Chain-ganging

105 km!! That's how far my ride to work was this morning. I woke-up at 4.45 am with the sun streaming through the cracks in the curtains whilst the birds outside were proclaiming the wonders of another beautiful spring day in Skåne.  Unlike the birds, I didn't feel the least bit chirpy, having stayed up way too late last night!! Ignoring my desire to crawl back under the covers, I stumbled downstairs, crammed a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea down my throat and was out on the road 20 minutes later, still feeling zombified. 

Uncharacteristically for this part of the world, there was no wind this morning; and as I headed out of the village the sun was beaming through patches of fog rising up from the damp farmland and the air went from warm to cool and back again as the road dipped up and down. I'd arranged to meet a cycling buddy 10 km away, so I put my head down and cranked hard. It felt great to be out on my competition bike - an obscenely expensive, but very beautiful work of art made by Cervelo, which feels like a Ferrari on PEDs to ride!!

As with all the 'first rides of the season' I've ever done, I felt a little trepidation as I set out, not knowing how well the next 100 km would go, but luckily for me my legs and lungs were on great form today. So after picking up my buddy Ferenc in town, we chain-ganged (a biker's word describing the technique where two or more riders take their turn on the front of the group, rotating every few hundred meters, whilst the other rider sits in the slipstream behind) the next 60 km until we parted company north of Lund, with Ferenc heading off to his office and me carrying on to Malmö. The final 30 km went quickly and I arrived at work a little less than 3 hrs after leaving home, and 2 minutes late for my first meeting of the day (which I attended in my sweaty bike gear!). 

I run one of the largest research Units at Lund University Diabetes Center in Malmö, with 20 or so members. Monday's are usually the day when we meet to discuss the tasks for the week ahead. We have what we call the "board meeting" on Monday mornings, during which everyone present takes a few minutes to update the rest of the team on progress with projects, what's going well, what's not, and sharing ideas and solutions. The team's comprised of a remarkably multi-ethnic bunch, with 13 nationalities represented, and with roughly equal numbers of men and women. I have no hesitation in saying that my team is excellent. I'm an incredibly lucky person to have such talented, motivated and well-intentioned people working alongside me, which underlies the team's ability to produce a large volume of high-caliber diabetes research. 

Like almost all other academic research enterprises, my Unit's supported primarily by funds from either government-backed agencies such as the Swedish Research Council or the European Union, or charities such as the Swedish Diabetes Association. Some of our funding also comes directly or indirectly from pharmaceutical companies such as Novo Nordisk, which is probably the biggest fiscal donor for diabetes research in the region and has supported much of my research since I moved to Sweden in 2006. Because so much of our funding is derived from charities and from public taxes, spending our funding responsibly and ensuring that the research we do is of the highest standards is always front and center in our minds. So aside from the personal satisfaction of working with a great team, having very competent and hard working people working with me helps me ensure we do the best we can with the funding we're given.

Mid-afternoon I had a meeting scheduled with the media people from my Institute who're helping me with this fund raising campaign. Sara and Tord showed up with a film camera and microphone in hand, just as I was wrapping up a meeting with one of my doctoral students Dmitry. Never one to let an opportunity to crack a joke at my expense pass, Dmitry pounced on the opportunity to poke fun at the idea I'd be the star of a short promotional film about the campaign, highlighting that the camera was far too small to do my ego justice... how I love these guys... grrr!! If only we'd done this a few weeks earlier I thought, I would have been the talk of Cannes ;-) More to follow.