Less than a month to the Marathon; Football season

On the 27th of April I'll be running my first ever marathon. The training has been going well, an 8.5km run on Sunday was followed by a tough 28km run on Monday and a 10km run on Wednesday. Of course, if somebody was just training for a marathon they'd take Tuesday and Thursday off but football commitments meant I had training on both days. 

No serious injuries thankfully, a few sore muscles in the legs the day after running but that's the worst of it.

We're into the last two months of the football season aswell. The first team have drawn 3 and lost 1 since the winter break which is not ideal, we'll finish in mid-table which is decent for a promoted side. 

Our second team are doing great, we've won 5 from 5 since the winter break and haven't conceded a goal in 4 games. We're joint top with a game in hand and have six games left. It would be great to win the league with the second team and would mean much more to me than winning the league with the firsts last season as I'm captain of the seconds this year. 

Tomorrow is arguably our biggest game of the season away to the 3rd placed team, with the team in 2nd not playing then a win tomorrow will put huge pressure on them to stay in touch. 

I scored my 5th penalty of the season 2 weeks ago in a 1-0 win. One of the lads got a video of the goal. It was an extremely tough away game and thankfully the goal came with 10 minutes to go.

Staying with football, it has been a below par performance from the Champions of Ireland to date. We've won 1 drawn 3 and lost 1. The loss came last night at home to Dundalk, losing 4-1. Need to get our act together before the summer because that's when the fixtures will start to congest with our Champion's League Qualifier.

I got to a Bundesliga game a few weeks ago aswell, Frankfurt losing 4-1 at home to Freiburg. (What is it and 4-1 home losses)

Showing off the Supersaints scarf in the CommerzBank Arena

I have 2 months left now in Bad Kissingen before my teaching course starts in Dublin. Still very curious as to what country I'll be living in next year. On the internet I've been looking up different places to teach, they vary from Brazil to the Middle-East to Germany and Spain. It's a real pity there's not an established English speaking school here in Bad Kissingen. But I suppose the reason I have to leave is because it's too small and the reason I love it here is because it's too small.

Anyway I'm still accepting Donations for the Marathon. 

http://www.mycharity.ie/event/robbie_osullivans_event

The Donations are for the following charity that I chose: http://www.pieta.ie/ They are a great charity and do some really important work around Ireland, so any Donations they get the better.

Having a Paddy's Day pint after a long run to get the Iron into me

Karneval, Football and Training for the Marathon

Finally the weather is starting to get warm again, as we get closer to Paddy's Day, which isn't celebrated very much in Deutschland, unlike Karneval or Mardi Gras as it's known in other countries.

The party started on the Thursday evening where I was dressed as a woman. The evening went well except for my wallet being stolen (they always pick on the women). Thankfully my cards were found but no wallet. The big party was on the Saturday and was organised by our football club. 7 of us from the team performed a dance to "Call On Me". We'd been practising for 4 weeks and we had all the moves in place and learned by the time the actual dance came along. There were some great costumes on show, and the dance went so well that we had to perform it for a second time.

Sunday evening was the last party, again I was in the same costume, dressed as a woman. (The costume was wrecked at this stage). It was in a huge hall 20 minutes walking from my apartment (40 mins n the way back). 

Monday was a day of recovery and time to start proper training for a marathon that I'm doing at the end of April, so I'm off the drink until then. 

The marathon course

The marathon is in Würzburg, and I've been slowly building up the kilometres, doing just over 16km yesterday. A long way away from the 42km that I'll be doing on the day. I'll be building the training up by 3km a week, eventually getting to 32km 2 weeks before the race. It's very hard to know what time I will do as I've never done a marathon before, don't know the course and don't know what the weather will be like. It's usually very warm over here at the end of April, well into the mid-20s. I'll be doing the marathon for charity. The Charity I have chosen is Pieta House - The Centre for the Prevention of Self-Harm or Suicide. Donations are very much appreciated for such a great cause and any donation no matter how small will help them greatly.
Just click on the following link to sponsor my run: http://www.mycharity.ie/event/robbie_osullivans_event/

Before the football season started back we had our annual football team Ski/Snowboard holiday in Austria. The snow was brilliant and the slopes were empty. We were staying in a hut on the mountain so we could literally get straight out of bed and onto the slopes. One of the days after we had finished we stayed in a bar a bit up the mountain from where we were staying. Of course the only way down to our hut was to ski/snowboard, and after one too many and visibility at "poor" it took ages.

Not feeling the best the next morning

We got a half day skiing in before  a 4 hour drive back to Bad Kissingen. Thankfully there were no injuries this year unlike last.

Last week the competitive football season started back. We had a 3 day training camp in a hotel two weeks ago to finish off our preparations and had our first league game of 2014 on the weekend. The first team drew 2-2 thanks to a 90th minute equaliser and the second team won 4-3 away thanks to a 93rd minute winner to really keep us in contention for promotion. (3 points off the top with a game in hand). Still a long way to go and we have to play both teams above us again in the league

At the moment I'm still doing the roofing and also studying for a CELTA teaching course that I will be doing in Dublin in June. I will be leaving here two and a half years after arriving in September 2011 and who knows where I will be this time next year. After doing the course, I'd like to teach in South America or Asia for a few years, and learn a new language, with Germany always there as an option if other continents don't work out.  So next year you will probably be reading the "Robbie in (insert country name here)" blog. After the month's course I'll be in Dublin for the summer following the Champions of Ireland try and win back to back league titles. The first two games that I will be back for are away to the Scum and away to Bohs! Two Dublin Derbys against mid-table opposition and hopefully a few more Keith Fahey wonderstrikes like his goal versus Sligo last week 

New Year New Me!!!!!

I hate when people say "New Year New Me". Nothing has changed except the calendar year.

That was a quality Christmas. Meeting old friends, going out celebrating the festive season most days and eating crap food everyday. The partys started in Germany just before my flight back to Ireland. We had our work Christmas party on the Friday evening and my flight back was Saturday morning. As I said in my last blog, I would be cutting it tight to make this flight. I was still in my town 2 hours after I was supposed to leave for the airport but made the flight thanks to a delay.

After arriving back it was straight out on the town with the 12 pubs in my squirrel jumper. To be honest most of the nights out are just one big blur so I don't know which was which.
I did the GOAL mile on Christmas Day which I've been doing for years, and did a respectable time of 5:40, which was good considering I was out in Dalkey the night before. I was so surprised with my Christmas present! A Pats jersey! Who would have thought!

The best part of the 2 weeks back in Éire was the trip to Kerry for the New Year's with the lads. A very well organised firework display (it was shite) got 2014 underway and we did a phantom countdown aswell.

The next night out in Dingle was good fun but I didn't know what was going on the next morning when I woke up with a sheep in my bedroom, on the 2nd floor. Don't worry though, he was brought back to the field he belonged to. I reckon that was the weirdest start to the year that the sheep had ever had. He was just a shadow of a sheep.



One bad thing about Dingle that is still annoying me is that the nightclub closed at 2:15 in the middle of a song. Don't know if that's a culchie thing or what.


I am now dying with a cold and have been for 3 days after one too any Bulmer's over the Christmas. They don't do Bulmer's over here so had to get them in while I had the chance. Still felt a bit jet-lagged on Sunday, I usually get up at 12 on Sundays but got up at 1 there the other day.

It was back to the norm though, with an U9 tournament on the Monday bank holiday. We finished a respectable 4th from 10 teams


Christmas: It's the thought that counts