BOFHJournal - November 2015

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30/11/2015 [16:55] I'd class the weekend as a good one, I think. I did put the heating on, finally, but it was about time. After a nice relaxing Friday night I didn't get up much before 09:00 on Saturday morning, which was fab. Then it was a little bit of morning exercise and then down to the boat house to collect the medal for winning a race on the Tideway a few weeks ago. I was just about to cycle off to Tesco when I realised I didn't actually have much to do during the day before Rachel turned up, so I stayed and helped with the maintenance day that was going on. About four hours later, when most things were done, I headed off to Tesco, then home to tidy and clean a little before Rachel arrived. Rather delicious delivery Indian food arrived shortly after she did, which was nice. We really must use that place again. Sunday was our one legitimate full-on lie-in of the week. So we really made good use of it and didn't get on with things much before midday. That was when we started our long run for the week (well, Rachel's second one). I'd planned a rather good route, so we got that out of the way in just a shade under two hours. That gave us time to get cleaned up and have some very late lunch before Cormac came over to borrow me for some awkward thing shifting at the house he's having renovated. By the time I got back Rachel had made a rather large amount of chocolate brownie, so we had some of it with the last of the pears from my garden after a huge meal of sausages and mash. We finished the weekend with a film, which didn't develop as I was expecting at all. Today I've been over to one of our data centers and re-prepped two servers, opened a call about a dead disk in another one, have scheduled an application upgrade and restart for tomorrow morning, a disk swap, and probably some disk array wrangingly with Cormac at some point. All before doing a 20 min cardio erg after work. Tonight though it's just cardio weights, if that's even a thing. High reps with lower weights, anyway. That is, if the wind doesn't blow me into a tree before I get to the boat house.

27/11/2015 [16:40] I'm very glad it's Friday. Not that I've done everything I was hoping to do this week. This was stymied by the firmware upgrade debacle on the Dell server. However, both of the machines I'm hoping to rebuild next week are in the same datacenter, so I can go there for a morning or afternoon (I favour morning) and get them reinstalled with a USB stick and up and running enough that I can come back to the office and finish getting them ready from the comfort of my desk. Not that it might be my desk for much longer than another month or so. Everyone got letters yesterday telling them the final outcome of the big rejig that's going on due to my division and another division coming together. It's finally happening as of the beginning of next year. Chances are I'm going to be sitting elsewhere in the building, away from my window, and my shelves, and my places to put all of my running kit. But anyway, that's something for another day and really not anything I can affect, I don't think. In other news, I got stuff done today, ran a fast 6km at lunch time in oddly warm weather without any major injury niggles, and ordered some Christmas presents for Rachel. So I'm considering today a win thus far. Now all I have to do is go home and enjoy the evening. Rachel's here over the weekend (which always means an enjoyable one), there'll be a Tesco trip, a long run, collecting my medal from winning a rowing race, and probably some other fun stuff if I have my way at all. See you on Monday.

26/11/2015 [17:10] Dell engineer finally arrived at just gone 15:00. Luckily a combination of a quick hardware fix and me figuring out the other half of the problem (RAID card trying to boot from the wrong virtual disk) got things sorted relatively quickly. Other than that nothing much happened today other than a lot of script frobbing to get various things working consistently with an application called unison. Everything seems to be literally working in unison now, which is good. Oh, I got a letter (as did everyone else) telling me where I am in the New World Order that's resulting from the joining together of my group and another one. I'm not sure where this is going to put me both physically within the building and within the hierachy/organisational tree... but there's no pay rise, which is a little disappointing considering I think from next year I'm going to have lot more work to do, and far less fall-back on the knowledge of the people who built the things I'm going to be maintaining. Still, Rachel's coming tonight and I'm getting out of here for a cardio erg now. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.

