Archive for December, 2005

Nos Galan/New Year’s Eve race commemorates athlete

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

A historic New Year’s Eve race held in memory of the extraordinary athleticism of a 18th-century hero is poised to attract record numbers of runners and spectators.
The traditional Nos Galan races through the streets of a South Wales Valleys town commemorate Welsh runner, Guto Nyth Bran.
Legend has it that Guto, born in 1700, could catch […]

The Red Dragon/Y Ddraig Goch

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

As promised, here’s a quick insight into the significance of the red dragon in my site header.
The flag of Wales consists of two horizontal halves - the top half white and the bottom half green. In the center of the Welsh flag is a red dragon.
There are many legends, rumors and myths about the […]

1600 miles

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Well, 2005 is nearly over and my total miles for the year added up to 1600. Not as high as I’d hoped for, but with my recent 6 week off suffering with an IT Band problem, I’m just happy to be running at all. To reach the 1600 mile mark I had to sneak in […]

wales fact #4

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Wales is home to the largest stadium in the UK (soon to be overtaken when the new Wembley Stadium is completed) - the Millenium Stadium, which has the only retractable roof in Europe and seats 74,500 people. The roof is also the largest in the world. Since it opened in June 1999, the Millenium Stadium […]

“Y Cymro” ??? “The Welshman”!!!

Friday, December 30th, 2005

So, you may have seen the header to my site [I’d rather not call it a blog] - “thoughts of y cymro“….. - and wondered what it means. You may have see the header and not wondered, but let me explain anyway.
“Y Cymro” simply means “The Welshman”, Welshman being a man who is a native […]

4 steps to add a drop shadow to text in Photoshop

Friday, December 30th, 2005

Let’s assume you have some text on a layer that you’d like to apply a drop shadow to:

step 1: In the Layers palette, make sure the layer containing the text you want to add a drop shadow to is selected [just click on the layer once if it’s not selected].
step 2: Click the Layer Styles […]

welsh fact #3

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Wales is home to the longest place name [and railway station name] in Europe.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which in English means ‘St Mary’s Church in a hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and St Tysil’s Church of the red cave’, is a village situated on theisland of Anglesey, and is known locally as […]

Toolbox or no Toolbox, that is the Photoshop question

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005

How many times have you thought the Toolbox takes up too much space in Photoshop, but closing it is the wrong option because a few seconds later, sure as eggs, you’ll need to choose a tool?
Relax, there’s an easy solution [actually there’s usually an easy solution to everything in Photoshop, it’s just a question of […]

Decisions, decisions…which Spring marathon for me?

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005

Christmas is now behind us, everything’s getting back to normal but I’m still unsure of my marathon plans for 2006. I’m 6 weeks into a training plan that should have me ready to race 26.2 miles at the end of April. The Frederick Marathon takes place on April 30th and I’m very tempted to return […]

welsh fact #2

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005

The population of Wales is currently running at around 2.9million. Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), there are about 11million sheep in Wales, giving a sheep to human ratio of 4:1
No jokes please….