A late weekend addition

I have just had the weekend of a lifetime I reckon. It all started on 'Thirst Thursday' when I managed to cycle into work, had a lunchtime spin with Ali Glendinning for about 80mins and then I cycled home again in the evening, totalling 3.5hours in the saddle RAAM stylie too. By that I mean intervals of approximately one hour of riding followed by some rest, repeated 3 times.  Rachel's parents came up to LincolnSHIRE to visit the Christmas market and  we all headed out to the pub for a drink and then I walked home with the kids who were having great fun playing with torches in the woods.  I have to confess to having 2 beers that evening and a glass of vino tinto when I got home. By that stage I had been without alcohol (I am Peter and I am not an alcoholic by the way!!) for over a week, and I had stayed away from refined sugars and sweets too. That left me 3 kilos lighter, and I was eating as much as I could eat without the usual cravings caused by peaks and troughs of sugar consumption. I had also cycled 10hrs from Monday morning, I had swum for one hour, and I had been to the gym to do some strength and conditioning work 3 times. So all told I had trained for 15hours which was fantastic.  The effects of the beer and wine kicked in almost immediately and I have to confess to feeling a little tipsy about an hour after getting home from the pub.  We all had a lovely dinner of spicy chilli and rice, great for protein and carbohydrate recovery at the same time.  That was all topped off as Father Ted's Mrs Doyle would say "with a wee cuppa tea".

 

            I cycled into work first thing on Fri morning on a pretty cold day. It was sunny for the first time in weeks and the view of the rising sun across the Lincolnshire Fields simply made the start of the day magnificent. I took some video footage whilst cycling, a little dodgy I have to admit as the phone camera was not secured to anything, so the slightest bump and it could have been tumbling and smashing its way down the road. In the interests of Health and Safety, I ensured that I only did this on a very quiet country road when there was no traffic or pedestrians around!!  The cycle to and from work is great 'head space' time for me. I relish in the opportunity to think through my day, work out what went well and what could be better. I think about the relationships with people I have met in the day and reflect as to whether I feel I have done enough to make that person feel like I have done what I could for them, and/or I have been a good listener for them. 

 

Fri afternoon was just hectic. I had to make a decision on a job offer that I had been sitting on for some time, thanks to the organisation that shall remain nameless. I had gone for an interview way back in September in Edinburgh with an organisation that is nationally responsible for the development and delivery of a sport. It had been my first interview that I had had since joining the RAF. Typically we tend to get 'posted' to jobs in the Services, without so much as a job interview, based on what our typical career profile might need at the time. So that whole experience of reading up on the job and the organisation, thinking about why I anted the job, what I could bring to the party, what value I could add etc was a great experience for me and a kindly reminder that I would soon be entering the 'normal' world of corporate life where you have to work for a living as we say in the RAF. There is a commonly held misconception in the RAF that life outside is 'harder', I think it is due to the fact that we do not have to go out and win business in the Services, thanks to people starting wars around the world, our business tends to be created for us out of the chaos of the world in which we live.