Tag: parkrun

Happenings

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I’m not at all happy with the weather the past few days. I tried running this morning and it was absolutely horrible.

Parkrun is back at the weekend but I don’t think I’ll be doing it. The COVID case numbers are shooting up very quickly, which puts me off. It seems like Parkrun has promised to return a number of times and then didn’t, but ironically now it looks like they’re actually going to do it, it’s happening at a time when there’s a higher chance of contracting COVID than any time previously.

I phoned the recruiter and said I was happy to progress. The next stage is to wait for the employer to send everything through. I’m not used to such a slow process! And it’s playing on my anxiety. Apparently they do some kind of background checking. The recruiter told me there would be a credit check (why?!) and a criminal record check. I’ve never had to deal with this for a job before so I don’t know what to expect. From my research it appears it will be the basic DBS check, because my role is not eligible for the standard or enhanced checks.

But since I’ve never done this and don’t know what to expect then I guess I should wait until this clears before actually handing in my notice? Obviously, I’m worrying I’ll fail the background check despite there being no reason I should. I’m worrying about references too. I’m sure my current employer will be fine, but the previous one… I have low expectations of them. I keep telling myself that they would gain nothing by starting a fight with me and potentially exposing themselves to a hefty lost earnings lawsuit, but eh. What if they just refused to give a reference? Thanks, anxiety.

Virtual Great North Run

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

On Sunday I’ll be doing the Virtual Great North Run. Which is the great north run from the convenience of my house. So it’s not the great north run at all. It’s just a 13 mile run. I’d like to say I’m excited about it, but I’m not. I am really missing the slightly more competitive side of running and somehow I don’t think this virtual race will scratch that itch at all.

I downloaded the app for it yesterday, which enthused me even less. To be blunt, it reminds me of the kind of thing my last employer used to develop. You’d look at it and think “we’re not actually giving it to the customer looking like this, are we? Oh we are, okay then”. All I can say is I hope it works better than it looks, but in my experience, software often works exactly as well as it looks. So I’m not optimistic. I will be completely unsurprised if it crashes after 11 miles and doesn’t register me.

But then I’m not optimistic about the run in general. I don’t expect to get a good time because it’s just really, really hard to push yourself over 13 miles when you’re on your own. There’s no adrenaline or competition. There’s a reason that Kipchoge was surrounded by other runners during his sub two hour marathon, even though he had lasers projecting his desired pace onto the ground.

But apparently Parkrun is supposed to be returning at the end of October. I really hope so! The last time I ran a Parkrun was way back in March. The run director greeted us all with “GOOD MORNING PARKRUN” and when we weren’t loud enough for her she asked if we had some kind of respiratory illness. Well, ironically, I did, as I discovered the next morning when I woke up feeling like death and pretty much stayed in bed for the next week.

That was a long time ago now.

I miss Parkrun.

Saturday

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

Saturday is Parkrun day after I missed it last week with my stomach bug. I was pleased today as I went sub-21 for the first time in quite a while, or at least, my Garmin time was sub-21, my official Parkrun time was slightly over, but whatever, Garmin is more accurate for me. Hooray, I’m getting fitter again.

In total I ran a bit more than 14km this morning at an overall speedy pace, but my hip was a bit achy when I got home. I have been neglecting the stretching and foam rolling this week, so I need to get back to that, but I also need to start building some more glute strength so hopefully I won’t need to keep stretching so much.

But let’s keep it in perspective – six weeks ago I couldn’t run a few kilometres without hip discomfort, now it only happens after 14km at an intense pace.

I found out this morning that the half marathon I had planned for early April has been cancelled. I was worried about this when they started mentioning curtailing “large scale gatherings” due to the coronavirus, but actually it was cancelled for the opposite reason: not many people have signed up.

I can’t help but be slightly irritated by this because the organisers didn’t advertise it and they were holding it on the same day as the Coventry half. The only reason I even knew this one existed was because this time last year someone mentioned it at Parkrun and I thought “I’d better make a note of that for next year”.

So I could do Coventry, but, let’s be honest, nobody wants to go to Coventry. Also, I’m just not really feeling well prepared. I’ve had injury and two illnesses sideline me when I should have been training. I’m not as fit as I was in October and I’m not sure I’d be happy with the result. So… I’ve signed up for a different one at the end of April instead. That gives me an extra three weeks.

Progress?

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

I did Parkrun today at max effort and my hip feels… fine?

So in total today I’ve done about 9k (warmup + parkrun + run home) at a fast pace, which is both further and faster than I’ve run for a long time, and everything feels fine.

I’m hesitant to say everything really is fine, because I’ve had some pain from it this week, but I think it was actually a different pain which might be a red herring (I did a lot of planks one evening, and had some sharper pain the next day; I may have just overdone the planks).

