{"id":21034,"date":"2016-01-21T09:11:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T09:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=21034"},"modified":"2016-03-02T09:24:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T09:24:26","slug":"busy-days-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/01\/busy-days-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Busy Days at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a busy day for all of us yesterday. I started it with some work on the computer and then a nice 3x 12 minute sweetspot turbo trainer session courtesy of a TrainerRoad workout called Geiger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Geigier\"<\/a>

Geigier<\/p><\/div>\n

It was then the usual hectic half an hour of getting ready for work and school before we headed off through the frosty streets to Aberystwyth. Morgan was dropped off at school and we went to work.<\/p>\n

Work was hectic as I have been responsible for a graduate trainee on the AberForward program so had lots to organise for him. This is in addition to\u00a0the fact that I’m also trying to cover for a technician who is off sick which means that\u00a0I’m currently doing the job of two people. On top of that I’m also partly covering for\u00a0an IBERS website editor who is off on maternity leave so I get\u00a0various website update request from the whole institute as well.<\/p>\n

I only work at the University part time and had been off the previous day, but the first thing that Martin our graduate trainee said when he came in was that it had been manic\u00a0the day before with people popping in every 5 minutes looking for me. That’s nothing unusual, it’s always like that, it’s just that people notice it more when I’m\u00a0not there to help them. I had labs to prepare, supplements to make and emails to send and then it was time to organise some video shots with Martin.<\/p>\n

Promotional Videos<\/h2>\n

As well as all the usual day to day tasks associated with my job\u00a0I’m trying to set up a new project within the department. We are going to need some promotional material for this project so we had Martin working for us on a graduate trainee placement and had decided to put him to work making a start on such material. However, he had managed to get himself a full time job elsewhere so was only going to be with us for two weeks, not the 4-6 weeks as originally planned. This meant that getting him settled in, up and running and able to actually produce anything of use was going to be tight.\u00a0I’d been working hard on it and today was one of the crunch days as far as actually getting things done was concerned.<\/p>\n

I’d lined up lots of different video shoots for him today and therefore had to orchestrate these as well as feature in some of them myself. He’d already spent a day in the analysis lab filming various procedures and today it was time for some shots elsewhere. We had him filming me on a bike doing a ramp test (which added another 10 minutes or so of cycling to my days training). Next up was a 3rd year student running on a treadmill whilst wired up to a breath by breath analyser.<\/p>\n

Swimming Gala<\/h2>\n

I then had to pop out for lunch to meet Anna and make a flying visit to Plascrug Leisure Centre where Morgan was swimming\u00a0in the finals of the local schools swimming gala. He qualified last week in the heat so was swimming\u00a0in the 25m freestyle finals. He knew that we’d only pop in to see his race and we timed it to perfection. Well, I say we timed it to perfection as that’s how it worked out but if that had been the plan it would have been cutting it very fine indeed. We\u00a0couldn’t find a parking space so ended up driving around for a while looking for somewhere. We then rushed into the pool and onto balcony and managed to see Morgan walking along the poolside to take up his place on the starting blocks for his race. Luckily he looked up and saw us waving at him as he lined up to go. We’d arrived literaly seconds before his race and he had seen that we were there.<\/p>\n

In no time at all they were off and 20 seconds or so later Morgan’s race was over. He swam well, we’re not sure where he came as it was pretty close at the finish but he was definitely in the top 3, maybe even 1st.<\/p>\n

We managed to have a quick chat with him and then headed back off to work, having been at the gala for about 5 minutes.<\/p>\n

More Filming<\/h2>\n

Back at work and it was time for more filming and of course the usual emails and running around after people. Martin was off filming with Dan and Greg in the DEXA scanner room. I managed to catch up with a few things and then had to prepare labs, drinks and equipment ready for the next day. I finish at 3:15pm on certain days so that I can collect Morgan from school, which is what I did today, but I was soon back at work doing a little extra as we wanted to get some footage of someone running on the track.<\/p>\n

I was supposed to do a run today anyway so thought I’d combine it with some extra work and turn it into a video shoot as well. We set up the timing gates and camera on the side of the track and then off I went first for a bit of a warm up and plyometrics session, then some sprints for the camera and finally for a 40 minute MAF zone run.<\/p>\n

Morgan came along to watch and I had expected him to head off to Anna and for Martin to head back to the office after the filming was done, but they hung around on the side of the track chatting (mainly about YouTube I think) whilst I neatly clocked off 21 laps of the track at Maf zone pace. A MAF zone run means keeping my heart rate at around 140bpm so it was fairly easy.<\/p>\n