Consistency is the key.

I’ve not had much to write about since returning from my business trip to Europe. My focus has been catching up with the family and helping to get life back to normal. It was a big strain for my wife to manage the kids school and training. Especially when training involves a 250k round trip three times a week. What hasn’t helped is the fallout from our disagreement with the swim club so emotions are running high at the moment. Unfortunately even after all these years as a husband and father I still managed to be less than optimal at times and made a couple of wrong choices, for which I am trying to redeem myself.

I am fortunate to have a wonderful wife, who still hasn’t killed me and allows me to run occasionally as she does see the value to me and the family.

Unfortunately I’ve not been able to get out as often as I’d like and it shows. Today I did a 5k while two of the children were training. It hurt! Some days the best thing about a run is stopping. I couldn’t find a pace or rhythm and everything hurt. Not cool. I can only put it down to inconsistent training. As we get to the last week of school I’m hoping we can all relax and recover and with the pressure off I can get a bit more time on my feet.

One plus is that I have supported the kids and the surf club by being an official at the recent surf carnival and there’s another one tomorrow. This is always good. It’s a long day on the beach with no breaks, but great to watch all the kids out on the beach and surf, working hard and having fun.

A nice little segue on the subject of consistency is the other thing I’m working on. For no other reason than I think it’s a good idea (I did run it past my boss first to be sure though)I’m currently promoting a health and wellbeing month for the company I work for. On another blog the author mentioned RED January. This is a UK based movement promote mental health benefits from daily exercise. RED equals run every day.

As my office is fairly sedentary I think this is a great idea. Over the last three days I’ve run a teaser campaign over email, with “what is Red?” “Are you ready for red?” This has got people’s interest and a number have come and contacted me wondering what I’m doing. Some curious, some concerned that I’m going to turn January into a boot camp. I’ve got 20 people signed up already just from the teaser.

What I’m trying to do is get my coworkers to do some type of exercise every day in January. There’s no competition, no league table, no interdepartmental challenge and no prizes. Just each person making a small active change every day. My role is to motivate, encourage, and be the conscious of the company to achieve RED in January

I’ve got stuff planned for the office. I’m going to invite everyone to join me for an 11:30 morning plank. Along with the 2:30 stretch, where I’ve 22 days of office/desk based exercises that I’ll encourage the team to do. I’ve some other stuff as well that I’m still trying to work out how to fit in.

I’m pretty excited and confident that there will be a good uptake and we’ll have some healthy fun in January. I’m looking forward to sharing.

My learnings this month, try not to screw up when your wife is stressed, consistency in training is vital and RED January is coming.

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Running up that hill… in Kraherwald

I’m sitting at Munich airport with about 90 minutes to wait to board to start the long trip back to QLD.  I feel it’s only fitting that I write up my last bit of German running while sat at a German airport.

After my adventures in Hamburg I drove carefully back to the airport to head South to Munich.  This was followed by an hours drive to Augsburg, my last stop.

The tasks I needed to carry out in Hamburg went extremely well by the way.

Anyway I drove to Augsburg without incident and checked into the hotel.  Rather fed up at this stage with driving, travelling and wandering around trying to find a decent place to eat, the furthest I went in Augsburg was less than 1k, having found a restaurant called Berghof to eat in (every night Friday to Sunday) and Macca’s.

I didn’t explore Augsburg.  Though it’s a place with plenty of history I was all done on tourist stuff at this stage, so I pretty much stayed in my hotel room and worked.  How dull!

When I was planning my trip I’d planned to do two German parkruns.  The one in Osnabruck that I’ve already written about and the second was to be in Nuremberg.  Given the less than comfortable driving experiences I’d already had I was bit uncertain that a 3 hour drive across Germany was really a good idea.  So I went back to the parkrun website to consider my next move.

I have no idea why I hadn’t noticed it before, but on closer inspection I saw there was a parkrun in Stuttgart.  Only 2 hours away!  And better still this is where my friend Berti lives.

I met Berti in 2010 in Ludwigsburg when he worked for the company that was designing the brand new brewery that I was to be the first brewing and quality manager of.  We’ve been friends ever since.  I’d already seen him once this year (after 8 year of not seeing him) when I was in Ludwigsburg talking to the same company about another new brewery that I am on a project to develop.

Brilliant!  I get to run and see my friend!  That’s the plan.

