I’ve spent the last 5 weeks out of 7 on non-UK soil. That’s for another time though. This post is dedicated to running, more specifically the British 10k. As you may know I hurt myself pretty badly when running the London Marathon. After spending plenty of time getting fat and sitting on my bottom, I started to get back out there running.

And boy was it hard.

In the few months I’d been resting, I’d seemingly lost all of my ability to run. Keeping pace, breathing properly… it was as if I was starting all over again. This was going to be difficult, but worth it. I was fortunate enough to spend the 3 weeks prior to the race in America. Running in Boston and NYC was an experience in itself. In a good way, of course. Running around Central Park at 6am with hundreds of other crazy early-risers seems like a great way to start the day. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with the city (I won’t mention just how much better at running James was than I (he destroyed me)). Nike have it right, time to find my old pace.

Come race day and Craig and his family were generous enough to allow me to stay at theirs the night before. I strolled up to Waterloo Place, handed in my luggage and went to the start line, pumped and ready to run. That’s when the first problem hit. It took me 45 minutes to even cross the start line – people were impatient and pushed their way ahead, regardless of others around them. I found myself at the back, wondering how that possible considering I was about middle of the pack at one point!

The race itself was pretty uneventful, I maintained an OK pace, the main point being I was able to walk after finishing! However at each water point (3, 5 and 7km) was a massive bottleneck. I was reduced to a walk each time because others couldn’t maintain simple etiquette; this threw off my rhythm somewhat; a minor inconvenience, but not a game killer.

I was able to finish with a time of 1:05:08. A pretty awful time by any standards but it was another 10km logged on my road to recovery. No excuses why I got a bad, I just wasn’t very quick!

Post-race was a disaster. I finished and went to my number to collect my belongings. I was allowed to go behind and just pick my bag up, I could’ve picked up anyone’s bag (similarly, anyone could’ve picked up my bag!). They’d run out of “goodie bags” (I managed to get one but it was hardly worth the effort; plethora of advertisement leaflets, a packet of sugar, a teabag (from the awesome Teapigs) and nothing else of note). I’d heard stories of runners not getting finishers medals because they’d run out of medals. The reason they’d run out? “Oh, can I have 2 extra medals, for my kids?”. Seriously? You’re depriving someone of their hard earned medal so your child can have one? Not cool. I could go on about other problems I had but I won’t. It was a fantastic route and overall, I had a good time but boy do Nike need to buck up on the organisation next year if I’m going to run it again.

I apologise that this has turned into a giant rant but when entry can cost upwards to £50, you’d expect a well organised race. This was the first step to recovery though, I’ll be running lots of 10ks over the summer, in hope I can back down my sub 40minute times.

(Gormless is the only way to be pictured when running!)

I’ve spent the last few months training hard, getting some pretty quick times in the process. When the day arrived I was excited to potentially get a good time. Things started okay, I was a little slower than planned but managed the first 10k in little over an hour, which would give me a finish time of 4 hours 20 minutes.

Perfect.

Unfortunately, at around mile 10, I aggravated an old quadricep injury in my left leg and found it difficult to run. I resorted to a 5 minute run, 1 minute walk routine which seemed to be working well for me. This got me through the next few miles at an decent pace. At around the 15 mile mark, I felt an excruciating pain in my right knee. At this point it was difficult to walk, let alone run. A quick pit stop to St Johns, a massage and ibuprofen gel applied I was on my way again. I should note that I was advised to stop my attempt at completing but I was hell bent on getting round.

I would have to spend the next 11 miles, limping around the track. I found myself accompanied by another who had also suffered an injury. After talking for a mile or so, we decided that we would get around the remaining miles together, and boy, did having someone to walk with help a load. I genuinely think I wouldn’t have made it otherwise. That is not to say that the support from the crowd wasn’t there.

It was. And it was bloody amazing.

It’s a difficult thing to get across but the sheer amount of people there and just how vocal everyone is; it honestly made me goosebump up a few times! To hear complete strangers say “Come on Luke, chin up lad, you can do this!“, “Go on Luke, you’re looking good fella!” – it made you want to start sprinting.

I managed to limp round the last 11 miles to get a time of 6 hours 01 minute and 42 seconds. This was an hour and a half longer than I had set myself. A lot of people have said it was an amazing achievement that I even completed the course given my injuries and that I should feel proud for having completing it. The strange thing is, I feel somewhat unsatisfied.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not being ungrateful, I am so thankful I even had the chance to take part in such an event. I raised some money for Farleigh Hospice (The sponsorship page is still open, by the way). When I say I’m unsatisfied, I mean from an athletic point of view. I feel I’ve let myself down, while ultimately it was something that was out of my control, it still isn’t good enough.