25/11/2015 [17:20] I think I've reached peak exercise for this week with last night's 20 min cardio erg and then getting up this morning for a 1 hour run. My quads are sore. As a result I'm doing nothing this evening and nothing tomorrow until another 20 min cardio erg after work to fill up the time between work and Rachel arriving (hurrah!). This morning's run wasn't too bad though, given how tired my legs were going into it. The weather was nice too (cold, dry, windless for the most part) so I was able to concentrate on keeping the pace down and my heart rate steady (I wore my heart rate monitor for once). I might have been a few minutes late for work by spending too long enjoying the shower at the boat house, but no-one cared. At work today I started preparing two servers for their new lives as DB boxes. This involved some firmware updating. As they're Dell servers I did what I normally do to update them, then figured I'd try and get one working with Dell's new way of handling updates (software and firmware). That has resulted in one server getting in a real mess and refusing to POST when the NICs are enabled. After spending the afternoon on the phone with Dell technical support I'm getting an engineer out tomorrow with a new NIC daughterboard in the hope that'll fix things. What's a little concerning is that the iDRAC web GUI stopped responding shortly after I tried doing what the telephone support person told me to do in trying to reupdate the NIC firmware using the GUI interface. But that's for tomorrow. Hopefully before midday so we have plenty of time to get things fixed. I'm off home now to stretch a lot (sitting down all day has not been good for my legs), watch some television, and try to relax before and early bed and a not-so early rise (first one this week).

24/11/2015 [17:00] While doing weights last night I was asked to sub into my old 4+ crew for an early morning outing this morning. I didn't look at the weather forecast first: rain. And indeed, it was raining when I got up this morning. And cycled to the boat house at 05:50. And when we got the boat on the water. Happily though, after about three minutes it stopped and all was well. We then got a reasonable session of 8x500m sprints in which, coupled with last night's leg-heavy weights session, has left me feeling a bit achesome in the quads and hamstrings. Tonight's 20min cardio erg is going to be interesting. As is tomorrow morning's 60 minutes of running. Happily, the latter doesn't have a specific pace set. I just have to be out running for an hour. If it's raining and/or the weather's particularly unpleasant I might not, though. I can always do it in the evening. Today I've moved four servers into their final resting places in two server rooms, visited one again to get it booting after a kernel update and lack of memory caused me to stop it booting (added lines to the grub.conf that didn't need to be there), and done a whole lot of small things that always need doing. Now I'm out of here. Hopefully I won't get too wet on the way to the boat house.

23/11/2015 [17:05] I got into work a little late this morning. This was due to having to get two trains back from Croydon, where I spent most of the weekend. I probably could have been on time, but I spent the extra time at the train station moving Rachel's bike somewhere a little more easy to access after Saturday morning when I moved it next to mine. Basically, I decided to use my good bike to cycle to the station for once, but took the set of keys that doesn't have my proper D-lock key on it (but does have the key for Rachel's bike lock for her bike at the station in Croydon). That meant when I got to the station I just had one tiny little cable lock to secure my bike. I tracked down Rachel's bike with a second, thicker, cable lock on it and put both bikes together so I could lock mine with both locks. Once I got back this morning I was happy to see my good bike was still there. Probably the sub-zero temperatures kept the cycle thieves away, too. Anyway, that was that. Over the weekend I went to Tesco, went to Croydon, had a lovely time with Rachel, went for a 22km-ish run with her on Sunday, and spent lots of time keeping as warm as possible given the serious drop in temperature. We also watched a few things on the laptop, spent plenty of time sleeping (but never, it seems, enough not to be totally rested), and... actually, that's about it. Today I've brought another UPS onto the network (potentially not one of ours, and I've 'stolen' it from our compatriots with whom we've just amalgamated), and done a heap of Monday things. Now I'm off to do a light weights session and then home to see if the cold weather has made my last pear drop from the tree, and hopefully not burst any pipes in the house.