Another early start at just after 6am to get me to Stuttgart to the Kraherwald parkrun.  I let them know I was coming earlier in the week to be sure the SatNav directions were kosher.  All was good and I arrived without incident (which is always a relief).

As I was a bit early I had a mooch about before bumping into Andy, who was about to set up.   So I had a chat and helped a little with the set up.

What I’ve noticed so far with my three runs in Germany is that they’re set up by English or Irish expats or Germans that have lived or studied in the UK and got the parkrun bug.  Whatever the reason I and many other are very grateful for them and the volunteers that make parkrun happen.

When I was looking at the runs in the vicinity of Augsburg I looked at the courses.  Nuremburg is a suburban run around the lake and Kraherwald is a run through the woods.  I’d rather run the woods any day and I’m really glad I changed my plans.

This run starts at the top of a hill and takes you down into the woods, up another hill and follows a two lap course that finishes each lap with a cheeky hill.  It’s a really nice course, challenging but reasonably quick considering the terrain.  Course record is 16 minutes apparently.

I lined up with the 40 or so runners and had a chat with a few expats. There was a lovely UK couple recently moved from Singapore to Stuttgart who were telling me about the Singapore and Malaysia parkruns.  Prerun brief in German and English by Sue, the day’s Race Director and then we were off.  There were a good number of volunteers as well.

I set Zombies, Run on a supply mission and started off, reasonably quickly as it turns out.  Once again I don’t know what comes over me, and I went off as best I could.  First lap was pretty comfortable overtaking a number of folk and trying to keep a decent close distance to a chap who came past me around the 1500m mark.

Hills!  I’m not used to hills.  Wasn’t going to let them stop me and pushed on overtaking another couple of folk as my consistent pace kept plugging me through. At the top of the hill at the end of the first lap I started to feel the beginnings of the dreaded asthma.  This time though I’d left the inhaler at the finish and would have to go on without it.  Second lap was pretty steady until I heard “warning Zombies!” and put on a burst of speed for the next 200m to get me well ahead.

A drop in speed back to normal ish pace and I carried on.  At this stage I’m beginning to sound like a broken bellows wheezing with every pace.  I looked at my Garmin and for a hill course, after 2 hours of driving and no breakfast I was doing pretty well, so I’m not going to slow down,  As I rounded the final bend before the hill I could see the chap in front and two ladies who’d been ahead from the start.

Head down I pushed on and caught one of the ladies but couldn’t quite catch the chap and I came over the line about to cough up a lung.  I came in 17th, first in my age group and with a time of 25:30.  Nothing wrong with that.

I must be getting fitter as after a couple of minutes all asthma had gone and I hadn’t used the inhaler. That’s a good thing.  I spent the next short while chatting to folk before going for a walk to take some photo’s of the course before meeting up with Berti.

This Sue, RD for the day.  It’s a really nice run, supported by some fabulous volunteers and I would really recommend it if you’re in the region.  Some course pics below

After the run I caught up with Berti and had a really great morning chatting over breakfast.

Driving back was the next challenge.  On the way to Stuttgart I’d notice roadworks on the opposite carriageway. What I hadn’t realized that this was a 5k tailback and a whole section of road closed with a massive detour.  Long story short it took 4 hours to get back.

Overall 6 hours of driving for a 25 minute run!  Well worth it in my book.

Parkrun, it’s a running thing.

Happy Running Everyone!

Northern (Germany) Exposure

Monday morning and all is well.  Suitcase packed, large breakfast consumed, check out of Hamburg hotel, all good.  Successfully extract monster Skoda from underground car park without leaving paint on the walls.  It’s going to be a good day!

Having left relatively early the traffic was just beginning to build up on the way out of Hamburg and the roads were narrowing because of road works, but I was feeling pretty good and thinking “I’m going to get this car back in one piece, no worries”.

Over confidence, that’s a problem.  As no sooner had I thought all was good, then, boom!  I’m not sure what I did?  Did I hit a pothole, hit the curb, hit a roadworks sign, I have no idea?

What I was sure of was that I’d done the front right tyre and I needed to get somewhere safe to change it.  I turned right down a side street and into the first clear space I could find to asses the damage.  The tyre was done for!

I have no idea why, but cars don’t seem to carry spares anymore.  All I had was tyre sealant and a compressor.  I could’ve had that tyre off, a new one on and been on my way in a matter of minutes. Trying to decipher the pictographs on the instructions took a little longer as I wanted to be sure of getting it right.

