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3rd March 2015
12:48pm GMT
Ahead of the My1000Hours run taking place in Dublin's Phoenix Park on Saturday 7 March, JOE sat down with the event's founder and ambassador, Niall 'Bressie' Breslin, to chat about the reasons the run was set up in the first place, why people should get involved, and the Westmeath man spins the... *drum roll*... JOE Tombola of Truth.
In the meantime though, sit back and enjoy as Eoghan 'I've got a stitch just writing the word "run"' Doherty caught up with Bressie in Dublin recently.
At that point, I felt I wasn't ashamed of it in any way and I actually now believe that, in my own life, it's given me an edge.
One part of my coping strategies is that I incorporate physical fitness. People should try it. I'm not saying this is the answer or the cure, but it definitely helps me.
For the event then, the My1000Hours idea was kind of borrowed from Malcolm Gladwell's theory that if you do 10,000 hours of anything, you become a professional or an expert.
The idea is that you have to be patient with your mental health.
People who experience depression or anxiety issues, the first thing they want to do is get rid of it straight away, but most of the things that do that aren't sustainable, so my idea of My1000Hours isn't that you have a watch and, as soon as your 1000 hours is up, you're grand, you're cured.
It's the idea of being patient, of seeking out different options like medication, meditation, fitness, whatever it is that works for you.
Niall: It's the three-legged donkey one.
What do you call a three-legged donkey? A wonky.
Depending on your audience you can really play with it. You can tell kids that joke and they think it's brilliant. They're normally tough crowds, kids.
Niall: Yeah. I streaked through Croke Park.
It was the construction site, when it was being built. It was at three or four in the morning, I was coming back from a night out in the Big Tree with a couple of mates and there was a big gap in the fence. So I just had on a pair of Nike and off I went.
It's very rare a Westmeath man gets to run naked through Croke Park.
Niall: Absolutely. You can't beat proper laughter.
Niall: I went off coffee... but I've already had three coffees before 10 o'clock today.
Niall: Fine. I went off Lent, how's that?
Niall: He's not going to be happy.
Niall: Absolutely, I do drink tea. To be fair though, when it comes to tea, I'm not a snob. Life's too short. But I definitely don't like weak tea. You want to know it's tea you're drinking, I don't want to think it's milk.
My aul man would leave the teabag in for three hours, so you'd give it to him and he'd say, "it's not strong enough" and fling it back at you. It's the school of hard knocks.
I don't leave the tea bag in though, it could be anything in there, it looks like a fag butt. That's what puts me off it.
Niall: I think you get more bang for your buck with the Yellow. Break it up into six pieces. I don't think any of them taste like life-defining chocolate, but they're iconic.
Niall: In college I used to grade biscuits; Class A, Class B, Class C, and so on. So your Jersey Creams would be Class C, you never expect too much from them, but they're always alright when you have one.
But the Class A were always Fox's.
They were always top of the league, every other biscuit was just chasing them. The thing now is that Lidl and Aldi have come in with really unknown chocolate, but it's really good. I think I'm quite adventurous with my biscuit choices.
Niall: Yeah, the same group of people who had the biscuit system also had a Murder She Wrote group where we'd all watch the show at the same time and text each other who we thought was going to be the killer.
Niall: Outdoor.
If you get a particularly good evening it can be an emotional experience if you've had a few. You start looking at the sky and it becomes a spiritual experience, you can forget who's even playing.
I always get injured at open air gigs though. I got kicked out of the Foo Fighters at Oxygen. I remember the headline in the paper said, "Bressie acting the fool".
My sister was with me and they were trying to get her to mosh, but she wasn't having any of it so I said, "you wanna mosh?" And so I just started picking up people like it was WWF. If you want to mosh, don't be pulling some poor, innocent girl into it.
Niall: Yeah, but I was still twice their size, but there were many more of them. I used my old rugby skills.
Niall: Yeah. We both needed a towel afterwards, saliva everywhere.
The thing about the first kiss was that I had three sisters, so I used to ask them what to do and they pulled the piss out of me and told me all the fucking stupid things to do.
The girl was terrible too to be fair to her. It wasn't an experience I'd rush to do again.
Niall: Indian. I love hot food. If I'm eating and there's snot coming out of my nose then we're laughing.
Niall: I wouldn't call myself a professional singer, but my karaoke song is 'Sledgehammer' by Peter Gabriel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJWJE0x7T4QNiall: Can I pick two?
Niall: Larry David and Steve Coogan. It's hard to make that call between them, depends what mood I'm in. Although I don't know if Larry David drinks, I wouldn't imagine him as a pint drinker.
Niall: Yeah.
Niall: No! I got away with that one. I don't know if I can be done for that now actually, it'd be fairly harsh. Anyway, I was just highlighting a weakness in the security at the time.
I did spend a night in a cell though, not for actually doing anything, but for people believing I had done something. I've never been in a cell since.
Niall: There's a book at home in our house called 'Do Ants Have Arseholes?'
It's a book about all of these kinds of questions that you'd never think of asking, but then, when you read them, you realise they're really good questions. Like, "does a bear actually shit in the woods?"
These are the questions I ponder on.
Niall thinks long and hard for a few minutes... still no answer.
Niall: No, but I was certainly curious about Twink.
Do you know who mine was? This is really weird. It was the lead singer of L7, the girl band, a grunge band. I can't remember her name, but she was a girl who played bass guitar and that did it for me, like Courtney Love.
Niall: I think Home and Away has just become an Australian version of Eastenders, it's depressing. Neighbours is easier to watch and it was there first, so I'd say Neighbours.
Niall: Exactly. Actually, she was my first celebtrity crush, Angela Lansbury. I'd be very paranoid if I met her though because it would mean somebody in the nearby area is dead.
Niall: Imagine the size of that giant duck's wing, forget about it, you'd be fucked. There'd be no fighting that. Mind you, even the ducks in St Stephen's Green are pretty big, it must be what they're being fed.
I think you'd have a much better chance kicking and swinging at the duck-sized horses. I'd find them a little less petrifying if the tiny horses were coming towards me.
Niall: Toast. Toast ice cream. And if I could smell like anything in the world, it'd be toast.
When: 7 March 2015
Time: 10:00
Entry Closing Date: 5th March 2015 - 23:59
Distance: 10k/5k
Where: Phoenix Park, Dublin
The Irish Independent My1000Hours 5k/10k run is a new initiative by Bressie and co aiming to put our mental health on the map. My1000Hours aims to help bring clarity to the subject, exploring ways we can improve both our emotional and physical fitness. My1000Hours will also serve as an online support blog for those hoping to challenge themselves and require some guidance Everyone needs a goal to run towards. Let this be your goal for 2015. Sign up for either the 5k run or 10k run and let’s use YOUR1000HOURS towards getting FIT and starting the year how you want to continue. Why enter?Explore more on these topics:
