All change..

A few things haven't changed since I last posted:

• it is, once again, 3 weeks since I last posted..
  
• I am still keeping up my maintenance runs, managing a good 10 miler every weekend. This is a big change (bingo!) from my past post-marathon periods where I have taken it very easy between training schedules. I'm hoping a base of 20-25 miles per week will make marathon training easier.. Of which more, later.

A big thing has changed, however, which goes some way towards explaining why it's been 3 weeks since I've last posted:

• the prospects for my freelance career have taken a bit of a downward turn. Various opportunities have become much less concrete in current climate;
• and as a result I have decided I need to stay in my current position for little bit longer. Writing this down feels like such a climb-down. It very much felt like that. I was so looking forward to being completely freelance. However, economic necessity and practical considerations forced me to reconsider. It was not an easy decision to make, but it's done.
• Not all is bad though. As a result of my uncharacteristic frankness with my boss, concrete steps are being taken to hire me an assistant in the New Year. The list of jobs I put together that I no longer wanted to do? That has become her job description... She's a nice person as well and I'm looking forward to working with her.

So after a tough week where I really wasn't sure which way to go (and lots of runs trying to work things out in my head) I am back at work and, strangely enough, feeling quite optimistic about it all. We shall see how it goes.

A further set-back in terms of blogging, reading and posting has been the death of my beloved PowerBook's hard drive AND the back-up drive. (For those of you not aware of this - do NOT use Time Machine to back up your hard drive. If your hard drive becomes corrupted, the corruption is copied to Time Machine.) So after an agonizing and extremely expensive week I am now the owner of a new MacBook and of a new external hard drive filled with data recovered by a data recovery firm. It's a good thing I still have a job to pay for it all ;).

It's taken me a while to get back up and running on my new computer and to get my stuff together. The inevitable race towards Christmas with presents to plan, buy and wrap, Christmas trees to decorate, parties to go to, children's school performances to go to and cater for has meants that my free time has been non-existent. I'm not too displeased with my time management at the moment but I DO feel like I'm on a roller coaster.

Running has, once again, proved a lifeline. With everything that has been going I have been managing to keep it up. I have more or less decided on a schedule for London and I hope to post about it this week. My long runs are generally decent - today's 10 miler was tough but I was exhausted so it was a real "eating the elephant in small bites" run (to paraphrase the INCREDIBLE MarathonChris). I am ready. I can see that the next year is going to be busy and challenging but running is the thread that keeps me together - that returns me to me every day and forces me to consider and check myself.

I am going to bed now and am really hoping to post more this week. I am working tomorrow and Tuesday and then Tuesday night my family and I and a mountain of presents will be taking the Pride of Hull from Hull to Rotterdam overnight (the least glamorous ferry journey imaginable, take it from me - from one horrible ugly industrial city across a rough and ugly sea to another horrible ugly industrial city) to get to Holland and to my parents - in bucolic Oosterbeek - for Christmas eve. The week pans out as Chrismas day, boxing day, my son's birthday (Maritza's birthday buddy) and my mother's birthday - 4 days of parties. Once again, running will preserve my sanity - and my waistline...

But I hope to be posting from the frontline of my life - and I wish you all the most wonderful of Christmases. May all your dreams come true.