Spring recap 2024 | S7 Episode 5

It’s time again for an update: mostly personal but a bit of PhD too. I’ll pick it up from where I left it the last time: mid-March.

The end of March was interesting.

• It was great giving a math-bio lecture for high school students at the Women in Maths residential. Hosted by Trinity and Christ’s (my undergrad college), I was a student helper at that event back in 2019. I was glad the invitation included a formal dinner at Christ’s – I hadn’t been to its Hall since my graduation in 2021.
• At the Cambridge Science Festival, my research group had an activity for children (and adults): LEGO epidemics! Though it was an exhausting day, it was a lot of fun. It was also nice to see so many young kids interested in maths, and all the other amazing activities around the maths faculty.
• I attended the annual JUNIPER meeting in Bristol (where I gave a flash talk). It was my first time in the west of England, so I was glad to visit Bath on my way to Bristol. I also took a small detour to make it to Wales (albeit only to the closest train station to England) for my first time ever.
• March ended with a bang. We travelled to London to watch Cambridge win the Boat Races. And with great weather!

April’s highlight was a two-day trip to the Netherlands, just for fun (and meeting a friend from undergrad). Before this, my only other exploration of dutch territory was in 2013, to Amsterdam. I skipped it this time, instead doing a loop Eindhoven-Utretch-Leiden-The Hague-Rotterdam-Eindhoven. I improvised my itinerary more than usual because you can just tap your bank card to get in and out of the train stations, no need to “buy” tickets. Although the weather during April was quite rainy and relatively cold, I got lucky as that weekend actually had very nice weather. Otherwise, April was a month of routine (but in a good way) because the undergraduates were away. I got in solid running miles, and worked on a few PhD-related projects. One of these projects was preparing an academic talk for a day-long symposium in London (I was delighted to be an invited speaker!).

With May, the undergraduates came back. With daylight already until late, evening rowing was back! The weather finally improved (it wasn’t a big ask), but I kept up with my monthly habit of briefly leaving the UK. My father was visiting Madrid for a week (from Mexico), so I spent a night at home. Although not as exciting as exploring a new location, I enjoyed my trip to Madrid. I took off exercise both days of my trip because I feared I was again overtraining. Back in Cambridge, my legs seemed well-rested. Nevertheless, just a few days later, I (again!) fell ill. This time, it was COVID. I likely got it on my flight back (the person next time was coughing, but I wore an FFP2 mask throughout). If true, it’d be about the fourth time I caught a virus while travelling in less than a year. My symptoms were mild (similar to my other SARS-CoV-2 infection in early 2022), but I wasn’t able to exercise for four days. After that, I was feeling good but still testing positive, so I went on a couple of runs. Although I was conservative with the mileage on these first runs, I got a persistent niggle on my left foot. I didn’t want to take any risks, so the last five weeks my running mileage has been my lowest in a year. Luckily, I could still row.

Last week we had our main competition – May Bumps (which actually take place in June). We just about managed to avoid Spoons: we went down three and rowed-over twice (as sandwich boat). The weather was bad for this time of the year (even for Britain), but at least it stopped raining for Boat Club Dinner. And I was pleased I didn’t have to run a half marathon the morning after the last race! This bumps campaign was the end of our season and of my (semi-serious) rowing endeavours.

Now I will focus on running, and I am targeting another half marathon towards the end of the summer. Until then, I will be (mostly) in Cambridge, hopefully locking into my PhD work. Last week was also the end of my 7th Easter Term as a Cambridge student (third as a PhD student)…I am not yet ready to share publicly my plans for the next academic year, but watch this space!