French

2018 – S.M.A.R.T. or not?

Leave a comment

At the outset of every year I pause and think about what I want to achieve. This year was different.

Or rather, I wanted to make sure that I would be more likely to achieve my goals, so I resolved to be smart and make ’em S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Did I succeed? Yes and no.

Chess: ✅ I played every day for a month and got the rating I had set my mind on. (Then promptly lost it.)

Reading: ✅ One non-fictional book per month. Done.

Piano: ❎ I did play, but didn’t learn as many pieces as I had hoped. The temptation is to stick with the ones you know…

French: ❎ I didn’t learn anywhere near as much as I had planned, mainly because I had to focus on Danish.

Travel: ✅ I went to Morocco, Egypt, the Seychelles, Norway, Italy (thrice), and Denmark (plus Sweden), which is less than usual, but still acceptable, especially since Egypt, Italy and Norway was with the kids.

Fitness: ✅ The year was marred with injuries – first recovering after the paragliding incident, then a wonky neck, a messed up Achilles’ tendon, a tennis elbow, and finally a slipped disk – so running and biking and swimming suffered. I did manage the Paris marathon, and a runstreak of 100 days, but I’m nowhere near the distance goals I set myself for runs and biking. Nor did I learn to crawl, but I’ve racked up some 100 gym sessions, including an ironstreak of 40 days or so, which has meant three or four extra kilos’ worth of muscles.

Challenges: ✅ Apart from the aforementioned run- and ironstreaks I’ve successfully given up coffee, tried intermittent fasting for a month, I’ve become vegetarian, and I’m currently on a no sugar diet, so that’s gone well. Less well went my attempt at keeping a diary – I kept it up until Denmark, but then fell out of habit, unfortunately.

Work: ✅ I added Danish to my language combination, and continued working in Communications. In addition to that I MC’d a couple of conferences using participatory leadership, which was fun, too.

Blog: ✅ I increased my readership quite spectacularly this year (from just shy of 3,000 readers to 5,500, and from 5,000 views to nearly 10,000), which is really gratifying.

So. What worked and what didn’t? Some goals turned out to be insufficiently specific, such as “learn a piece of music”; others were unattainable due to factors beyond my control (the fitness targets) or had to be downgraded in terms of priority (French, when I was paid to go learn Danish), but overall it’s a sound principle, and one I will continue to use in 2019.

Now all I have to do is decide what those goals should be…

On balance

Leave a comment

It’s fair to say the year ended on a bum note. Things don’t always go as planned. But what of the rest of the year? Time to look back and reflect on what went according to plan, and what didn’t.

But for the butt injury, I might have had a sporting chance at reaching my distance goals for running and biking (averaging a marathon distance per week for each), but realistically that was too much. I did do that much on average when at home, but traveling got in the way, and that lowered total mileage significantly. Need to set more realistic goals, especially with next year’s runstreak requiring time every day.

I did set a new personal best on every one of the distances 1k, 5k, 10k, 21k and 42k, which was gratifying. It’s a clear sign the training pays off, after all. Two marathons – one as early as January – and even if my one attempt at an ultra didn’t end well it was still a good experience. Lesson learnt? Don’t try mountain trail running 70+ kilometres the first time you do it.

I did my first ever triathlon – an Ironman 70.3, and the result was better than I had hoped. Still not sure whether a full-length one is worth the trouble, but maybe… saying I did half-something jars my soul!

I didn’t lift weights, swim or do yoga anywhere near as much as I had planned. I did some, but found it difficult to fit it all into my routine. Will have to find another balance to make it all work. And actually learn how to swim.

So much for fitness. I didn’t read as much non-fiction as I would have liked, but what I read was good. I’ve played a lot of chess and piano, and studied French, too, but I’m still not sure how to measure progress here. I know I am progressing, but how to tell? The system of dividing up the day into half hours to ensure that things get done works, at least, so I will continue doing that. And only watching Netflix when I’m on the stationary bike will kill two birds with one stone…!

Travels and challenges, then? I certainly travelled a lot, and two themes emerged: island hopping around Africa, covering Pemba, Mallorca, and Madeira (following on from Malta), and hiking in the alps in France, Bavaria and Sweden (ok, so we don’t have alps, but parts of Bergslagsleden were really hilly!). Add to that the two(!) trips to Andalusia – once to see Alhambra, and once to learn how to paraglide – and a nice long weekend in Paris, and you have what I would deem a pretty good year of wanders. More of that, please.

