Welcome to www.manxathletics.com . Its an entirely independent site designed, edited and funded by Murray Lambden (pictured above).  

It is an amateur site and despite my enthusiasm for the project, usually compiling the pages late at night or early in the morning, I inevitably make mistakes. Please don't feel afraid to point them out to me!

To provide a forum for the views of athletes in the Isle of Man
To inform and communicate with athletes and anyone with an interest in athletics in the Isle of Man
To extend the enjoyment derived from athletics in the Isle of Man by sharing the fun and pleasure of the sport
To provide a history of the sport by the provision of on-line databases of major events.

Although I try to keep the site as friendly and informative as possible, and hope that people recognise faces at events from the pictures on the site, I've tried to keep the style fairly formal most of the time, with the use of full names etc, so that new people wishing to join the sport don't feel the it is a closed shop.

Murray Lambden

Milton House, Brunswick Road, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM2 3LF

email: murray@manxathletics.com

Telephone: 01624 675536

The site commenced late in 2000 and the first major database, the Parish Walk records, was published just a few hours before the year end.

The site was originally written using NetObjects Fusion. I commenced a complete re-design In November 2001 using, what I judged to be, a much better software application, Namo WebEditor, although I still use a later version of NetObjects for another site.

When I started the first re-design, I publicly thanked the significant contributors during the first year.  Bridget Kaneen, Steve Partington, Graham Davies, Stan Hall, Peter Cooper, Chris Quine, Caroline Brand and Richie Stevenson are all still prolific contributors but there are so many others now that I cannot mention them all on this page. So thanks to everyone and a special mention to Steve Taylor who at one point was sending me several emails a day.

The number of regular visitors to the site has increased dramatically and some people appear to check for updates several times a day. People with specialist interests log in from Britain, Ireland and around the world and if you are reading this whilst visiting for the first time, welcome.

The site is still largely compiled in Namo WebEditor but I use Acrobat Pdf files significantly so you should visit www.adobe.com and ensure that you have the most up to date version of Acrobat Reader (it's free).

Although the www.manxathletics.com domain name does the trick of finding the homepage, the pages that are linked are stored on a number of different computers around the world.

Initially the www.manxathletics.com domain name pointed your browser to a sub domain of another of my sites, www.murrayandmarie.com and many more of the files were stored on www.geocities.com but latterly I bought another package and lots of the pages are stored under the domain name www.manxathletics.info  The dispersal of the files, although done on cost grounds, makes it difficult to use a search engine within the whole www.manxathletics.com concept sometime so later this year I hope to move all the pages back together again.

In 2001 I registered the www.parishwalk.com domain name and created a separate website, although it is closely linked to the main project.

A few months later I registered the www.manxharriers.com domain with the hope of training someone else to take on the site on behalf of that club. I'm still hoping that this will happen in 2003.

Furthermore the www.iomaa.co.uk domain has been registered by me on behalf of the Isle of Man Athletics Association again with the hope of coaching someone to set up the site.

Needless to say, when someone is as willing and enthusiastic to run an independent website there is less pressure on the clubs to do so. I've always said however that I do not envisage spending as much time as I do now in front of a computer screen for the rest of my life and it is therefore important that others start to develop their own sites in readiness for the day I stop.

One useful development during 2003 has been the addition of a picture site by Anthony Brand . As the number of digital cameras in use has increased dramatically I hope that more people will consider their own sites like this.

The purchase of my own digital camera (a Hewlett Package photosmart 715) in March 2002 was one of the major steps forward for the site and the picture on this page taken by my wife Marie tonight is number 7995 so that gives you some idea of how well used it has been.

We've almost reached the point where a few athletes in the Isle of Man will have there own websites and expect Commonwealth Games High Jumper Martin Aram to be the first to reach this height shortly.

I've tried not to duplicate the work of the club sites where they exist and you will find a link to the Isle of Man Veterans Athletic Club, the first Manx athletics website to be built, on the vertical navigation bar on all of the main pages.

Fell Running has the most straightforward programme of events and this enabled me to build a site within a site in 2002 with a page for each of their events. This has remained popular judging by the number of hits and the Manx Mountain Marathon Organisation now have their own site at www.manxmountainmarathon.co.uk to promote their prestigious event.

One of the things I have taken great pride in during the past 30 months or so has been to provide the results and pictures extremely quickly, sometimes with most of the coverage completed before the last person has finished. It is still a little frustrating therefore that some event promoters do not either send me the results or provide a link to their own website.

I suppose the other main disappointment is that although everyone asked for a forum, it sometimes goes unused for weeks on end and this feature may not be continued for much longer.

I continue to welcome contributions of all sorts. I make a judgement as to whether to publish the contributions straightaway or keep something up my sleeve for another day but I publish 99% of what I receive with many thanks.

I've never enjoyed the sport as much overall, despite my athletic performances declining, and the friendly atmosphere improves all the time.  If I have helped you through this site gain as much enjoyment from the sport as I have done, then my work will have been worthwhile.

Murray Lambden

29 May 2003