Photography

OK so this is not a very serious hobby for me, I don't spend a lot of time or money on it, but I am interested in it and do enjoy it.

My photography roots are from my dad (who got them from his dad), he was always taking photos on family events and encouraged me to do so. I remember as a youngster, on many occasions, looking through slides which my grandfather had taken.

I got my first camera as a teen, a very basic 35mm, and liked to take photos of people, mainly family and holidays and outings, nothing serious.

I did hit the fringes of "serious" photography briefly at school and did some old style developing of film, which was very interesting during art lessons.

I like taking photos of people rather than arty or landscapes. I like to record events and seeing people growing up. I think a lot of our long term memories come from looking back at photos.

When on trips I like to take a camera and constantly annoy my family by taking lots of photos. In groups I am normally the one taking the pictures, which is why I am not in many photos, and in the same way that there are not many photos of my dad (although more recently the phone has become a big event recorder and, unluckily for everyone else, I have appeared in more photos).

I have recently brought an entry level Sony dslr camera, an a35, which has taken my photography as a hobby up a level. This mainly involves taking the camera off the auto setting and experimenting with aperture, shutter, exposure etc, with varying degrees of success.

I have a few friends who are into photography, a couple who do quite well as semi-professionals, and I spend some time chatting with them about photography.

Currently my main focus in photography is taking photos of my daughters basketball matches. This is quite challenging as a; it is fast moving and b; often the indoor lighting is very poor.

I have recently been on a photography big cats 'experience' where I got to photograph wild animals close up, which was pretty cool. It was a nice sunny day so we got some good shots of  mainly the big cats (lions and tigers) and also some other animals as well (monkeys, rhino's, penguins etc.).

As part of my event recording I produce a yearly photo book. I do this at the start of the year, putting the best photos of the previous year together into a printed photo book. As most of my pictures are of family and events this gives a good picture diary of the year

I also find printed gifts to be very good as personnel presents, not just framed pictures but books, mugs, t-shirts etc, so I spend a bit of time putting those together.

I am currently debating on whether to upgrade my camera or not, as I struggle with the basketball lighting conditions, but this is quite a big expense.

Favourite Albums

There are a lot of songs which form the soundtrack to my life, I shall explore these in another blog entry but there have also been a few outstanding albums which fit into this category as well.

I'm not including compilations or greatest hits.

These are the albums where I listened to the whole album, many times, normally from beginning to end, without skipping any tracks.

I have to start with the greatest album ever produced The Wall by Pink Floyd. This is not just a series of individual songs, but is a total story from begging to end. The highlight has to be Comfortably Numb. I listened to this continuously when I was about 17 with my good friend Richard Espin. We knew all the words to the whole double album and sadly used to sing it as we walked around town. My biggest regret in life is that I missed an opportunity to go and see it performed live. I must also give an honourable mention to another Pink Floyd album which I listened to a lot Dark Side of the Moon.

Next up is Queen II by Queen, my favourite group (with the greatest singer of all time). OK so I listened to Queens Greatest Hits a lot as well, for all their best individual songs, but II is again a story where the album is greater than the sum of all the parts. I think the Black Side is slightly better, but it is a close run thing. It is also fantasy based which I love. My girlfriend (future wife) and I listened to this constantly whilst playing fantasy based computer games.

Hot Fuss by Killers is a brilliant album I listened too over and over. It is not a story album, but all of the songs are good and it also has some exceptional ones, particularly Mr Brightside. This is also a very significant album to me as I played it a lot when my wife and I were having problems. I will also mention the Killers Greatest Hits which I have also played a lot recently.

The next album is from my new romantic period in the early eighties and is Lexicon Of Love by ABC. Although not a concept album it does have a continuous theme throughout all its songs and they do fit together very well. This was from a time when I had started my first job. Although I liked a lot of the music, I was never an extreme new romantic i.e. I didn't dress up or wear make up.

From my earlier teens, when I was finding music for myself (rather than being influenced by my parents) comes Out Of The Blue by E.L.O. This is a big album to include (4 sides), and I have to admit that side 2 is slightly weaker than the other 3, however I did love the whole album and played it a lot. I love the epicness of the songs. I remember playing this album whilst I was developing my first computer programs as homework from school.

No Parlez by Paul Young is an album which was played a lot whilst I was dating my future wife. It does have it's ups and downs, with Common People being at the top. I remember that we used to listen to it whilst playing games on the ZX Spectrum, particularly Manic Miner.

