Monday, November 29, 2010

It’s always darkest before the dawn


Different day, different format. It’s about time for me to go plow through some more of A New Earth, and then get to sleep but here are some things that have been rolling around in my head today:
• Sometimes you can accomplish more by doing less (chaordic design makes more sense the more I learn about it and the older and, perhaps? wiser I get).
• Maybe this kundalini yoga thing works best when you need it most – for the first time today I was actually suddenly overcome with emotion (anger, actually, followed 15 minutes later by sadness).
• A burning platform is both a good thing and a bad thing.
• Looking forward to Camps Bay sunset on Wednesday.
• I’m running low on fish oil.
• Who knew it could take so long (30 minutes, and I’m not kidding) to get an ATM card? Good heavens….
• Occam’s Razor, and the most likely thing to happen is usually what does.
• Is caffeine actually a mood-enhancer, or is it just the additional blood to the brain? Along the same lines … the placebo effect is strong, even when you suspect that it might be in play.
• My friend was right Saturday (twice, and just in this part of the conversation): 1. I am letting other people affect my thinking too much, and 2. I should worry less about what other people think.
• Oh that image? The computer virus I defeated today. It infected one of the Purple Heart computers and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a clever-ass thing – wouldn’t let you open things where you might be able to disable it (i.e. Regedit or Task Manager!). It even messed with the boot sequence to make it harder to load Windows in Safe Mode. Anyway totally not my job but once the thing impressed me with its sophistication I was determined to defeat it!
• Yes, I really am a nerd.
• Could I be happy working for a purely for-profit enterprise again?
• Which is more powerful, doubt or hope?
• I really miss milk.
• I really love this shirt that Laa-Laa sent me. If only I could wear it every day.
• Fresh date balls are quite possibly one of the best things ever. Of course, they are also almost pure sugar.
• There is a lot of wisdom in The Matrix.
• Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age; some of the wisest people I know are younger than I am and I sometimes think I am wiser than people much older (well, I guess there are just some older souls and some younger ones).
• Being able to turn off each outlet with a wall switch is actually a fantastic feature.
• My floor is very dusty (I was rolling around on the floor for a while … if you don’t know why you’re not in the cult and it really doesn’t matter). And I really need to get this shattered window fixed, so that I can clean and have it stay clean.
• I sure as hell hope Frank Lloyd Wright was right.
• Walking on water is dangerous. So is the ego.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Tired







































Yes, I’m tired. It’s been a taxing couple of weeks, and the trip back to America was draining both physically and emotionally, and then getting back here has also been tiring emotionally – a lot more than I expected it to be. Those long plane rides take a lot out of the body even though you don’t necessarily realize it, and even though I haven’t really been hit with jetlag on the return side I am just tired. My workouts this week and actually even post-the CrossFit Fenway one last week have been significantly sub-par. Yesterday’s way the first beach workout at Cape CrossFit, and consisted of 5x 60m sprints, followed by “Sandy Helen” which was 3 rounds of about a 500m run on the sand, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 burpees. Now that’s the sort of workout that I should just absolutely crush, but for whatever reason I didn’t run harder than maybe 80% on the runs. Why? Mentally tired but even as it was by the end burpees I was just tired and slowed way down.

Add to that a couple nagging injuries that aren’t bad but that I have been ignoring and hoping will go away(hope is not a strategy), and it all adds up to that my body is telling me I need to rest. So I asked one of the athletes in my gym for advice on how much to rest and he told me to rest the entire week until next Saturday and just stretch, and do mobility work. Now although I don’t like this very much at all, he is absolutely right. I suppose it makes sense anyway, that if I’m going to do something I generally tend to do it all out, so that should include rest as well. I will probably do some yoga but not as physical activity but for the mental clearing aspect of it, and will take it as easy as I can. I’ve known for a while that I needed to take some serious time off, but I guess I may as well actually do something about it. So funny to write this now because I am thinking back to the weeks when I would use any excuse not to make time to go to the gym, and actually that was the unnatural state for me, thinking back on it.

I was even tired at work on Friday: my brain would not engage very well at all. I spent a lot of the day co-ordinating meetings for next week, and did have a good check-in meeting with the Hub host, and a business development meeting in the afternoon.

Friday evening was interesting: first I dropped off beer-brewing ingredients I had smuggled into the country at a friend’s house, then went to the Woodstock Industrial Centre to an art opening at /A Word of Art. The artist was named Roger Ballen and his work was interesting and mostly somewhat disturbing and uncomfortable. Well, you can look at it. Anyway my colleague and I went, and there I ran into a bunch of other people that I knew (someone from my apartment block and yoga, and a couple who train at the gym). We also had a celebrity show up, Yo-Landi Vi$$er from Die Antwoord. Very cool. But anyway Roger Ballen gave a talk and maybe it was my tired brain or maybe he is so right-brain that I just couldn’t understand him but he would be talking and I would realize that I just had not processed anything that he had said. Very, very strange. Apparently I wasn’t the only one having this problem, however. But regardless, I was smoked so I went home, cooked some steak and salad and went to bed as quickly as I could.

After the Saturday workout about 6 or 7 of us ate brunch at Sandbar. I am pretty sure almost everyone at the table had the Mexican omelette (sans the bread, of course), although many of them did not eat the chilli sauce. Apparently my consumption of the sauce was unusual for some reason. I don’t know. So we were rejoined on this morning by a guy who had been in Sweden for a few months visiting family. He’s happy to be back, and I’m happy he’s happy, and also it’s good to have him back. Also, selfishly, I like having him here because he is quite wise and gives me good feedback. We all need friends like that.

Anyhow, after eating I went to the Biscuit Mill to pick up some meat, and for once I actually managed to go through a whole visit without bumping into someone that I knew! So that was good because I was trying to hurry to get to a farewell braai for this girl that I know from the gym at Oudekraal Beach just south of Camps Bay. That was good fun, we hung out there for a couple of hours, braaied, and talked. The most amazing rainbow showed up and stayed out for a long time – it was absolutely fantastic. When the beach closed at 6pm we moved to the rocks by Bakoven until it got dark and a little bit cold, at which point a couple of us went out to dinner followed by, in my case, a little bit of Alexander (the movie, actually this is not code name for another CrossFit workout!) and a lot of red wine. Ouch, feeling that today but other than that a super fun evening!

Now, I am working. I didn’t get as much done as I had wanted on my trip to America last week, prompting this conversation at work on Friday:
• “Yes, I’ll be working on Sunday. I didn’t really work at all last week.”
• “Oh Ellie I am so glad you didn’t work last week!”
• “Well I’m not! Now I’m behind!”