20/11/2015 [16:40] Today has been for the most part a good day. Admittedly it started with having to let Rachel head back to London, but even with a moderately bad night's sleep it was nice to have her around. Morning exercises plus a cycle to work in the dry-but-cold weather is always good, too. Then there was a morning of catching up with email, getting ducks in a row for next week, and nothing going hugely wrong with anything. Over lunch I decided it was time to clear the pipes a bit and took myself off for a fairly fast 6km run. Not quite as fast as my fastest ever recorded time, but in the top three, I think. What was nice was that although I was feeling pretty much on the edge, I wasn't out of control and I wasn't particularly shattered within a minute or so afterwards. Maybe next time I do that I'll wear my heart rate monitor and see what's going on there, too. Nothing happened this afternoon other than some wrapping up of old Dell parts for a friend (to be posted next week), some RAM upgrades here and there to a workstation or two, and clearing down tasks ready for next week. I'm off to see Rachel for once this weekend, so tomorrow morning I have to get things like the weekly shop and my washing done so that I don't have to worry about them next week. Life certainly is a bit easier when I don't have to worry about rowing. Then again, I do need to drop by the boat house again tonight (after going last night to do a 20 min cardio erg) to see if I can't stop the tap in the boat bay - which we use to hose down the boats post-outings - from wasting water all over the place because I think it's broken. Right, so I'm off. Have a good weekend. I certainly intend to. There'll be chores and travel on Saturday, and running and relaxing on Sunday. Then I'm back again on Monday. Why, because I have to.

19/11/2015 [16:55] Another day, another UPS fixed (this time just a replaced battery). It's not a particularly essential or interesting job, but I am enjoying getting a chunk of our infrastructure working as it's supposed to. Plus it means fewer error emails being generated and clogging up my work email. After getting back from doing that little bit of work I popped into the A/V exhibition that was happening close by and got some free pre-lunch food, as well as entering a prize draw and picking up a free mouse. Always useful to have one for traveling and stuff. No exercise at work today, so I'm off to the boat house in a few seconds to do a quick 20 minute cardio-erg before Rachel arrives and makes the day better.

18/11/2015 [17:30] A reasonable number of moderately useful freebies gained from the IT exhibition close by today. A few USB sticks, a charger for USB things, sweets, useful cables, pens. The usual deal. Not much else going on today, if I'm honest. I did get a good hour of running at a moderately slow pace in this morning before work, which was very pleasing. No sole/blister/callus issues at all, and just a little bit of adductor discomfort. I'll have to ask the physio about other exercises for that the next time I see her. Otherwise, that's it!

17/11/2015 [17:05] Lots of small things achieved today. Not as many as I'd like, but a good few. I went back into town from work this morning and of the three UPSes I tried to visit I got one online, discovered one was potentially more broken than just having a dead battery set, and found one missing entirely. One out of three is bad, sadly. Still, it does mean one fewer UPS to have to monitor and maintain. The one that's totally dead I'm going to have to think about a bit more. I continue to chivvy work to buy new batteries as and when I discover a UPS with dead ones, and hope that in time everything'll be done... at least for another five years or so. Back at the office I got another VM spun up in super-quick time (even without cloning, which is bugging me less these days), patched and updated with all the extra bits and bobs that the developer requires and passed it off to him. That just left me with organising what exercise I'm going to do today and tomorrow. I was planning on running today, but have gone for a cardio-erg instead, followed by an hour's run with Max tomorrow morning before work at a pretty slow pace, which might mean my callus/blister thing has a bit longer to heal, and then doesn't get quite so hammered when I run on it. We'll have to see. Anyway, I'm off now to remind myself what the boat house looks (and smells) like. That is, if the wind's blowing in the right direction to actually let me get there in one piece.

