Uh, uh oh.........

There's trouble in America :)

Last Wednesday I flew to Philadelphia. It was for a conference to the Philadelphia Childrens Hospital there, which must be I guess the biggest centre for research into hyperinsulinism and neonatal diabetes in the world.

My boss is a consultant endocrinologist at Great Ormond street and a pretty big expert on the above conditions so he was on the faculty for this. I work on one aspect of HI, which is mutations in a fatty acid oxidation gene that lead to it. It ticks my boxes because I am particularly interested in metabolism and I love mitochondria. I quite like kids too :-D

Anyway, my abstract got chosen for an oral presentation so I was pretty busy leading up to it as to me it is still a big deal to talk at a conference in front of my peers and those so much more knowledgeable than me!

That's why there ain't a lot of running here. Sometimes life does indeed take over and though I love running, my career is something I have spent a long time getting and I love it. Running is something to keep me out of trouble.

Anyway as expected the conference was great. It was so focused that I couldn't not get it and there is something pretty amazing about listening to people who are passionate about what they do speak. I do hope that people get that from me too. 

I did though get some sightseeing time and I did the expected running up the steps at the Philadelphia museum of art :) I also went to the national constitution centre for a Bruce Springsteen exhibition which was fab, we then went to the 'play' about the setting up of the constitution, which was quite uh, American shall we say ;)

St Patrick's day was interesting. Lots of people in green t shirts being drunk really. I guess that's the same in many cities.

 The Van Gogh exhibition was a bit too busy for me. I preferred a lot of the other art in the museum, I liked the Canalettos (no, you are thinking of vienetta, that's an ice cream) and the gory ones. I loved the exhibition of armour and guns and swords, because the period when those things were about does fascinate me, when people fought wars close up. But still most of them didn't really know what they were fighting for and the ones in the armour were the people directing it, not the ones in the mud and blood :(

Food was ok, we kept over ordering but I reckon we would have worked it out in the end!

And I did get a run!!!! I went to a sports shop near our hotel where a run was advertised to go on Saturday morning. Well there was no one there so I mooched about a bit and then thought 'sod it' and went to leave. A girl in running gear walked up and asked if I was there for the run. Yes I said I was and she said good maybe we could go on our own.....we agreed on 4 miles cos Mr H was waiting for me and she took me down to university city and back, which was brilliant because I wouldn't have had a clue where to run really. And she never stopped talking so I didn't have to say a word. Cool!

All in all a really good trip. Not a bad flight home. Though 7 hours with a rugby player on your lap should have felt better than that (Yeah, yeah, he had his seat tipped right back and he was twice the size of Mr H so we left him to it)

Now I need to get back to decent training again and lose the America weight before I turn into a biffer :-D