True. So, it’s about time for me to explain what I do. The organisation I work for is called heart and we are an incubator for social enterprises. This is a term that does not have an industry standard meaning, which is why everyone and their brother can get away with calling themselves social entrepreneurs. Be that as it may, we define the term as a for-profit business the raison d’etre of which must be to create some sort of positive good in the world: social, environmental, etc, etc. So as an incubator we have a methodology combined with tools, templates, policies, and procedures that can be used to take a business from concept to operation, or can refine an existing business and nurture it to help it succeed. Associated with this incubator is a fund firm that provides seed capital for the enterprises that are incubated. Imagine a venture capital fund, but here the investors are looking for what we call blended value returns: commercial returns, yes, but the money goes directly into enterprises that are making a difference at grassroots level. So, a real social investment.

Now the other part of our business is a founder, owner, and operator of social enterprises, and I run this part of the business (since August). These are all in relatively early startup phase, with two more on the way. Now because these are real businesses with real customers, products, and competitors, I obviously can’t go into extreme detail in a public forum about what exactly is going on. So, the short version of what I do is business strategy and management.

…and with that, time to get back to some planning.

Friday, November 26, 2010

A very South African Thanksgiving (or why South Africa is like a drug)





As some of you may remember, the prowler is not my best friend. I went to the workout this morning hoping to do weighted situps, resistance sprints, and overhead squats. Yes, I prefer this torture to the beast that is the prowler. But even at 32kgs a round, it wasn’t so bad because we had a good amount of rest in between. Our coach was asking “who wants more weight here, except for Ellie who I know does” and I looked at him like he had two heads and said “are you kidding” (usually I want more weight but in the case of the prowler I am afraid). Unfortunately after one round he made me increase. There is just no winning, is there?

So today was more like a typical day. Within the first hour I was inundated and I think the only thing I really accomplished all day was writing an email off to a key client. Well. Ok yes, that’s pretty well true. Everything else was coordinating deliverables, providing guidance to other people, and checking in with my boss via phone (he was trying to get some work done by working from home). In other words, managing. Whee.

I guess the big intellectual excitement for the day was reading about BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) structures and asking questions to our lawyer about legal structures and so on so forth. But actually it is important in an NGO context to understand the exact legislative definition of “profit-driven.” For so many reasons.

What else did I do today? Check in on the market research for our low-cost housing initiative, set up some next steps there, mentor meetings with some interns, talk to my boss a few times on the phone, review some more budgets, talk next steps on recruiting, Purple Heart business coaching, um, well it’s a bunch of simultaneous startups perhaps I should say what didn’t I do today? In retrospect, yesterday was a bit chill. After today I remembered a) the ambient stress level and b) the excitement level getting call after call about things coming through. Well, I am never one to count my chickens before they are hatched … a call to my local lawyer capped the day off.

So afterwards I went to the house of a couple of American friends who were hosting a Thankgiving potluck. Note, for the record, the incredibly tiny size of the South African turkey! Heck I have roasted chickens here bigger than that! I had made some roasted veggies last night so that I could have something paleo; as it turned out other than the meat there were two other acceptable dishes. Well, plus wine because what is a holiday without wine?

As is suited to Thanksgiving we went around the table to say what we were thankful for. I was very moved by the person who said he was thankful for the arts because I frankly didn’t think of that. Self-centered person that I am I said the following:
1. I am thankful for my family for the love and support they show for me, and that I know they want the best for me
2. I am thankful for my friends both here and actually around the world: in Africa, the Middle East, America, Europe, and Australia, who love and support me
3. I am thankful for my health; the more so after each injury I get where I am thankful that I can do things like run 400 meters (not as fast as I want), deadlift 100kgs, do pullups, and yes do a bunch of pushups even when I get mad at my body for not doing what I think it should!
4. I am thankful for my job. Thankful that I love what I do, thankful that I am good at what I am doing, that I am appreciated for it, that I think it’s both important and the start of something big. I’ve been here before in my career where going to work every day was a joy, and when you have that once you know how much you are missing when you don’t have it, so to have it again is a blessing. Really.

The best quote from the evening from a fellow American who is also head-over-heels in love with South Africa relating what she told her cab driver when she moved here: “South Africa is like a drug. Once you get a little taste you can’t get enough!”

Then, again, I realized what a nerd I am by teaching a five-year-old the proper form on pushups, and helping I think a four-year-old to do handstand pushups.

After dinner, I somehow avoided dessert and talked first politics, then CrossFit, then work. And so it goes, there are my main subjects of interest I suppose, and not necessarily in that order!

One of these days I should really explain in more detail what I do, and what my organisation does. But right now I need to go to bed or else even 21-15-9 burpees and thrusters @24 kgs is not going to be easy!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

First Day Back





















































Second day, actually, but yesterday was only a half day and was mainly filled with errands. After Bill Belichick picked me up from the airport (inside joke, sorry), I picked up my car from the mechanic, and went home to find that the Cape Town wind had had a way with the door to my balcony, ripping it completely out of its socket, and smashing it to boot. So I did what any person who just finished a 22-hour trip would do, and re-secured the door, called the landlord, and went for a Thai massage to help get my flexibility back. Then I sat and drank tea for over an hour chatting, before realising I needed to do grocery shopping so that I could get to bed at a reasonable hour.

And yes, Christmas season is officially upon us!

I started off by sleeping in and deciding to hit up CCF in the afternoon. Then, despite the fact that the only days I can reliably make it to work on time are the ones where I train in the evening, a lane restriction on the N1 caused me to be late to work! Figures. One of my co-workers was playing guitar in the morning meeting, which was pretty fantastic. It was also great to see smiling, familiar faces. I had brought gifts for a couple of co-workers back from the U.S.A. I am funny with gifts: I will only get one for someone if I think they will really like it.

Following the morning meeting I caught up with my boss for an hour and change, which was really great. I will repeat for about the 80th time how wonderful it is to work with someone different enough to challenge me and that I can learn from, and similar enough that we can come to agreement on the important issues quite quickly. I also relayed what I had been working on last week (which reminds me I need to send an email before I go to bed!), and immediately got a couple of ideas. Love that. Then he went home to work on a business case in peace (!) and I got to work, first digging into the Purple Heart 2010 budget reconciliation and budget projections for 2011. Suffice to say that we have our work cut out for us on a number of fronts; these are challenging times to be sure.

Mostly though I spent the day catching up and trying to plan. I wound up not going to a conference at the UCT GSB (Graduate School of Business), which was just as well because I had enough other things going on! We need to do a lessons learned from the latest FoodTents GrowZone build, and we are engaging with a number of corporates to sponsor our IT infrastructure (including internet). So my main contribution to this was to suggest that we put out a comprehensive RFP to ensure that we were comparing apples to apples. Other than that, kind of nice to get back to my high tech roots although the physical infrastructure was never an area of extreme expertise but I did learn a thing or two at Exit41 (who would have thought you could learn so much selling to quick serve restaurants?).