16/11/2015 [17:40] All kinds of things went on this weekend. For a start Rachel's plane had engine trouble when flying out of Zambia. So it turned around after 40 minutes or so and meant she had to spend quite a bit longer there, before flying out the next day, and then getting a flight at around 03:40 the following morning from Dubai. This meant that she missed the St. Neots Half Marathon we were supposed to be running together. I went, and left her keys so that she could let herself in when she finally got to town. Things worked out in the sense that she was able to go for a half marathon distance run on her own to get over her cabin fever from the previous 36 hours or so, and we got home just about the same time. Which was nice. Without Rachel around on Saturday I was able to go and meet a friend for a birthday lunch, go to Tesco, get chased by some teenaged yobs, and then go out for the evening for additional birthday drinks with the same friend and many others. Then on Sunday I was up early so we could drive to St. Neots in time to get numbers and things and warm up for the race. In the end there wasn't much need to "warm up" as it was about 16degC. The problem was more the wind. Which was gusting a lot and very strong the rest of the time. The fast guys estimated it'd taken about 3-4 minutes off the time they'd been aiming for. I was about 4 minutes off my all time PB for the distance, so that made me feel a lot better for being year on year slower over this course again. Anyway, once home Rachel and I got a whole load of logistics stuff done, caught up on everything we'd missed and been missing over the last week or so, and then curled up with pizza and a film. A pretty wonderful way to end the weekend, really. As Rachel didn't need to leave at the crack of dawn this morning we had a chance at an actual lie-in for a little while. Then it was me getting to work that forced us into action. I've had a pretty quiet day, although my Amazon order arrived while I was out at my physio appointment, and I've been wanting to play with it more than I've had the time for given the work stuff I've had to do. Maybe I'll have some more time tomorrow. For now though, I'm off home to enjoy the end of a day without any official exercise. It all starts again tomorrow! Exercise, that is.

13/11/2015 [16:40] I'm a smidgen worried about my achilles and right adductor for Sunday's half marathon. I went for a nice steady run this morning and despite lots of stretching beforehand and afterwards they haven't been as great as in the last few weeks. I'm very much inclined to think that maybe it was the Monday and Tuesday back to back runs. I don't think I'll be doing that much, if at all once I start into the proper training following this weekend. Another thing that I didn't particularly appreciate was getting a nose bleed about a third of the way into the run. I'm sure it gave the rowers and their cycling bank parties something odd to look at as I went by. It'd pretty much stopped by the time I got home again, but my hands and fingers were a bit of a horror show. Hopefully it was just some strange blood pressure thing. I might have to pack a tissue in a bag for Sunday, just in case it happens when I'm running. Work today has mainly been about getting things organised on the UPS front a bit more. My documentation as to what goes where, and what's named what and on the network took another step forward today. I even have the asset tags listed, which is a big step and gives us some reference as to what is actually what. Why this wasn't ever done previously I don't know. Next week will hopefully be all about getting kit connected to UPSes which're new in the field, and getting a few others back on the network. Also perhaps another replacement battery coming in. How exciting is that? What's more exciting is that Rachel comes back from Zambia tomorrow, straight to my house. As I'm celebrating someone's birthday who's coming to town (as well as one of my best men from my wedding) I'll be out for most of the day, but in for the evening so that I can look after Rachel and give her the most recuperative Saturday possible (after two 7+ hour flights back to back). This does mean missing the evening festivities, but I'll have seen the people I want to see over lunch and in the middle of the afternoon. Sunday is race day. Collection from work early in the morning so that we can get to the race in time to collect numbers, racing, then showering and driving back, followed by a cycle back to the house and collapsing. I doubt I'll do food shopping that day, so it'll either be Saturday or Monday evening. Not that you care. Have a good weekend.

12/11/2015 [17:00] It's odd not having rowing training in the evenings (or mornings) again. Just like last time, when I stopped rowing to concentrate on running, there's a period of time when I don't think I'm doing enough, even though running requires (or at least my body requires) a bit more time off between sessions due to the impactful nature of it. Once the half marathon is over this weekend I'll start fitting core, cardio ergs and light weights back into my week. For this week though I think I need to make sure my body's ready for the shock of a half marathon at race pace. After having run two days in a row on Monday and Tuesday I don't think my achilles were totally happy with me, so I've decided to take a second rest day to give them a bit more time to be happy again. I didn't manage to stretch properly during the working day, so I'll have to make do with first thing in the morning and last thing at night, as I always do. I'll do some kind of easy 6-8km tomorrow at lunch time and then let myself recover from then until Sunday morning. Two of the three replacement batteries arrived for the UPSes I've recovered from our various network cabinets. I've fitted them, and been through the astonishing rigmarole required to return dead batteries to APC. In the end I couldn't return one set due to it actually having split open and spilled dried lead acid everywhere. Good job we have WEEE Disposal facilities on site. Not much else has gone on today. I did a report on the servers that're going to be be unsupported in a year and a bit from now, and otherwise kept the wheels of this place turning in my own small way. That's about it, really. I'm going to head off home shortly and have another relaxing evening at home. Potentially with pizza, but probably not as I should save that treat for Friday evening. It's only 26 hours or so away, I can live with that. I might be able to convince one of my coworkers to help me find a few more UPSes which're offline and get them online again over the course of tomorrow, but it's not guaranteed as he's not particularly motivated at the moment.