The next album is from the early years of marriage and is an album my wife and I played a lot together, Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf. OK so it is OTT and the songs are very long, but it's huge and epic, it makes you feel good and you can't not sing along to it. Also, all of the songs are good, there are no low points.

Again from my early teens comes Parallel Lines by Blondie. This album was huge with everyone at school, everybody raved about it and all the boys were in love with Debbie Harry. Again it has its highs and lows, but it has a lot of all time 70's classics on it, I particularly liked Picture This and Sunday Girl.

One of the newer albums is Escapology by Robbie Williams. This is quite a surprising choice as it does not feature his big hits (with the possible exception of Feel). But my wife and I played this a lot, we liked all of the songs, particularly Me and My Monkey. We played this album over and over in the car on some long journeys.

Finally there is 21 by Adele. This is a great album, again individual songs but a brilliant set with some real classics.

There is one compilation album which deserves a mention, the Shrek II Soundtrack. This is a great collection of songs and we listened to it a lot after watching the film whilst on holiday in Great Yarmouth.







I will also give a mention to a few greatest hits albums which were played a lot: Sweet, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles, Queen, 10cc and Neil Diamond.

Home Computing and Games Consoles

As seen from my previous blog entry on Computing, I was always a Computing geek, so it was only right I got into home computing and games consoles.

As previously seen, my first exposure to computing in the home was a Binatone pong machine, which was amazing but limited in scope.

This was followed by a ZX80, but I don't remember doing that much on it apart from a small bit of Basic. I was mainly doing programming at work and was more interested in games at home. I don't remember playing many games on the ZX80.

When I was about 16, as the 70s were turning into the 80s, on our summer holidays I came across arcade machines including Space Invaders and loved them. I then found some magazine adverts for the Atari 2600 games console which had interchangeable cartragies, including a Space Invaders. I became obsessed, but It took a while to persuade my dad to get one, as they were quite expensive, but he eventually did and I spent a lot of time playing Space Invaders, Pacman, Asteriods and many other games.

Following on from this was my first real foray into home computing with a TRS-80. There were mainly text adventure games such as Zork and Scott Adams Advetureland and Voodoo Castle. Not that many graphics based games were available but I remember Android Nim and a decent Galaxians. There was also the weird Dancing Demon!

Next up I got a ZX Spectrum, with its rubber keyboard and loading games from tape (with its classic data transfer noise). This was great because it was fairly cheap so a lot of people brought one which led to there being a lot of software available. There were also a lot of computer magazines available (such as Crash) to keep you up to date with the games and also giving you programs to type in yourself. I spent a lot of time on the Spectrum, I even wrote some games in assembler language. I remember playing Manic Minor, The Hobbit, Ant Attack etc but mainly the Ultimate games; Jetpac, Atic Atac, Saber Wulf, Underwurlde, Knight Lore etc. I remember travelling to Northampton on the bus to go to the only local computer games shop to get the latest Ultimate releases.

I then had a Commodore 64. This was quite similar to the Spectrum but had a proper keyboard. I remember loving Boulderdash, Elite, Bubble Bobble, Pit Stop II and many others. I spent ages converting an interactive adventure game in a magazine from BBC code and my girlfriend (future wife) and me playing it for ages (whilst listening to the Queen II album), it was very good. I also regularly got the Commodore magazine ZZAP 64. I got a disk drive for the 64 which took 5 1/4 inch floppy disks, no more sporadic/noisy tape loading.

I started going to the Wellingborough computer club where I met a good friend Dale Thompson.

It was at the computer club that I first saw the next level home computers Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. There was quite a battle between these 2, I plumped for the ST as Dale had one. It had a GUI desktop and a mouse and used the classic 3 1/2 inch floppy disks. The games I loved on the ST were Dungeon Master, Super Sprint, Xenon, Populous, Leaderboard, Bards Tale, Bomb Jack, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder, Gauntlet II and who can forget Leisure Suit Larry In the Land of the Lounge Lizards. There were a lot more games, I loved the ST.

I did eventually succumb to the dark side and get the slightly superior Amiga, but I don't remember playing it as much, the games were very much the same as the ST, I cannot remember much of the Amiga.