I dashed out of work reasonably early to go pick up my weekly bag of veggies (and fruit – nectarines and apricots are apparently in season now!), and get my workout in. Apparently I’m a whiner for complaining about my hands, well, whatever, they need to harden up. Then the boys made me demonstrate my pullup (again I was told to quit whining about not being able to perform under pressure). Notice a pattern here? Haha. Well, despite the ribbing, this crew were also happy to see me. I, on the other hand, was not so happy to see Cindy which was our workout for the day (20 minutes of as many rounds as possible of 5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats) because for some reason I was unable to do pushups very well at all! I mean like really badly (for me), so badly I’m not so much mad at myself as slightly disturbed. I will monitor this situation but I may need to take a couple extra rest days next week if this weakness continues.

Chatted a bit about some of the CrossFit gyms I visited in Massachusetts. What I neglected to mention was how many of the people were talking about competing in the CrossFit Games next year. You wouldn’t believe how many people asked me that, actually, which I would take as a compliment except for the fact that I think it was more of an ice-breaker than an actual compliment!

Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I didn’t have anything for the potluck I went back to Pick’n’Pay to pick up some veggies. One thing that I did enjoy being back in America is having veggies weighed at the cashier, but here there is a very friendly guy who weighs them in the grocery section and he actually thanked me for not using bags and protecting the environment. How cool is that? Well, I was happy.

Why all the pictures of coconut milk you ask? Well, there are 13 different kinds of coconut milk on that shelf. Guess how many contain preservatives and other garbage? 9. OK to be fair, 2 of 8 brands, or 25%. But really. Moral of this story? Check your labels.

Then I was serenaded for the second time by my car guard. Now I didn’t really realize as I dropped my gym bag and headed across the road just how good his voice was but on the way back I complained that he was not singing and my goodness the man had an amazing voice! Either that or I have no sense for that sort of thing, but he was doing full-on opera, and really well. OK, I am easily amused, but do you know how often you walk past amazing things and don’t notice? Reminds me of the study I once read about where they took members of I think it was the New York Symphony and had them play in the subway …. And almost no one really took any more notice than if they had been random street musicians. It’s all about context. This is the same reason a $100 bottle of wine tastes better than a $10 bottle (often, it actually doesn’t in blind taste tests). Also the same reason brand is so darn important. But enough of my drivel, if you want to learn more about this read one of these books: Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, or How We Decide. So I guess I’m a fan of behavioural psychology after all.

Speaking of behaviour I was so surprised to hear a pretty large number of American friends who said they read either my blog or my Facebook posts and never commented on either. The large lurker crowd! Makes you wonder, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody comments on it in this day and age, well it still fell but does anyone care? Apparently so.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Family, friends, and pullups






Well sorry for the long post but it was a long week, and I didn’t wind up having time to write up a post half-way through, so here we go!

This week was very tiring. I found myself getting very, very tired around 9pm every night and not just because it was nearly fully dark at 4:45 (although that did not help). I spent the first few days at my parents place in Vermont, and the remainder at my house in Bolton, Massachusetts. The time was about as emotional as I had expected, and a lot more of a whirlwind than I was really expecting – I expected to have a lot more free time than I did, which turned out to be just about zero!

No surprise of course that my family and friends love and care about me. I was actually pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to explain what I do for work 100+ times (either people already understand or just don’t care about that level of detail). Obviously I also have a lot to think about. From that perspective it was good to get out of Cape Town to clear my head. I had actually forgotten just how beautiful New England is in the autumn; wow. I would say it’s about time for a 2+ hour run to clear my head but that’s not in the cards … more on that below.

So Sunday’s activities included a trip to Middlebury and then to check the construction of a bridge to New York state (the old one was declared structurally unsound and demolished last year). This was fun because we wandered way past the areas where you were supposed to go. Great security there; guess we didn’t fit the profile of terrorists. It is always interesting to me to check out construction up close.

On Monday we went up to Burlington, had a lovely lunch with my brother (he should have had the meatloaf), some good coffee at Muddy Waters, and watched the workers hang Christmas garlands. Then, we collected my mother after she had finished teaching one of her classes, and went to Frog Hollow, which is the gallery for local artisans. Middlebury still isn’t quite the same after Frog Hollow closed there: the new gallery is missing something. Shame; the ravages of an economic downturn.

Before heading home, we went by Belmont to collect my car from the mechanic. Now apparently some sort of surgery was done to the wheel wells, and the plastic barrier between the car and the wheel was not attached properly so it came unattached on my way to Whole Foods, and I was unable to pull it completely out so I did what I could to wedge it back into place. As I figured, the hardest part about adjusting to driving on the right again was shifting with the other hand – a countless number of times I would go to shift and would knock the door with my left hand. After the first two days or so that went away except when parallel parking. But to finish my story – my amateurish repair job in the dark parking lot came undone at highway speed, causing me nearly to swerve into the adjacent lane. Well, thank goodness for good reflexes. Aside from that, it was great to drive my car again – love, love, LOVE that car!

I actually found Whole Foods a bit overwhelming after 6 months or so of South African supermarkets. I was trying to figure out what sort of veggies to cook and I think I walked around in the vegetable area for about 5 minutes in complete indecision before settling on Brussels sprouts and yu choi. So many choices! A little bit surprisingly, I did not really translate prices back to rands at all. I guess it makes sense: what is a reasonable price in one country doesn’t really translate to another (hence the arbitrage of buying $30 worth of Oil of Olay SPF 15 moisturizer that would run me $60 in South Africa).

Tuesday I was sufficiently rested (and stretched – you wouldn’t believe what a toll 22 hours of travel takes on your body - now that I am used to listening to my body I can really tell the difference!) to go check out CrossFit New England in Natick (oddly enough, probably about a 10-minute drive from where I used to live). This is one of the meccas of CrossFit in the U.S., or at least so I think. Their team (2 men, 2 women) came in a very close second in the CrossFit Games this year, and the two owners Heather and Ben Bergeron are kind of celebrities. At this gym they have recently been doing one workout a week where the workouts are custom-designed to your weaknesses (since you are only as strong as your weakest link after all). So Mel who was running the workout I went to asked me what my weaknesses are and I rattled them off (starting with pullups, which I was unable to do). She took one look at me and said, ok, my workout would be 1 pullup per round and 10 wall balls. I tried not to look at her like she had three heads considering that I had just said I couldn’t do pullups, and gamely demonstrated my pullup attempt. I’ll spare the details but she told me exactly what I was doing wrong and showed me how to do it properly – so I tried and got much closer than ever before on my very next attempt, then within another 2-3 attempts I was doing pullups! My technique is still not great and sometimes I will get mostly all the way up and then have to muscle my way up the rest of the way but hey it’s an infinite improvement. Needless to say, I was pretty excited, I am not sure that grin came off my face for the rest of the day! Well, and the other thing that made me happy was that my most recent 400m time that I was so down on myself about is apparently considered quite good by CFNE fitness standards.