11/11/2015 [17:00] Today's major achievement was getting a new UPS in place, and bringing another one back to base. Although it wasn't a total achievement as it's not actually supplying load given the switch it's there to protect isn't allowed to have downtime inside of working hours. Someone'll have to go there and deal with it at some point. We also remembered just now that the other UPS we just had installed also isn't protecting everything it should be, so we need to put in a change request for that, too. Today's a rest day for me. Which is good as my achilles really do seem to be aching after yesterday's run. It wasn't even that fast, but it was over the seemingly 'magical' 10K mark... Which means this weekend's half marathon is going to be very interesting in that regard. My two landladies came over last night and gave me a new shower curtain and tried to fit a new mirror in the bathroom. Sadly they're not the most careful of DIYers, so the holes they did for the drilling didn't quite line up on the wall and so when they put the screws in the mirror was under a bit of tension/compression. By the time I went to clean my teeth last night the mirror had cracked through one of the screw holes. They also didn't use all the fittings correctly, so that probably didn't help either. Hopefully they'll replace it, again, before they head off down to South Africa for the next six months. Rachel's presentation yesterday in Zambia apparently went quite well, which is good. Now she just has to survive the rest of the week out there and come back safely for the weekend. I just have to survive the cycle home this evening and get a good night's sleep tonight so I can wake feeling refreshed and non-achesome in the achilles area for a run tomorrow. Then I'll have Friday and Saturday off (maybe a walk or jog) and then it's race day...

10/11/2015 [16:30] My landladies are unable to get into the house owing to not having the knack with the bottom lock on the front door. I may have to leave at any moment and cycle home to give them a hand with it. Therefore herewith what's gone on recently in my life. Last night I went to the boat house after work and rerigged the boat, moved the trailer around and generally did post-race boat stuff. Then I went to Tesco, ran into a rower ex of my club, and then went home to eat. This morning I was up early to run 7 miles or so with Max from the boat house, did some stretching, had a shower, and came to work. I've done some script fixing today, some other stuff, and that's about it really. Now I have to dash. Back tomorrow.

