Almost had you starting a day early

With so many changes to the website in the last 24 hours and trying to keep things current, I almost started the event a day early. For half an hour this morning I had the event starting "tomorrow" on the front page!

Great committee

The Clerical Medical Parish Walk has benefited from the stability of a long serving committee and its always worth reminding you who you should be thanking for maintaining the very high standards of the event:

So three cheers for:


Raymond Cox, Elizabeth Corran, Karen Kneale, Allan Callow, Kevin Walmsley, Martin Lambden, Winston Liu, Tracy Cook, Debbie Walmsley and Geoff Walmsley.

Temporary front page

I've spent a good deal of time this evening sorting out a temporary front page to focus on the check in over the next couple of days.

I have finally publicised something that I had hoped to do some time ago - big screen TV coverage at the finish thanks to Colebourn.

You will also see that I have announced my team for Saturday. Fell runner Richard Jamieson will be with me throughout the day in the 4Hire van while son Ben Lambden heads straight from exam week at university to the ferry on Saturday afternoon and joins us to produce the finish line production in the evening.

I'm running out of time. Talking of which it is over 17 hours since I wrote my first blog this morning and the day has included a short hard run at 6.45 this morning and the Steve Jacobs mile tonight. I'm knackered!

Website hits increase further

There were a pre-race record of 529 different visitors to the www.parishwalk.com website yesterday. More people (67) had a glance or more of this blog than ever before in a single day. I'm still not sure if the visitors to the blog are mainly the same group reading it daily or whether a larger group are visiting less often, say once a week.

I've had a publicity poster on the front page of the www.manxathletics.com website for a talk tomorrow night for over two weeks. Crossroads Caring for Carers are promoting an evening with Chris Moon, one of the competitors in the Parish Walk, tomorrow evening. You can read about it at http://www.manxathletics.com/#chrismoon and if you are hoping to attend you should take action.

Lapping it up

I remember when my son Ben was little and we went out to watch the Parish Walk (I think it was 1992) he asked "How many laps they did". When it produced a laugh he repeated the question to everyone we met (I hope that he doesn't read this!).

Well you may have heard that Bethany Clague is going to do two laps this year. I try not to repeat stories that are available elsewhere but if you have not seen Michael George's blog that carries the story follow this link:

Website hits increase as countdown continues

395 different people accessed the parishwalk.com website yesterday - that's nearly twice as many as the previous Monday (204) which is usually the busiest day of the week.

Three or four years ago I would be have been happy with that number the Monday after the event.

There were even 61 different people who accessed this blog yesterday which is close to the record of 66 two weeks earlier.

Tried to broadcast live from Woodbourne Park

Part of the jigsaw of preparation I have mentioned a few times in passing involves setting up my laptop to enable me to broadcast photos, videos and reports from around the Parish Walk course at the weekend.

Thanks to Manx Telecom I will have a card to enable me to do this without the need to return home each time I want to upload photos.

They provided the facility last year but I wasn't able to make the most of it because I tried to use the Laptop from the boot of my car with bright sunshine pouring onto the screen.

This year the organising committee are supplying me with a van from which to work from - more about my plans and my team in the next couple of days.

Today I met up with Darren Shaw from Manx Telecom at 5.15 to have the card installed but unfortunately their 3G network was down and so he couldn't test it before I left. So I tried to test it myself in Woodbourne Park tonight - hoping that Michael George (he lives in Woodbourne Square) wouldn't see me alone with a laptop in a park and think that Marie had finally had enough of me and my computers!

Unfortunately I still have a snag with the setup but I'm sure it will be resolved tomorrow.

Nigel's quote from his Comrades Marathon experience was picked up by Manx Radio and published at http://www.manxradio.com/readNEwsItem.aspx?id=21686 within two hours of it being written. Oh, the power of the internet and the forum.

By the way, the fact that I am back publishing this from our house proves that I haven't been thrown out. I have been trying to do plenty of housework and odd jobs, however, to ensure that the locks have not been changed on Sunday when I return from 24 hours of computers, cameras and the Parish Walk.