Tuesday lunch was at Legal Seafoods with my best friend from Babson. It was great to catch up with her, and one thing you always wonder about is how much you really have in common with ex-classmates or co-workers, once the opportunity to chat and gossip about other people, work, etc. is gone. Luckily in this case, we seem still to have a lot in common! After some quick shopping since I was already in the Burlington Mall, I went up to my old company, Exit41, in Andover. Chatted with my old boss the CEO for about maybe 45 minutes and then went on the rounds catching up with a lot of people. Sad, though, that there wasn’t really enough time to catch up with everyone in the amount of detail I would have liked!

Once I was able to extract myself, I headed to the bar at Dylan’s where I had spent many an evening when I worked for Exit41. There I enjoyed dinner and a couple of drinks with a couple of ex-coworkers. Absolutely love these two: they are as close as family in some ways, and that’s about all I have to say except thank you for sending me that Wendy’s audio file I had somehow managed to lose. And yes, I know the rules. Following dinner, I went down to Cambridge and got a parking spot right out front of the Muddy Charles, where I stayed for another drink or so with the BH3 “support group” before heading back home.

On Wednesday I had arranged to go up to my boarding school (St Paul's School in Concord NH) to give a talk at lunch time. Silly me, I hadn’t thought that they would have activities arranged weeks in advance (seriously!!) so I didn’t exactly get the best time slot but I did get about 20 students, most of whom seemed really engaged. I think I wound up talking to them as much about the context of living and working in South Africa (i.e. apartheid, BEE, etc.) than about social enterprise. But I was very impressed: I asked them to define social enterprise and this one kid defined it so well I couldn’t have done it better myself! My goal for the visit was party to plant a seed in the mind of these children that there could be a way to make a living outside of the traditional things they have been thinking about their whole life, but also to start networking and see what connections I could make that would be useful to heart. There are a couple of things that may or may not pan out, so we shall see.

I was impressed with a couple I met in the admissions office who looked like stereotypical New England (actually they were probably New York, I didn’t ask, but Northeast) old money. I don't know what my expectation is of the knowledge of most Americans about South Africa, but the father at least knew not only the President of South Africa by name but also knew of Julius Malema, so as I said I was impressed!

It’s funny, when you are told something often enough you tend to believe it: these kids are told every day that they are the crème de la crème and the world is their oyster. Now, this is true: they are by and large very intelligent and also lucky enough to come from a background with money, many of them. Well, maybe it’s time also to start thinking about what they can do for the world. If you think about all the brainpower being poured into things like behavioural psychology, advertising, financial instruments, frivolous lawsuits, making possessions we don’t really need … what would happen I wonder if people started moving in mass droves to second or third careers where they can really make a tangible difference in the world? Maybe this is already starting to happen, I am not sure – but I do know that there are a lot, a LOT of smart people out there who maybe don’t even know how to help. Even in America – I was just reading that there is something like a 14% adult illiteracy rate, and 31% of college graduates even are not proficient at basic math skills required to succeed in everyday life. I have, obviously, been thinking about social enterprise and what I am doing, and the fact of the matter is that it’s an idea whose time has come but it is much easier to do it in an environment where a) the need is so much more clear, and thanks to BEE legislation seed capital is more easily accessible than in America. So, you start where it’s easy and then you have the luxury of time, lessons learned, and capital to help you succeed where it’s harder. There is also the fact that being based in Africa, even in South Africa, is just exciting to people in the first world, and doing social enterprise is exciting to anyone with a bit of a business brain to them. I can literally see people start to light up from the inside out and get visibly excited when I talk about what I do and how they can get involved. You don’t have that opportunity every day, or every year.

Anyway. My walking reverie of the school took longer than expected so I ran a couple 200m sprints and checked out the new athletic complex. Wow. Change is hard, there was really a spirit to that old gym with the upstairs basketball court (they kept that feature, happily), and the weight room that looked like something out of the 1950s. Well, onward and upward I presume. Funny, though, the number of staff members who remembered me by name even though I hadn’t been there in literally 15 years. Apparently I stood out, actually I guess that’s no surprise around the gym, come to think of it … but yeah, I never did fit in really well there. I’m more of a chameleon now, it would actually be kind of interesting to go see how everyone has changed in 15 years. But we shall see.

I was in a bit of a hurry because I wanted to catch the 5:30pm class at CrossFit Fenway. I appreciated this gym from the get-go because they insist on only 8 people per class so that they can make sure everyone has proper form and attention. I also appreciated that our warmup involved sandbags which was new to me, and so good fun. The workout was deadlifts (5RM, for the second time in a week, file that one under constantly varied), followed by a fun workout of row 250m then do pushups to failure, and repeat (you are allowed to rest at the top of the pushup but not at the bottom, chest must touch the floor and legs must not). Your score is the max # of pushups you can do in 15 minutes. Well, this looked a lot easier on paper, I must say. Repeated muscle failure is hard! My first round I did 35, then 20, then after that it was a struggle to get between 8-12 in the last rounds. I really wanted to get to 100 and I did … barely. 101. But all in all, good fun! I was starving after all this so I went home and cooked goat chops with turnips and yu choi.

Thursday morning I went back to CrossFit New England for the workout which was clean complex. I won’t bore anyone with the details of this one because it’s pretty boring unless you’re a serious CrossFit nerd, but Ben told me to jump later than I had been jumping and that actually felt like good advice, I could feel that my form was a lot cleaner (no pun intended). Also, I feel like I should practice full cleans more because geez doing 36 of those suckers is hard when you are not used to front squats!

Lunch was Sichuan Gourmet (as paleo as we were able to make it). Gingu fish fillets are a lot spicier than I recall! My poor taste buds are not used to it, but the whole experience was very enjoyable. After that, Rob and I took off for a quick trip to Maine which consisted more of hitting up the outlet stores than sight-seeing but in our defense it was really, really cold! Lobster dinner and down to Cambridge Common for drinks night. This was really awesome: actually quite a few people couldn’t make it and either apologized before or after (or, in one case, apparently forgot completely until it was too late!), but a lot of people did make it, and most of my favorites. So, that was really just wonderful. It’s funny, it’s been months but in a lot of ways it could practically have been two weeks since the last time we all met up at Cambridge Common.