09/11/2015 [17:55] I'd say that I've had a really successful weekend and Monday, but I haven't had time to reply to an email from Rachel when she was sitting on the plane about to leave for Zambia. So I consider myself a failure. I'll try and do it tonight once I get home from the evening's activities (more on those in a moment). What I have done this weekend was pretty good. On Saturday I headed to London to row in the Fours Head of the River race as stroke in a 4-. While I don't think we quite managed to capture the rhythm we'd been working on in training, and we also were in a collision with another boat (no damage, just time lost whilest we disentangled ourselves) it was still a good row in some challenging conditions. We lost about 27 seconds, and ended up being 14 seconds slower than the coxed 4+ that we'd been planning on beating. So that was a little disappointing. However, going to Croydon to see Rachel (freshly back from Washington DC that morning, and having played hockey) was wonderful. We had a lovely evening together as well as fairly lazy morning with breakfast at a local cafe before I headed back in to London to do the Veterans Fours Head of the River Race. This time I was in the crew I'd been rowing with for the last half of the previous season, and we had an amazing row. Everything went as I'd hoped for and we were rewarded with doing extremely well in our category. Rachel didn't quite manage to make it to Hammersmith bridge in time to watch us go under, but she was there afterwards to congratulate us all and then share a pub meal with us before she headed to Heathrow for her plane to Zambia via Dubai. Unfortunately, our van was broken in to (as was someone else's car nearby) whilest we were out rowing. Thankfully all that was taken was a rucksack full of someone's university work, so it wasn't as problematic as it could have been (whilest still being very annoying). We also got a ticket for parking in a residential zone without a permit, which was additionally simply annoying. Happily, the person whose car was broken into called out the AA. The very nice man who turned up for them also agreed to film over our window as well, so we were able to drive the trailer home without too many issues. When I got home I spent far too long working on editing the videos for public consumption, and then went to bed past midnight. Oddly though, I woke up this morning feeling pretty good considering I'd given lots to the rowing over the weekend. I got into work on time and decided to be cautious about my running at lunch time, so only did 6km. Amazingly, I seemed to be full of energy and very light on my feet, so went pretty quickly, I think (still not using my GPS watch, so I can't say for certain). I'll be running again tomorrow morning before work, with Max, so we'll see how that goes, too. I'm about to head off now to rerig the boats we used over the weekend, and then go to Tesco to do the grocery shopping I couldn't do over the weekend. I'm getting caught up on most things at work, but still have a few things to do tomorrow before I can move on with new stuff. What's most important right now is replying to Rachel's email. Hopefully she's been too busy with work stuff and long flights to have wondered where it is.

06/11/2015 [16:25] Despite it not really raining all that much last night I think I made the right decision in not going to watch the fireworks display. Not only did I get to eat my own food without any more expenditure, I could do it at the time I wanted, sitting down, and without being nudged or deafened. Couple that with the fact that I dozed off on the sofa some time around about 21:30 and staying home was almost certainly the best thing to have done. I think two or three days of early mornings and exercise had taken their toll. I got up 'late' this morning (07:30) and felt much better for doing so. Morning exercises and not having to make a lunch today also made the first part of my day quite pleasant. The cycle to work wasn't great given I was basically in rush hour rather than before it, but I survived the experience. Over lunch today I was one of the people randomly chosen for this week's "meet the manager" type thing (hence the lack of lunch from home). I got to raise some concerns over things which have gone, are going, and almost certainly will continue to be the case... but I have no real idea if anything will be done about them. I couldn't be too specific about the issues I've seen and the people who've been totally useless. Nor could I mention the names of the people who're almost certainly going to be leaving within the next four months or so. Suffice it to say, we're going to be living in interesting times in the next six and more months. I'm off home via the boat house to collect a few things for the weekend, shortly. The weather forecast for Saturday and Sunday looks really very grim, so the rowing may be either cancelled, or seriously unpleasant. We'll just have to see how it goes, I guess. I'll be staying with Rachel on Saturday night after she gets back from the three days she's just spent in Washington DC, and before she heads off to Zambia for all of next week, then home again after the vets race on the Sunday. Hopefully I won't be squelching too much. More on how everything goes, and just how soaked I get/got on Monday.

05/11/2015 [17:35] I think I'd call today a mostly successful day, again. It started early with another 06:00 outing. Not quite as hard as yesterday's, but technically just as challenging. We were out in the 4- (coxless four) for a lock run with a few race pace bits thrown in. Luckily it didn't really rain at all once we got on the water, so that made things a lot more pleasant. After we got back we derigged the boat for Saturday and did some trailer contents juggling to make room for it. Then it was time for a shower and to work. The majority of the morning was spent out and about getting UPSes back on the network, getting them configured correctly, and in one case swapping one with very swollen batteries out for a spare. Over lunch I commissioned another one, getting a chunk of services properly covered by it, and then came back to put them all under the watchful eye of Observium. Since then I've eaten a late lunch very slowly and considered whether or not I want to go and watch fireworks tonight from the boat house. I think the answer is no, actually. I'm tired, it's raining a little (doesn't really matter), and I want to go home and have a relaxing evening and make my own food.

