BOFHJournal - February 2014

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28/02/2014 [16:05] My back seems somewhat better today. Not perfect, but noticably better. I don't think it's anything to do with my posture, I think it's just a break from pounding the pavements with my running shoes on. Hopefully this break until Monday will be just the thing to set me up for the weekend after this when I'll be doing an actual half marathon, rather than simply a half marathon distance on my own at stupid o'clock on a Wednesday morning. My physio appointment for this evening has been cancelled, unfortunately, but I still have one set for next Thursday evening, which will be just about the right time to make sure I know how to prepare myself, I hope. The weather for this weekend's racing (rowing) is going to be atrocious. Everyone's going to be in the same boat (no pun intended), but I'm going to be bringing two or three of everything, and a big towel (or even two of those). Especially for Saturday when we race once, get off the water (soaked) and then race again in a harder division an hour or so later). I don't think I'll look forward to a hot shower more than after the second race. Of course, by then it's likely all of the hot water will have gone. I'll have to make do with lots of warm clothing, stretching, and food, to allow my body to reheat itself. So yes, Saturday spent mostly in boats, in torrential rain. Sunday spent in bed, then in a boat, then on the sofa, with luck. Still with lots of rain. Then it's Monday all over again, and hopefully a run. Nothing heroic. Just 15K, in a sensible time. I really, really hope I'm OK for it. Nothing much to tell you about work today, sorry. Tesco time, then derigging the boat. Shame about the physio.

27/02/2014 [17:40] Still no running today. I had an early morning out, then it hammered down with rain at lunch time, and my lower back still isn't niggle-free. It's now too late in the week to do anything if I'm going to be fresh for this weekend's mammoth amount of rowing. Given I have a physio appointment tomorrow evening I guess I've done all I can to give it the best possible chance for next Monday's run. You know, other than doing lots of rowing this weekend. The outing wasn't too shabby this morning. Nothing spectacular and Henley-winning, but a reasonable stab at moving on from the last two or three reasonable outings we've had. Of course, it rained, so we all got wet and cold. It looks like it's going to rain over the weekend too, which isn't going to be pleasant. Lots of kit to pack (and collect from the boat house this evening where it's been drying all day) for the weekend, as well as lots of food for lunch and a dinner, of sorts. Although I'm sure I'll eat again when I get home on Saturday evening. There're plans for the crew to go to dinner this evening, but nothing seems to have materialised, so I think I'm going to end up not going to it, and instead having dinner at home and trying to relax and not worry so much about my back-in-connection-with-running. It's fine for weights and rowing to judge from last night's weights session and this morning's outing. Just not running. Or at least potentially not. It aches when I walk, so I'm assuming it'll ache or worse when I run. I'll see how Monday feels. Nothing much happening for me at work today. I mean, stuff happened, but none of it was worth telling you about. What is worth telling you about is that I'm going home now.

26/02/2014 [17:05] I didn't run this morning. I think it was the right decision, even as I hate the fact that I wasn't out on the road. My lower back (and it's not my back muscles) still aches somewhat. I got up at 08:00 instead and felt better for doing so. I didn't run at lunchtime either, which was particularly galling as the weather has remained tremendous throughout the day. I may or may not run tomorrow, or Friday. We'll just have to see. In the meantime I've scheduled a preliminary physiotherapy appointment for Friday, with a follow-up full one the following week in the hopes this can shed some light on what's going on. Until then, no running. It's deeply, deeply frustrating. Work hasn't been quite so frustrating, as some progress was made on a few things. Not so much on others and I've spent a significant portion of the day going around in circles on a few things. I may make tomorrow the day when I go over to the other server room and build a new server which'll be our new Nessus host, as well as Observium web server. It'll be cold and lonely work, but maybe that's what I need to keep my back in a little bit of motion, rather than being tied, stationary, to a chair all day here in the office. Thursday morning is an outing morning. The last one before we head off to race this weekend (away from home on Saturday, twice on the same river), then at home on the Sunday, once. Tonight though is weights, so I'm off to do that now.

