Category: Out of the Box

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been taking a bit of ‘time out’ from my online persona. Don’t you need to do that sometimes… you know ‘don’t go to the places you normally go’, ‘do things that bring you closer to nature to get back perspective on what’s really important in life’?

Why ‘time out’ now? Well not sure really, but nomally my periods of ‘time out’ follow periods of hyperactivity. I guess my brain just needs to ‘get back to basics’ or maybe this is just my very simple way of ‘refuelling’ and I guess Spring is a good time for this as new life is popping up everywhere after a long cold dark Winter 🙂

I was amazed to find a comment on the posting walled gardens for minors  from Mike Gerard. It has been a long time. Apart from being an exceptional work colleague during my time at CERN, he also agreed to be the coach for a team of us ladies (we were about 6) that would run the CERN relay every year at the end of May. The core team was myself (British), Monica Marinucci (Italian ), Maite (Spanish ), Aneta Baran (Polish ), Leanne Guy(Aussie ), Irmeli Svenson (Swedish), and Catherine Charbonnier (French) We also had some that came and went, sorry if I missed your names ladies 😉

I think the first year we ran it was in 1998. Each of us needed to run 1km, and OK for you fit guys out there this is nothing, but for us it was like a marathon as none of us were runners.  Mike used to take us out twice a week leading up to this race. He was amazing, he also got some stick from his colleagues when he was caught running around CERN with 6 ladies puffing in tow 🙂

We did so well that we even got medals in first or second place in our ‘ladies only’ team category a couple of years. After the first race I trained in earnest and have since run a whole load of half marathons and two full marathons (incl. NYC), and every time I have stood at the starting line I think of Mike and what he said that made me believe that I could run, how I said that I didn’t have a runners form, almost as though it was out of my control, I was getting to that age where the kilos were starting to load. He said that “you needed to run in order to get a runners’ form”. He was right, it is the chicken and egg thing. So I started to run… and got that runner’s form and I remember that one day when he said to me “now you are starting to look and run like a runner”. This made me feel very proud.

Apart from running I have since done tjevassen (ladies cross country skiing race) twice 30km, and once a race on skis of 45km. I have done an ice-skating race of 30km across the Swedish lakes. I have three times cycled tjevatten (ladies cycling) of 90km each. I have swam in tjevarnbroswimmet 1km upstream in water of only 16 degrees (with a wetsuit ;-)). I have trekked across the mountains with a 10kg rucksack on touring skis, got stuck in snow blizzards and survived. I even canoe and take a tent to sleep in overnight. In fact it makes me what I am today, determined and much more, getting mentally younger every year I get physically older. My personal moto is that “there is no excuse for not trying”.

More importantly if I had never started running I would have never met my very fine viking man soon after arriving in Sweden who has since become my husband. We met in a running club, at that time when running was my only life outside of my work. So this is why I feel nostalgic, if it wasn’t for Mike’s encouragement I would not have what I have today, and it is those things that money cannot buy 🙂

I don’t normally name people in full on my blog for obvious reasons, but I wanted Mike to get this public thank you from me and from the team, and this is the best way I can think of to do this 🙂

Well I must say that I do like WordPress look & feel, ease of use, but the statistics is quite useless, and I am very disappointed. On Blogspot I was able to include some Google Analytics code into my blog code, but this is not possible on WordPress. What’s more stats that do exist is quite poor….there is only number of hits, nothing on visitors, unique visitors, which networks they enter the site, browsers they use, etc.

If anyone knows how I can get better information on my visitors feel free to share, in case I’m doing WordPress an injustice.

I came across this great article on how Hewlett-Packard started up, and succeeded, their ideas were innovative and their ways of doing things were different to what was generally accepted or understood at this time. It also talks about the HP Way. This is what makes me feel proud to be a part of HP. Let us do things differently, innovate and get excited about life and it’s surprises even during these more challenging times 🙂

Today was quite fantastic. We walked to the little lake on the island only 10 minutes away and spent a couple of hours ice-skating. I have never seen such beautiful ice; opaque black yet so clear like a mirror. It was an amazing sight and a heavenly sensation when skating, the ice couldn’t have been more perfect. The temperature has now dropped to -8 degrees centigrade this evening. During the day it was -6, quite perfect as long as you wrap up warm.