We won!

Last night I was at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane where my team collected the award for the best corporate website at the CorpComms Awards! I knew we would. Really, I did. Because we've developed an awsome site. Of course, I had very little to do with it. All the hard work was put in by my team. I was presented with the fetching glass and chrome trophy by comedian Frankie Boyle. Photos and everything.

What a great night!

I do wonder how many people in the room realised how fundamentally the corporate communications profession is going to change over the next few years. We have Generation Y people coming into the workplace who will be their own communicators, and we have technology - like the technology I'm using for this blog - that removes the barrier to entry to communications. So people will be willing and able to do it themselves. Communicators really need to re-assess their role now that everyone has a radio tower. Carefully crafted messages and beautifully designed websites will be less relevant, and probably not timely.

Black tie

Off to the CorpComms Awards at the Grosvenor House tonight. Black tie and everyhing! We were narrowly pipped for the best corporate website last year, and we've been shortlisted again this year. Fingers crossed!!

I'm In!

I got my acceptance for the London Marathon in the post yesterday! Fantastic! I can't wait. I've also got a place in the Silverstone Half Marathon in March. That'll be part of my London preparation. My running distances are slowly increasing - see last post - and I've just 2 weeks left before I switch from cycling 4 days a week and running 2, to 3 days a week for each. I don't plan to do any more than that as my legs are too prone to injury. I've also modified my expectations and will be aiming to complete the London course in under 4 hours 30 minutes.

I plan to run in aid of the The Salvation Army Training Centre in Hadleigh which my sister, Shelley, manages. They do great work helping people with disabilities, or who have been long term unemployed, back into work.

Half Marathon time

Saturday's half marathon training run in the gym was pretty successful. I had the treadmill on an incline to try a simulate street running, and I varied the pace quite a bit. I was getting tired towards the end, but nevertheless completed the distance in 1 hour 57 minutes and 34 seconds. That's over 5 minutes better than my previous best. No injuries, or niggles, just the continued stiffness in my right achiles in the mornings and for the first 1k of any run. I had a couple of days rest from running, then today I did a fast-ish 8k - 40 minutes (that's fast for me). Next run is Sunday when I plan an easy 15k, before raising the distances again for the following weeks, with a 22k and a 24k planned.

Punctures

I cycle from the South East London/Kent borders to central London on average 3 days a week. I have a decent bike, made with decent components. Everything has been great and I really enjoy it. Except I've had 3 punctures in the space of 12 months. That's not normal! Yesterday morning was miserable. It was 6.30am, dark and wet and I was at the side of the road fitting a new inner tube. My conclusion is that the tyres are not up to the job, so I've changed them for a pair of Schwalbe Stelvio Plus tyres which I'm assured have very high puncture protection. We'll see! They're also slightly thinner, so I should be a few seconds faster next time.

Talk To Her

I watched the last of my Pedro Almodovar DVD box set last night. Talk To Her. Like the other Almodovar movies, this one deals with a difficult issue. It's the story of two men who love women who are in a coma. A compelling piece, powerfully acted, which certainly makes the viewer re-assess things. I recommend it to you - particularly if you're a fan of indie movies as a refreshing change from Hollywood gloss.

One of the great parts of the movie was the performance by Caetano Veloso singing at a party. I'd heard of this guy, but I don't think I'd ever really listened his work before. It was sublime. That's another CD on the way from Play.com!!

I'll be the England manager

I saw that Steve McLaren got a huge pay-off for failing as the England football coach. I've sent my application form in for the job as I reckon I could fail just as well as he did. Hopefully I'll get the same kind of pay-off.

I'll let you know how I get on!

Still running

I've decided I HATE GOLF! I've had lessons, but making progress is just such hard work. I went down the driving range today at lunchtime and it was a good half an hour before I was even hitting them straight. Really, what is the point?

I cycled to work on Wednesday as usual, then did an 8k run when I got home. And it felt really good. I'm planning a half marathon distance training run tomorrow, but as the weather is looking like it's going to be really cold, I think I'll do it down the gym on the treadmill. I've got a table tennis match right afterwards, so at least I'll be in the right place. Running is generally easier in the gym, so I make sure I put the machine on a small incline to at make it feel a little more realistic. I'm going to take it real easy - aiming at 2 hours for the 13 miles. I don't want to push it too early and risk injury!

I'm pondering entering the San Francisco Marathon in 2008. I love San Francisco. I could see some baseball afterwards as well.

Live Flesh

I watched this film yesterday. Another great Almodovar production. As you'd expect all his films have a particular style, pseudo-realistic. But the thing that unnerved me most about this one was the brutal honestly of Elena - "I never lie".

In all, not as good as "All About My Mother" but pretty good nonetheless.

The runs are getting longer

Went down the gym yesterday. The first time for months. But I was due to play table tennis and the weather was pretty rough, so I thought I'd do my run inside on the treadmill. Got to about 18k when my wife turned up for lunch. Everything felt good, and I am only a little stiff this morning, and am still injury free. In fact I felt good enough to do 35k on the bike this morning.

I'm now going to up the running to at least twice a week, with one of those being a progressively longer run. Target is the Silverstone Half Marathon in March as a warm up to the London Marathon. I'll need to fit in a 10k before then though.

Social media football team

It'll be interesting to see if the wisdom of crowds gets better results that the selection of an expert.

What a great story though....

Dot-com Bubble

It'll burst soon. It's all going crazy again. Where's the value? Here's the story from the Beeb...

Holiday fatigue

Just when we'd decided not to do so much travelling on future holidays - probably as a result of the incredibly long delay we suffered (thanks Virgin!) coming back from the States last time - someone throws you a wobbly. I read on Terry McKenzie's blog about the fab time she had cooking in Tuscany. Now that's got to be worth a look! Here are the full details...

Training update

Last week was pretty good. I only needed to ride into London on one day which means my legs were fairly well rested for a fast 10k on Friday. I managed 50'56 in quite blustery conditions. It felt good, and I was injury free at the end. I didn't set out to do a fast run, but after a fairly gentle first 3k, things felt good enough to speed up. I expect to be sub 50 minutes in the next few weeks.

The policy of not running so much and doing much more cycling seems to be paying dividends in keeping me injury free. I'm also taking fairly high doses of Glucosamine Sulphate, which appears to help with post run recovery.

Today I took the road bike out and did a fairly gentle 60k ride around South London. It was too windy to make it much fun, and it's quite a hilly route - including Chislehurst Hill on the way home. However, at least the heart rate monitor didn't go crazy like last week when I came over Shooters Hill!

I've got 4 round trips into London on the bike this week - just as the weather starts to get cold! That means I won't be runninng until Friday, so no risk of injury. Let's just hope I can start to get the distances up soon.

They read magazines........

Have you noticed how the kids only read the magazines from the Sunday papers? Newsapapers just don't interest them! Is that a new phenomenon, or was it always like that? I'd always thought there would be a role for newspapers going forward, as thought leaders (opinion formers?) and aggregators. However, I think generation Y get all the news they need in very small bite sized chunks from the web and so I expect we'll see a new wave of news content migrating from print to online, with what newspapers remain focussing more on very brief news snippets, and much more features. They try to become daily magazines.