25/02/2014 [17:05] I seem to have some slight sacral plate discomfort. This close to the half marathon I'm both tempted to take this week off running to let it recover, and push through this week and take next week as a deeply tapered week instead. I guess I'll see how I feel after tonight's 30min AT erg and what my body feels like in hte morning. Not that I want to wake up at 05:20, get up and walk around and then go back to bed if I feel like a long run (only 25K, but still) isn't on the cards. I think the weather may have a key part to play in addition to how I feel. I skipped weights last night because of the niggle, but didn't miss the outing this morning. Which was good as it appears that the ache isn't down to rowing at all. We had a pretty good outing (it looks like we're beginning to perhaps consider approaching a corner through which we can turn with regard to improving), and even when putting down a bit of power it didn't seem to get any worse. In fact I felt a good bit better afterwards. I think it's an impact thing from running. I've booked a physio appointment with my rowing club's resident rower-who's-also-a-physio and we'll see what's what, hopefully on Friday evening. Workwise I spent the entire morning getting Ruby stuff identical across four servers. This involved RVM, judicious use of 'gem' subcommands and plenty of fiddling with Apache configurations (much of which I've now pushed off to the web developers who have their own configuration system for that kind of thing). Anyway, time to go. I may or may not be in for 06:00 tomorrow morning. We'll see...

24/02/2014 [17:40] Interesting weekend. Saturday morning was another lacklustre 8+ outing, made a little more interesting by swapping into the 2- which two of our other squad mates were in. My steering wasn't 100%, but we still made some good progress. After the outing it was all about trying to impress our new sponsors and doing Twitter (not me) and Facebook things. In the end I headed off to get bruch with a few people, then came back, then went home to do Tesco stuff, then came back again to be sociable. Aside from plenty of fun, I also managed to win a brand new Polar heart rate monitor. Which would be even more cool if I didn't already have a GPS watch with a heart rate monitor. I'll wait for it to arrive and then see if I can either use it, or sell it to someone at the boathouse at a reduced price. Sunday's outing was far better than it had any right to be, and was actually quite good. Maybe people just weren't stressing out so much. Anyway, we all came off the water feeling a lot better about ourselves. I was bank party and coach for another set of people in the 2- for the second outing. I think I was reasonably good for them. After that all that remained was for me to go home, do the washing up, and then get the train to see Rachel. With a book the journey just sort of went by and then I was there and things were a whole lot nicer. I took this morning off work so I wouldn't have to get on the more expensive train ticket and made it to work in time to do about an hour of stuff before my 15K run. I started off pretty quickly today but ended up not being able to hold the same splits as that time last week. Still, I was within 20 seconds of last week, even if it felt quite a bit harder in places. I've decided not to do weights tonight in an attempt to let myself recover a little more. There's an early morning outing tomorrow anyway, so it's not like I@m slacking off too much, really. Work is going well, although there's a Ruby/RVM/Gems thing which is going to be annoying without guidance from above. Hopefully I'll get some of that tomorrow before said above person ends up neck-deep in other work. I'm going to go home now, relax for a little while, have some food, and then do a lot of stretching before an early bed.

21/02/2014 [18:45] Not sure why I've ended up staying so late at work today. I think it's because I've got Monday morning off and I wanted to get something done for the rest of my team so they wouldn't be waiting for it while I'm not there. Anyway, it's all done now. Last night's two 8K UT2 ergs went quite well. We were on sliders and I was 'stroking' the group. Quite a good feeling to be back in charge again. I didn't think I was all that tired, but managed to drift off on the sofa after dinner later in the evening. This was annoying on one level as Thursday night is about the only night when I get to stay up a bit later, given I don't have to be up before 07:00 on Friday mornings. I went to bed at 21:50. Ran at lunchtime today. With other people for once. Put in a reasonable 10.7K in about 46minutes, which was a nice little jog. Work has otherwise been quiet, with just a few maintenance tasks here and there. This weekend I've got rowing both mornings, a party at the boat house in the afternoon to celebrate new sponsors, a Tesco trip at some point, and then I'm down to see Rachel on Sunday afternoon. See you all on Monday.

20/02/2014 [17:00] The last weekday of the week when I had to get up early. It wasn't so bad as I knew I wasn't rowing, only bank partying for a 4-. So, up and out of the house and down to the boathouse for 06:00. Then about an hour and a half of cycling along the bank making sure my crew didn't hit the bank all that often, and trying to get as steady as possible video as I could without falling into the river. Not everything went perfectly, but it was a good way to spin out my legs after yesterday's run. Rachel ran last night too, so she needed to get a bit of a run in too to shake her legs out as well. We even passed each other on the towpath, which was amusing. Work has been nicely quiet again today. Quiet enough that I've been able to put some work in to getting geolocation working a little better. It won't work properly until the next version of the free software we're using comes out. For now though I'm off to do some gentle(ish) ergs, then go home and have a moderately 'late' night for once.