Now, despite not drinking too much I was still very tired the next morning (this, apparently, is what happens when you don’t drink frequently enough!). Dragged myself out of bed and to the dentist, then walked around taking pictures. Oddly enough I ran into someone I had met in South Africa (a Boston native) when I was on my way to grab some coffee at Starbucks. Talk about a small world! After grabbing a quick lunch in Harvard Square, I walked over to Harvard Business School where I had a meeting with the woman who runs the Social Enterprise Initiative (they define social enterprise much more broadly than we do … another of the challenges of an emerging sector!), and the woman who runs the incubator HBS is starting up. This meeting as well was to explore potential collaborations, and I think we have some ideas for how to do this. Directly following this meeting, I headed a bit further into Allston-Brighton to meet with a high-tech company there about potentially forming a joint venture, or in some other way helping us get kick-started with replicating a modified version of their business model in South Africa. Both of these meetings were notable for as I described above literally being able to see people light up with excitement, even while we’re all trying to be realistic about expectations. Collaboration is easy when you figure out how to make it both a win-win, and something that either both parties can do without a lot of extra lift, or, in cases like this, where there is an asymmetry for one party to do a lot of the legwork and just rely on the other for talent, or money, or technology. Of course, everything is easy in theory … it’s where you need to execute that the rubber really meets the road.

After these meetings I hit up CrossFit Southie, which is a new gym. I will just say: don’t bother. I knew more about proper form on the push press than the co-owner who was running the class. Cool logo though. So Friday night dinner was salmon (you can’t get wild salmon in SA, and the farm-raised Norwegian stuff is expensive and as we all know only to be eaten rarely because it’s awful for you), and I spent a good amount of time prepping for the Thanksgiving -1 party the next day (this is a pre- or post-Thanksgiving potluck, this year I was making roasted vegetables and paleo stuffing – fruit & nut, it was really good!).

Saturday! I must have been tired because I overslept and barely made it to CrossFit New England for the 9:30 workout. Yes, if it’s a day ending in y there are cult activities to be had … this day’s workout was 7 rounds of 5 handstand pushups, 10 deadlifts @60kgs, 10 chest-to-bar pullups, and 20 double-unders. Since I am new to pullups I subbed 5 normal pullups for the 10 chest-to-bar, and that was sufficiently difficult for me. I also managed to completely tear up both my palms, so although I may be like a kid who has found a new toy in pullups, those soft hands are killing me.

After eating lunch, Rob and I scouted trail for the hash he was supposed to hare (set trail for) but couldn’t because his knee hurt. I think it’s a sprain and that he should see someone, and I now am even more convinced it’s a sprain because after running the second half of trail then laying trail (did I mention running like the fear of God was in me because my flour didn’t arrive at the beer check until the pack did so I didn’t have much of a head start on the second 2-mile leg), I noticed that my sprained knee was hurting a bit too. So these things can flare up if you don’t rest them!

The rest of the evening involved a smoked turkey, a fried turkey, a TON of food, Sierra Nevada beer, fish oil in leaves (don’t ask…) and seeing just why Four Loco has been outlawed. My goodness I have never seen anyone go from fine to hilariously messed up so quickly! This was also a great party because I got to see a lot of other people I hadn’t seen all trip. But, unfortunately despite the fact that I didn’t actually go crazy eating too much I ate something that disagreed with me and had to go to bed relatively early. Still, I had a great time!

Sunday was also a bit hectic … a lot of last-minute errands, followed by the 100th Boston Moon hash (which was fantastic fun, despite the fact that I had to run really easy due to my knee starting to hurt). Really nice job by the hares, only problem was that it was extremely cold, like 40 F, and I was really cold (did I mention how cold it was) so by the end I just wanted it to end so we could get inside. Inside we went, to Doyle’s in JP where I got a few people to join me in the bar area so we could get a better view of the Pats/Colts game. And what a game!! Pats were up by I think 17 points at one point but the Colts came back to within 3 and the game ended with a Pats interception on the Colts 6 yard line with like 30 seconds left. That game totally could have gone the other way. But it didn’t. So then I didn’t realize my ride was leaving until they were and had a couple of hurried and emotional goodbyes (no fair trying to make me cry … you know who you are!!).

Speaking of emotional, I was also very sad this morning to leave. As I write this now from Heathrow Terminal 5 (oooh, the excitement), I can only say that I enjoyed my trip, I’m excited to be going back to Cape Town, and as Thanksgiving approaches I can only give thanks for all the unconditional love and support from my family and friends.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Back in the U.S.A.




I thought I would take this opportunity to remind my readers (assuming I have any), why I am doing this blog. It’s partly for my friends and family in America and the rest of the world to keep track of what I am doing and experience some small piece of what it is for me to live life in a different country, and have some better understanding of where I am coming from when we talk. But it is also for me, so I can reflect as I am writing and so I have some sort of a basic record to look back on. Of course by its very nature it is personal and impersonal at the same time, and it reflects what is going through my head when I write it, which is not necessarily what goes through my head when thinking on the same topics later. The brain works like that.

I didn’t really get the time to describe my last day when I posted my last update so here it is. Yes, handstand pushups and I increased my max unbroken from 3 to 5 (didn’t try to go higher as I didn’t want to tire myself out!). I need to practice these more at home if I want to get the 45 with full range of motion for Diane in only 3 weeks! I was a little sad to bid adieu to Cape CrossFit but I am actually excited for my first ever CrossFit workout in a different space under different coaching!

Many of us were running a bit late to work so I showed up and put on the pajamas, then sat for a bit of a photo session (for the record that is not my muffin or my laptop), and the meeting was supposed to be to have everyone talk about their experience working with a co-worker who is going back to Europe after a three-month stint. But I started off by having him reflect a bit on his time at heart and asked him what advice he would give us. This led to a very long discussion around the potential and challenges for what we are trying to do, and actually a very, very interesting discussion on potential fundraising approaches. This was cool, in addition to the quality of the discussion you could just feel the excitement in the room popping. One of my co-workers came up to me afterwards, suggesting that I meet a friend of his and see if we couldn’t arrange some sort of a quid pro quo. The guy is apparently an entrepreneur and would potentially be interested in giving funding for one of our ventures in exchange for help writing a business plan for a new idea he wants to get off the ground. This is exactly the sort of conversation we should be having, and I’m happy that this morning’s meeting had stimulated whatever thoughts in my co-worker’s head to make him realise that he should make the connection. Anyway life is a bit like a gear box: when things are working smoothly they just work, and when something gets stuck, well, you’re stuck. I’m happy to be in the flow.

According to my co-worker I had “that look in my eye” on Friday. Not the “I’m excited to go on vacation look” but the “how am I going to get all of this done before I leave” look! I actually wound up spending much of the day talking to people: doing weekly mentoring with one of my interns, getting some sparring of my own from the co-worker I mentioned above, a Swiss national who has been with us for a few months and will continue to be mentoring us from afar. As much as I try really hard to look at the big picture sometimes you have blind spots and he pointed out a big one on FoodTents. But, this is actually fantastic: now that I see the problem I will eventually figure out how to solve it, or how we need to change course to avoid it.

