Stepping up the game, May 2017

Stepping up the game, May 2017

June 2, 2017personal journal4 min read

It is the first week of June 2017 and that means it’s time to write my monthly review again. May was again busy month (tell me which wasn’t) but I’m actually quite happy with everything that’s happened and the progress I’ve made.

Work and travel

I’ve travel again, this time twice, to Hamburg for few days of consulting. Thanks to Eurowings, London has a direct connection to Hamburg and the flights count toward Miles & More status, so it’s always small nice bonus.

I usually always try to pack my running shoes and stay near Alster Lake. That gives me a bit more motivation to maintain some of my training also when I travel. I love the running route around the lake. It’s well maintained, has few drinking water fountains along and you almost never run there alone.

Running around Alster, Hamburg, Germany
Running around Alster, Hamburg, Germany

Obviously, also the sightings are quite pleasing. Water, boats, birds, trees, clouds and sky make this environment very relaxing.

Plans for upcoming travels

I won’t visit Hamburg until the very beginning of July, where I’ll be joining workshop about Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns, by Vitaly Friedman, the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine! I’m really looking forward working with Vitaly, as he has tremendous knowledge and lots, lots of experience in the area.

I think I’ll be also visiting Munich at the end of June for 3 days. I hope the weather will be nice as I want to score one or two training runs while I’ll be there. But I’ll talk about my training plans a little bit later. Speaking about training…

Training summary

I’m looking now at my Strava calendar and I’m happy with the achievements. Most of the time I have this feeling that I’m not training enough, that my runs are slow and short. Yet when I look at the summary, I can see the progress!

My Strava Calendar for May, 2017 - looking quite busy, except for a week in the middle when I was in Poland
My Strava Calendar for May, 2017 - looking quite busy, except for a week in the middle when I was in Poland

In May, I’ve tracked 18 hours, 106km and 18 activities. That’s quite an accomplishment! OK, this includes the half-day long Box Hill hike that I did with N. and friends, but even without it, I’ve still made good advancements over April. To be honest it is actually good that it is still within about 30% range, at least I’m not overtraining.

Memories and experiences

May was full or other experiences too. When I look back now in time, it’s been quite busy.

London sightseeing with friends

Technically, it was the end of April, but since I didn’t post any update for that month, I’ll count it towards May. Ola and Grzegorz visited us for the “long weekend” and we’ve had the pleasure to go with them and walk through some interesting places in London.

Tower Bridge, London
Tower Bridge, London

We’ve walked all the way from St. Paul’s Cathedral, through the Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern to Tower Bridge, Tower of London and finishing at the Bank Station. Quite long, but nice walk nevertheless.

Google Cloud Next

I’ve been to Google Cloud Next Event in London (only 2nd day, though). The scale of the conference was huge and the catering was amazing, the whole thing felt quite like a big advertisement for Google cloud service (but I think this was their main goal).

Quite big space dedicated for networking, showcases and demos at Google Cloud Next, London

I’ve enjoyed two presentations, one about building serverless apps using NodeJS and Firebase (cloud functions). The other was from developers Lush Cosmetics, telling the story of their migration to GCP.

The wedding

We’ve been also in Poland to join and celebrate the wedding of Ania (N’s sister) and Kacper. The party was very nice and we wish you guys a lot of joy, happiness, and great experiences together on your new journey into the future!

Ślub Ani i Kacpra, Polska
Ślub Ani i Kacpra, Polska

Box Hill Hike

Together with N., Dan & Ale we went for joyful hike in the Surrey area. You can read more about it in my previous blog post: “Box Hill hike in Surrey”.

Plans for June

Besides the travel cycle, that I’ve already mentioned, again I want to focus on increasing my training time and distances. This is going to be really important for me as I’ve signed up for one race in August and it’s going to be a big challenge! I’ll write about that in my next post! Stay tuned.

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