So I've had a few interesting, perhaps notable things occur.
Firstly I've taken about 2 weeks off the gym and only today have I gone for my usual Wednesday long run, which was fairly arduous due to the break of activity.
On the run,
I ran past this one runner who was casually running at his own slowish pace and after a while, I noticed him in my peripheral vision gaining on me. It was interesting.
I thought that perhaps he'd just seen me, felt that I was a good target to aim for and tried to keep up with me. He did. It was amusing because at one point I thought I'd just test him a little... I ran a bit faster.., then a little bit faster and I would see how he might cope - He coped remarkably well. At this point, I was running at about 4min pace which for me is pretty fast and he kept up with me the whole time. I then decided to veer off course behind a car park and then planned to come back into the main route part way through to see if he'd slowed down perhaps thinking that I'd left.
I rejoined his route about 2 or 3 minutes after losing him, only to join up with neatly behind with him as I wedged myself in behind him and I tailed him. This was a bit of a role reversal and at this point, I was fairly sure that he hadn't got a surprise or an inspired 2nd wind when I passed him earlier and that he was quite a challenge!
I let him notice that he was now setting the pace, he was in control and he was the one that needed to shake me off. This continued to my surprise for a lot longer than I thought, we ran a long way at about 4 minute pace and it wasn't until about 2/3 of my way back that he signalled that he's going to stop and climb some stairs, while I just thundered on through - hoping that I'd see him on the other side (he went up over the bridge and I went under it) but he was nowhere to be seen after that.
Half of me thinks he ran out of steam (in which case I'd won!) and the other half thinks that he merely had to detour as his route was different from mine (and that I'd met my match!). Either way, I ran a lot faster than I'd planned to on my first run in 2 weeks!
It turned out that I ran 4:28 average pace for the 12km route that I do and I got 4 PRs - which is much better than my last runs which were quite casual, in at around 4:30-5 minute pace. I really really enjoyed that, though it perhaps wasn't the smartest thing to do on the first day back.
The reason why I've let my routine slip prior to this is twofold: I started developing a pimple inside my nose(haha!) and for me, this is the early indicator that my immune system is not on par. It also, as it happens, coincided with me having to work almost every spare moment I could in the previous 2 weekends on my coursework. The course work is quite rough at the moment and I've spent a lot of energy on it. In fact, it's been bothering me and as such, I've rather studied and prepared for my assignments in these past two weeks than go running or to the gym.
Interestingly enough, when this would otherwise be unbearable for me to do - I quite like exercising and running - I felt quite good about pouring my time and effort into something of almost of equal importance to me - my studies. This has helped me get over not sticking to my exercise regime and it has also afforded me great opportunity to make good progress in my upcoming assignments(hopefully).
This is a good compromise but I'll not do this again in this way. Basically, I left things too late and as a consequence, I've had to lose that balance between health and education and work which is so important to me.
Prior to this frenzy of work, a week back I came up with A strategy for systematic thinking in light of some feedback I got from my tutors recently which I wrote about in Zero point four - perhaps this is what inspired me to pull up my socks in that department of late!
To add to this, I've been fighting with some code at work which is like a self-modifying book, that morphs while I'm busy trying to read it. Along with this is the fact that I managed to miss-book my upcoming planned holiday by 2 months on non-refundable flights! So much for planning. So things just seem to be happening all at the same time. So I'll be having to write another assignment while I'm on holiday...that wasn't in the plans. Anyway, thankfully the ill-effects of this mishap aren't dire(other than my embarrassment in making the mistake - lesson learnt!). I still need to make some alternative arrangements around transport and accommodation(which I reminds me...).
So being ill actually helped - I skipped exercise for studying and in hindsight, it worked out because I'm feeling a lot better due to the physical rest and well, I've exercised myself mentally so perhaps a fair trade.
I also managed to set up my investment management app to use Postgres SQL to back the entity framework database layer on my machine at work(we use Postgres while I'm traditionally used o MS SQL) which was incredibly simple and rewarding. Oh yes, I remember how - I was running tests at the time and needed a distraction! I also managed to fix up my relationship node graph with the right configuration of elasticity and charge between the related nodes and it looks pretty cool now. I also made the graph a bit bigger so you can see more of the relationships between the entities in the graph. I'll show a picture of this later perhaps.
When I was writing Python scripts to upload data to our API at work I came across tqdm in Touring with Python(which is something we use routinely now in our scripts) to simulate a progress bar during long-running operations. I found a .net equivalent and was hoping to use it but as I have already mentioned, time seems to be evaporating from my grasp these last few weeks. Its something I'll look into next, however - its called ShellProgressBar.
A few weeks back I started writing a mini 4 part series of articles about how I feel about functional programming. I started with my interpretation, my attitude and how I was introduced to the concepts - which I must say wasn't very elegant, to say the least - Not that these articles are elegant in themselves but rather form a bit of self-reflection on the whole situation culminating in Bind behind the scenes
I don't know...Its all been a little bit hazy to be quite honest these past few weeks, I'm not quite sure what to make of it - I've also been quite drawn-in and detached from the world somewhat.
Still, a little bit hazy really.