This is quite some days late I know... it's not that everything has gone bottoms up but I've just had a manic few days combined with a bit of writer's block.  I've been too busy to think of anything interesting to write!

This week I have been back in Nottingham for a few days with Chris who was sitting his viva for his  PhD yesterday.  It went really well and he passed.  It is a massive relief for us both. For him to have finally completed the seemingly impossible and never-ending task that is a PhD. I feel we can now start getting on with the rest of our lives.

As I write this we now only have 16 days until we commence our trip - hopefully of a lifetime.  This time in 16 days time we will be aboard our flight to Sydney.  A few months ago we decided to take six months out of 'normal life' and go abroad to give it a go training full time.  See what happened.  We're not exactly young anymore (in athletics terms) and at some point in our lives we may want to move on and do something else (although definitely no plans to retire just yet!!).  I've felt as though my running is on an upward curve recently and before Chris started a new career post academia, it just seemed like the best possible time to do it. I suppose we just thought, if we didn't do it now, we never would!

It's been a bit of slow burner in terms of getting it sorted - I had to get approval from work to take a six month sabbatical which was fortunately cleared without too much persuasion, and then we booked flights thinking that the PhD would be done in plenty of time...only for the viva data to be arranged a bit too close for comfort to the day of the flight.  It's meant that we haven't really been able to get excited about the trip until now, as there was always that bit of fear that something would go wrong and Chris would have to stay behind.  

We have no week by week itinery for our trip but have sketched out a few plans for the six months.  The first three months will be spent in Australia and New Zealand, where we will mainly focus on training and getting a good base behind me.  I  have a friend in New Zealand who we will spend a few weeks with and we will probably also do a bit of the touristy types things too.  At the end of Jan we are then heading over to the US, to stay in Oregon for a while before hitting the early season track meets in March and April.  I am hoping to run a good 5k before heading back to the UK at the end of April.  I'd love to compete in one of the Stanford meeting's, but I suppose we'll have to see how it goes.  I wouldn't even know how to go about entering for a start!

So, it's a pretty exciting time.  My main worry (other than bankruptcy!) is getting injured or ill and wasting the opportunity.  What can you do though hey?  I already take all necessary precautions against these happening (or try to) but often these things are simply uncontrollable.  Just got to try not to think about it.  It's a great opportunity and it's going to be great experiencing training in a load of great places, not having to worry about fitting in work around training, having more time to recover and just relax, and on top of that finally getting to spend some quality time with Dr Clement - with not a thesis or journal paper in sight!