I'm already 10 days into this career break. Where did that time go?
Well some of it was spent on the bikes. With my friend Gwyn, we've been out training for the Wiggle Saddle Sportive at Newmarket, a 100 mile bike ride on 7th April. So far I've managed two rides in Thetford Forest and one longer road ride, a 63 mile circuit west of Cambridge. We're making good progress but we're a long way off the 100 mile target.
I've also managed a three trips into London. The first was to hand in my Atos kit and celebrate the next chapter with my friend and serial career break specialist Jennie. We met while I was cycling in India on my last career break. The other two trips were to celebrate Mark Maiden's departure from Atos and to meet with all the old Schlumberger Docklands crowd. Both were excellent events.
This last weekend was the Cambridge Half Marathon. Helena had entered us with our friend Nicola as a relay team, 'Team 1970'. Running isn't a passion of mine and so I'd done all of two training runs. In the past I have run some of the Parkrun 5K's but that was over a year ago. Excellent preparation on Saturday night saw me drinking way too much, even Helena joined in with some red wine. We woke to a very cold and snowy Sunday, perfect conditions, NOT. Helena ran the first leg with some very quick times for each mile, I then had a 3.9 mile leg. Did I mention I'd never run that far before? My personal goal were firstly to finish and secondly to try and run the whole way, kind of what you need to be doing as part of a relay team. I achieved both goals and could have run further. Nicola then ran the final leg with our team finishing in a very respectable 2 hours 15 minutes exactly. The question is whether that's it for my running career.
Lastly we spent a superb weekend with my brother and his family. Below is the superb video of Tom and Annie, my nephew and niece on this year's skiing holiday. I can't wait to ski with them, they look awesome.