When I think back of the day, I remember how optimistic I was. I remember being so angry when I felt the pain in my leg that I was almost in tears. People told me the sense of achievement one feels after crossing the finish line and I don’t remember feeling that.

I’m not looking for sympathy here. This is more of a statement that I’m not happy with my performance and I’m not going to sit back and let myself blame an injury for this bad performance. I have completed a marathon, yes; but I am not a marathon runner. Not yet. I have one year to recover from these injuries, train myself back to an even better condition (without sacrificing my social life in the process), and come back, bigger and better.

However, one thing that has come out of this is proof of how amazing the people in my life are. I can honestly say I have the best friends and family a guy could ask for. My parents came and picked me up from Newbury Park (with my dad taking a half day just because). Everyone I’ve spoken to has been so supportive of me, it’s unreal. So, I honestly can’t thank you all enough. I love you guys!

Consider this a statement of intent. I will run a marathon (whether it be the London Marathon, the Paris Marathon, the New York Marathon…) in under 4 hours in 2013.

First up, The London 10k in July.

I’m just a fan of their service. Despite the troubles I’ve been having with their iOS app (I hope a fix is coming soon, I’ve helped blackbox diagnose the problem as much as I can!). I’ve been a premium user for some years now, making my rather large iTunes library somewhat redundant. I know it wasn’t a popular decision to tightly bind Spotify with Facebook, but some rather interesting outcomes have arisen from this.

I discovered a new one today; “Listen with…”.

I noticed my friend Suzanne was listening to a song I like, and in times past, I could start playing that same song on my local system by pressing the song title. However, this seems have changed to “Listen with Suzanne”. One press of the button and I was suddenly 1:01 into James Vincent McMorrow’s ‘If I Had a Boat’. I was now subscribed to whatever Suzanne is listening to, in real time; she had essentially become my personal DJ. As I mentioned before, not everybody likes to make their music social, and that’s fair enough. Myself, I love to share and discover music my friends listen to and think this is a fantastic little feature, that was until she started listening to One Direction…

Sort of.

It requires the user to have the spotify client open on their machine but it works seamlessly. It allows the user to listen to music, while keeping them on the same page. I can envisage some very interesting uses for this over the coming months.

With that in mind, I give you my top 20 songs, EVER. Presented to you using the lovely new Spotify Play. I would love to see your top xx songs ever too.

When I say we were on the sea front, I mean it in a very literal sense. This is the view from the kitchen:

We witnessed some pretty bang tidy sunsets from that place.

Due to the fact we visited in the off season, we were the only British people to be found (as evidenced by the fact we were all walking around in shorts & shirts while the natives were all wrapped up in scalfs and jackets!). However, this quiteness was exactly what a lot of us needed. We are all reaching very important moments in our lives, and having the chance to escape reality for a few days could not have come a better time.

My particular favourite aspect was the fact we stayed in the old town. This place is brimming with history and stories to be told.

Each day had a similar itinerary:

• Explore the surrounding area.
• Raid the local shop for cheap food and wine.
• Find a quant restaurant to eat.
• Drink wine.
• Be merry.

Did I mention how beautiful this place is?

So, I’m sure you’re wondering about the title. Well, I’ve been very lucky in that almost as soon as I was back from this holiday, I was off again, this time to Rimini, Italy. Whereas Sardinia was very much focused on relaxing, Rimini was for squash tour. Now, squash tour is essentially a guise for a massive party. If you know me in person, then you’ll definitely know that I’m happy to consume a drink or ten, however, I’m not sure if I’m in the right frame of mind of this sort of activity any more.

This became very apparent to me on the second night when our group was queuing up for the bus to take us to the club. There were fights breaking out to gain entry to the bus; they would rather throw a punch (and potentially risk ending their night) than wait 10 more minutes for the next bus. I vividly remember thinking “Why? This is pointless.” – so I prompt told my group, “I’m not up for this, I’m off, have a good night buddies”. Ten minutes later I was joined by a few others who also shared a similar mindset. We ended up having a few drinks in my room while playing cards, and I can pretty much safely say it probably was one of my favourite nights on tour.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love the people who went. They’re all amazing, but to paraphrase John McCain, “I’m getting too old for this shit”.

I know I’m 22 and I should be going on this sort of holiday, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Again, this wasn’t down to the people I went with; in fact, that was a major reason I went. I’m just not sure if I have another tour left in me!