Not surprisingly I didn’t finish everything that I wanted to get done, but I did take care of the most important things, including dropping my car off for repairs (excited to get a much-needed alignment and new windshield wipers, albeit after winter is ended). This led to an amusing discussion: the guy who owned the place called to get the price of replacement wipers and then said: “the original wipers for this model cost R285 each. Do you care if they are original?” to which I replied much to the amusement of the other customer in the waiting area: “I really don’t care what they look like: I just want them to work!” Seriously, who would pay that much for windshield wipers? I never got around to looking for them in the SA equivalent of AutoZone (Midas, odd name actually when you think about it), but am happy to pay a little more to have the problem taken care of.

I also signed up for medical coverage since my American health coverage had ended at the end of October and I wanted to make sure I was covered for my trip to the States because goodness knows when you don’t have medical cover is the time when you get hit by a bus. Yes, Mom, this means there was a 12 day period when I was without coverage but no bank account means no coverage and I was just able to get that on Tuesday. Long story why that took so long … you know some things here are just way more difficult than they need to be! On the other hand, it’s great to have medical plans where you can buy essentially just insurance (and preventative screenings). In America all the medical plans also include subsidised doctor’s visits and prescription drugs, which really makes more sense when you are ill more often than I am. But, the healthy subsidise the ill and the entire scheme is very expensive. Although in purchasing power parity, things are probably more expensive in South Africa but in real terms or in proportion to professional wages, the system is quite good. Actually for R2500 a month (this is about $350 at current exchange rates) you can get 100% coverage for anything. Unlimited doctor’s visits, hospitalizations, surgeries, etc. all with no co-pay. Not sure about drugs. But an incredible value for money if you are older or have some sort of chronic condition!

My boss had kindly offered to take me to the airport; even if I wasn’t dropping off my car for repairs paying R100 per day for parking really adds up! But of course, the hospitality extended to a few bottles of Wines with Heart, and a paleo dinner (fish and salad). This was also a great opportunity to actually put out into the open a lot of the things that had remained unsaid (like, apparently, navigating boulders), and I was very pleased that we were 100% on the same page with regards to how we wanted to work together going forward. This whole discusssion was interesting too because he has a different view of my greatest strengths to the last person I had this discussion with (and to my own opinion). I had always maintained that I was better at execution than at strategy, and he thinks the opposite but that I am particularly good at working with people to get them to execute. Having reflected on this for a while I guess I’m not at all sure any more but it doesn’t actually matter all that much I suppose (except that what I am best at and where I have a greater comparative advantage are not necessarily one and the same but then again you learn such things in Economics 101).

So it was with a twinge of sadness that I looked around the airport before boarding my plane to London. Made me remember some of the sadness I had leaving Boston a few months ago. Luckily, I was so tired from a busy, emotional, and sleep-deprived week that it didn’t take much for me to collapse into sleep. Somehow I don’t really seem to mind these long plane rides … actually 6 hours across the U.S. bothers me a lot more than a 10 or 12-hour plane trip. I think it’s a mental thing. And, BA was flying a newer 777 and so I reminded myself why you can never watch The Matrix too many times. Yes, I’m a geek, but a leopard can’t change his spots either.

Got to check part of Heathrow Terminal 5, and then boarded a bus to Terminal 3. This was a very amusing process: the TV showed you where you were in the process, but only sort of. I was trying to figure out how it worked, if it was time-based as I had assumed, or what … then all of a sudden the progress indicator jumped by about 30% so perhaps it works off of passing some external sensor. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, either way. Remember that geek comment above? My brain does strange things sometimes. I was so fascinated by this thing that I almost didn’t notice when we went through a really long tunnel!

So Heathrow is as I remembered it. My 2.5 hour layover was enough time for this bus ride, another long security queue, walking to the gate at the far end of the terminal (really, it was like a 10 minute walk but I wasn’t in a huge hurry), and then to the gate. Now this was amusing. They were doing El-Al style security screenings, I presume because we were going to the States. The British couple in front of me were Indian by ethnicity and the guy gave them the third degree, and I was standing here, tired and annoyed that the lady told me I didn’t have time to go back and get coffee and yet I had been waiting in this line for 20 minutes. So then I get to him, he asks me three questions and it takes about a minute. Well, tired and annoyed-looking white American females don’t fit the profile I suppose. Actually as annoyed as I was (mainly at missing coffee) I was happy to see this style of questioning because it works a heck of a lot better than the x-ray screenings. But that’s a story for another day, or better yet, Google it.

My seat to Boston was literally the next to last row. This was good for getting up and stretching in the area by the toilet, although I spent as much of this flight as possible sleeping. I realized the South African in me when I ignored the command to shut down all electronic devices until someone literally made me, and I decided to smuggle biltong into the country (the theory being if they caught me I would claim I forgot, despite all the warnings of severe fines and whatnot). I had a harder time with the grouchy guy at immigration, but then again I’ve had harder times getting into Canada, so I guess having an American passport has some big advantages.

Our flight had arrived late because it took off late (something about leaking hydraulic fluid from the tug), so I was absolutely starving. We stopped at the Whole Foods in Andover for lunch (salad bar, salt-free rotisserie chicken, and salt-free pistachios!!), and I was literally a bit shellshocked at the amount of commercial messaging I was bombarded with. I went to wash my hands and in the bathroom alone there were displays telling me about the two different kinds of soap, recycled paper, and how switching off the lights was good for the environment. Then, there were several banners I was looking at: two describing the high quality of products available, one talking about the corporate mission of Whole Foods, and one which I couldn’t read but that had a photo of two people on it. It was all quite overwhelming, actually, and before I left this would all just have gone relatively unnoticed. Although I wonder if it’s unnoticed like a banner ad, or absorbed without knowledge like a commercial you fast forward through on TiVo (they are working on making commercials that are effective at normal speed and when on fastforward, you know – apparently brand recognition isn’t enough).

I was so exhausted when I arrived that all of yesterday seems like a bit of a dream. So, on to today … not entirely sure what is in store yet, other than apparently going to check out new bridges that have been built. The weather is surprisingly warm, and there are still leaves on some of the trees down in Andover, both of which are very pleasant surprises. It is pretty well full-on dark at 4:45pm though, so I will need to make the most out of whatever sun light is available!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Farewell for now, Cape Town!



Not quite over yet but, as predicted, this week is a sprint to the end [of the week, at least!].