About this time came the rise of the games consoles, the first we had (after the Atari 2600) was the Sega Megadrive. The main games here were obviously the Sonics, but I also remember Disney's Aladdin, Ecco and Micro Machines.

This was quickly followed by a Sony Playstation. With a lot of great games; Doom (which we completed), Wipeout, Medieval, Crash Bandicoot, Gran Tourismo, Spyro, Oddworld, Final Fantasy. My young daughter spilled a yoghurt on the Playstation so we had to get it replaced.

We then had a SNES with the first introduction to the best game ever, Mario Kart. We also played Donkey Kong Country a lot and Super Bomberman 2.

Next up we had a Nintendo 64 which we played a lot, particularly Mario 64 and Zelda (I actually completed Octarina of Time). I was never a big fan of Mario Bros, but the rest of the family were.

At some point we got a PC and I remember playing Command & Conquer a lot.

We also had a few handholds. The Gameboy, with Tetris, and a psp.

We then had a Nintendo Gamecube on which I mainly remember playing Mario Kart.

The next generations of consoles has mainly been the domain of my kids.

We had a Playstation 2 on which we played Guitar Hero and Singstar a lot. We still occasionally play the Buzz series of quiz and junior games.

We had a Nintendo Wii which was brilliant for the family, particularly Sports, Mario Kart and Party.

We then had an XBox and Xbox 360, playing SSX Tricky, various Call of Duty's and Halo's (including the on-line multiplayer versions).

We have not yet got any of the latest generation consoles.

Today it is mainly iPads and App games, with a lot of time wasted on Candy Crush!

As previously mentioned I am a hoarder, which is vaguely disguised as collecting, and still have all my games consoles. Plus a few others I have picked up along the way, such as a SNES and Saga Saturn etc.

Accidents and Injuries

I have always been accident prone and as a youngster was frequently injured.

Here are a few of the incidents that have happened to me.

Knocked over by a car. When I was about 9 I stupidly walked into the road from between 2 parked cars on Rushden High Street and was hit by a car. I was knocked unconscious and woke up at home (it was in the time when doctors came to you). Luckily there was no real damage only bad cuts and bruises.

Fell out of a tree onto a metal gate. I was a bit of a tree climber and I climbed a tree near our house, but fell and landed on a metal gate. I was found unconscious and only remember waking up back at home. No real damage. As an adult I have always been a bit scared of heights, I wonder why!

Kicked in the head during football. Whilst playing football in a church charity game when in my teens, I fell over and was kicked in the head. I was knocked unconscious and woke up at home with no real damage. Many years later, at my brothers wedding, a guy came up to me and apologised for kicking me, it had been playing on his mind for 20 years.

Fell off a washing line and broke my arm. When I was about 7 I was swinging on the washing line and tried to jump onto the goal bunker. Of course it all went wrong and I broke my arm.

Ran into a car. When I was a teenager I used to run everywhere! Once whilst running down Rushden High Street a car came out of a side alley and I ran straight into the side of it. I was not injured and jumped up off the floor and just ran off. I think the car driver was a bit bemused.

Stabbed foot with a garden fork. When I was quite young, 5 or 6, I was out in the garden with my dad and decided to help him with the gardening. I picked up a garden fork and jabbed it into the ground, however my foot was in the way. I was very lucky and only one prong hit the inside of my big toe. I chipped a bone and was in plaster for a while, but the doctor said a millimetre either way and I would have lost a toe.

Hit a stationary car on my bike. When I was about 13, I was riding my bike to school on the last day of term when I rode into the back of a stationary car and injured my private parts quite badly.

Crashed a go cart under a moving car. My friend and I had built a go cart and we took it to the top of the hill on the street we both lived. I was on the back and my friend was driving. Half way down the hill we lost control, I was thrown off the back and suffered cuts and bruises, the cart, and my friend, went into the road and under a car. My friend broke his leg.

Bit tongue during football. When I was in my 30's I was playing for a Sunday league football team when I bashed my face and bit my tongue. It was very bad, almost severed my tongue altogether, it swelled up and I could not eat at all and could only take in liquids through a straw for a week.

Tripped over a curb and broke my arm. Whilst a teenager I tripped over a curb and broke my arm.

Hit by a car whilst running. In my 40's, I was out on a run when a driver pulled out of a petrol station and ran into me. Luckily he was not going very fast and I only suffered a few cuts and bruises.