19/02/2014 [17:55] And I thought 30K was a long way. It turns out that 35K is even further! Who knew? I have to say though, that by the end I had a much greater understanding of what the Paris Marathon is goig to feel like. And that feel is "great, with significant chunks of awful". There were times this morning when the pace I was at felt more like a gentle dog-trot than a run. And at other times like I was close to quitting and walking back to work. And yet, I finished the run, did the distance, and in a reasonable time, too. I'd also put the fact I left a nice warm bed at 05:25 this morning to get to work to do the run as pretty much as hard as the run itself. Certainly some parts of it. Oddly, I don't remember much about the last 5K or so. Perhaps because the route was one I've done countless times before. Autopilot is a wonderful thing. Part of me ache, other parts of me are perfectly fine. I'm not sure what I'm going to feel like tomorrow, but thankfully while tomorrow's another very early morning, I'm only bank partying. I'd have loved to have been in the boat considering it's 4- Vs 4- against a rather interesting crew from another boat club, but I think I may find that tomorrow morning I'm not in 100% tip-top shape. Maybe by the evening I'll be good for a few 8K UT2 ergs, but I think my body deserves at least 24 hours or so free of hard exertion. Especially after last night's 30 minute AT erg which saw me hit 8K again for only the third time. Amazingly, only 30 seconds after finishing I felt fit and not terribly tired. Maybe this whole running thing is having some knock-on effects. It's definitely time for a rest though. Luckily, today was a very light day, work-wise. I've been able to clear up a few annoying bugs and errors with our PHP/Observium installation, get some other bits of data entry batched up and done, and have even been able to upgrade a few bits of software here and there. At this point all I really need to be doing now is building a new server and porting the whole installation over to it so Nessus and Observium get the benefit of 64-bit memory addressing and a server which isn't overloaded by VitalQIP traffic and processing. For now though, I'm going to head home, contemplate a sausage casserole, welcome Rachel back from a run, and the settle in for an evening of television and stretching. Definitely stretching. I'm just a little bit worried how I'm going to feel from the hips down tomorrow morning...

18/02/2014 [17:05] It's amusing when I feel like getting up at 05:20 to row is a 'day off'. I think because I'm not getting up to run a very long way before work it just doesn't feel all that big of a deal. Tomorrow morning will be (unless it's raining hard, in which case it'll be tomorrow evening). Tomorrow is 'long run day'. I'll tell you how far once I've done it (or died trying). Anyway, this morning's outing was a mixture of OK and meh. So much so that in conjunction with Sunday's race time (which wasn't all that much faster than out second boat's time) there's a feeling that there's going to be some crew swapping going on. I lay even odds on me being one of the people who's 'tried out' in M2. However, that's still to come, so we'll see how the rest of the week goes, first. Today, after getting in to work, I've been working on a few small things. Nothing concrete I can tell you I did today, other than keep the lights on and make sure nothing exploded. This evening it's the weekly 30 minute AT erg. I'm not holding out hope of anything record-breaking this evening, but you never know what I might find in the bottom of my bag. Rachel's over this evening as well as tomorrow, which is pretty great, too. Hmm, weather forecast says possibly rain by 09:00 tomorrow. With luck and a following wind I'll be at my desk by then...

17/02/2014 [16:55] Busy weekend! Friday night, though, was all about relaxing. I didn't even go to circuits, and it was a good thing. Saturday morning though I got down to the boat house to find that the wind was extremely strong, and gusty. We debated for a while and in the end only the top crews went out. That meant my crew was on the water for almost three hours. Flying with the wind in one direction, fighting against it in the other. Happily, in one direction it meant that I didn't get splashed by the person two in front of me because all of his excess water went over him instead. After the outing there was a chance to coach the W1 crew on sliders for a bit, then about 30 minutes of core, then a nice gentle 10K run (still with plenty of wind to fight against on the way back). We all went for late brunch/lunch at the pub afterwards and I ended up staying a while to talk about a variety of things with two other people. After that it was Saturday afternoon and meeting Rachel at Tesco while being shattered, heading home, and collapsing for the rest of the day and the evening. Burritos/wraps were had for dinner. Something I haven't made in a very long time. It was nice to get them made again and banish that particular mini-demon I'd been harbouring. Sunday morning was an honest-to-goodness lie-in day. So I wasn't out of bed before about 08:30, which was very weird. Late breakfast and an early lunch meant that I still felt stuffed when I left for the boat house for the lunchtime race. Rachel ran while I rowed, socialised, and came home again. The rest of the day was again spent on the sofa, although I did keep an eye on one of the back garden fences, which I spent some time on the Saturday afternoon kicking back together again (literally) and then bracing until the landladies' handymen can come round and replace all the bits that have broken, or fallen off in the high winds. This morning was a bit of a lie-in (for a week day), followed by a morning of cycling around and getting kit working again after power supply failures. A new PB for 15K at lunch time in moderately good weather, and then an afternoon of emailing and catching up on other work. Tonight it's weights, followed by a quiet evening, I hope.

