Having a chat to Thomas on the forum a little earlier, I was telling him about some of my plans for the next six months or so. My current contract should finish just before Christmas, and the first few months of next year are definitely going to be a break from work, and a whole lot of erging and chess.

First of all, to see 2008 in with a bang, I'm going to try and outdo Mike Channin, and do 50K a day for more than seven days running, the aim being to go for an entire fortnight. No firm party plans for New Year yet, but no guarantees that something won't come along either... so this might have to start a little later than January 1st, depending on how much alcohol gets consumed.

Following that, I'll be off to Gibraltar at the end of January for a big chess tournament (the Gibtelecom Masters). The venue is the Caleta Hotel, and, as I already discovered when surfing to check out the most important details, their website lists their leisure facilities, including the fact that their gym has C2s, so I'm not going to miss out on training!

I'm also planning to do a 24-hour erg, probably in mid to late February. This will be for charity (even I'm not mad enough to do one of these just for the hell of it), and I'll be aiming for at least 240km. This is going to take some serious organization however, and I'll need to find some interested people as a support team. Somewhere between now and then, I need to find time to do another 100km row, to see whether I can break 7 hours, and to give me a better idea of what I might be able to achieve in the 24-hour row.

Nice (though only supermarket, not the real thing) Indian meal tonight with lots of naan bread and extra bits and pieces - about 2000 calories. Gym tomorrow evening.

Metres: 0
Alcohol: 5 (the remainder of that Wolf Blass yellow label Chardonnay from Sunday)