While I’m doing this I find out why this space I’m in was so convenient.  It’s an entry way for the garage of an apartment block and I’m preventing a decorator from getting in to work.  He doesn’t speak English, I don’t speak German, you can guess we didn’t get very far.  Fortunately the lady he was working for did speak English and with a bit of maneuvering I limped backwards and positioned myself in a spot of less inconvenience while I tried the sealant and compressor.   Which was totally unsuccessful!

If it had worked I doubt it would’ve survived the trip up the motorway to my destination.  So I called Avis and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited for 4 hours!

While I was waiting I had a few spirited conversations with people bellowing at me to move my car, which I could not and that there was in fact sufficient space for them to go past.  I sat and read a book.

When the tow truck did arrive it took 5 minutes to clear me from the area and get to a tyre place.  Who were not expecting me.  Again me no German, they no English, so resulted in passing the phone with Avis on the line to get it all sorted.  One hour later I’m back on the road and turn up at my destination over 5 hours late.

Work went well, which was a relief.  Then I had a 20 minute drive from work to my hotel through dark twisty narrow back roads. That was a bit tense.  Hotel was nice though.

The rest of the week was work, work, work.  However I did manage to get two early morning runs in on Wednesday and Thursday.  It was dark and it was misty and as I had no idea of where I would be going I had head torch and red light on my cap.  Got to be safe.

I do like running in places I don’t know, especially in semi rural areas.  It’s great to leave a hotel and strike out in a direction with a plan to turn back at a set distance.  Invariably there’s a few twists and turns as a promising route either works or doesn’t.  I do like the added excitement of putting on a Zombies, Run mission complete with Zombie chases.  These are great as you never know when they’ll turn up and at what stage of the run you’ll be at and if you’ll end up in a dead end in the dark.  Top fun!

My two runs looked like this.

Both excellent stories and great fun to run.

Apart from work and running there were other positive and negative events during my stay here.  I was invited to dinner by the wife of my business contact, I’m only the second (non family) person through their front door ever.  Apparently the only other person he has had to dinner is a chap from Korea who he has known for 20 years. He’s not had his boss round his house.  So I felt very privileged indeed and had a wonderful evening.

The next night I struck out on my own to dine and made my way to the Bakehouse that was highly recommended.   In a rookie error I forgot to confirm if they took credit cards before ordering and had an amazing meal before it was realized that I had no means to pay.

It’s 2018, who doesn’t take credit cards? Apart from German Taxi drivers, Albert Heinz supermarkets and car parks in Holland?

The waiter was very trusting and was prepared for me to come back with cash in the morning.  As I was walking back to my hotel I texted my colleague who came round in a hurry with his wife to bail me out.  We shared another beer and had another enjoyable evening.  Lesson learned – always have some cash in Europe.  I paid him back in the morning.

I have to say it from a business perspective it was a really productive week, we got a lot done and learned a lot.

From a personal perspective, the tyre was a drama and driving a stress, the hotel and the runs were good though.  More importantly the relationships developed over the course of the week were excellent and are now golden and I’m really pleased about that.

On the Friday I left to get the car back to Hamburg airport.  It’s always fun when the sat nav wants to take you to just not quite where you want to drop the car off and the signs for rental returns simply disappear at the moment you need them most.  However the return went without a hitch and I prepared for the flight to my final destination Munich and another hire car to get me to Augsburg, where I now sit.  More of that later though.

Happy Running Everyone!

What to do while waiting for a hotel room? Run of course.

After breakfast at the Rubbenbruchasee cafe I got back in the a car for the remainder of the drive across Germany to Hamburg.  Having not been here before I was looking forward to the weekend’s stay before moving on.  Fortunately the drive was uneventful.  It did get a bit more tense the closer I got to the hotel as traffic increased and the roads got narrower.  I did successfully navigate to the hotel underground car park (I’ve had a few scrapes in these in the past) and went to check in.  Unfortunately I’d arrived too early and no rooms were ready.

In the past I would’ve headed to the bar to wait and started early.  Those days are long gone.  Not that I am or have been an alcoholic.  It’s just as a professional brewer throughout my career, beer has been an integral part of my day for over 25 years.  In my previous companies it was accepted practice that having a beer at anytime when “off duty” was what you did, especially when on business trips.  Now I don’t make beer anymore, I’m a brewer of soft drinks, I don’t drink very much.  I’ll have a beer or a wine with dinner and that’s about it.  To be honest I don’t miss it and I feel so much better for it.

