No Eryri Marathon

My plan for the Saturday was to support Marathon Eryri. Quite a lot of my fellow Harriers, including Chris, would run it, and I wanted to cheer them on. 

It was not to be. The day before, news reached me that the race had been cancelled. Storm Boelo was making it too tricky. 

Storm Boelo makes himself known 

Thinking about the race had woken up something in me. Should I try to run another marathon? And if yes, why not this one? It is on the road but beautiful, and nearby. What more would you want?

I had already decided I should register for next year. But with this year’s episode cancelled, all runners are transferred to next year. I suppose that means there will barely be any tickets available for other people. I am sure that not everyone who was going to run it this year still wants to do it next year, but probably the majority does.

Chris was disappointed. I can imagine! He had really been preparing for it. And anticipating. We will have to see how he feels about the race next year.

Maybe I get to support next year. And what about a marathon? There is also one in Chester. Not as close by, and not as beautiful, but still quite doable. I might give it a go! If I just make sure to have a few paracetamol at the start, maybe I can make it happen without problems with my IT bands. But I suppose I should go and run 35 km on the road before I register, to see how it feels! It it goes well I can probably do the remaining 7k on race vibes…

No more dissertation proposals

Finally it is done! For many years, I have encouraged our third year students to design their own dissertation topic. Initially, that didn't have an awful lot of uptake. The first four years I never had more than 11 students managing it. That doesn't mean that there were only 11 who tried; there is always a fair number who try but don't succeed. Then two years ago, there were too many tries, so I started the rule that they can only have three attempts. Sometimes students would have their proposal rejected, change one sentence, and then submit it again. And that was just taking up too much time. With the three-attempts rule they had an incentive to thoroughly incorporate all my comments.

Last year that worked well. This year I was just too popular. I had 41 students giving it a go. Altogether, I received 86 proposals. And I approved 25 proposals in the end.
There were 31 students who submitted the proposal before the last week in which I allowed that. Their approval rate was 77%. Ten more students left it until the last week. For them, the success rate was only 20%. They really are warned that it is not a good idea to leave it to the last minute. But what can you do?
 

I will have to reconsider how I do things. Having a look at 86 proposals for a dissertation is just too much. This year it was extra bad as I had to squeeze it in between everything else including jury duty. It is interesting to do; some student come up with really cool projects. But I am only one person, and there are only 24 hours in a day. There is some time to think about this, but something will have to give...

More than one proposal involved sea birds

 

Tutorial Welsh terminology

In the run-up to my jury duty some new commitments ended up in my timetable. I didn't really have time to think too much about them. It was two Welsh language tutorials in our marine fieldwork module, that I had rarely been involved with before. There were four students on the Welsh version of that module. And it would be our new PhD student James, who is a native speaker, and me, doing these. 

Beforehand I tried to figure out if there was anything in particular we needed to cover. No idea! There was quite some interesting vocabulary in the module information on the module website, but other than that, the site contained very little information. It mainly referred to the English language version. Which I didn’t have access to. 

I hoped maybe James knew more. But when he appeared, it turned out he wasn't quite sure about any particular requirements. We had to improvise! We asked if the students (we had three turn up) had requests. We checked they knew where to find technical terms in Welsh. James realised he had access to an old version of the Welsh language website, opened a lecture, and started going through it. Any terms people didn’t know in Welsh? 

 

He also asked the students to translate a few sentences from it into Welsh. And we answered some questions about the practicalities of doing assessments in Welsh.

I think it went ok! I learned the Welsh terms for things like filtration and suspended sediment and suchlike. And the others realised the Welsh word for relationship (be it personal or statistical) has no plural. The atmosphere was good. Maybe we weren’t perfectly prepared but it may not have mattered…

Sunny Llanddwyn trip

The first day after my two weeks of jury duty would actually be a field trip. This was the second one in the series; Dei and Jaco had done the first one without me while I was in court. Normally, the first trip is Llanddwyn, but there had been some logistic reason why they had gone somewhere else. So now the second trip would go there. And it's a lovely location.

There was a complication; timetabling had put a lecture to all MSc students in my diary, at 9 o'clock on the same day. Normally they won't double-book you, but this time they must have missed something. And they couldn't move it. It is difficult to get all MSc students together! So we reached a compromise: Dei would pick up the students on his own, and start without me. Straight after my lecture I would jump into my car and follow. I figured he wouldn't manage to get past the pillow lavas (the first outcrop) before I would appear.

It went as predicted. After my lecture I hot-tailed it to Newborough, parked up, and started walking. Once I got to the beach I could see a group of people in the distance, with one of them in a hi viz jacket. That must be them! They were indeed walking between clumps of pillow lava. And I caught up with them when they had only just started to look at one of them in detail.

Pillow lavas on the beach

Dei dealt with the pillow lavas and the nearby peperite.  Then we went to see some sedimentary rocks that had seen quite some stress; I dealt with these. We had lunch on the next beach along, where there were more heavily  altered rocks. I talked about a clump of limestone, and then we went to the pièce de résistance at the far end of the island: the type location for mélange. That is a spectacular site. 

Then we were done. And in the gorgeous weather, we walked back to the vehicles. Trip done! And it had been very pleasant. We had been lucky! 

