Yesterday, I met up with a group of other expats on the same exchange program with our firm. We found the Breakfast Club for lunch, then went to a wine tasting festival and dinner at a French restaurant nearby, all in Angel.
The Breakfast Club could have been at home in the East Village -- small place, typical American brunch menu, huge line outside, random photos on the walls, and 80s music playing that completely fits with the cafe's namesake movie. I definitely need to make it back there sometime soon!
I had no idea what to expect at the wine festival, but it ended up being probably 60-80 vendors in a huge convention center. We each got a glass as we walked in, and were able to taste wines from around the world. After five hours, I restrained myself and ended up walking out with only two bottles -- a Chilean cabernet malbec blend and a cabernet franc.
After the nine of us left the festival and had dinner, we all went our separate ways... I actually enjoyed having a quiet weekend evening for a change, and enjoyed being able to sleep in today. No particular plans here today... other than I'm doing some chores around the flat this morning, then likely joining a gym this afternoon. It should be a nice, quiet Sunday!
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Sailing
So, after last weekend's marathon and redeye flight back to London, I was planning to have a relatively quiet weekend here, see a few friends on Saturday, and maybe find a museum today.
Friday night, I went to have a drink with coworkers after leaving the office. At some point, one of my coworkers mentioned that he was heading out early the next morning to go sailing, so he was going to head off shortly. When I looked interested in his comment about sailing, he asked if I wanted to join, as they were a person short of a full crew. With just about no deliberation, the answer was "Yes!"
John picked me up at 5:30 Saturday morning and we drove to Port Solent, on the southern coast of England. There, we met four other current and former employees of my firm, loaded up our 37' boat, and were off for the weekend. We were one of eleven boats in a racing series, and did two races on both Saturday and Sunday. We had a great time, a few close calls with the boom, and absolutely perfect weather. I've posted a few of the photos from the weekend here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/trenshaw/OctoberSailing
It's now 9:40 and despite an amazing 8 hours of sleep on the boat while docked in Cowes last night, I'm completely exhausted. Time for bed...
Friday night, I went to have a drink with coworkers after leaving the office. At some point, one of my coworkers mentioned that he was heading out early the next morning to go sailing, so he was going to head off shortly. When I looked interested in his comment about sailing, he asked if I wanted to join, as they were a person short of a full crew. With just about no deliberation, the answer was "Yes!"
John picked me up at 5:30 Saturday morning and we drove to Port Solent, on the southern coast of England. There, we met four other current and former employees of my firm, loaded up our 37' boat, and were off for the weekend. We were one of eleven boats in a racing series, and did two races on both Saturday and Sunday. We had a great time, a few close calls with the boom, and absolutely perfect weather. I've posted a few of the photos from the weekend here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/trenshaw/OctoberSailing
It's now 9:40 and despite an amazing 8 hours of sleep on the boat while docked in Cowes last night, I'm completely exhausted. Time for bed...
Chicago marathon
Last weekend, I traveled back to Chicago to run the marathon. I took a Virgin Atlantic flight direct to O'Hare on Friday, which was amusing since more than half of us on the plane had running shirts of one type or another... there was very little drinking on the plane, but plenty of random running stories with strangers.
Friday afternoon was my quick "I'm in the US, buy stuff now!" trip. I found a new suit, a few dress shirts for work and new dress shoes, before going off to meet a friend for sushi. Right about the time I returned from dinner, two of my friends got in from their travels -- Stu from Seattle and Julie from Hoboken. The three of us ended up out for another dinner, as neither of them had eaten yet, and I hadn't seen either of them in months. By the time I finally got to sleep, I was more or less delirious and had been up for just shy of 24 hours.
Saturday was a great, relaxing day... we walked around the city, tried and failed to get on an architecture tour, spent some time relaxing in Millennium Park, and went to the race expo before a charity dinner and an early night.
