Fire and Ice

As part of an activity for my Design Thinking course (U101) , we had to create a map with markers to indicate the countries of origin of various items of food, clothing and others. This is my map: It was so interesting to look through labels and find out where things come from! I knew we'd end up with a lot of stuff from China but clothes from Hungary? Trousers from Jordan? Books made in Dubai?? I did have a few non surprising items like maple syrup from Canada, a hawaiian print dress from (where else?) Hawaii and toys made in China but it is still very interesting and something to think about... (The full map with details is here.)

With just over a month to go until the Disneyland 1/2 Marathon , my training is now becoming serious, with the distances covered becoming more and more ridiculous. This weekend's run was a 15k run, which took me two hours to complete. Because I'm out there for such a long time, I need to make sure that the routes are at least interesting - it's all part of the mind games I play in order to get through the boredom of long runs. As before , I took my camera to practice and also because I knew this was going to be a pretty run. So come with me on a virtual run! We start at Willen Lake - where a lot of my runs start, purely because that is very near my gym. It's nice around Willen Lake too, and I used to run loops of it until I got bored, but I always add at least a loop of it to my long runs (if I'm going in the right direction) because it's an easy way to add distance: Before long we get to the Medicine Wheel which is on the north part of Willen Lake. And...