04/11/2015 [18:25] I'm only here late because I'm going to a seminar about marathon pacing at 19:00 and it's closer to work than to home. This does make today something of a long day considering I got a call last night to sub into the crew I used to be in (and will be again for the race on the Sunday) for a 06:00 outing. That meant getting up at 05:20, to then go and row in the rain. It didn't turn out to be too bad after all that though. However, I will be doing exactly the same thing again tomorrow morning with the actual crew I'll be racing in for the Saturday race, so it's two long days in a row. As a reward to myself I only ran 8K at lunch time in an effort to keep myself feeling a bit fresher. I don't know if it was because I wasn't running too quickly at the start, but I think I managed to push back and maintain the final sprint a lot further than previously. It felt good, anyway. Maybe my body's actually starting to remember how to do long distances quickly. No blister, achilles, or adductor issues today, either. I spent some of today setting up a new UPS that needs to get delivered to a building in the middle of town today. How that's going to happen I don't know. Especially as various people are really beginning to 'check out' with regard to work here given they're seriously considering leaving. Hopefully I can get some useful work out of them before they go, or give up entirely. Anyway, I should leave and get to this seminar, then go home for a late dinner and as early a bed as I can manage.

03/11/2015 [17:20] Heavy weights and a 10K run last night were probably not the best preparation for this morning's erg. Then again, going from weights to the train station to meet Rachel after she'd had a bad journey and missing her (meaning she was standing outside of the house in the dark for 40 minutes), and then me being in a mood for a while, coupled with getting a pretty poor night's sleep can't have been a positive contributing factor to my performance and energy levels either. Nevertheless I think I did reasonably OK, considering. A PB, given it was free rate rather than at 20 strokes per minute, but I think I could have done somewhat better if my legs had been happier. My cardiovascular side of things was fine. I wasn't really all that out of breath by the end of it, and certainly didn't need to lie on the floor for a bit afterwards as I would if I'd been absolutely shattered. There's at least one person who's gunning for me when he does his this evening. I can't see him not beating my distance, to be honest. Still, there's no chance he can run as well as I can, so I guess my pride is intact. He's also at least 6'7" and weighs 11kg more than me, so even if he's not as fit, he should still be pulling a good erg. I had my appraisal at work this afternoon. It basically devolved into I and my team leader bitching about how things are going down the tubes here. I got in everything I wanted to say about how I feel about my position here at the moment, and learned a little bit about what everyone else in my team is thinking and doing about the reshuffle/merger we're currently in the throes of right now. So yeah, that. Anyway, it's the end of the day, I don't have any exercise planned for this evening, so I'm going to go home and eat either steak or bacon and gruyere quiche and watch lots of television until bed time. See you tomorrow.

02/11/2015 [16:45] A good weekend was had by all, I think. Saturday had a good outing and a slightly less good one because we all stood around too much in the cold between the two rows. But then I got everything I needed to out of the way and Rachel arrived in good time for us to go to a Halloween party with just the right amount of people for it not to be too crowded or bothersome for people who aren't totally happy with big social events. Sunday had a pretty great early morning outing with excellent coaching and a very clear river in terms of other boats (but not mist), which was very rewarding. As was the huge second breakfast I had afterwards. Meanwhile Rachel was able to have a proper lie-in and go for a run, which was great. Sunday afternoon we did another social thing by seeing the new Bond film with loads of other people. Admittedly, we did slope off afterwards rather than going for dinner with everyone else, but I think by that point we definitely needed a quiet evening to ourselves. It's now properly November and I'm starting to think about marathon training (and the half marathon I'm not sure how well I'm going to do at, the weekend after next). Regular running is key, which is why I ran 10K at lunch time today. My left foot went a bit numb for a few K or so, but I think that was due to some gait experimentation I was doing. We'll see how Wednesday does for it. I'm off to do weights as soon as I've posted this, then home hopefully right on time to welcome Rachel back. She's away for the rest of the week from Wednesday morning so we're getting in our visiting time for this week at this end of it. She'll be in London on the weekend to watch at least one of my rows on the Thames and I'll stay with her between them rather than going all the way home and coming back again the next day.