Today, 30 April 2006, Reading FC beat QPR 2-1 to gain a further 3 points and beat Sunderland’s record number of points for the second tier of English football. Reading’s final points tally for the 2005-2006 season is 106 points; in the 1997-1998 season Sunderland attained 105 points. Reading were just shy of the 100 goal mark as well, scoring 99 goals this season. I’m glad to report that Graeme Murty scored his second goal in 280 appearances today which means that every outfield player has scored this campaign. There will be further celebrations tomorrow when the team tour the town in an open top bus!
Archive for April, 2006
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I haven’t posted any updates on Reading’s progress since they were promoted and it has been a fantastic season for the Royals. They were crowned Champions whilst I was away on holiday and were the team that has won the Championship the earliest in the season, back in early April.
Since then their form has continued to surpass my wildest expectations, they’ve only lost one home and one away game all season. With one match to go against Queens Park Rangers they are on the verge of breaking Sunderland’s point record of 105. They stand on 103 points and have scored 97 goals. It would be a fitting end to a record breaking season, having the longest unbeaten run of 34 games, if they could top 100 goals and reach 106 points.
I am looking forward to the celebrations on 1 May when they will be doing the open top bus thing around the town and finishing in the mighty fine Madejski Stadium.
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As a keen runner, I sat down and watched some of the London Marathon this morning. I have run the London Marathon twice now, and had intended to run the Cardiff Marathon in October 2005 but was taken ill with a chest infection a week before so was advised not to run by my doctor. I’ve done very little since October last year, so watching the race today gave me the bug to go out for a run again.
I’ve done a few short runs over the last few weeks but without an event to train for I find it hard to get out the door. As a result I’ve decided to give the Cardiff Marathon a go again in October 2006. I usually get sponsorship for my runs and this time will be no different … I will be supporting my favourite charity Spinal Research. I’ve supported them every since a family friend was paralysed in a car crash when I was younger.
I’ll be adding a donations module to the site later today to help encourage my visitors to donate a small amount to this worthy cause. These donations will be made through PayPal using the xDonations module. I will make a few modifications to customise it to my needs and make it xhtml compliant but essentially it will be the 1.9 Beta version obtainable from the Official XOOPS Development Site.
I will be aiming to raise £1000 GBP which over the 5.5-6 months until the race means I need to average around £100 GBP per month from donations and the rest from other generous donors that I collar into sponsoring me. I will be posting progress of my training here and my schedule; this will encourage me to stick to it! There will be lots of shorter summer events (usually 10km runs) throughout June and July, so I’ll enter a few of those too.
I kicked off with a 6.7 mile run this morning which was a little ambitious based on my fitness level and lack of regular training. I managed to post a rather poor time of 56 mins 35 secs … some 7 or 8 mins slower than I’d expect at peak fitness, but it will show my progress over the coming weeks and months. It’s now the target starting point to use as a comparison with other runs. I have a variety of local routes that vary from 3.6 miles up to a half marathon distance (13.1 miles) and beyond so that I can track progress. I am also fond of running through the local woods and across the common but I always run these on time as I can’t measure the distance.
I’ll look up some events and post a race schedule here later this week so you can pull me up if I miss any of them.
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