Collecting Tolkien

As pointed out in a previous blog entry my main collecting obsession is anything J R R Tolkien.

I started collecting Tolkien stuff after reading the best book ever written, Lord Of The Rings, in the late 70s. I used to read LOTR regularly, at least every year (although I stopped doing this after about 15 years as I didn't have time due to other reading, but I do still read it every so often).

Initially my collection was very limited. I would get a Tolkien calendar each year and would pick up any copies of the LOTR or the Hobbit books that I found.

I first came across other Tolkien stuff through my board game playing, I found a Tolkien board game 'The Games of Middle Earth' which is excellent, although I didn't get my own copy of this until some years later.

Throughout my 20s and 30s I would pick up a few bits and pieces, the BBC Radio Drama of LOTR was very good, there were some Citadel gaming figures.

But there were 2 things which greatly increased my Tolkien collecting.

First was eBay. When I found this I not only came across all sorts of things I didn't know existed (well the internet in general helped with this) but also the place to buy them. Funds were, and still are, limited but I did pick up quite a lot of bargains in the early years of eBay. These days bargains are not so easy to find.

Second was the LOTR films. When these came out the amount of stuff available became enormous. Not only from the films themselves, but also from the increase in general interest in Tolkien.

The next thing to mention is how huge the world of Tolkien stuff is, there is actually so much which can be collected.

For example Tolkien books is the obvious collecting area and he did only write 2 main books, so how big an area can that be. Well the LOTR was originally published as 3 different books, the first one in

1954 and each of these 3 has been published at least once every year since. They have also been published together and even as 7 separate books. There are also Hardback and Paperback versions. There are also different impressions of each book, the 1st Edition Fellowship of the Ring has 15 impressions. And also special, anniversary, event etc additions. Tolkien also wrote quite a lot of smaller books and stories which have also been published in many different versions. He also left a lot of unpublished stories and works (the most famous being The Silmarillion) which have also been published in different versions. There are also many, many books published about Tolkien and his works. And not forgetting foreign versions of everything. And also all the film related books! So just Tolkien books is a huge area.

There is far too much to be able to collect everything, it is almost impossible to be a completest in even the smallest of areas, you should really specialise in specific Areas. If you look at the Internet you will find sites dedicated just to Tolkien Books, Tolkien Calendars, Tolkien Computer Games, Tolkien Board Games etc. Saying this, I must admit that I do collect almost anything I can, but I focus more on some specific areas.

I don't specialise in the books, although I do have quite a few, for example about 35 copies of The Fellowship Of the Ring. I also don't collect the film statues, replicas and ornaments as these are just too expensive.

My main areas of interest are Calendars, Board Games, Records, Bakshi Movie and Computer Games.

I also have quite a large collection of Action Figures.

I am not an 'expert' collector in any area and do not go after the rarest things at any cost. I don't pay huge money for things just to have them.

I hope to go into the areas of my collection in more detail in future entries but this is a rough overview:
Tolkien Books (285 items)
Tolkien Related Books (114 items)

Bookmarks (10 items)

Calendars (89 items)
Vinyl - Lp's and Singles (30 items)

Audio (45 items)

Video (58 items)

Computer Games (103 items)
Toys (65)

Jigsaw Puzzles (47 items)
Board Games (105 items)

War and Roleplaying Games (553 items)
Action Figures (349 items)

Dolls and Figures (54)
Statues and Ornaments (291 items)

Art (21)

Cards & Stickers (163 items)

Postcards (26 items)

Stationary (37 items)

Stamps (35 items)

Magazines (480 items)

Posters (47 items)

Clothing (41 items)

Promotional - Food Related (30 items)

Promotional - Merchandise (120)

Promotional - Retail (31 items)

Promotional - Scrapbook (72 items)

Other (50 items)

Total items: 3351

It should be noted that there are overlaps between various areas and some items may be counted more than once.

As well as Areas there are also Themes, which cover items from lots of different areas all with the same thing in common. A specific theme can often be more rewarding to collect than a whole area. There are some very big themes such as each of the books (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings etc), or the Movies or a specific character (Frodo, Gandalf, Gollum etc). There are however a lot of smaller themes. These are the some of the themes I am interested in:

Bakshi Movie (60 items)

Hilderandt Artists (11 items)

BBC Dramatisation

LOTR Musical

Lego (58 items)

I also have a collection of autographs, mainly actors from the movies, whom I have met at various conventions (yes I am that nerdy).

