Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, my knee was always going to give out on me at some point. I had hoped it would wait until after I had completed my crazy running challenges, but no such luck. On the bright side, I’ve only minorly buggered it. I reckon I’ll be able to survive the Boundary Run marathon and then I’ll take it from there.
Last Friday afternoon saw me write a little webscript for organising the Bake Sale and putting the finishing touches on the Bake Sale poster. I e-mailed out the link for organising cakes and who would be managing the stall and once more got flooded with replies which I totally failed to reply to. I’m eternally grateful to Laura for all her help, I have a feeling that the Bake Sale would be falling apart without her.
I had a miserable Valentine’s Day in the end. I had planned to spend it on a long run; it was a beautiful day to be running. Instead I struggled for my entire run and my knee crapped out on me early on. I tried to keep jogging along and see if I could make up some distance without injuring myself seriously, but in the end I only managed 25 kilometres. My knee would mostly make me miserable for the rest of the week. Instead of feeling awesome about blitzing another long distance run, I ended my day by watching animated movies and surrounded by chocolate to help me forget about my knee.
Monday got swallowed up with supervising 4th year projects here in the Department of Engineering. We’re doing some research on drums with the Cambridge Drum Company. It’s a great project, we’re looking at the role shell material plays in the sound produce by the drum. We have some rather cool close-up images of the shell materials taken by a scanning electron microscope (SEM). It’s nothing to do with raising money for charity, but still good fun.
Wednesday evening was spent having another go at the second draft of my book on hiking the Pyrenees. I actually opened the feedback from my editor this time. There was lots of red pen on it. I felt like I had a bad school report: “Phillip has failed to live up to his potential this year.” The book will be good in the end… honest!
Thursday involved a quick catch up with Ian Jeffs and also Mark from The Pickering Brothers. There may be some cool news there, but I’ll save that news for another day. I also went to see Deadpool in the cinema with the kickboxers. Again nothing to do with StupidWay and raising money for charity, but it helped keep me sane given how my knee was feeling.
Back around to another Friday and this one was spent putting up posters for the Bake Sale and feeling rather guilty for not having replied to anywhere near enough Bake Sale related e-mails. The Bake Sale is going to be held on the 2nd March, so I’m rather glad that it feels like it is taking shape – even if it is taking shape in spite of me rather than because I have any skill in organising these things.
Saturday was meant to be a non-StupidWay related day. I was helping out with the Town vs. Gown Kickboxing event, just doing a bit of coaching, but rather enjoyed myself. I’ve been helping out with Cambridge University Kickboxing Society this year, so was sat firmly on the gown side of things. It was great to see people who I’ve been training with do so well in the ring. There were a couple of people I was particularly pleased to see win, but that was balanced out by the odd loss. There may be some exciting kickboxing related news in the near future with regards to StupidWay, so watch this space.
That evening I went down to watch Claudia and The Braidy Bunch play down at Relevant Records on Mill Road. They’re such an infectiously happy bunch that I can’t help but feel better after hanging out with them. I also caught up with Rob Toulson who is turning out to be the multimedia guru for StupidWay. We’ve bashed out plans for a Charity Album to be released somewhere around late-April or early-May. Everyone I’ve spoken to has been so generous with offers to help with playing at gigs and donating tracks to the album. There are some really great bands in Cambridge and I feel so lucky to have so many of them on board with what I’m trying to do this year.
This morning I helped out with the Sunday Sprints session run by the Cambridge Uni kickboxers. Even though I couldn’t sprint I took part in the warm up jog which was enough to get me past the 200 km mark on my 1000 km in 2016 challenge. It’s another step closer and it was good to survive my first jog since hurting my knee.
These last few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster for me, but it seems that every time I feel a little bit disheartened by how things are going there is a friendly face to drag me back up and push me in the right direction. I’ll admit to having needed those friendly faces this last week. Next week though, I’m going to make up for it by being totally awesome and maniacally productive.