Welcome back to my blog!

Some time between my last post and now, my blog died with a “WordPress White Screen of Death”. With my job taking up my available time, and my desire to stare at “screens” all but vanished completely, I didn’t have the will to sit down and sort it out. One day I’d get around to it…

Today, was that day.

I’ve no idea if there are any other bugs here. I guess they’ll raise their heads when they do.

So, what’s been happening since October 2022? Not really a lot to be fair. Working five days at the Lidl RDC leaves me a physical wreck with no energy to run, no desire to code, and too exhausted to story-write. You haven’t missed much.

A year of working hard at the RDC led to me being asked to become a Training Mentor. It’s a position I enjoy, except that a person who hates the cold rarely enjoys anything working anywhere in the Chiller, and training people requires a lot of standing watching the new trainees, getting cold.

When not training, I’m a picker in the ‘Chiller Convenience’ section of the RDC – an area in which I can move at a decent pace, keep warm when moving quickly, and exceed my pick rate targets in my sleep (for which I thank my former running fitness). On that front, the job could definitely have been a lot worse.

We have some great managers at the RDC, so the atmosphere whilst working there is fairly easy-going. So long as you don’t try it on, and just get on with your job, you don’t get any hassle. It’s a much better working environment than my old factory job.

Towards the end of my first year, I felt my fitness level declining and feared that my absence from running was going to see my health and fitness reduce drastically. I had a sit down with my line manager and ultimately asked to drop down from five days to working four days a week, and that is what I’ve been doing this year.

It may not seem like much, but the extra day off each week has been enough to enable me to get back into running. At the start of the year I had trouble doing much more than a 3km stagger around the cemetery – that’s how far my fitness had fallen. I was just too tired, my poorly leg was getting worse, and everything ached. I felt 20 years older than I am.

Now it’s August, and my running has improved. I’m back to running half-marathon distances semi-regularly, albeit closer to 2hrs than 1h 30m that I did before. I’ve recently begun some pace work, and my 5km pace is threatening 23 minutes now, which is about 3-4 mintes off where I once was but, given where the year started, is pretty amazing.

Now with my blog back online, I hope to start finding some time to get back to writing as well – although three days off per week when you’re running at least two of them really is not a lot of time at all.