Race day was infinitely better than last year! It was still 67 degrees at the start line and got into the mid 80s during the race, but the humidity was much lower, the temperature peaked about 8 degrees lower, and the course had many more fluid stations. I'd been feeling great in the first half of the race and ended up trying for a 3:10 pace. At the halfway mark, I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could for any reasonable duration of the race and I crossed at 1:35:30 chip time. As I didn't think I could reasonably maintain that pace, let alone make up the 30 seconds that I was off of my 3:10 target pace, I dropped back a bit from a 7:15/mile pace to something closer to 7:45. This was the first race where I hit the wall... I ended up just feeling incredibly lethargic from miles 18 to 20, before slowly picking it up again after that. I also had another first after that... cramps in my calves. I stopped several times to stretch, before continuing. In all, I finished in 3:37 -- it's a personal best by seven minutes, but noticeably short of my goal time that I had known was somewhat unrealistic. I have no regrets, though, as I gave it everything, had a great time that weekend, and noticeably improved on my previous times.
That afternoon, Stu, Julie, and I went for burgers before Stu had to leave for his flight back to Seattle. Several hours later, Julie and I met a few other friends at a steakhouse and I ordered a fillet -- definitely something I have not seen readily available here in London. WOW it tasted great!
I met two coworkers, one of whom had run the race as well, for deep dish pizza for lunch on Monday before heading to the airport. The flight back was great -- even though there was a crying baby two rows away, I put in ear plugs, spread out into the seat next to me, and slept for almost the entirety of the flight, before landing at 8am Tuesday, showering, and heading into another (admittedly shortened) workweek.
Friday afternoon was my quick "I'm in the US, buy stuff now!" trip. I found a new suit, a few dress shirts for work and new dress shoes, before going off to meet a friend for sushi. Right about the time I returned from dinner, two of my friends got in from their travels -- Stu from Seattle and Julie from Hoboken. The three of us ended up out for another dinner, as neither of them had eaten yet, and I hadn't seen either of them in months. By the time I finally got to sleep, I was more or less delirious and had been up for just shy of 24 hours.
Saturday was a great, relaxing day... we walked around the city, tried and failed to get on an architecture tour, spent some time relaxing in Millennium Park, and went to the race expo before a charity dinner and an early night.
Race day was infinitely better than last year! It was still 67 degrees at the start line and got into the mid 80s during the race, but the humidity was much lower, the temperature peaked about 8 degrees lower, and the course had many more fluid stations. I'd been feeling great in the first half of the race and ended up trying for a 3:10 pace. At the halfway mark, I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could for any reasonable duration of the race and I crossed at 1:35:30 chip time. As I didn't think I could reasonably maintain that pace, let alone make up the 30 seconds that I was off of my 3:10 target pace, I dropped back a bit from a 7:15/mile pace to something closer to 7:45. This was the first race where I hit the wall... I ended up just feeling incredibly lethargic from miles 18 to 20, before slowly picking it up again after that. I also had another first after that... cramps in my calves. I stopped several times to stretch, before continuing. In all, I finished in 3:37 -- it's a personal best by seven minutes, but noticeably short of my goal time that I had known was somewhat unrealistic. I have no regrets, though, as I gave it everything, had a great time that weekend, and noticeably improved on my previous times.
That afternoon, Stu, Julie, and I went for burgers before Stu had to leave for his flight back to Seattle. Several hours later, Julie and I met a few other friends at a steakhouse and I ordered a fillet -- definitely something I have not seen readily available here in London. WOW it tasted great!
I met two coworkers, one of whom had run the race as well, for deep dish pizza for lunch on Monday before heading to the airport. The flight back was great -- even though there was a crying baby two rows away, I put in ear plugs, spread out into the seat next to me, and slept for almost the entirety of the flight, before landing at 8am Tuesday, showering, and heading into another (admittedly shortened) workweek.
Saturday, 4 October 2008
An update...
It's been two weeks since I posted because, well, I haven't been traveling recently. Here's why...