The hotel is located very close to the lakes, which was handy.  As I was still in my running gear, the day was nice and sunny, what else was there to do but go for a run.  I set the Zombies, Run ap to the 10k virtual race and off I went.

The area around the lakes was packed with walkers, joggers, bikes, dogs, prams and there was a rowing regatta taking place.  So running at a set pace in straight line was out of the question.  With no real idea of where I was going, of course I didn’t look at the map before heading out, I just started moving.  And it was great!

My course was a bit erratic and I wasn’t too bothered about time, I was just enjoying myself.  Until around the 8k mark when I realized that this 10k was a lot faster than it felt and I was on for a really good time.  So with that in mind I put on a bit of a burst to see what I could achieve.

Once again my awesome sense of direction pulled the wind from my sails as I took a wrong turn straight into the road where the rowing teams were loading their boats back onto trailers and had to stop for a moment.  Once past this embuggerance I belted for the last 1k to see what would be the result.

At the end of the VR I came in at 57:14.  Two minutes faster than my Australian and Dutch times.  Pretty good for someone who’d been up since 4am, traveled nearly 600k’s and done a parkrun in between.  Feeling extremely pleased with myself I headed back to the hotel.

Having never been to Hamburg before I also wanted to do some exploring.  The Reeperbahn is where the Beetles played early in their career so I thought I’d check that out.  Only a 3.5k walk from my hotel, which is what I did.

Can’t say I’m too impressed with the Reeperbahn.  It’s a bit of a tourist mecca of clubs, bars, sex shops, brothels and the like.  I suppose if I was on holiday with mates I would have looked on it with a different frame of reference.  But as I was on business, on my own, and don’t drink much, it just looked a bit seedy and sad.  So I walked back to the hotel to find dinner.

On the plus side the walk took me past a massive open air ice skating rink with a live band playing.  This place was packed with folk enjoying themselves, so that was a bit more uplifting.  It was a big day on my feet with 39k steps covered as well.

On Sunday what else is there to do before breakfast but run?  At Rubbenbruchasee my VR 5k hadn’t recorded properly as the course was a bit short for it.  I wanted to get a German 5k time on the board so I set out again to do the VR.  One of the ZR Facebook members had told me that you can go completely around the lake so that was my intention.

It’s a much different run early in the morning.  It was quite chilly, misty and not many folk around.  A very easy run with no issues and the track around the lake is easy underfoot.  Turns out the distance is around 7.5k’s which makes it a good run as well.

As I’d had a big day on Saturday I was quite happy with my 5K VR time of 27:22.  More importantly I’d done the 5 and 10k virtual races in four different countries, over 4 different terrains and temperatures and recorded some reasonable times.  My UK times are the slowest as it was the coldest I’d been for a long time, running in temps close to zero, jetlagged and my parents live at the top of a hill.  Next time I’m there I’ll be prepared.  From the Zombies, Run results board my times look like this.

Once I was back to the hotel, it was breakfast and work for the rest of the day and packing ready to change hotels about 30 minutes North to start some practical trials on Monday.  Writing about work, also means I better do some.  No rest for the wicked, spreadsheets and trial reports await.

Happy Running Everyone!

Oh, I do like to be beside the Rubbenbruchsee (side)!

The next stop on my European business trip was North of Hamburg.  I really tried to find a way to fly there, but getting into Europe seems to be a lot simpler than getting across Europe, so I had to drive.  Fortunately on the way from Breda in Holland to Hamburg in Germany is the little town of Osnabruck who have their own parkrun at Rubbenbruchsee.

Perfect! Only a two and a half to three hour drive.  Just the thing to break up the total five or so hour drive to Hamburg,  This may seem a long way to go, but seeing as where we live in Australia it is a minimum of a 4 hour drive to a major city this is not a big deal in terms of time or distance.

It is a big deal when you leave the hotel at 5am in the dark and fog to be sure to get there on time.  It’s been a few months since I had driven this type of distance in Europe and I had a barge of a Skoda Superb to do it in.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice car, however it’s huge!  I’m used to driving a small car on big open roads.  It was a challenge to get comfortable with this beast on the inner city roads of Holland.  And it was a manual.  Not normally a problem when I’m not changing gear with the wrong hand, which led to a couple of grinds of gears and unfortunate stalls in places.