It’s been nearly TWO months since I last blogged. That sucks. I’ve been mega busy with my PhD and life in general. However, I do have some good news to share:

I’m published! I’ve had my first ever academic paper accepted into the 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence conference. Major props must go to my colleague, Aysenur, who definitely deserves the majority of the credit (being lead author and all).

I’m also named author on another paper submitted to the 2012 IEEE Intelligent Environments Conference, which I’m hopeful in being accepted. And just to top it off, I’m finishing up another paper to be submitted to the Workshop on Large Scale Intelligent Environments as well! If I can gain 3 publications within the first 9 months of my PhD, well, then that’s awesome!

I’ve also been busy training for the London marathon (whats that? You haven’t donated yet? Don’t worry, the link is here). I’ve been training hard for this event and for my general badminton/squash playing. This has resulted in a grade 1 tear of my left quadricep. This obviously is a blow but never fear, I will be running the marathon, even if I have to do it House style, pimp-cane and all.

Speaking of badminton, I’ve finally won an internal tournament! First in the mixed and second in the mens. Sorted.

For reasons that I definitely shouldn’t be moping about. I got my feedback from my board review and it was all positive feedback which is fantastic! However, this is what had me at ends:

I know, I know, it shouldn’t have made me think bad but all I can see is “why wasn’t I excellent?”, “Why isn’t it very probable that I’ll complete my PhD on time?”. This just means I’ve got to really get my head down and work my arse off over the next few months to make sure I get those boxes ticked!

Yet, the prospect of building a blanket fort still is an amazing thing to do on a day off! It was a pretty simple endevour. Got some hooks, string and blankets from Tesco, tied it all together with some washing line pegs and BOOM. I have my very own blanket fort ala Community (if you don’t watch that show, I would thoroughly recommend it).

More photos after the break…

I’d even considered entertaining; if you open the side blanket, then you’ve got the perfect position to watch a movie or TV. Sorted!

I had my picture (from Day 2) posted in The Burning House! If you’re not aware of this website, it describes itself as:

If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It’s a conflict between what’s practical, valuable and sentimental. What you would take reflects your interests, background and priorities. Think of it as an interview condensed into one question.

Now there are some awesome photos which portray what that person really is about…but I find a somewhat unfeasible list of items to grab if your house is burning down. I tried to keep it somewhat realistic, while telling others about myself. I kept it minimal, which is how I want to live my life; cut out the unnecessary excess that one has come to tolerate and simply focus on the better parts of life. It’s not to say I’m going to start living in a forest but most people can afford to lose some excess whether metaphorically or physically (and I could probably do with losing some of both!).

I had my first Skype meeting with my external supervisor at King Abdulaziz University on Tuesday (10th) and then my first ever supervisory board review the next day.

I’m not going to lie, on the Monday I was a nervous wreck (on the inside… mostly). My meeting with Abdullah went absolutely fine; he was happy with the work I’ve done so far, offered some good advice for my board and we parted ways. I got kind of lucky in that the connection wasn’t very good so we had a text chat instead. This allowed me those few moments extra to really consider my responses.

Along came my board review, I locked myself in my office from 10am til 2pm to really practice my presentation, prepare answers to questions and so forth. Again, I got lucky in that we ended up conducting the board review in my supervisor’s office. This meant a slightly more informal setting, but at the same WAY more intimidating as they were only a few feet away from me. I was nervy to begin with, but I did eventually settle in and say what I had to say. I did have a few curve ball questions thrown at me; I had approached my research with a developers mindset and that was evident in the work I’ve done so far. My research also has a big theoretical side to it (in the form of formal methods). When pressed on this, I was quite honest and simply said “I’ve come from a developers background, and I had planned on spending the next quarter bringing myself up to speed with the formal methods”. All in all, they seemed happy with my progress and the direction I’m heading in.

I had a post meeting with James (my co-supervisor) and we planned out the next 3 months or so and I tell you what, I’m so excited to get stuck in. If all goes to plan (i.e. my papers get accepted) then I’ll have 3 publications in the first six months of my PhD. Now if that isn’t a bloody strong start, I don’t know what is.

I also joined a new photography website: 500px. I quite like it there, everyone is so nice! I posted some of my better pictures from my flickr and they got quite a bit of attention. I even had one photo pop up on the “upcoming” page, which was pretty awesome! It’s definitely one of my favourite photos. It’s of my friend Jenny at the beach. While the others were sunbathing, we went underneath the pier to look for crabs and other wildlife; naturally I took my camera and took this photo (not posed for) while Jenny was searching.