14/02/2014 [17:35] I nearly didn't go to do the erg session last night at the boat house. After the week's training I felt like maybe I could take an evening off. Only the new video-to-VGA converter arrived so I sort of had to go down to install it and make sure it worked. Given I was there I thought it would be rude if I didn't at least hang around and do the second 8K UT2 erg with five other of my crew. It was a quite rewarding and useful experience, to be honest. I got home and had a nice fillet steak dinner before staying up a little later than usual (so, 22:30!) given for the first time this week I didn't need to be out of the house before 06:00. I actually managed to stay in bed until gone 07:30, which was a bit weird for me. I fully intended to both run 15K today, and do circuits this evening So even though I feel pretty much at 100% I feel guilty that I haven't done either. I think it's right that I didn't run (staring out of the window at the weather helped a little) but not going to the boat house this evening for 40 minutes of circuits is hard to do. I know it's good for me to have a complete rest day at least once a week, so that's how I'm trying to justify it to myself. Hopefully this weekend will be pretty light, rowing-wise. There's only one outing planned for tomorrow morning (at 06:45), but if the weather's bad that may not happen. Then there's one race on the Sunday, so no outings before or after that, either. It may mean I can squeeze in a 16K or so run, instead, potentially with Rachel, who'll be around. Anyway, I think the weather's getting worse, so I should probably get home before it's totally abysmal. See you Monday.

13/02/2014 [14/02/2014 17:30] I don't know how I managed not to do this journal entry on the day, I must have just been busy elsewhere. Weird. Anyway, there isn't all that much to report as it is. It was a Thursday, so there was an early morning outing, which went moderately well. Better than it has, but not for any particular reason. Not many people turned up to the video analysis thing, which was a bit annoying. I don't think it was all that productive anyway.

12/02/2014 [18:20] For everything I've done in the last 12 hours, I'm feeling pretty great, considering. Last night was the usual 30 minute AT erg. I really wasn't feeling it, but still managed a respectable distance, and wasn't totally blown away at the end (which, actually, I probably should have been considering it was supposed to be AT). I think I was holding back something given I went straight home, had dinner and was in bed by 21:10. This was all leading to this morning's early rise, cycle to work, and my long run for the week, started at 06:15 from work and talking around 2h16min to do 30K. Amazingly, not only did I not get mown down in the dark on the on-road sections, but the weather remained still, dry, and only moderately cold. Almost perfect conditions, especially considering how the rest of the day has turned out. Back at my desk post-shower I then proceeded to eat everything, all day. Stopping only to successfully shoehorn a very useful network monitoring package onto one of our slightly more aged servers, and make it work (after a bit of judicious updating here and there). Definitely a good way to spend the day. I have tried to drink a fair amount, but my plan to stretch every hour on the hour has fallen by the wayside somewhat. Hopefully this won't be too obvious tomorrow morning. Then again, given the way the weather's going it's possible we won't have an outing tomorrow morning anyway. Rather than go to weights this evening I've opted to stay at work until pretty much now to get some stuff done and fix my Skype, which I think wasn't working. It's working now, at least, mostly. I'm off to the boat house now anyway to do video analysis with the rest of M1 and M2 before heading home for television, food, and another early bed time.

11/02/2014 [16:50] Weights last night an outing this morning. All seems well other than I seem to be getting two splits in my lips (one in each) and somehow I gained a cut to the base of my right thumb between last night and this morning. I think it was on a pancetta packet. Don't ask. Anyway, the outing this morning wasn't too bad. Not anywhere near our best, but certainly an improvement on recently. I've got a 30 minute AT erg this evening as soon as I can get out of here, and then relaxation. Tomorrow morning, with luck, I'll be doing my long run. Hopefully the weather will get a bit better than it is right now. And now, I go.

