Full retirement beckons!

Well, the deed is done. After the Board meeting this morning, we discussed my future and agreed that Christmas would be a good time to make the change and give my successor a free run from there. So, just 4 weeks' work left for me now.

My replacement, Ross Rennie, has asked that I come back and look over their budgets when I return from Australia at the end of February and I've agreed to do this (on a day rate basis), but I don't expect to be called back to do much work after that.

The end of an era - over 31 years with the Clarks.

Yesterday was my eye test and I've finally got a slightly stronger prescription for my distance lenses. My vision has hardly changed for a number of years - my reading prescription is the same, but I felt I was ready for a slight change when it came to driving, in particular.

I still had time for a relatively short cycle in the afternoon - short in miles, that is - but plenty of climbing, so it wasn't all that easy. Still, for every uphill, there's a downhill. Two consecutive days of 13 mile runs - a good start to the week. I had been bemoaning the fact that my exercise - walking steps - had dropped off dramatically since we moved in to autumn - partly due to little golf being played now.

My Up stats tell me I averaged nearly 17,000 steps per day for the week I was in Istanbul then golfing in Antalya and my overall average since the beginning of March is still just short of my targeted 10,000 steps per day, but it's down to just 7,000 recently and last week, I hit a new all-time low of 4,400 steps. In terms of miles per week, this takes me down from a peak of 50 miles to under 18 miles last week. Must try harder.

My sleep "goal" is to average 8 hours per night, but so far, I'm only at 7.5. My nights with the longest sleep are, not unsurprisingly, usually at my long weekends. I wonder if this will go up post-retirement?