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2025
April's Journal
June's Journal
31/05/2025
So, there we were getting the RedJet ferry over to the Isle of Wight to spend a
few days on the south coast doing some walking and generally enjoying ourselves.
Rachel's mum hadn't been before, but Rachel and I had. Once to do a few days
of running around the outside, and once to do an Ultra Challenge race of the
same thing in one go. I DNFed the race (Rachel didn't, of course), but feel
no urge to try again. Amusing, the same race for 2025 was on whilest we were
there and we passed people doing it on the day, feeling very little urge to be
a part of it again. Lots of walking was done, plus a few shorter runs by
Rachel and I, just to keep our hands in, as it were.
Through all of last month and this month my right achilles tendon has been
slowly improving, although it always feels like I'm just one bad run away from
bringing back the discomfort again. The exercises the physio gave me certainly
seem to have helped, though.
Anyway, after returing from the Isle of Wight, doing some more of the Q2
patching round at work (and helping get more hosts onto the automated patching
system, although not as much as I could/should have) it was time to head to my
parents again to see them and check jobs off the list. I returned home in
time to go to my first (possibly last, who knows?) parish council meeting to
find out more about what's being done about the absolutely atrocious road
conditions in my area. It turns out: not much for now, but more in the next
few years, probably. Disappointing, as when heavier vehicles go by my house
now shakes (and it didn't used to).
Lots more work in store for me for the remainder of May with an EDR solution
to trial (and find out it causes problems on a small scale which would be on a
much larger scale if rolled out more widely), the implementation of a systems
management policy for better security for our servers, and a new version of a
auditing agent. All require lots to be done to lots of servers, so I've balked
a little at doing it... even though eventually I'm going to have to bite the
bullet and get a lot of work done.
The last weekend of the month was my first big race of the year. London to
Brighton (but not the whole way; the "3/4 Challenge" of 75K). I haven't run
properly long in a good few years, and in retrospect I was severely
undertrained for it. Rachel had entered it late as a training run for her big
100 miler later in the year, so she was content to stay with me for the day at
whatever pace I could do. It turned out... not as fast as I was hoping for.
In fact a whole hour and a bit slower than I'd expected. Not only that but
after starting with a reasonable drinking and eating routine this degraded
badly and I ended up very much in a calorie deficit and underhydrated. This
lead to feeling very ill at the finish and actually retching for the first
time ever after exercise. We made it back to Rachel's house (much closer than
mine) where I slept in the following morning while Rachel threw in a little
six mile run to drop off some running poles to the friend doing the Summer
Spine Race before I managed to eat a cooked brunch at a cafe favourite of her's
and we got a tram and trains back to my house for the remainder of the bank
holiday weekend.
And then just like that it was the last week of May and on Friday we both
headed from our respective homes to see my parents for my father's 84th
birthday. At 03:15 the following morning Rachel left in a taxi for the airport
to fly to Madagascar. As you do.