More running after blood donation

Since I became a proper running nerd, I have been very conscious of the effects of blood donation. For two weeks afterwards, I just can’t get up hills. I still go, though; blood donations save lives and running up hills tends not to. 

This February I had a Monday morning session booked. I came in, did the questionnaire and all that, and soon was called into the booth where they check your iron levels. They start with a finger prick. When the lady measured my iron level she said it was a bit low. There were two things they could do now: one was to send me home, and the other one was to take some blood from my arm to do a more precise measurement. Maybe I was still above the threshold!

I won't lie; part of me hoped I would just be below it. Then I could keep all my blood. And that would definitely yield a better result in the upcoming race! But as I said; blood donations save lives. Running races does not. So they took blood from my arm, and lo and behold, I was just above the threshold. They could take a donation.

In a way, that was quite a bad outcome. If they are going to take blood anyway, it's better if your initial iron levels are very high. I figured I would be extra lethargic after losing half a litre from such a weak  starting point. But let's have it!

When they stuck the needle into my arm, the blood wasn't flowing as it normally is. I tend to be done in five minutes. This time they struggled to get a full donation out of me in 15 minutes. But they just made it.

The next day was track training. I told the people in my group I was going to be a bit slower than the previous week, for reasons of the blood donation. The week before I had gone for 4:20 per km; now I would aim for 4:25. For people who don't do track running; this seems so trivial, but believe me: there is a noticeable difference. People were okay with that. Many of them! When I started pacing on the track I tended to have four or five people behind me. This time I had line behind me that was at least 100 m long. Crazy!

The track session actually went perfectly fine. That was nice. But of course there are no hills on the track. The proof of the pudding would be the Thursday Night Hill session.

When I have donated blood I make sure to not run first part of the route, which is in a way a warming up, on the flat. I headed straight for the hill. This is an accepted practice; that first leg is never done by everybody. And when I got to the top of the first hill, I started making my way down before the main group did. And then from the second hill, I just did what everybody else did. And it went fine! Strava said afterwards that I had even done two of the sections unusually fast. These were not the big hills, though. But it was a good sign nonetheless!

At the top of the first hill

I don't know how this all works. How can I be so unaffected by a blood donation if my initial iron levels were so rubbish? I have no idea! But I'm not complaining. I might not even do too badly in the upcoming race, less than a week after donation!

Lots of academic integrity meetings

Well! As I write this I have done the last meeting about academic integrity with students in my diary. I had 16 of them this calendar year so far. That’s a lot! And I’m sure it’s not over yet; people are still marking, so new cases may still come in. But at least I have now dealt with everything that has been raised with me so far. 

It’s a bit bleak; only one student was totally exonerated. Two got a warning. Two got a penalty of <100%. And the rest all got 0% for the assignment in question. And this means I only penalised about 2% of undergraduates, but still. A lot more than I hoped! And of these 13 penalties, 11 were for inappropriate use of AI. And I don’t know, of course, how many I don't catch. This is quite a big thing! 

I have also done the second sitting of the University panel. They even asked me to chair. Why not! We have clear guidelines you can follow. And they've already asked me about my availability for March. I think it is fair to say the University also has quite a lot of work with this academic integrity business, and so far it looks like quite a lot of that is also associated with AI…

Goodbye John

It's February; we have a new Head of School. John has handed over to Stuart. And given that he has been in the school since the eighties, and had been HoS for six years, there was a goodbye do. I didn’t expect much, but I trusted he would get a present (there had been a collection) and would say some words. And I gathered some collaborators would say something too. 

Was I sad or keen to see him go? Well, a bit of both. He was the man who tried to make me redundant. But he was also the man who (after initial discouragement) supported my promotion to Senior Lecturer. He was in the EDI committee, but there his role seems to mostly have been to push back. He saw no point, for instance, in the students being allowed the option of giving their pronouns on their University profile. So a bit of a mixed bag! 

We piled into the room. There were some faces from the past there! Several people who had retired before him had come back for the occasion. Several of these were actually former heads of school.

There was tea and coffee and lots of cake, and it all started with a bit of mingling. John, who normally is wearing a smart jacket, was this time in a fleece. He has already adjusted to the change in circumstance! He just mingled in my direction when some colleagues were going to have a little presentation. John said he was nervous. The first page of the presentation just had his official profile picture on. Nothing embarrassing about that! But he said he was nervous about but would come after that. I doubted anyone would have any compromising pictures of such a straight-laced man. But maybe I was wrong!

I was wrong. It started with quite old pictures of a rather casually dressed John, still with his dark hair, when they were discussing his early career. Not that there is anything wrong with having our car and being casually dressed. This was just a side of most of us didn't know. Sometimes the speakers interrupted their presentation to read the message of old colleagues of John’s from that time. 

The pictures got wilder than I thought. There was one that even had to be censored! This clearly featured John straight out of the shower on fieldwork with a towel only covering his front. One would hope that this day and age, people wouldn't take such pictures anymore. But this looked like the 80s and things were different then.

We got some insight into John’s diving habits as well. By training, he is an anemone and tropical coral specialist, and his research involves of a lot of diving. He is also very prone to sea sickness, and under the illusion that you can communicate with other divers underwater by talking.

