to little sugar loaf when I saw Ellie again. I was glad she managed to catch up! We ran (who am I kidding? We walked) together for a little bit. Every single year, the Little Sugar Loaf kills me. It’s less than 10 km from the finish line, but the climb is steep and I struggle climbing up. This year was no different. Ellie had to go on ahead without me about half way up the hill. I was better last year, but this year, my energy management didn’t work well. The rest of the Little Sugar Loaf was somehow past me. I ran through Belmont and then the next bit of the route was completely alien to me. I had no idea what it was like.
I wanted to run but my body didn’t have the energy for more than a few seconds of running at a time. There was a climb I struggled with, because I had to first go up to Bray head and my legs couldn’t do it. A couple of the 80K runners passing me encouraged me to keep going at it. I could hear the announcer from the finish line and it kept me moving. Besides, I was too close to the finish line to quit. Finally, I could see the end, I got to Bray head and now it was downhill all the way. Except for the 10K participants.
Coming down from Bray Head. I have not seen the stairs yet when this picture was taken.
The 10K had started a few minutes ago and they were running up the routes I’d use to go down. There were a lot of cursing from the non-runners on Bray head. I had to be not nice and force my way through some of the tighter spots so I could head to the finish line. And then, I arrived at the stairs. These stairs have been unused for a while and had been recently cleared by the race organizers. My quads were not happy with the stairs. I could not climb them down like a normal person. I had to do one stair at a time. It almost felt never ending.
The last bit by the sea was the best. There were people clapping and cheering me on. As I got closer more and more louder cheers. I finished the race!