Last weekend was a quiet, relaxing change. I ran my last long run before the Chicago marathon, by doing two loops around Hyde Park, Green Park, and St. James Park. Doing this run the morning after going out for drinks with work colleagues, running on my own, not in a race atmosphere, I maintained a 3:06 marathon pace and still felt pretty good afterward. After this, the goal of coming in at a sub-3:10 time in Chicago seems slightly less impossible!
The rest of the weekend was somewhat quiet... my flatmate and I went out to dinner at a French restaurant in Angel on Saturday night and actually got to talk and be social for the first time really since I moved in. Although we see each other pretty much daily, we're on somewhat different schedules and don't always end up talking that much -- not out of trying to avoid each other, but just out of timing. This was our first time we'd had a relatively relaxed meal together in the two months I've lived here and it was great to actually start to get to know her after being here for a while already!
This week, I came down with a cold. I generally try to insist that I'm not really sick, take some Sudafed, and get on with life. However, with the marathon coming up, I tried to take it a bit more seriously so it'd be gone before the race. Thursday felt substantially better than the previous two days, so I thougth this might have been my shortest-lived cold ever. Friday morning, though, I woke up feverish and achy. I had to go into work because it was my first day at a new client with a new team, and I couldn't start off by just not being there. By 2:00, though, I was mentally useless and had to head home. I slept for three hours or so, woke up long enough to watch Fargo and have a bowl of soup, and then slept another 11 hours last night. I'm feeling substantially better today, but still am going to force myself to have another quiet weekend, to make sure I'm over this before the race.
So, next weekend, I'm on a Friday morning flight from Heathrow to Chicago, planning to do some shopping on Friday afternoon to pick up some stuff that is substantially cheaper in the States (running shoes, dress shirts, and the like), doing dinner with a coworker on Friday night, prerace stuff with Stu, Andrew, and the Hoboken running club on Saturday, the race Sunday morning, and then likely touristy stuff around Chicago on Monday before taking an overnight flight from O'Hare to Heathrow Monday night and going straight into the office to start another new project on Tuesday morning. We'll see how this actually works out...
Last weekend was a quiet, relaxing change. I ran my last long run before the Chicago marathon, by doing two loops around Hyde Park, Green Park, and St. James Park. Doing this run the morning after going out for drinks with work colleagues, running on my own, not in a race atmosphere, I maintained a 3:06 marathon pace and still felt pretty good afterward. After this, the goal of coming in at a sub-3:10 time in Chicago seems slightly less impossible!
The rest of the weekend was somewhat quiet... my flatmate and I went out to dinner at a French restaurant in Angel on Saturday night and actually got to talk and be social for the first time really since I moved in. Although we see each other pretty much daily, we're on somewhat different schedules and don't always end up talking that much -- not out of trying to avoid each other, but just out of timing. This was our first time we'd had a relatively relaxed meal together in the two months I've lived here and it was great to actually start to get to know her after being here for a while already!
This week, I came down with a cold. I generally try to insist that I'm not really sick, take some Sudafed, and get on with life. However, with the marathon coming up, I tried to take it a bit more seriously so it'd be gone before the race. Thursday felt substantially better than the previous two days, so I thougth this might have been my shortest-lived cold ever. Friday morning, though, I woke up feverish and achy. I had to go into work because it was my first day at a new client with a new team, and I couldn't start off by just not being there. By 2:00, though, I was mentally useless and had to head home. I slept for three hours or so, woke up long enough to watch Fargo and have a bowl of soup, and then slept another 11 hours last night. I'm feeling substantially better today, but still am going to force myself to have another quiet weekend, to make sure I'm over this before the race.
So, next weekend, I'm on a Friday morning flight from Heathrow to Chicago, planning to do some shopping on Friday afternoon to pick up some stuff that is substantially cheaper in the States (running shoes, dress shirts, and the like), doing dinner with a coworker on Friday night, prerace stuff with Stu, Andrew, and the Hoboken running club on Saturday, the race Sunday morning, and then likely touristy stuff around Chicago on Monday before taking an overnight flight from O'Hare to Heathrow Monday night and going straight into the office to start another new project on Tuesday morning. We'll see how this actually works out...
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