Usually I’d run about 15k on Saturday and then again on Sunday, and I won’t really feel I’m recovered until I’m doing that again. Unfortunately, Storm Ciara looks set to disrupt any Sunday running, but maybe the weather forecasters are being hyperbolic and I won’t really be cowering in my house all day. I can hear the wind now though…

But in some ways it will be good if I do just stay home all day tomorrow because I have about a million plants that need repotting before the growing season starts (which it seems to be doing thanks to some mild weather).

Christmas

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

Today was the last day of work for a while as the office is now closed until January. We went out for a Christmas lunch, which turned out to be a very posh 8 course meal lasting for the whole afternoon. It was an experience.

It was a bit awkward to start with but I think I enjoyed it. I ended up drinking alcohol, which I don’t usually do, but it was kind of peer pressure and kind of anxiety medication.

I think I enjoyed it. It was certainly a new experience, which I survived, and maybe I feel like slightly more of an adult because of it. It was also something that we’d never have done at the previous job. And I definitely appreciated the fact it was held during work time!

It turns out I’m being paid for the Christmas period even though I haven’t accrued the holiday, which is nice. This employer seems a lot better at the human touch.

So, the Christmas break…

Excitingly, I’m going to get a blood test on Monday to see how my iron and haemoglobin levels are, which I should have had done a few months ago when I finished my last course of iron tablets, but I didn’t. Then on Tuesday I’m at the doctor to renew my antidepressants and I’ll mention my ongoing ab muscle woes and maybe get referred to physio, but I’ve decided to just take it easy over Christmas and limit running to parkies.

We’re quite lucky in that we have both a Christmas Day and New Year’s Day parkrun on top of the normal Saturday events. I will be there sporting my Santa hat 🎅 and my festive red 50 t shirt.

One week

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

One week today I’ll be lying in bed feeling terrified by the prospect of starting my new job, but for the moment, life is pretty calm!

The weekend was nice. I did parkrun yesterday at probably 80% effort and my abs experienced no worse than a vague ache. I then did 12k this morning with a slightly more noticeable vague ache, but overall it’s definitely moving in the right direction. I think actually the slow runs have helped it. Total rest can be unhelpful for soft tissue injuries, I have noticed.

Yesterday was my sister’s 30th birthday. I bought her a bulbasaur. She wasn’t expecting him and she seemed happy (I also bought her something she actually wanted). I hope she looks after bulbasaur. I’m not sure what they eat.

Holiday

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

So!

I haven’t posted for the last week because I’ve been on holiday. My parents asked me a month or two ago if I wanted to join them on holiday, and I’d usually say no because who wants to do that?, but this time I said yes because maybe I do?

I didn’t know how it would go and I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I don’t have the best relationship with my dad. I’ve always found him difficult and he’s got more difficult since he retired and doesn’t get as much human interaction as he used to. My relationship with my mum is really good, but we’re both quite sensitive to each other’s moods and we can be a bit volatile because of it.

It went pretty well though. There was one day I got grumpy because I was bored and hungry, but other than that it was good. I strongly suspect that the antidepressants helped out here and kept me a bit more amiable than I would usually have been when we weren’t doing things that I was particularly interested in.

We went to an English seaside town, which I won’t name for anonymity. The town itself was a bit tacky and touristy but we were staying in a village a mile or so outside of it which was nice. We went on some long coastal walks, which I really enjoyed.

I have written here before about my love for running, but I love walking just as much. I’ve always been quite active, but when I had problems last year I ramped it up as I found it theraputic. I still walk A LOT and get kind of grumpy if I don’t. Covering about 80 miles a week on foot (walking + running) is normal for me. I’m slightly addicted to Pokemon Go as well.

We came back Saturday after finishing the holiday with some Parkrun tourism (mum’s a Parkrunner too), which was really enjoyable. I won’t say which Parkrun, but it was smaller than my local one and I got a Parkrun PB on the flatter course with a very low finish number, which I was really pleased with.

It was interesting to see the difference in Parkruns; my local one is almost like a military operation in how it’s run whereas this one was very relaxed and maybe a bit more inviting because of it? But it’s also much smaller, so there’s that. Anyway, it’s inspired me to start branching out to do more Parkrun tourism.

Now I need to get up to date with everyone’s blogs.

Parkrun

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

Parkrun today was pretty great. I was 4 seconds off my personal best, which I’m very pleased with as my actual performance seems to have been drifting further and further away from my PB over the past couple of months. The mythical sub-20 was starting to look like a pipe dream, but maybe not anymore.

I was a bit worried that the anti-depressants would negatively impact my running performance, but it doesn’t seem so.

A combination of that and the heat wiped me out for the rest of the day though.

 

Weekend

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

The weekend was mixed. I did Parkrun on Saturday but I felt quite sick afterwards, and whereas I’d normally continue running another 8-10k, I just walked home. It was the first time I’d run in almost 2 weeks because of an ankle injury, so that was disappointing. But I ran 16k on Sunday just fine, so I was happy with that. It was probably still a side effect from the Citalopram.