Once on the highway this monster of a car came into it’s own and chewed up the k’s.  Ever so concerning though was when I crossed into Germany and hit the unlimited speed sections.  Suddenly doing 200kph was not fast enough!  People were still overtaking!

Somewhat relieved I arrived safely at the Rubbenbruchsee Cafe which is the start of the run.  It’s a lovely cafe, really good food and service, which I found out quite quickly,  In need of a convenience I popped inside and asked politely if I could use the facilities and could I get a cup of tea.  It was yes to the first count and a maybe to the second, as they didn’t actually open until 9am.  When I explained where I’d come from and why, there was no problem on the tea and a full understanding that I’d be back after the run to eat and settle up.

Once the tea was drunk I went outside to wait for the setup.  I’d contacted the Race Director via Facebook to let them know I was coming and check the location.  When I went to Frankfurt’s Nidda parkrun, the GPS refused to take me where I wanted to be, so I find it worth checking with the host.  Carla confirmed what the website said and she was right, it was all correct.

The run is a single lap around the lake and it looks quite lovely from the cafe.  It was a bit misty and only a couple of degrees above zero.  It was in fact bloody cold!

Before I left Australia I convinced myself I would be a good parkrun tourist and just enjoy the run and savor the experience.  I had planned to take it easy and take some pictures while running.  This didn’t quite go to plan.

Here’s one I took at the start and one running.  It kinda stopped after that.

The pre-run briefing was delivered by Carla (on the left) to the 14 hardy runners that were there, did I mention it was cold?  Also included in the line up was a young lady from Spain doing her first parkrun.

Briefing done we set off at 9am on the single lap of the course.  As I mentioned my original intent was to take it steady, take a few pictures and enjoy the moment.

The reality,  “SUICIDE SPEED”, as fast as I can possibly go before my asthma says stop or die.

I don’t know what gets into me but I just want to get the best time possible.  Fortunately the course is super flat and I plodded away overtaking the few in front of me.

Surprisingly the cold air kept my asthma somewhat at bay.  Though I was wheezing like a pair of ancient bellows but still able to chase down the runners in front of me.

As I was still in the Zombies, Run Virtual Race and wanting to get that first German run on the leader board I had that tracking my performance as well as my Garmin on the go.

Feeling pretty good I rounded the last corner having overtaken the young lady from Spain,who’d been ahead of me from the start, and could see the finish funnel.  Then it all went a bit wrong.

In the parkruns I’ve done so far my Garmin and ZR app have indicated a run distance of nearly bang on 5k’s for the places I’ve been.  In this run I looked down and saw 4.77 on the Garmin and a similar distance on the app.  Worse still I was at a point on the VR that I knew still had 0.5k to go.  So I panicked!  Thinking I’d missed a corner I sprinted past the finish to add another 200m on to my run.  What a mistake!

By the time I’d turned around the three people I’d passed had finished and I’d come in 5th with a time of 24:15. If I’d headed straight for the finish I’d have come in around 23:30 and second overall.  Which would’ve been my best parkrun performance ever.

Lesson learned ignore the technology and head straight for the finish.

However 24:15 is my fastest parkrun for the year.  I’d got up super early, had no breakfast, driven for hours and it was really cold, so I’m not complaining.

It’s a lovely course, from what I recall, (should’ve slowed and taken some pics) and run by some excellent volunteers.  My fellow runners were also quite awesome.  I really enjoyed it and it was worth getting up at 4am to be here.  And I get to have this picture, which I think is cool.

After the run we headed to the cafe.  Breakfast was great and I settled my tea tab before heading off to Hamburg.

If you’re in Osnabruck or even in the area (multiple hours drive counts as in the area) go and do the Rubbenbruchasee parkrun.  I’m confident you’ll enjoy it.

Happy Running Everyone!

If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium?

Actually it’s not, it was Wednesday and it was Breda in Holland.

The business trip took me from my original home town across to Amsterdam and a two hour drive south, via another company to talk tech, to Breda. I didn’t know that Breda has over 1000 years of recorded history, was once the home of Dutch royalty and was instrumental in the Dutch Spanish 80 years war. So it’s a place of some significance and quite lovely too.