Challenges? I went on a paleo diet with good results, I learnt how to fly – or at least fall really slowly – and camped in a tent for the first time in 35 years. And at work I got to try new things, like writing a movie script and leading a think tank, so that was very pleasant, too (and never mind that I applied for my dream job – it’s good to dream, as well!). Less pleasant was the aforementioned injury which left me incapable of running and in a lot of pain, but that only meant that I had one last challenge to overcome this year: rehabilitating myself and getting back on my feet.

Lest I forget, the year has brought some wonderful new people into my life, as eclectic a bunch of characters as one can hope for: an Argentinian telenovela starlet in Tanzania, a Scottish philosopher in Spain, my own personal stalker, a Phillipina philanthropist, a Swedish ultrarunner in Amsterdam… in fact, if I were to write a book about them all it would probably seem outlandish, which brings me to my last point: this blog.

I’ve continued to write throughout the year, about everything and anything, from great tits to particle accelerators, and my readership is steadily increasing (visitors up 25% (to 2800+) and views up 50% (to 5500+) at the time of writing), something for which I’m immensely grateful! It’s humbling to foist your words on people and have them not only actually read them but also come back for more. So thank you, dear reader. I hope you have enjoyed the ride this far.

It’s been a good year, on balance.

Half a lap around the sun…

Leave a comment

…and it’s time to summarise what’s happened this far 2017. As has been the case these last couple of years, I set myself certain tasks in January, to be completed over the next twelve months, and at the halfway mark it makes sense to take stock, to see what has gone according to plan, and what hasn’t. 

Have I managed to go on an adventure/set myself a new challenge/have a new experience every month? Happily, yes. January I ran a marathon with a difference, February I went to see Alhambra, Grenada (the text about which seems to have been deleted, sadly!), March I dived the incredible reefs of Pemba, April saw me join a monastery of sorts in Mallorca, then came hiking in Madeira and in the troll-infested forests of Sweden (whilst also trying out the benefits of a paleo diet), before finally taking on my first triathlon last month. 

Looking back, it’s quite a lot crammed into six months, so I’m pleased with that. 

I’ve managed to work out quite a lot (unsurprisingly, what with the races) but not as much as I had set out to do in total – weeks of hiking and skiing and diving have prevented me from reaching the goal of a marathon run and biked every week, and I haven’t done much yoga either. But then there’s still six months left to remedy that. 

Have I developed my French, my piano and chess playing, and done more non-fiction reading? I certainly got off to a good start, doing thirty minutes per day of each, but a good friend giving me a Netflix password threw a big spanner in that particular structure. I haven’t completely derailed, but there have been leafs on the tracks, shall we say.

As for taking on new tasks at work, I have, happily. And not least because of this very blog, in fact. Turns out people at work read it and thought I might do good in Internal Communications, so from now on I will spend one day per week as a roving reporter, highlighting goings-on in my work place. Very happy about that. 

So what’s next? I will try to make up for lost time in those areas where I haven’t quite managed to reach my targets, obviously. 

I’ve still got the mountain ultra X-trail coming up in the beginning of August, and ten days of hiking the Bavarian alps hot on the heels of that. After those ten days I don’t really have any plans for the rest of the year. An acquaintance has invited me to Bilbao, and another to Nepal, so those things might happen. Or not. Readers should feel free to make suggestions. 

I still want to try and beat my marathon record before the end of the year – I’ve improved significantly on my personal best for shorter distances, but whether that will translate into a new marathon PB remains to be seen. Time to start looking for a fast race, in any event. 

At work I have made a promise to attempt to add Danish to my official language combination, so that should keep me busy for quite some time (maybe there are Danish movies on Netflix?!), and the new job will hopefully continue to present new challenges, as well. 

All in all I feel quietly confident that the second half of this journey will be as filled to the brim as the first half was. Come fly with me!

Having the time of my life

Leave a comment


“People’s life do flash before their eyes right before they die. The process is know as ‘living’.”  – Terry Pratchett

I don’t want to come to the end of my life feeling I haven’t accomplished and experienced as much as I might have. In a way, that realisation is the main reason for this blog; by charting my adventures and self-imposed challenges I can look back and see how well I’m doing in this regard. 

