S Silvestre do Porto 2014!

And it is done, yet another S Silvestre! This year I was quite fortunate to have been able to train with the guys from my home club for a week and a half before the actual race, which was good fun (and we have a lot of big climbs on the banks of the river to practise our hill running!).

I ended up with pretty much the same time as last year (around 43:30 for 10k) which wasn’t stellar, and to be absolutely honest I think I was overly conservative with my effort – the first climb went on OK, but after it I let myself fall behind a bit. Furthermore, running downhill is not one of my best skills, hence I kept being overtaken there 🙂

less than a km to go here! And the weather was simply spectacular!

Still, it was a nice race to finish the year properly, with the bonus of a post-race meal at our local Pizza Hut – featuring an obscene amount of pizza which made the race feel like piece of cake compared to finishing that very last slice!

Wrapping up the year!…

So, here we are, 2014 almost over (indeed it is 2015 already in some parts of the globe!) and I have yet to write my year wrapping-up post in here. Since I have better things to do than to be here on the computer let’s get started! 🙂

2014 was good to me, broadly speaking – looking back, I had some fun, visited a few places, ran a few races, and progressed in my work. Definitely not a bad year, and I dare say it might have been one of the quietest and most relaxed I’ve had so far (and yes, I am a PhD student, I should be stressed!). I reckon this is the calm before the storm… as 2015 creeps in, I can already see this is going to be a year of decisions – I have to start looking beyond my thesis and my PhD as I’m due to submit my thesis at the end of this coming year, and I have to write the aforementioned thesis, too.

Where am I going to go? What am I going to be working on, 1 1/2 years from now? Those are very legitimate and interesting questions, to which I have no answer at the moment, unfortunately. I’m hoping that by this coming Summer I already have some of the answers.

So yes, 2014 was a piece of cake compared to what is coming!… 🙂 To sum it up, a terrific 2015 to all of my readers, may this coming year bring you plenty of great accomplishments!

Season’s Greetings

To all my friends and contacts my wishes of a merry Christmas and a brilliant 2015 full of great accomplishments!

More tests with the action camera…

Last weekend, after having done a little service to my bike (definitely it was needing it! Muck and dirt all over the chain, and the frame was coated with hard mud everywhere!…) I went on a little trip to Chartham, which is a village close to Canterbury on the banks of the Great Stour.

There’s a nice cycle path there, and given that it was a glorious sunny day (albeit a chilly one) I decided to take the action camera for a spin – mounted it on the handlebar and off I went!

(I sped up the video to spare you a long viewing time. Enjoy!)

Thermal amplitudes? :)

Yesterday it was ‘3-4 degrees C’ day – cycling to work in the morning, 3 degrees; going for a quick run in the woods at lunchtime, 3 degrees; and in the evening while preparing to go home, again 3 degrees. Amazingly, it kept that temperature through the night — there was no frost over the car this morning!

(but that is going to change very soon.. I heard that tomorrow is going to be very chilly! 🙂 )