jurasource

I've been running ultras for a number of years now, and have suffered from many injuries, the worst being a stress fracture in my hip.

The last time I saw a sports doctor, he gave me the best advice to date:

"Run, but not every day, on grass if you can"

That was over two years ago, and I've been racing and running happily injury free since.

Agreed. I hardly ever see my daughter in the morning but make sure that 99% of the time I'm home in time to put her to bed and read a story (she's 8), often it's at bedtime that any worries come out, and I'm so glad I'm able to be there to listen.

It’s not a city, but I’ve just spent 10 days working remotely from the Isle of Jura, population 200, off the west coast of Scotland. I work in finance as a programmer, and whilst often need to spend time with traders and quants, this time away was a great opportunity to get my head down and get stuck into some issues that I normally don’t get time for. The best thing was that my daughter could spend time with her cousins and I could do trail running at random times of the day. Seriously considering doing this more often!

Reminds me of the fire starting birds in Vernor Vinges "Marooned in Realtime", awesome book.

What a great idea. I really struggle to plan sprints and projects just using lists. Also MS Project etc are just far too complicated for my small projects.

I actually resorted to drawing dependency and flow diagrams by hand, then translating those into JIRA tickets and adding to Kanban style boards.

The ability to track changes using git is such a simple (and with hindsight, obvious) idea, but I should think very effective.

Nice one.

Now I think about it, we started when she was about 2, leaving a marmite rice cake in a bowl outside her door, with a bottle of water (with a sports cap), that was just enough to delay her slightly.

As she got older, I'd put some greek yoghurt in a bowl with cling film over the top in the fridge, and a plastic cup of water with tin foil over the top and cutlery on the table.

Now I just say "no cartoons before 7", and she sorts her own water out, makes some bread and butter (don't trust her with the toaster yet) and helps herself to yoghurt.

She woke me up at 9 this morning, happy with that!

I "automated" (trained?) my kid to make her own breakfast at the weekends so I can sleep longer.

Started when she was around 4, it's easier now she's 7.

Lots of parallels with hacking code:

  * Specific rules (if there are more than 2 stars showing on your clock, it's too early to get up)

  * Trial and error (put cereal in a jar and loosen the lid slightly, put milk in a tiny jug at the bottom of the fridge)

  * Optimisation (if you don't want cereal, don't wake me up, but have a yogurt instead)

  * Enhancement (feed the cat, so it doesn't wake me up either)

I'm not lazy, sleep is important :)

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I'm a ultra distance runner and fairly regularly run for over 12 hours. One of the first things people normally ask is "don't you get bored", but honestly the concentration needed to maintain good form, eat, drink, not get lost, doesn't leave much room for much else. I've been running for over ten years, and I'd say it's only in the last year that I've realised how important that concentration is, to do it well that is, it's easy to trundle along allowing ones mind to wander...