10/02/2014 [17:00] It was a good weekend, I think. Friday night's bodyweight circuits weren't as bad as the previous week's. And I even set a record for something that we all now have to break next week. Saturday morning consisted of only one outing on account of the river being rather flooded and over the bank by a considerable margin. In my opinion it wasn't a very good outing at all. Others disagreed. Something needs to happen, and it needs to happen soon, or we're going to get our bottoms handed to us at every race we take part in. Still, after the outing I ran everyone in my crew ragged on a 10K run, and then we did some circuits with the W1 crew. The remainder of Saturday was spent either in a pub having a venison burger, in Tesco, or at home, relaxing. Rachel arrived late into the evening and we had a lovely time together eating pizza, doing fun things, and watching a bit of downloaded television. Due to the flooding all outings on Sunday were cancelled. So instead I got to sleep in, then head down to do some ergs with my crew on sliders. That seemed like a useful use of my time, as was cleaning and tidying the boathouse somewhat afterwards. I headed back to see Rachel, who arrived later on after doing a mammoth 16 mile run. I still feel like she's going to outpace me in the Paris Marathon as I've definitely not put the long distance miles/runs in. Anyway, we had a wonderful afternoon and evening together not doing anything at all... other than her popping out to Tesco to get us something to cook for dinner (as well as some baking supplies). Which was wonderful of her. This morning I went to my GP to see if I could get a medical certificate for the Paris Marathon and was told that would be "%pound;40, please." Which wasn't a pleasant surprise. However, the other issue I went for turned out to be something about nothing, which was nice. Work today has been the usual Monday stuff. I wasn't feeling the urge to run at lunch time, and when I started everything ached, but by the time I finished it turned out I'd probably set a new 15K PB, which was nice. It just goes to show that how you feel mentally sometimes has no bearing on your physical condition! And so, I'm off to weights for the evening, then home to relax and eat lots. If the water level is down we've an outing tomorrow morning, otherwise... early morning maintenance at work.

07/02/2014 [16:50] Last night's outing wasn't totally terrible. But it wasn't more than passable either (side note: I wasn't aware of the meaning of 'passible', but apparently the word exists). We really should be doing better than that. I really feel like if I was back in the stroke seat we might be doing better, but apparently the coaches feel it's better that I'm elsewhere in the boat. So be it. Got home last night, ate food, stayed up a little late watching mindless television, went to bed. Got up late this morning (08:00) and toddled into work. Amazingly, the weather has improved over the course of the day, but the river is still very high. It's over the bank by a considerable amount outside the boat house, so that'll be something to watch tomorrow morning, I think. Between now and then is getting out of here and down to the boat house for 17:45 today, 40 minutes of hardcore bodyweight circuits and then getting home and some food inside of me so I can relax and recover for tomorrow morning. Not that I'm sure we'll be on the water tomorrow given the flooding/river level, but you never know. The 10K (and a smidgen) at lunchtime today went far better than I expected, although I was still feeling the effects of Wednesday's 25K somewhat, I think. I'm looking forward to next Monday's run after two full days of no running (but rowing). Anyway, I'm rambling now. Have a nice weekend no matter the weather and we'll all be back on Monday to start this whole thing all over again.

06/02/2014 [17:20] Phew! Running 25K in the dark, windy, rain of yesterday evening, even with Rachel for company, was hard. It makes me a smidgen worried for the marathon, to be honest with you. Then again, both the route we took and the weather didn't make it the easiest or steadiest of runs. 2:00:11 it took us. Which also isn't all that good for either of us, but probably isn't anywhere near our best time. Anyway, feeling somewhat broken after that we stretched, showered and had delivery curry while watching some television, which certainly helped. We were both dreading this morning. But honestly I didn't feel any worse than after a hard 15 or 20K run. The top of my right leg hurt part way through the run last night, but stopped before the end and only aches a bit now. I didn't do this morning's erg session, but there's an outing this evening I'm vaguely looking forward to, even if it's raining and windy outside still. Oh, one more thing... I think I'm going to have to select the top I wear very carefully, or think about something to help with chafing, or these longer runs are going to be extremely painful. Not that you probably wanted to know that. Not much happening in work today. Tomorrow's going to be a tad more interesting as I'll be out of the office here and there helping swap a backup device chassis over, among other things. 10K run, too, if I have the time. I should head off and get to the boat house in time to warm up for tonight's wet and chilly outing. I really can't wait to get home this evening, get warm, eat something filling and watch some quality television before bed.