My biggest problem is that I don't have the room to display any of my collection and it is currently all in storage.

For a brief glimpse of my collection, have a look here.

I will also be producing some blog entries on Tolkien Collecting Guides, covering a specific area from an interest perspective rather than about my own collection. Obviously some areas, such as books, are already very well covered by other people/sites, so I will only look at areas not very well covered.

Occasionally I will also be doing Tolkien Collecting Musings, on bits and pieces I have found which are just interesting.

Here is an Index to the Guides and Musings.

Computers

Computers have played a huge part in my life.

I was born at just the right time for home computing, just as it started up, and as a nerdy teenager it was ideal for me.

My love for computing started at school, I was 15 and I was made aware that there was a new extra curricular computer class starting, for the first time in the school. I went along, it was run by my Chemistry teacher Mr Hughes and involved learning about programming in the BASIC language, leading to a Computing O level qualification. There was one problem, the school had no computer! In fact there was no such thing as computers in schools. What we had to do was write our programs out on coding sheets, post these off to a local college, in Northampton (who had a mainframe computer), where our programs would get entered, using punch cards, run and the printed result sent back to us (along with our program saved on punch card). We had one chance to submit a program a week. If there was an error in the code, that weeks output would be a compiler error, whereby we would have to manually locate the error in the code and resubmit it next week. It was long winded but it was new and I found it fascinating.

The 'highlight' of the course was that during the summer holidays we were allowed to go to the local college, an hours bus ride away, and use the mainframe computer ourselves for a week. At the college we could use a paper driven teletype machines to enter and run our programs directly into the computer. This was a machine a bit like a typewriter with a printer output instead of a screen. I did once get a chance to use the single VDU terminal, which was in the actual computer room itself. You were not allowed to save your programs on the hard drive, it was all held in memory, you had to produce a ticker tape to save your program. There were some programs on the computer that you could run, including a few games such as naughts and crosses and hangman.

I found it all amazing, I could get the computer to 'think' and do things. In the 2nd year of the course we had to submit a program as course work. I decided to write a chess program. Of course it was far too ambitious, but I managed to get it to display a chess board and allow valid moves, I even managed to get the computer to make a couple of valid chess moves itself, but that was far as I got. It was good enough to pass the course though.

I even used the cover of a computer world magazine as the basis for an art piece I used in my O'level art portfolio.

At the same time, as the computer course was finishing, the home computer/games world was just starting. My dad bought home a Binatone games console which played pong on the tv. This was soon followed by a ZX80 which was amazing, I could write programs at home.

At this point I will leave home computing and games consoles to another blog entry.

I had no idea what I was going to do for a job. I was still at school doing some random A levels (Maths, Geography and Art). Knowing my love for computers, my dad took me along to an open day at Wellingborough Tresham College, who had teamed up with a local electronics company GEC Reliance to offer Computing apprenticeships with a BEC qualification. It was just what I wanted, but they wanted people with A levels, however they let me apply and I did an aptitude test and an Interview. Then, because they didn't have enough people to fill the course, I was offered a place. All of a sudden I had a job and left school.

The job was great, it involved 3 month chunks of time in the various departments within the company learning about all types of computing. Being a phone electronics company this varied considerably from very low level electronic based computing for phone control, electronic research computing analysing wave patterns using Fortran programs, office systems written in Basic on standalone PET machines and company mainframe systems in COBOL. This was interleaved with 6 weeks at college doing more academic computing. It was a great time, we were mainly left to do our own thing at work and I wrote a pretty good stock control system on the PET, although we were always fighting with lack of machine power and memory. I was always more interested in the business computing rather than the electronic computing. As we were left alone a lot I also wrote some games, a nice 'digger' type game on the PET and I completed the simple chess program I had started at school in COBOL on the mainframe (it wasn't very good, but it did play chess). I made a good friend Andrew Bailey whom I spent most of my placements with.

I loved programming.

I passed the BEC qualification, finished the apprenticeship and was offered a full time job in the business IT department writing COBOL programs.

After a year I applied for a job in the computing department of another local firm Weatherbys, I'm not sure why exactly, I thing I was just curious. I was offered an Analyst job but the money wasn't any better than i was already on so I turned it down. But they had liked me so they offered a bit more money and I decided to give it a go. I have been there ever since.

