Yep, indeed – sadly, my holidays are over! 🙁 Hard to believe that exactly one week ago I was still melting under the Portuguese late Summer, especially after spending this whole morning at the University’s boathouse under an overcast sky and with a cold wind continuously blowing…
The holidays, though, couldn’t have ended better: the 2013 edition of the Douro descent (actually this year we had an ascent/descent!) was awesome! Lots of rowing (~64k overall), good company, great scenery and excellent food, what can I ask for more?
(there are a lot of stories to tell, along with some excellent photos, but those will have to wait for a later time, as I’m writing this in a hurry now! 😛 )
I can do this in England, although only a couple of days per year! 😛
Anyway, in retrospective, these 3.5 weeks I spent in Porto were great, albeit they went past very, very quickly – I managed to mentor 5 high school students, train towards and run a half-marathon, work on my ^”!$!^*! paper (which is still not ready – every day we uncover new things that need to go into it, it is the sad life of a researcher!) and do lots of rowing and running (and even some cycling, which didn’t end the way I wanted to, though…).
Yesterday was not a good day. While servicing one of our old PCs, hoping to make it able to scan our old negatives, I managed to blow a power supply (there were a lot of sparks and loud noises, followed by smoke and the characteristic pungent aroma of burnt electronics…), and apparently the hard drive of that computer as well (which had been reinstalled recently). Ended up having to reinstall XP in it on a slower, smaller drive than I wanted, argh!…
Then I went for a bike ride. All was well, I rode from my rowing club in Gaia down to Valadares, following the coast (didn’t have a tracker, but it was probably something like 15-20k). Then we pulled out, and got out of the bikes to stretch our legs, and that’s when a loud pffft was heard, and my rear tyre went from full to completely empty in about 2 sec!
We took the tube apart (not before breaking a brand new set of spanners my friend had) and realised nothing could be done on the roadside – no patch could save a 3 in long tear on the tube!
Ended up pushing the bike back towards the car, but fortunately I had the presence of mind to jump on the other (working) bike and sprint like crazy against a head wind to fetch the car… 😛
And now I should head to bed, ’cause this weekend I have a 60k row waiting… 🙂
Mostly recovered by now, two days later! Well, I was never *that* bad, which was quite a surprise – compared to my very first race (S Silvestre 2010) when I couldn’t go down a flight of stairs without considerable pain for a few days, this wasn’t too bad. A lot more training (and a lot more miles) went on these last races, though…
This guy was photographing most runners as they passed, he has tons of photos on Facebook scattered over multiple albums. Unfortunately, the only photo where I do appear is this one, and he almost missed me! Tough luck… 😛 For those who don’t know my club’s colours, they are dark blue and white. Have you found me now? 😀I definitely think I had a curse on me that morning! The only image I actively participated in turned out massively out of focus because I forgot to disable the macro feature on my phone’s camera… 😛
Still, it wasn’t enough! I mean, I completed my goal (finished under 1h50, with a time of 1h47m36s), but now I’m hungry for more – I have something to improve for next year, and perhaps even consider running the “full” 42k at some point.
Two things that, I suspect, had a negative impact on this particular event: I hit “the wall” too soon (about 10-12k into the race, and I was going at a very conservative 5:00-5:10/km!), that caught me red-handed (I kept going, but by the time I crossed the finish line I wasn’t too steady for a while, at least until I ate something! Should have eaten more in the morning, but I was fearing getting too full…), and the temperature!
Sure, I should be used to that given that this is my hometown 😛 (and it wasn’t as warm as it normally is…), and I’ve been training for 2 weeks here (in Kent I had typically 10 degrees C less, which was a lot better to deal with dehydration), but the fact that they initiated the race at 10h20 in the morning meant that we were running when the Sun was at its tallest position, which isn’t pleasant at all (with the addition of new, lovely, unisuit tanlines! 😛 ). I mean, couldn’t they have initiated it at 9h or even 8h30? Good thing that the next one I’ll be doing (S Silvestre 2013 hopefully, if my flight doesn’t get affected by snow in December) is in December & at 6 PM!…
Anyway, that’s the only negative point I have for the organisation of this event. It was quite a fun morning, even though my running mates ditched me half-way through (apparently I’m too polite when overtaking other runners, hence I tend to get stuck and unable to follow them! 🙂 ), just seeing that massive orange mass advancing over the riverside was quite spectacular. And 10 euro for all that the event contemplated… absolute bargain!
For the past week that’s what I’ve been doing! 🙂 (well, sort of…)
After “getting rid” of my students – I had one more year mentoring the Robotics project on the “Escola de Verão de Física 2013” Summer School – I entered vacation mode for a little while.
With regards to the School, everything went well! Once again I had good, motivated students, and at the end of it I was feeling great, that I had made a difference and taught something useful to young(er) minds. (I was feeling quite tired as well…)
On the meantime, I still found time to cram a few training sessions for the Porto half-marathon (which will take place tomorrow, hoping to finish it under 1h50!) and work on the several-times-mentioned-but-still-not-finished paper of mine (getting there!…).
Just to let you know that I’m still here, anyway!… 😀 (and having a good time…)
Via Flickr:
While my poor colleagues are facing the famous English weather up there in Kent, I’m here holidaying/working outside! Living the good life…
The downside is that not a lot of work is done under these circumstances – I’ve been running, rowing, swimming and just roaming around, enjoying the sun!…
Via Flickr:
Just because I can! 🙂
(yes, I accessed a remote computer & then used that one to remotely access the one I was currently using – thought TeamViewer would block me out but it didn’t!)
Last Sunday I just had time to dash out of the door, armed with my tripod and camera, to capture this beautiful sunset.
The weather here might be temperamental, but the skies are gorgeous!
