The early 2020s are the first time, as I understand it, that the Scotland census has taken place on a different day to the rest of the UK. The England / Wales / Northern Ireland censuses (censii?) took place in early 2021 as scheduled. The Scottish authorities decided the situation with COVID would make it too difficult to carry out the census in 2021, and postponed it to 2022.
What do you do in this situation if you’re a census fan? You make sure you appear in BOTH, of course!
Geth and I were at home in Newcastle for the English census last year. Today, we are visiting Mum and Dad in Edinburgh so that we can be in the Scottish census. Additional bonus: this means that I am yet to miss a Scottish census in my lifetime!
(And in quick non-census news: I took part in a podcast on Friday evening, talking with fellow Adventuroners about game design and the upcoming jam next month. It’s currently listenable here until 17th April – I’ll update with a more permanent link once it’s up.)
It was a relatively short-notice volunteer slot for me this week after I decided to rest my knee until next weekend – and a really great day for it, because Jesmond Dene parkrun was celebrating its 50th event! With the COVID hiatus it had been a long time coming, so there was much cake to be had at the finish.
I was marshalling at the ‘mind the steps’ point, which I hadn’t done since February 2020 – it’s a nice peaceful spot a few hundred yards from the start/finish, and so you get to see everybody going out as a big clump and coming back as a trickle!
Marshalling again next week.
So far, going into recovery mode to try and heal my knee seems to be going well. It’s still hurting a bit, but a little less so every day, and so I’m hopeful that my rest-ish week will do the trick before my race next Sunday.
I’ve been using the extra time to do more work on my current game project. It’s turned into a bit of a behemoth (don’t they all), but I’ve got some good work done on it this week and I feel like I’m nearly there with it. Hoping to get it largely finished over the next week.
Geth has had some really good news at work this week, so we’ll be quietly celebrating this weekend. Lots to enjoy at the moment.
I’ve been running through a knee twinge for the last couple of weeks. When things like that remain twinges, I have always found that continuing to run as planned is not a problem, provided that I’m careful and do some extra stretching to target the area in question. This week, however, the twinge has become more than a twinge – it’s hurting quite badly and is causing me to hobble – and so I know I need to take some time out from the training plan so that it doesn’t get any worse.
I’ve got the Sheffield Half Marathon (my ‘halfway point half marathon’ for the current marathon training block) in eleven days’ time, and I don’t want to be dragging my leg around that, so I’m going into rest/recovery/mini-taper mode until then. I’ll just be doing short slow treadmill bumbles, gentle walks, parkrun volunteering, and lots of foam rolling – because that’s what’s worked for me in the past when I need to get rid of aches and pains while keeping my fitness level intact.
I’m really disappointed to have to take some time out when I’ve been sticking to the plan so well for nine and a half weeks, but the most important thing is getting rid of the knee issue so that I can get going again.
We had a plumber come to visit this morning to fix a leak (a task we’d been procrastinating for a few weeks). We now have a new tap and new bits of pipe under the sink, and more importantly, a greatly reduced risk of flooding the house. I’m looking forward to not having to mop the floor multiple times per day.
Other than that it’s been a fairly quiet day of writing. More tomorrow.
In this morning’s email: email from the London Marathon to tell me I was unsuccessful in the ballot for 2022. Not disappointed about not getting into the race (I don’t really want to do an autumn marathon again for a while as it doesn’t fit into my preferred race season structure – I would have deferred to 2023 if I had got in) but slightly disappointed that they don’t seem to be doing a rejection magazine anymore!
In this afternoon’s email: approximately 30 emails from other autumn marathons saying ‘Didn’t get into London? Come and run OUR marathon instead!’.
Also in this afternoon’s email: my official certificate for graduating from TechUP. Very happy!
I’ve been working on the writing for my current game project today, which is going to take up the bulk of my free time this week. It’s such an enjoyable thing to be doing while I’ve got a bit more spare time, and I hope to be able to do a lot more of it this year.
I’ve just completed week nine of my 20-week marathon training plan, so only a week to go until I’m halfway through. Of course, I will still be quite a long way from halfway through the mileage at that point, and it’s already feeling quite tough. I think it’s time to start varying up my routes a bit, so I’ll be doing that this week. Anything that mitigates the feeling of dread is a good thing.
I’ve also (pretty much) finished the coding for my current text adventure project today, and so tomorrow I can get started on the prose writing (which goes a lot faster). It should start coming together fairly quickly from this point onwards.
Another scenic plod round Jesmond Dene today, though a lot slower than last week – I’ve still got Thursday’s twelve-miler in my legs.
Back for event #50 next week, which should be nice – with the hiatus it’s been a long time coming.
