Back to Office - I miss the face to face social interactions with my coworkers; the impromptu discussions.  I've been in touch with most of them over the past two years, but it is more work to stay in touch.  On the other hand, my commute by foot and train is 75 minutes each way on a good day.  Starting next week, I'll likely be in the office 1 day per week.  For me, that's a decent balance of being able to see people vs. the pain of the commute.

 

It is more useful to be in the office if the people you work directly with are there as well.

Over the years I have developed friendships with people all over the world and I often make a point to visit them when I'm traveling around their area.

Those impromptu discussions are what drive many developers away. If you are doing any kind of deep focus work, any interruption sets you back 40 minutes to an hour.

But I get that many people thrive off what I like to call "office noise" 😂

And I also get that not everybody are software developers.

In certain fields like in software development talent is very scattered throughout the world, and a lot of people just don't care to move to a different country with their whole family, plus immigration is a very touchy subject.

The companies hiring fully remote software development teams are picking up the top tier of talent.

Imagine if Real Madrid or Barcelona suddenly could only hire players born nearby. Imagine how their teams would be if they could never hire people like Ronaldo, Messi and Portuguese Ronaldo.

The funny thing about remote work is that it is the largest wealth distribution program in human history, better than any government ever hoped to implement. And it is also the best example of meritocracy at work.

Ok, enough speeches for today 🫢

I had an excellent workout earlier today, 12x200 at 400 pace with 1 minute rests. I averaged 36.8 seconds which is much better than over 39s the other day I tried this workout.

The race is in 2 weeks, let's see how fast I get till then.

A good week biggest this year

Total distance: 90.37km

Fred - yeah the commute is definitely a big advantage of working from home.  I don't have as big of a commute as you, but even then, it's still an hour of dead time all up each day.

Piwi - excellent week (again!).  Those gastro bugs are rough.  I remember my daughter brought one home from daycare a couple of years ago while my wife was overseas, that was a fun few days.  Hopefully you dodge it.

James - if those niggles are floating around that's still better than persistently staying in one place and getting worse!  Sometimes a down week can make a big difference.

Me - pumped up the volume again and got a couple good workouts in.  The weather was windy basically all week and annoyingly warm as well, but overall it was a reasonable week of training and it looks like more westerlies in store for next week which is less than ideal.  A bit sluggish on my LR this morning, but looking after a sick kid at 3am tends to do that.  It seems like it's the same thing I had a couple weeks back.

Weekly for period: From: 30/05/2022 To 05/06/2022

Total distance: 100.48km

Working Remotely:  I’m not surprised that serious runners like working remotely more than the population as a whole does.  I assume we’re more likely to be introverts, and we also have the internal motivation/self-discipline to get the work done on our own.

 

Yeah, really good point. I work for a small company created by two good friends of mine, so am kinda given free rein (or I've just taken it lol). The commute is only 10 mins, so can't complain on that front. But I don't like to go into the office too much, just on the days when there's staff training and staff meeting...because there's usually free coffee and snacks! Our work is computer based, so we can work from anywhere. Before Covid hit, we were planning on moving the office to Bali for 10 days, with partners and families coming along. Maybe next year!

Mark there are a few bugs going around right now. My wife also has something. You must have been knackered for that long run. Nice work pushing through. The wind makes workout days tough.

James good week despite your continued hamstring issues.

Flavio good to see your speed returning. Why such low mileage? You probably already said but I can't remember.  The 1500 is one of my favorite events to watch. It's so tactical.

Hash that Makara loop run you did was excellent. I was checking a mates strava on the Reboot marathon he ran and saw he ran with another guy who you must know as you had commented. They both got sub 3.

My week

27 miles running, 6:30 hours pool-running, and 500 meters of swimming.
M: 90 minutes pool-running and upper body weights/core
T: 8 miles - attempted a track workout but dropped halfway through first rep when it felt like the last 200m of a 5K race. Tried to do it on treadmill, but did one 3 minute rep and then done.
W: 90 minutes pool-running
Th: 90 minutes pool-running and some leg strengthwork
F: 90 minutes pool-running, including 20x1 minute hard/1 minute easy, plus 4x30 seconds very hard/1 minute easy. Followed with upper body weights/core.
Sa: 8 miles (10:08), drills and hill strides, and streaming yoga.
Su: 12 miles progressive, split as 4 miles averaging 9:30, next 4 miles averaging 8:37, and next 4 miles averaging 7:42. Followed with 30 minutes pool-running, leg strengthwork, and 500 meters swimming.

