Paul May

Today was my last day in my current job. I got up a bit later than usual before getting the Dart into the head office - where I handed in my laptop and name badge, did the exit interview, and headed off into the wild blue yonder.

It’s been an interesting couple of years. I’ve met some great people and worked on some interesting projects. I’ve travelled a bit, trained with people from all over the world, and taken up Triathlon. Working with a large (huge) multinational really opens your eyes; you see the scale that a company can grow to, the scale of the money that washes around the global economy, and the “machinery” companies put in place to stay big and get bigger.

On the negative side, I never felt as though the work I was doing was a good fit for my skills or interests. That’s not to say that I didn’t learn things, but that my job sometimes felt like a bit of a detour - and some days I found it hard to motivate myself; which is hard for somebody who considers himself to be pretty driven.

Before the money gets better, before I get a little bit older I’ll take a leap and hope that my next job (which I’ll talk about in coming days) is a much better fit. Belfast here we come.

On Saturday seven of the group who’ll be doing the Camino De Santiago cycle in September made the spin to Glendalough from Dublin. Everybody made the cycle without problems, and we’ll all be ready for the Camino. There was a bit of rain on the way down, but only for the last 45 minutes or so. The trip was cool, we stayed in the An Oige hostel to make a night out of it, and came back in the sunshine on Sunday. Here’s the cheesy group shot we took at the Upper Lake.

We’re back from Barcelona and it was great. We spent the 10 days wandering around, shopping, sightseeing, swimming and eating. It was perfect - a really relaxing break. I’ve uploaded a lot of photos from the trip, they tell a better story than I can. I hope you’re well.

I did Triathlone today; It was great - tough swim, nice bike and a confusing run (confusing for me anyway…). I was told three laps by one marshall, four laps by another - so I finished one lap early, had my timing chip removed, then figured out I wasn’t actually finished. I begrudgingly did another lap, but my time for the run will be wrong by a few minutes. Annoying - but that’s life.

It’s 1am now, I’m just packing my things for holidays. Off to Barcelona tomorrow for a break. See you soon.

I’m doing a bit of an oul redesign on my site, let me know what you think. Things still to do:

• Actually add some content other than my blog
• Tidy up the typography used on the site - also known as “Kevin Cannon-ing”
• Make it validate as XHTML - shouldn’t be tough, the WP template is about 20 lines long.
• Start taking more photos - I’ve been “dormant” for a long time. Time to dust off the Flexaret, the K1000, and my retinas.

Last Saturday I took part in the Kilkee “Hell of the West” Triathlon; my second Olympic distance race - finishing in 2 hours 52 minutes 3 seconds (155th male out of 308).

I’m very happy with my time - to say that Kilkee is on another planet of difficulty to Chicago and the other races I’ve done would be putting it mildly. The swim was fine; I was relaxed, the water wasn’t freezing and the shamozzle didn’t put me off at all. 30 minutes for 1500m - not exactly fast, but 7 minutes quicker than Chicago. The bike course is a 45K tangle of small hills, downhills and tricky roads…1.29.28 for the transition out of the swim , the bike course and the transition to the run. The run course is cruel and unusual; literally, 5K straight uphill and then 5K back down again. A tough, tough race.

After the race I went out to dinner with the Piranhas (Murphy Blacks in Kilkee do an excellent steak if you’re ever in the area), and then we had a few drinks. Most people went on to the race HQ in the Kilkee Bay Hotel for “the dishco”, but I was happy enough to call it a night and stagger home to bed.

A cracking weekend, and a race I’ll definitely do next year.