My three days in Breda were packed with work stuff, fortunately (lol), I struggle to get over jet lag and found myself wide awake on Thursday morning at 4am. Ummm? What to do? Obviously go for a run.

Breda is ringed by a river, so quite obviously if I run next to the river, I’ll get back to where I started. Simple really. Unfortunately the river doesn’t quite go all the way round and I got a little mislaid in places. The great thing was it is lovely and flat and a great run. Intent on getting another country flag on the Zombies, Run Virtual Race board I did the VR story again. I really enjoy running somewhere I don’t know and getting into a good ZR mission, it adds a whole new dimension to it.

My first early morning Dutch run a tidy 6.3k in 36 minutes. Quite happy with this and a Dutch flag against my name on the leader board.

My business contact took me out for dinner that evening and informed me that Breda is a bit of a party town and the weekend starts Thursday night. Looking at the bar we were in and then the restaurant I could see what he meant. A couple of beers and I was feeling it too. The middle Beer is Breda Brewed and the name is slang for Hey, Boy! The bar was pretty cool, my contact first went there in 1979 and it’s his favourite watering hole. I thought it was pretty sound myself and could see the attraction.

Once again Friday morning and 4am, wide awake. Time for a 10k, twice around the city this time. Having done it once I was fairly confident of no unplanned detours, so into the wet lamp lit streets I went.

What I hadn’t planned for was the amount of late night revellers heading home. I dodged vomit, broken glass, discarded food and a far amount of good natured ribbing and disbelief as people took in the fact there was an old duffer pounding their streets in the wee small hours. I received applause, high 5’s and a few trying to keep up, but at no time did I feel concerned or threatened. All in all it made me smile and happy that I’d given and received some early morning amusement.

The most surprising thing was that with all this dodging and weaving I was moving quite quick and had I realised I would’ve beaten my Australian 10k time. Not a problem, some runs are more about enjoyment than time and this was one of them.

I really enjoyed my short time in Breda. Apparently they have a running festival in October which I just missed. I’m hoping the company takes my recommendations and buys the equipment and I come back again for factory acceptance testing and can run Breda some more.

Friday was an early night to prepare to drive for three hours into Germany to make it to parkrun, a subject for the next blog.

Happy Running Everyone

Taking Care of Business

In a previous part of my career I spent a lot of time away from home in West and East Africa. Being a keen and well motivated employee I figured that by working hard and going the extra mile my effort would be noticed and rewarded. As a result I’d fly at weekends, get straight off the plane and into work at both ends and spend my time between hotel and brewery for the duration of the trip. This would drive my wife insane as she, sensible woman that she is, could see that I was missing time off and getting no benefits from my efforts.

Eventually I noticed, much to my wife’s relief, that the members of my team, were not flying on weekends and were taking days in lieu to compensate for their lost family time. Then I realised it was time to make business travel work for me as well. Since that epiphany that’s what I’ve done and managed to see the pyramids, go on safari, visit the Harley Davidson museum, Robben Island and Rourkes Drift, all because my company has sent me in that direction.

This current trip has me away for three weeks. England, Holland and Germany to see partner companies and view potential new equipment. So far a really enjoyable, but hard working trip. I’m writing this in Hamburg airport before I fly to my last stop outside Munich, where I am for the next four days before back to Australia.

When I planned this trip my first thought was where can I run and how can I get there? The UK was comparatively easy. I stayed in Buckinghamshire with my parents and did the Tring parkrun with my friend. I was also able to get two runs through my home town, something I’d never done before in my life. So in a short trip I had an enjoyable stay with my parents (and continued to improve what was a poor relationship) I met my three cousins for the first time (triplets, all girls and they’re awesome) and three new runs.

I was able to do the two Zombies, Run virtual races, giving me two more slots on the board. So I have two Australian times and two UK times.

Above is one my runs through the hometown and below is the Tring parkrun

I also got my business trips in as planned, wrote up the details and made the team happy. My work in England now complete. The next phase of the journey a quick flight to Amsterdam. As we’re boarding shortly, that’s a subject for the next blog post.

By the way my efforts weren’t rewarded and after six months away managing the brewing operations in Benin City Nigeria I came home to be made redundant. While I was away we had a new HOD. As he didn’t know me or know what I was capable of and as I was in a role and performing above my grade it was cheaper to give me the flick than promote me. But there you are, that’s business unfortunately, a valuable lesson learned though.

Happy Running everyone!