Kinda a sucky week.  I attempted a workout on Tuesday, but felt very short of breath, and pulled the plug very early.  I walked home and hopped on the treadmill, thinking that it might have just been the weather, but I didn't do much better on the treadmill.  And that was my cue to take a few days inside in the pool.

I suspect this is all adjustment to the estrogen gel I started last week, so I'm just going to hang tight for another week or two and see how things go.

Incidentally, I got some bloodwork results back - haven't had a chance to discuss with the doctor, but to my uneducated eye the bloodwork seems consistent with menopause - no estrogen, and FSH very high (FSH gets very high when you enter menopause).  So....that might explain many of the issues I've been struggling with over the past 2 years or so

Piwi - when I'm in pretty good shape, I'll often have easy runs averaging 115-125 beats per minute. And nice week.

Keen and Mark - nice weeks.

Caitlin - look after yourself. If you start feeling better, don't rush back to running.

James - nice week. And well done for bringing this thread back on purpose to weather complaining.

Flavio - nice week.

Hash - nice week. Are you racing the Dorne Cup?

Darkwave - is this statement correct? "6:30 hours pool-running"?

Re work from home, I've been in the office three times this year. I'm going in on this coming Tuesday. My work is strongly work from home if you can, and before I come in Tuesday I'll have to do a RAT.

Door to door, it's a 60 minute trip each way, so not going in much is rather beneficial for me.

As Flavio has stated, it's not been necessary for a long time to have everyone go into the office all the time. Even for people that must go in, often it's not needed every workday.

My week was good injury wise.  Physio has given me the green light to increase volume, my right calf feels fine. 

Life got in the way unfortunately, as our very old 18.5 year old cat Alexi's, who had been unwell for a while, declined further and we had to get her euthanized.  So that was a major downer on the week.

The last few weeks I've also recorded refereeing my girls football/soccer, the distance I cover is less than I thought.  12th grade is 25 minutes per half on a smaller field, 18th grade is 35 minutes per half on a smaller field.

Weekly for period: From: 30/05/2022 To 05/06/2022

Total distance: 41.36km

Watson – Knew I recognised those squiqqly runs from somewhere! Always interesting to track activities and get an idea of what is really happening. And yeah, definitely going up for the Dorne – it’s quite an enjoyable race (despite lacking any real hills). Stink news about your cat. Hope the family isn’t taking it too badly

Flavio – I’m watching your training with interest. I’m planning on a mile race in January, so closer to that time will start to train specifically for that. With my stronger base this year, I should be able to bring my PR of 5:32 down a bit

CK – I would feel very vulnerable not having any replacements ready to go. My shoe strategy is to have about 4 pairs for each activity (trail, track, road, race) all at varying stages of life. My wife thinks I have a shoe ‘problem’, but I think it makes good planning sense!

Piwi – Your comment made me do some Strava stalking and found a couple of the runners who finished with my mate Nic. Funny to hear their stories of the finish, and interesting to see their final 5km split times. If my mate Nic didn’t really smash the last 5km he wouldn’t have gone under 3hrs

Darkwave – To be honest, I felt I had to do the Ice Cream Sandwich, just because of its name! Zeb’s link took me to a Strava blog by Lauren Fleshman. I found her posts a refreshing read. https://blog.strava.com/wow-the-icecreamsandwich-9584/

Mark – Lauren has sucked me in with her great names for workouts. I’m looking forward to doing her #FreddyKruger. https://blog.strava.com/wow-the-freddykruger-9769/

Caitlin – Interesting question about the Queen’s birthday. Not sure what they’ll do when there is no longer a queen. They won’t change the date, but maybe the name will get changed (King’s birthday??). Although to be honest, they should change it completely to something that is more relevant to us Kiwis…like celebrating the birth of the TV (not that we had anything to do with that, but we do like to watch it!)