Quite a lot going on at work: planning a FoodTents GrowZone build for this coming Saturday, and the formal launch of Hub Cape Town is next Thursday. I am not doing the bulk of the work for either of these events, but just generally paying attention to what is going on and stepping in where necessary (for example, I just finished drafting a contract and sent it off to the lawyers, and forwarded the Hub invite to a couple of people I really think should attend). A lot of really cool people coming through the Hub on a day-to-day basis now: it’s pretty hard to go down there and not meet someone cool (like Jeremy Loops today), or see friends new and old. It’s so cool to see the space come together and as we start to build membership this thing is going to get very exciting!

Also this week interviewed three people for a key position we have open. Really, really hard choice: none of them is perfect, and all are quite good in their own way. We also continued driving hard into digging deep into the budget for 2011 for Purple Heart. What a fantastic team I have on that project, really, it’s just a pleasure to work with them.

I also opened a bank account this week, and I’m pretty sure I signed away my first-born child in the process!

We had monthly status reports for our four main portfolio projects, the results of initial market research into a new venture we are investigating (this was super cool, although it led to some head-scratching because we are now realising this is going to be more difficult than we thought at first!), and also some fantastic market research results around corporate interest in Purple Heart gift hampers. Nerd that I am, this got me super excited: a trimodal distribution around price points! Exactly what I expected, actually, except I didn’t know at what price points the data would cluster, but really this is where primary market research really gets me excited: when it helps us answer key questions like how many items should we have in the product range, at what price points, and what else do customers want to see included in the hamper? Fantastic job also by that research team!

I managed to keep myself somewhat distracted from work in the evenings. OK, actually, that’s not at all true. Monday night I went out for coffee that turned into dinner (and thanks to self-restraint, not drinks!) with an ex-heart employee who now works for our Swiss bankers, later joined by a current co-worker. Well, obviously we didn’t talk about the sushi and the view the entire time! Tuesday night I went to yoga because I was stressed out, then went home and continued working. Wednesday night was similar; I was stuck at work late and got home literally 10 seconds before my dinner guests arrived (!!) but they were very understanding and we had a nice relaxed dinner talking about work, snakes, other creepy crawlies, and, yep, CrossFit. Then after they left I went back to work, finally going to bed a little after midnight. At this point I had been up about 21 hours, so my brain wasn’t allowing me to do the work that I wanted which was quite disappointing. Then Thursday I stayed at work until 8pm, went home, cooked up the remaining food, and packed. Well, I always say I have a bit of an intensity problem… and, in my defense it started pouring around 6:30pm and my outfit was not cut out for becoming soaked so I had to stay at work until the weather cleared. Or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Nothing too terribly exciting at CrossFit this week … new 5 rep max on press (36kgs), and on deadlift (93kgs). Then, I learned that I can do approximately 40 situps in a minute! Actually I think I somehow made some progress on the overhead squat, during part of our workout Wednesday we had to do quite a lot of these at a low weight and somewhere along the line it somehow got a lot easier. Practice makes perfect I guess… today’s workout involved handstand pushups, which are always fun [at least for me].

There is quite a lot to be done in the last day before I leave, and I am of course taking things with me to keep me busy on the plane and during downtime next week. I am looking forward to seeing family, friends, drinking some good beer (!), checking some of the Boston CrossFit gyms, and watching football. Yes, football makes my top 5 list. I am not looking forward to the plane ride, cold, dark, and missing a very exciting set of events going down in Cape Town over the next 10 days. Oh, or not eating half the tasty foods at Thanksgiving -1 or the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. Or driving on the right, for that matter. That is going to be seriously weird….

Sunday, November 7, 2010

One big blur





That was my last week. I am not even sure why; if I had half a brain I would actually rest during my upcoming trip to the States. We’ll see how that goes for me. Most of the management team was out this week, which also meant that I was doing things I don’t ordinarily do (like handling petty cash), and just generally keeping an eye on things.

I had one informational interview this week, and then interviewed three people for a key position. Unfortunately, the woman for whom we don’t have an ideal role at the moment seems highly capable, and none of the other three I interviewed were suitable for the position we have open. So, back to the drawing board on that one. But better to take more time and find the right person than to bring the wrong person into your organization!

Tuesday brought a great meeting with a design firm: I think the more into this project I get, both the more excited I get and also the harder I realize it’s going to be for our joint team to pick just one group to work with! There is so much talent in this town it’s unreal. That night I had sashimi at Beluga (I will admit I had a bit of food envy when my co-workers were eating their sushi…), followed by Pecha Kucha at the Upper Eastside Hotel. Pecha Kucha is 20x20 – 20 slides, 20 seconds each and you must change subject each slide. Some presenters were way better at this than others. One presentation was so bad it was literally laughable; two or three were incredibly engaging, and most were pretty pedestrian in terms of adherence to the concept. If I had more time I’d be curious to talk at one of these things, but I think to do it well you really need to plan how you are going to craft your message and split it into these 20 second intervals.

I am really enjoying working with our recent crop of interns. We have one who is South African and has been helping with marketing, and this girl is a rock star! Her knowledge and instinct about branding is spot-on, and she came in very quickly and picked up a lot of context super fast. Sadly, this was her last week as she is moving to Durban. Another one is from Germany and has been here for a few weeks now, and she is also just a pleasure to work with: smart, responsible, conscientious, and has a lot of great ideas about what needs to be done which is always a good sign. Finally, we have an intern from Denmark who is here for six more weeks working on a FoodTents engagement. She is smart, but what really impresses me about her is her insight into people, especially given that she has been here all of two weeks. Takes me a bit longer but then again, I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes. On a related note, I am also pleased that another friend has been roped into the vortex that is heart – this time into the Hub. We’re slowly taking over the world!

The main strategic thrust of the week was planning for our trip to Joburg to meet with the corporate sponsoring one of our big projects. Last Friday they completely changed the focus of the meeting on us, causing us to scramble around a bit and I won’t say throw budgets together but we did need to focus hard on what we wanted, how we wanted to propose the budget, what we could realistically do, etc., etc. All in all this was actually quite enjoyable both because the person I was working with is great to work with: sold, reliable, smart… but also because sitting down for extended periods of time and really thinking things through is the only way to solve complex problems. Of course this is also a combination of strategy (which I love) and operational planning (which I am really good at), so it’s not surprising that I would enjoy the process.

Then, of course, reality got in the way and I had to skip Hub movie night Thursday to go home and work on Powerpoint presentations for the next day, exacerbated by the fact that we were on the 6:45am departure from CPT, so I had to be up at 4:45! The flight to Joburg was actually on time, and there was also some excitement because this was my co-worker’s first time on the Gautrain.