Ronan presenting slides

I thought it was a good balance of paying tribute and taking a little bit of the base. And then the tables turned. Now it was John’s turn. 

John focussed on his successor. He conjured up a big cardboard box that said Head of School survival kit, and he started to unpack it. He warned Stuart you need quite a lot of attributes to be a successful Head of school. He started with his sartorial choices; he said you really need to look smart as a HoS. Stuart got a crisp shirt, a Bangor University-branded tie, and a tweed jacket. He also gave him a pan and brush; a HoS needs a tidy office. And pompous books in the book cupboard. And a big notebook. And thick skin. And more. It was actually very well done! And Stuart was a good sport. 

John also got presents: among other things, a bottle of Pimm’s in a personalised box, and framed images of his allegedly favourite invertebrates from his various study sites (which he had to identify at species level). He was chuffed.

The man who had actually hired John back in the eighties had the last word. And then bottles of bubbly (both with and without alcohol) were opened. 

Five Heads of School in one picture! 

I left quite soon; I had Welsh class to attend. But a fair number of people went to the pub. One assumes John’s wife was driving back! I think he had a good goodbye. And I am curious to see how the first all-staff meeting chaired by Stuart will be…

Starting on ceiling repair

When the workmen started to put in the second round of panels in August, they had to put the wires somewhere. The logical place is in the ceiling, but that means having to get into it. This involves a lot of making holes in the plasterboard. Some small ones, where they just made a hole and left it; or big ones, where they basically cut a part of the ceiling into bits, and sort of stuck them back in more or less the same position when they were done. Both is not very pretty, and needs to be sorted.

Now that they are done it is up to me to sort out the damage. I have never really dealt with this before! I started out with a little instruction video on YouTube. The obvious place to start! And it spoke of backboards and joint tape and all sorts of things. I was learning.

I have now tentatively started. I ordered some repair patches. Plasterboard normally comes in enormous sheets, but of course there are people who take leftovers and sell them on eBay. Suits me fine.

I just started by tracing the outlines of the holes on paper, so I would be able to transpose that onto the plasterboard, and cut out (sub-)patches of the right shape and size. I also started to think about the backboards. The idea is that if you have a hole in your plasterboard, you make sure that you fix something above the hole, and you stick the repair patch to that. That's the backboard. That might be substantial if the hole is big. With small holes you might not need it; maybe the filler you need for putting it in place will just hold it in position.

I didn’t take chances. I screwed some small pieces of wood into the first small holes, and cut a beam to size for a big hole. I didn’t have screws long enough to put it there, though. I will need to buy these. 

I didn’t get very far. But there is a start! That is always the hardest part. It will take a while, but I have faith I will get there. I don’t know how seamless (or otherwise) it will look in the end, but I’m sure I’ll manage to improve it from what it is now! 

Preparatory artwork

Two small holes in the bedroom

Mini backboards fitted

A big hole that needs a big backboard

Adjusting to my 50+ hair

As hair maintenance I tie bits of string around the base of my dreadlocks. It keeps them together, and it makes new hairs join a dreadlock. You don’t want them to grow freely in between! And the idea is that your maintenance is so good to that when you put a new bit of string in, you take the previous one out. But sometimes I'm a bit late, and I choose to keep the old one in. My hair is not naturally inclined to be configured into dreadlocks, so if I have left it a bit long I might have a little interval of normal hair between the bits of string. Quite a lot of my dreads have more than one bit of string in.

I have traditionally used black thread. Not that my hair is black, but it’s dark enough to make the thread blend into the background. But that is changing.

On New Year's Day, Dean pointed out that I should probably be moving to grey. I figured he had a point. My hair is grey! So the next time I went to buy strong thread, I indeed went for that colour.

I first used up all the black I still had. But then I made the switch. It indeed blends in! And hopefully, one day I will move to white thread. But that is still quite some time away!

Symbols of time moving on

I suppose you can’t see the difference in this pic! But the lowest piece of string is grey…

Holyhead mountain and breakwater

Sometimes scampering off to Anglesey can keep you out of the rain. And there was quite some rain forecast further inland. So Neil and I decided to go to Holy Island. We first had a look at the brickworks, which have been turned into a sort of educational garden. Then we did a walk over the flanks of Holyhead Mountain, to North Stack. And then we walked the breakwater; I had only been on it once, during a race. It was nice to take some time to enjoy it. And we stayed largely dry! Success… 

The brickworks 

Artefacts

Glassless sash window

From the old railroad that took the building materials to the breakwater

View from North Stack to South Stack

View back to land from the far end of the breakwater 

5 year cat anniversary

It’s been five years! Five years since an unsuspecting little cat was carried into my house. She wasn’t even one year old. And now we’ve been together for five entire years. She’s such a fixture of my life. She welcomes me when I get home. She sleeps by my side. We often start the day with some play with the fishing rod toy. The best relaxation is when she is relaxing nearby. I’m sure she has changed in that time. She is not a youngster anymore! But I don’t really see it. She is still sweet but on her own terms, she is still a skilled killer but easily startled, she is still keen to greet everyone at the door but hates tradespeople, never thinks I feed her enough but never tries to steal food. She’s the best cat there is. Someone who I miss and worry about when I travel, but without whom I really don’t want to live if I have that choice!