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I just came across a job offer for a “Frontend Developer”. In it is explicitly stated that you should not apply if you’ve never touched AWS or Kubernetes. I mean: what the actual f.
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Hamburg marathon 2021
In April 2021 I will run the Hamburg marathon. It will be my second marathon after the Munich marathon in October 2018, which I ran in a net time of 3 hours and 44 minutes. My goal for 2021 is a net time of 3 hours and 30 minutes, which means I will run an average pace of just under five minutes per kilometer.
So, it’s roughly 36 weeks until the marathon. I’ve been going over my running schedule in my head. According to Herbert Steffny (his website is pretty dope, check it out, I will wait here for you) in order to run a marathon in 3 hours and 30 minutes one should be able to run a distance of 10 kilometers in 45 minutes and a half-marathon in 1 hour and 40 minutes. To bridge the time until the marathon training I thought it would be a good idea to train for and run both the 10k and the 21k distance in the mentioned duration.
This is my schedule:
- In order to get my body accustomed to an increased running workload I will gradually increase the weekly mileage of my current runs until the start of the 10k training (that’s in ten weeks) to about 50k per week.
- The 10k training starts October 26th and spans over a period of six weeks. On December 6th I will run the 10k in 45 minutes.
- After a break of two weeks, the half-marathon training begins on December 21st and spans over a period of six weeks. I will run the half-marathon on January 31st in 1 hour and 40 minutes.
- After a break of two weeks, the marathon training begins on February 15th and spans over a period of ten weeks. I will run the marathon on April 25th in 3 hours and 30 minutes (that is still to be seen, though 😀).
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Sleeping and snoring
Since July 10th we have a new four-legged family member, a dog to be precise. Dingo is his name. He is a rescue dog from Romania and his favourite hobbies are: sleeping and snoring.
We got Dingo from the Tierschutzbrücke München. It’s an association which has a close relationship to the animal shelter Casa Cainelui in the city of Timisoara in western Romania since 2001. Dogs are being rescued from local killing shelters (yep, those exist), nursed up and brought to Germany and other countries. In addition, castration campaigns are carried out regularly to get to the root of the problem of the uncontrolled growing number of stray dogs in Romania.
The process of getting Dingo via the Tierschutzbrücke was serious and professional. We were assigned a nice lady who is responsible for the placement of the dogs to Munich. She looked at our living situation and asked us honestly about our motives and experiences with dogs. You can see from the association and the staff that the main concern is animal welfare.
After her “go” we went dog shopping and surrendered to the marketing and products of the dog industry. We didn’t leave anything out: tick tongs, two different lines (a short line and a drag line), three different brushes (underfur brush, normal brush and massage brush), treats and food in different variations (from veggie to meat, from organic to conventional), toys, dog bed, pharmacy bag, dog shampoo, ... After the first big shopping tour I could understand and extrapolate what a gigantic industry this must be. In fact: 4.325 billion Euro turnover, that is the house number of the German pet industry in 2019. Fun fact: there are 10.1 million dogs living in German households. And: “Dog snacks have been growing dynamically for years” is a sentence my brain has never had to process before.
One week after the shopping tour, Dingo arrived. He’s a super nice guy, who always wants to cuddle a lot and whom we took to our hearts very quickly.
The daily rhythm is determined by him since then. Our day is now divided as follows:
- In the morning a long dog walk (30 to 45 minutes).
- At noon a short dog walk (10 minutes).
- In the late afternoon again a long dog walk (30 to 45 minutes).
- Late in the evening, a short dog walk (10 minutes).
- Repeat.
What we have already noticed is that, in addition to the time and money involved, normal everyday life has also changed considerably when looking at the usual social activities. Just drive into town quickly for a visit to a restaurant? Not possible, Dingo isn’t used to a restaurant situation and public transport. Spontaneous beer garden session with friends? Dingo on a leash in combination with possibly other dogs nearby still holds too much potential for aggression and too much stress for everyone involved.
We now simply try to approach his education in a calm and step-by-step manner: good leashing, learning the basic commands, learning new situations (driving the bus, going to a restaurant, etc.) and dog training. Along the way Dingo will learn a lot of new things, but we will certainly learn a lot more.