This year, I set out to achieve measurable progress in a number of specific areas, and I determined I would go about it differently from what I have done previously.

Whereas in the past I set lofty goals for how many books I should read, how many irregular verbs or piano pieces I should learn – and then not doing it – I now avoid such targets and focus instead on ensuring there are slots in my day for the activities in question. 

This means I plan as much of my time as I can in advance to ensure I get everything I want done, writing a schedule for the day; one half hour is devoted to reading non-fiction, the next to studying French, the one after that to playing the piano, et cetera. 

In fact, it’s the same principle I’ve been applying to travelling; by planning trips in advance – giving them an allotted time – I ensure they get done. I just never thought of using the same principle in my day-to-day life before. 

Now, three months isn’t a long time, but I’m really pleased to report the method of structuring my time is bearing fruit already. I’m not a machine, so the actual time I spend on these activities often doesn’t correspond exactly to the schedule, but even so the results are better than I dared hope for: in the last three months I have logged over 50 hours each of reading, piano playing and French studies, plus 150 hours of workouts. This works. 

In fact it works so well that I have decided to add another activity to the list: chess. I hadn’t played for a long time when a colleague challenged me to a match in February. This rekindled my love of the game, and I haven’t looked back since. In Pemba, I even played a Danish national champion and won 2-0 (he was a national kite-surfing champion, but never mind…).

If you want to play me, I’m on chess.com – improving my game for half an hour every day, as per schedule.

Halfway, 2016

imageRemember New Year’s Eve? And the resolutions you made way back then? It’s hard to believe, but the year is more than halfway over already, so it’s high time to have a look at how you’re fairing in regard to these promises – most likely they have fallen by the wayside already, long forgotten – but since I made a commitment to myself (and you) to report back occasionally on how I’m fairing, I will do so, even though – or perhaps precisely because – the results are less than fantastic.

I set out to improve intellectually and physically, and to go on adventures and challenge myself. To ensure that I did so I set myself clear, measurable targets, so how am I doing in relation to those?

In a word: poorly. At least on the intellectual side of things. I haven’t read more than very few books, my attempts at taking piano lessons were foiled by too much travelling, my efforts learning French came to a halt after two months (during which I did learn rather more words and phrases than I had thought possible, but still).

Improving my general fitness level is an area where I have been a lot more successful. Even though I have cycled nothing like as much as I thought I would do, and swum less, I have managed to work out a lot (as evidenced by a nice lady doctor asking spontaneously if I was an athlete of some sort only yesterday(!)). I’ve logged 160 workouts in the first six months of the year, or slightly below one workout per day nine days out of ten. I’ve run two marathons, both well below four hours, and I’m hopeful I will manage Ultravasan and its 90 kilometres come August. Who knows? I might even be reduced to swimming and biking afterwards instead of running, as a result…

On the other hand, my diet hasn’t been anywhere near as strict as I had planned – perhaps precisely because I had no concrete target in mind there. If anything I have been too indulgent, especially in allowing myself too much alcohol, so that’s something to improve upon in the second half of the year, as well.

So far, so-so impressive. Travels, adventures and challenges, then? Well, I did go for a refresher dive at Nemo33 in January, then went skiing in Sweden in February, and to Thailand to dive in March. April I got a new job part time, which wasn’t planned but must count as a new adventure, and May saw me hike Mallorca with my brother, which was quite the challenge – not because of him, I hasten to add! Then in June I explored Luxembourg, and this month I’ve taken the kids kayaking in the Ardennes, and gone to Edinburgh for a quick visit, so overall my track record isn’t too bad, even though I feel it lacks in challenges.

So what to make of all this? Reinforced efforts in terms of reading, playing the piano and learning French; more diverse workout schedule; better food and drink habits; more adventurous adventures and challenging challenges (and trippy trips? No.).

Lined up next: London with the kids, then two weeks without them (good time to improve diet and spend time playing piano/reading/studying, putting good habits in place) before going to Sweden and making final preparations for Ultravasan. After that I’ve got nothing planned apart from a few days in Lugano, as a post-race (re)treat, and then school starts and the rat race recommences. If experience shows anything, it’s that it’s time to start planning autumn now. Maybe that Ironman? Or a climbing course? Or something else entirely…?

image