Well I successfully made it into the office on Monday and Tuesday, for the first two full days since March 2020. I remembered how to get there, I eventually found the old lock I’d left in the bike shed, and I forgot neither my laptop nor its power supply (although a 15″ Macbook is a bit less wieldy than the 13″ one I had two years ago, especially as I had panniers then and only a rucksack now). What I did forget though, at least on Monday, was my pass card. Particularly annoying given that security on my building has been tightened up even more, so I couldn’t even escape without someone letting me out. Also, thanks to some bizarre design decision, the toilets are outside a door that needs a card to get back in.
The office itself has been “upgraded” in the intervening time, so now instead of having our own desks where we can leave whatever possessions we see fit, it’s now first come, first served for any of a whole roomful of identical sterile desks, all lined up in neat rows, with stupidly wide monitors that block your view of whoever’s on the other side. Anyway, it was a nice change to see people, and at least I got a few games of table football in.
A surprisingly successful week on the running front, starting with the second of the Ipswich Summer Series 5k races in Christchurch Park. These seem to be getting less and less popular (probably thanks to a combination of the price creeping up and them no longer handing out bottles of wine as prizes), but I’d already paid for all four in one go, and with only 50 entrants I finished in a frankly ridiculous fifth place, picking up another age group trophy.
Then we had the last of the Friday 5 [mile] races, and despite it being on a fairly flat course at Great Bentley, and not too hot for once, I didn’t feel particularly optimistic. I was quite surprised, then, to still see a 33 on the clock as I turned the last corner to the finish line, and just about managed to sprint to a 33:59, which I then realised was a PB. Maybe I’m not quite getting irredeemably old and slow quite yet!
For some reason I then decided not to take it easy at parkrun, and managed a half-reasonable time, then ignored my original intention to skip today’s planned 13 slow miles, instead accidentally extending it to 18 (well mostly accidentally – some of that was a slight detour at the far end to a pub to refuel with a pint and some crisps). The main purpose was to get this month’s hollow tree photo – it’s an excellent tree that you can actually climb up the inside of, but that doesn’t really come across in the picture.