Turns out the planning was worth it: both meetings went really well. The first one was interesting as much for paying attention to the personal power dynamics in the room as for the content of the meeting itself, which went about as I expected, which is to say that we didn’t get everything we asked for but they gave us exactly what I would have given had I been in their place (and I am very happy with this result for a number of reasons). Our second meeting, with a company I was hoping to get us to donate some equipment and anything else would be a bonus, turned into one of those great alignments that happens to you a few times in your career: every hope I possibly had for this was far, FAR, exceeded. The more I talked about who we are and what we do, this woman resembled a small child on Christmas morning more and more: she was practically jumping up and down in her chair by the end.

My co-worker and I were somewhat euphoric, and had a celebratory beer or two in the airport, especially after getting ourselves onto the 6:30 flight from our original 7:30 departure. Turned out to be a big mistake. The 6:30 was delayed, and then we were bumped off it, and by the time they told us this they had closed the 7:30 flight so we got stuck on the 9pm flight! So we headed back to the bar for two more beers, because, well, what else are you going to do under the circumstances?

That evening there was a housewarming/Guy Fawkes Day party in Bakoven I had intended to go to but I was so exhausted that I really didn’t feel like it. I figured I would go and say hello, at least, but probably not stay long. The best laid plans of mice and men … suffice to say I had a great time and met a lot of very cool new people! For better or worse (probably better as far as my body is concerned!) the after party never materialized and I went to bed around 4am. 5 hours later my friend from Stellenbosch called me to ask if I could come out there earlier than planned, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.

So I cleaned a little bit and headed over to the Biscuit Mill to meet a friend and now-colleague. Of course I couldn’t find him for the longest time but found someone else I had been meaning to schedule some more time with. Funny how these things go. We also spent a good amount of time talking to the guy who does the grass-fed meat. He used to do Olympic lifting and he was so funny: “How much do you deadlift? Come on you must at least be able to deadlift your bodyweight!” (um, yeah, I could do 1.5x bodyweight like 2 months ago so I am sure I could do more now!)

On to my favourite topic – the week in CrossFit! So on Monday we did push jerks and I really don’t like push jerks because I have a problem getting under the bar – I am much better at doing that with split jerks. So instead of 5RM push jerks I probably did 5RM push press. Then Wednesday we did 5RM bench press. I repeated my number from last time we did this (52kgs), and was going for 54 but my hamstring cramped on the third rep and that was it for me for the day. Amazing how much you use your entire body when bench pressing with proper form!

So this was exciting … one of our coaches (who, for the record, gave me the best advice of the month Monday morning in telling me not to make other people’s problems my own) had told me a while back about a workout where you bench press just the empty bar as many times as you can; resting only at the top (with arms fully extended). The empty bar is 15kgs for women, 20 for men. So I kept talking about coming in early on a Saturday and doing this but never got around to it, and on this day they added it to our schedule. I was so excited! I had heard that another guy in the gym had done 50, so I was thinking if that was all he could do it must be harder than it sounded and I should go for 51 at a minimum. Then our other coach said that when he first did this workout he was aiming for 200 since he knew someone in his gym had gotten 200, and warned that it got very hard after about 80 reps. At this point I had no idea what to expect so I decided just to go.

When I got to 117 the girl who was spotting me moved off to take her turn at it, and our coach moved in to count for me. He said that when he did this the second highest score in his gym was 150, and then started encouraging me to get “just 10 more” and get to 130. At this point I had enough in me to say “Are you kidding? I’m going for 150!” I must say by the time it got to 140 it was getting pretty hard … I got to 170 and was in pretty extreme pain so I decided to go for 180 and my strength literally gave out on the 180th rep so my final was 179. Not too bad if you ask me. I was also pleased the next day when I saw that three of the guys who trained in the afternoon had beat my score: one of them got 180 so I know for a fact he was gunning for my number. I still maintain that in relation to bodyweight and max weight you can press, 15kgs for women is somewhat harder than 20kgs for men, but no matter what, well done to those guys!

But after this the 1 minute handstand hold was, ahem, a bit difficult. I also got properly sore the next day! Oh but on to the other excitement of the week: a track workout! So after the market on Saturday I went out to Stellenbosch to have lunch and a loooooong talk with a friend who I hadn’t seen in far too long (my own fault; I never called, I never wrote … bad friend that I am!). Then we drove around looking for jacaranda trees, but the street with all of them had already gone by. C’est la vie I guess. Anyway I dropped him off and headed over to Coetzenberg to the Stellenbosch track.

My original plan was to run 8x400m. Needless to say, this did not go according to plan. I ran my first 400 in 1:16, which is actually not terrible for the first time I had run this distance in a VERY long time. I now remember just how painful this distance is. So my second 400 was nearly 1:30, so I decided that since a) I had been an idiot and hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and b) was dehydrated from traveling the day before and then drinking and had forgotten my water bottle (!), and c) I was trying to push my lactic acid threshold and I was running laps that were taking so long I wouldn’t be able to accomplish this, I decided that discretion might be the better part of valor so I switched to running 300s. That was much better. I did 4 of them and each one was either just as fast or faster (57.7, 57.7, 57.4, and 56.7). Actually what I should do from here on out is just warm up and run as far as I can in 60 seconds until I get to 400m. I ended with two 200s, and on the last one I felt my ankle start to give a bit so I stopped at that point and just did a slow 800 as a buy-out.

About halfway through my workout I was joined by one of the Maties rugby team, but he was too much of a wuss to join me on my long intervals. I told him he should really work on his weaknesses, but he was not interested in encountering too much pain apparently. Love rugby but I think the players must be a little like hockey players (to make a very broad generalization); nice to look at but not very smart!

Speaking of rugby, the night before I had invited myself back over to Bakoven to watch the Springboks play Ireland. A good number of people had talked about watching but in reality it wound up being just four of us. The game was good: the SA team won, and played well but mainly Ireland played pretty poorly. SA was comfortably ahead for most of the game, which did feature missed kicks from both sides, until Ireland scored a try with about 5 minutes left and then somehow managed to miss the conversion (this is like missing the extra point in American football). Bounced off the crossbar.

While I’m on the subject, I am very much looking forward to watching some football in a very short week!

Following the game, three of us went to the Seapoint Spur for dinner. That was quite enjoyable despite the fact that I was pretty well exhausted at that point. Bed had rarely looked so good!

Which brings me to today, in which I went to a birthday brunch for one of the women who trains at my gym. I just love this crew! I also love that we somehow managed to have a paleo cake with no flour, and no sugar. I think I may have been the only one who legitimately enjoyed the thing. Call me crazy but I really liked it!

I went home, did some work, then met up with a friend to go walk Camps Bay beach and catch up. Oh, and I introduced her to Sinful Ice Cream. Then, back to roast a chicken and do my planning for the week. This week scares me in a serious way: last week before vacation, tons of incubation meetings, and monthly status reports. I foresee getting a lot of sleep on the plane this Friday!