05/02/2014 [16:55] I finished last night's 30 minute erg feeling pretty tired. I'd given it close on everything, but not quite. As a result I felt I recovered from it pretty quickly, which was helpful. Got home and did some more cycle maintenance before Rachel showed up. Initially we'd planned to do my midweek long run (25K this week) before work, from work, but somehow the attraction of the first lie-in since Friday got the better of me. Given it's going to take on the order of two hours to do, running it at lunch time was a no go. As a result I'm left with running it after work tonight. We had planned on doing it from work (the showers are better here), but I think running from home on an out-and-back course with no roads might be a better option given the attrocious weather and the fact that it'll be full dark by the time we get back to anywhere with street lights. In fact, I should probably run with a head torch anyway. Did some work today. Nothing spectacular. Also ate a lot of food. Rachel really does like to keep me in calories. Tried to get a doctors appointment to get my Paris Marathon medical certificate filled in (and get something else checked out) but wasn't able to. At this rate the appointment I booked for next Tuesday's going to be my best option. Other than a niggle and a worry here and there I've actually been in moderately good health recently. I do know that occasional overtraining is leaving me open to a few more bugs and things, though. Right, I should head home while the weather seems a little less windy and rainy and stuff. Run tonight, ergs tomorrow morning, eye health checkup, work, then an outing. Busy day in prospect.

04/02/2014 [16:50] Outing this morning, 30 minute AT erg this evening. Steak last night, early night and an early morning. Other than that today is a running rest day (25K tomorrow, hopefully), and I've done some rather cool things with Dell's racadm and OMSA managed node software. Which is pleasing. Even if a reboot is required. Annoyingly, the bike I left at the station the day before yesterday and used to get to work yesterday morning had developed a flat tyre by the time it came for me to leave work last night. Luckily someone who was leaving at the same time had a pump, so I was able to get home before it went flat again. Cue swapping the inners and tyres of both wheels on the station bike, and using a just-arrived new inner tube from Wiggle on the rear of my usual commuting bike. Getting the GatorSkin tyre off and on again was the usual fight, which is why I also bought another six (two sets of three) tyre 'irons' (plastic) as well. Anyway, today has been mostly productive, even if I'm 5% of the opinion that I've got some kind of damage to the bone of my right thumb, which doesn't seem to be going away, as well as some other aches and pains that I'm not going to mention. Time to go and sweat on the erg for 30 minutes and then go home with a view to perhaps seeing Rachel, who may even run with me tomorrow morning before working from (my) home if things align.

03/02/2014 [17:45] I'm very very full (or was when I started this entry at around 15:00). I was given an extremely large lunch by Rachel when I left her house at stupid o'clock this morning and, after running a reasonable 15K time at lunch attempted, to eat it all. I failed. I think I've eaten more for lunch than I do for most dinners. Either that or my run caused my stomach to shrink. I don't feel 100% smashing right now, and it's not because of aching legs or similar. Hopefully my body will get right on with breaking down all the delicious things I've forced into it before I decide if I'm going to weights this evening. I've done quite a bit of exercise these last few days, so I think I could legitimately give it a miss. Friday finished off with cardio circuits at the boat house. They felt pretty fun at the time, and although I obviously broke a sweat, I thought they were pretty doable. Fast forward to Saturday afternoon after a morning outing and then a nice brunch at a nearby pub run by one of our rowers and, sitting on the sofa at home I realised my legs were really, really achesome. Not only that, but Rachel, who'd come over on Friday evening, had only been and gone to Tesco for me while I'd been rowing, so I didn't actually have anything to do to stretch them out. She really does go above and beyond, that woman. Sometimes I don't think I'm worthy of the things she does, to be quite honest. Anyway, Saturday over I moved on to Sunday and another early rise. Sunday was two outings. One in the coxless four, which is getting to be our favourite boat these days, and one in the 8+. which was... OK. After that it was a case of getting home, having some lunch, putting a wash on and seeing how quickly I could get out of the door and down to the train station on my station bike. An uneventful but vaguely soul-crushing train ride or two (nothing to do with the destination) later, and a cycle at the far end, and I was able to settle down and relax for the day with Rachel. Of course, after a wonderful evening of home-cooked food and a few episodes of something fun to watch there was an 06:00 alarm the next morning and two trains to get me to work for dead on 09:00. Today has mainly been firefighting a myriad of issues which occured over the weekend, trying to get some of my actual scheduled work done, patching and rebooting some servers, and going for a rather good (felt poo, turned out to be fairly quick) 15K run at lunch time. I'd intended to do 10K, but felt the need for a little more. No run tomorrow, but if possible I'll be doing 25K on Wednesday morning before work. We'll see.