Abergele 10k

I was a bit tired after the 5k! And I looked forward to a leisurely 10k. I wasn't going to be ambitious about this one, but, of course, I did hope for a category win. And the sun was a lot higher in the sky, which made it a lot less cold, but I was still a bit shivery by the start. A lady in a pink vest was next to me and was also cold. Richie was starting somewhere in front of me, as well as Anna, who I thought would win. Sion and Katie, Cybies like Richie, were also running, but I wasn't sure where they were. 

We started and I took it easy. That turned out to suit the lady in the pink vest totally fine! We ended up running together all the way to the turning around point. Before we got there I saw that Anna was indeed in the lead. She is like lightning! Richie and Sion and Katie were all in front of me.

Knowing that I was halfway there made me speed up a little bit. I only had to run back! And that made me overtake Katie and Sion. I managed to overtake a few more people. I like that even after a fast 5k, I can do that. Close to the finish line I started overtaking a lady in black, but she was not having that. She accelerated away. Then I finished a bit behind her. I managed to cross the line at exactly 45 minutes. Not a fast time for me, but still faster than the Felinheli 10k! Then I found Richie already having a sip of water. He had beaten me again, and it was about time.

Looking more relaxed coming over the finish this time

I stayed to cheer Katie and Sion on. Then it was time to go and get something to drink again. I also picked up my jumper. And then I went to ask how I had done. I had indeed managed another category win! By some four minutes. I was proud of that.

I hung out with the Cybies until the presentation. Anna had indeed won! With the Second Lady also having come second in the 5k. Impressive! And Steffan had a category win (he had come 4th by only a few seconds!). And I had been the second fastest woman to run both. And when the presentation was over, it was time to go home. I had enjoyed that! But I now was tired and looking forward to lunch and a shower. Maybe next year again!

Hanging out with running friends (Katie far right)

 

Getting my second category win

Abergele 5k

Last year I had noticed there is such a thing as the Abergele double: a 5k and a 10k in close succession. I hadn’t registered then, maybe because I was busy, or felt guilty about racing so much and not seeing Neil so much. But this year I figured I should go for it. When do you get the chance to do two races on one morning? 

I also hoped that a cool morning 5k would be just what I would need for a PB. I was still on a mission to break as many of my PBs as I could. I had managed the 10 miles and the half marathon. The 5 mile and the 10k would be difficult as I had already done these very fast, but I thought I should be able to improve on my 5k. That was my anomalously slow PB, set at 4:18/km pace. My 10k PB was done at 4:15 pace...

I wanted to be there quite early so I could do a good warm-up, so after breakfast I headed straight for Abergele. I parked right by race HQ. I got my number, did a stretch, drank some and went for that warm-up. It was cold! And I was wearing my new belt. I love it! 

Pre-warmup chat with Sion

 

The photographer (who later said he struggled to imagine a Run Wales race without me) caught me warming up. Notice the belt!

There weren’t many Eryri Harriers. I saw Gruff, the 17-year-old lad, and a guy called John I didn’t know yet. Gruff’s dad took a club pic. Then Iolo, one of the WCR runners, suddenly appeared. Too late for the pic! We would almost start. 

Gruff, me and John. Pic by Jason

I wanted to run 4:19 outward and 4:16 back. But I was feeling good! Most of the time I was going considerably faster than that. I got to the turnaround point without issues, and then managed to run less than 4:10 on the way back. That PB was in the bag! I crossed the line in 20:35. My old PB had been 21:29. Success! My average pace had been 4:07. And I had a category win. By some five and a half minutes. 

Near the start

About to finish

 

I went to drink something, and chatted with fellow runners, and then attended the presentation. The bloke who had won it had also won the Bangor 10k. He is from the University athletics club. Iolo had come 10th, which is amazing, but he hadn't won anything. Gruff, John and I all had category wins! A good race for Eryri. And I, as the only one out of us four, could look forward to another one, an hour and ten minutes after finishing the first race of the day! 

Loot! Pic by Jason

Getting a gardener to visit

 

I have been trying to find a gardener for years! Without success. But then I marshalled in the Moel Siabod race, and met a gardener. She wasn't available to do anything with my garden, but she knew someone who might be. This person, Ruth, turned out to also be quite busy, and it was a bit difficult to pin her down. But at some point I got her to suggest a few dates, and one of them was at 17:30 on the last day of the period of my jury duty. And the court ends at about 16:30. I could make that!

In the end I ended up released from my duties the day before, so I was in work. And I had a meeting until 16:30, which made it a bit tight, but possible. I just made sure I could go home straight after the meeting, and I didn't hang around. Something went quite wrong with my bicycle along the way, but fortunately, I was only about 100 m from home by then. So I made it!

I just had time to feed the cat and then I heard a knock on the door. It was Ruth, with a colleague. I recognised her; she had been involved in a project to make our little Ocean Sciences campus look better, with big planters. Our workshop technician can build planters like the best of them, but for the next step, a gardener is more suitable. And I showed them my entire garden, and specifically the problematic raised beds.

They are now going to come up with a planting schedule. I look forward to that! And closer to the time I will have to decide whether I'm going to see if I can pay them to implement it, or whether I want to do it myself. They still sound quite busy, but they do say they are part of a larger community of gardeners, and could probably find someone else to do it if they can’t. 

I am excited. I hope this was the first step in the direction of  really making my garden look better. If you leave it to me unaided, it is never going to look really good. Or fairly good. My sister once had a good walk around, and she did give a lot of useful tips, but I found them difficult to implement. Someone who actually makes a schedule of what plant to put exactly where is something I can work with better. Let someone else do the thinking. I might do the digging!

One of my problem beds (not the worst)