More generally I felt pretty bad on Saturday but much better on Sunday.

I elected to take Monday off sick from work. Uh oh, sick day #7 this year. My manager is back on Tuesday, and I’ve run out of motivation for dealing with the client myself when it’s not my job and things aren’t going well. On its own, it wouldn’t be such a big problem, but I feel so uncomfortable in the environment at work anyway due to the whole Becky thing. I think that taking sick days just because I can’t face going to work is a strong sign that I’m not going to be here much longer.

But I did some ‘work’ over the weekend for myself. I am forever recording (guitar) stuff on my phone and then never listening to it or sorting it out because it’s too much effort to get it onto my PC. So I started writing an app to record and automatically upload to a cloud storage provider. In only about 5-6 hours, I’ve got it working end to end, so now all it needs is some GUI polish and I’ll stick it on the Play Store. I have an existing app out there that makes me a few hundred pounds a year, so hopefully this will add to that.

It’s interesting to compare this with work. At work lately it’s been a struggle to achieve anything at all, but here, I’ve got something complex working in an unfamiliar technology in around 6 hours. It’s amazing how productive I can be when I don’t have to waste energy on office politics.

Summary

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

Health

Parkrun today wasn’t great. I’ve been pushing against my Personal Best (PB) for the last few weeks and now that the weather was a bit cooler, I should have been breaking it. Especially considering that I hadn’t run since Tuesday and should therefore be very well rested. But no. I was nowhere near my PB – over a minute off, which over 5k is an eternity. Unfortunately this is probably because of the blood loss earlier this week. Can’t run as fast with less blood. That’s science.

I feel a bit unsettled by the bleeding, which sounds dumb because it seems like it should be obvious, but the last time this happened it seemed unimportant compared to everything else. When you’re suicidal, the idea of your body dumping blood into your digestive tract is something you think of as helpful more than scary.

Life

I’ve had two phone interviews which may or may not go anywhere. If I get offered either of them I’m going to have no idea whether or not to accept. Although I have mixed feelings, one of them is offering up to £60k, and I’m currently earning only slightly more than half of that. But… money isn’t everything, especially after HMRC get involved.

Mike

Mike and I haven’t really spoken to each other since he upset me. He invited me out for a walk one day at lunch but I declined because I wanted to go further (well, it was both true and a convenient excuse). I go for a walk every day because exercise helps, but Mike is morbidly obese, so we have different ideas of what exercise is. I feel mildly disappointed with Mike. I feel annoyed he ruined a relationship that I used to value, but it’s important I don’t find myself trying to repair damage that he caused, because only he can do that. I feel disappointed that he hasn’t tried to do the grown up thing and address the problem. I think it shows he doesn’t really value the relationship.

Becky

The plants thing is weird. Here’s what’s happened: About three months ago Mike commented to me that plans were afoot (between Boss and Becky) to get some plastic plants in the office. I said that I couldn’t see the point of plastic plants, why not real plants? He said Becky didn’t want to look after them, so I said, in a completely unofficial and off-handed way that certainly was not a commitment, that I would probably end up looking after them (because I keep A LOT of plants at home). A week or so later Mike informed me that Becky had told Boss that I had said I wanted to look after real plants and used that to argue for real over plastic. I was surprised by this, but I didn’t react because nobody actually spoke to me about it. I didn’t mind so much that Mike had told her I’d said that, but she needs to actually discuss it with me before making promises on my behalf.

A few weeks after that, Becky spoke to me (which doesn’t happen often now) and we had a very awkward conversation which she didn’t seem to want to be having. She tried to get me to agree to look after plants. She didn’t mention that she’d already discussed this with Boss. I was unimpressed and I was also in the middle of an extremely stressful life event and had barely had any sleep, so I just resisted a little bit and then stopped talking. We looked at each other awkwardly for a while. She wasn’t taking the hint and said “you can think about it”. I said “ok, I’ll think about it”. This was probably two months ago.

Then last week, Boss called me into his office immediately after speaking to her, and said “Becky said that you told her you want to look after some plants”. I immediately just said “I did not say that”, but I still ended up agreeing to “partial responsibility” because I was put on the spot, which I’m not sure I’m happy with. The stupid thing is that I love plants and if someone had just asked me, I would have said yes. But going to my boss and telling him that I’ve promised something I haven’t is definitely not OK and it puts me off having any involvement. If I end up having a meeting with HR lady soon I will be discussing this with her.

HR Lady

HR lady hasn’t been in the office all week and hasn’t contacted me. I asked for a meeting about 5-6 weeks ago and she brushed me off until “late June”. She’s been back from her holiday for two weeks now, and it’s July. I’m underwhelmed. It doesn’t make me feel like a valued employee whose concerns are important. It makes me reluctant to speak to her at all, because part of me thinks I’m being obstructed purposefully. What does she gain though? If I end up leaving because she’s mismanaged the situation then my boss will not be impressed with her.