Weatherbys is an unusual company in that they administer horse racing in Great Britain under contract of the governing body, so the computer systems needed are varied and interesting. When I first started we were using COBOL on Honeywell mainframe computers, they even still had a data entry department and used ticker tape to communicate race details to the press.

The computing world has changed rapidly since I started, the biggest changes being the emergence of the PC and the Internet, and Weatherbys has had to incorporate these into its business. I have been involved in many interesting projects including, introducing relational databases, real time entry and processing of race entries (first via phone, then by the internet), interfacing with printing systems, the millennium changeover and many others.

When I was in my 30s I did a computing degree at Northampton University as a part time evening course.

I still love computers, although today I don't get much change to do any programming.

The Running Bug

What? running you say, how does this fit in with what's gone before, the other 2 hobbies have both been on the nerdy side!

I like sport, both playing and watching. I don't have much ability and I've never reached a high level in any sport, I'm average at best at most sports. When I was young I loved football. This probably originated from watching my dad play local football every Saturday. I played casually in the local park, almost every day, and at school, although I was never outstanding and only on the fringes of school teams. At school I also enjoyed PE and did a lot of athletics. I played table tennis quite well and won a place at a holiday training camp. In table tennis I was in local teams/leagues, in the top divisions and did ok (although I was never the star of the team). I played cricket, but only at the lowest level, for a works team (I did take a hat trick during a cup final - my greatest sporting achievement). I was also player manager of my works indoor cricket team. During my twenties I went back to football and played in Saturday and Sunday league teams, playing until I was in my 40s (when my knees finally gave out).

I didn't do anything sporty for a few years after this, and I missed physical activity.

My work had entered a team into a local charity 10k event and I somehow got persuaded to take part with a couple of work mates. I knew nothing about running. I joined a gym to get fitter and did some running on the running machines. I somehow injured my leg, calf I think, but still tried to do the 10k. It was a disaster. I hadn't run any long distances, nothing on roads, had no concept of pacing and had an injury. I went out at a newby fast pace (was with the leaders for 400 metres!), aggravated my injury and dropped out after 1k.

However, I had enjoyed the gym running and physical fitness. Also, a good friend of mine David Parker had just returned from living in America and he was a "proper runner". With his encouragement and advice, with the mates who had fared better than me at the charity event, and after a few months recovery, I entered another 10k in Wimbledon. I was still very naive but managed to complete it, and in an ok beginners time.

This was very encouraging and I kept up the training.

A couple of my friends entered the Paris marathon and I went along to support. The size of the event, the number of people, the expo, the pasta party, the warm up run through Paris (which I did), the crowds and Paris itself made it a fabulous trip.

So I decided to do a marathon.

I wanted the big event, so along with my friends we entered the Chicago marathon.

I joined a local running club, WDAC, which gave me the motivation for the Marathon training and the encouragement to get fitter and improve my running.

The whole marathon experience is fantastic. It is a 3 month journey, using a plan, running 3 to 4
times a week, with a gradual increase in distance, running in some local events, with the running club, including my first half marathon in Nottingham. The actual Marathon event was incredible. The trip, the city, the expo, the warm up run (where we gate crashed a shops celebrity event) and the pasta party. I must admit that the marathon itself is a bit of a blur (we ran through the colourful Chinese district and passed a huge fountain, but I have no recollection of either), it was not easy (the last few miles were torture), but the finishing and sense of achievement is amazing. I also did it in under 4 hours, which was beyond all my expectations. Following the marathon we went on a small road trip across to New York and ran in Central Park, so the whole trip was a great experience.

Following this I kept up the running, mainly through the running club. I did numerous events, mainly those attended by the club, the local NRRL and EMGB series, at all sorts of distances, including the Silverstone 10k around the F1 race track. The running club is great, very encouraging and supporting to all the members whatever their ability.

I did a 2nd marathon, another big event, the Rotterdam marathon. This again was a great experience and another great trip. I pushed this one a bit harder at the start and struggled a bit. I was trying for a better time but actually did a bit worse. We also incorporated a trip to Amsterdam.

I have had various injuries (tendon, calf, in growing toenail) which have stopped me from running for long periods of time (I even missed whole years!) and you miss the physical activity a lot. I am also getting a lot older, which means that your performance starts to deteriorate, which is hard to come to terms with.

I am currently uninjured and starting the new season, I also have plans to do another marathon.