Day fourty - Friday

Day started slowly, with a bit of a late rise! Was thinking of going in but was knackered after yesterday's effort on the hill and the training in the evening so ended up staying in the flat. Did lots of useful stuff, admin type things - sorting out term dates for next year, going through some situational judgement test (SJT) stuff from uni and then starting to look at the dreaded FPAS... This is the 'foundation programme application system', a new name for MTAS 'medical training application system' which a few years ago was so full of flaws that they decided to radically overhaul it - by renaming it.

Every final year medical student in the country will apply through FPAS in October for their foundation posts - their jobs for the next two years. It works in two stages, first you get assigned an area of the country - which has been divided into complex foundation school or deanery arrangements, which are constantly changing and counter intuitive. For example North West included Barrow and Lancaster in Cumbria, but not Whitehaven which is included in Northern. Lots of weird things like that. So after being assigned an area you then rank every single junior doctor job within that area and the computers whirr again before spitting you out your jobs. It's all decided on your EPM 'educational performance measure', 50% of which is made up of your time at medical school (6 years of higher education for me) and the other 50% coming from 70 multiple choice questions sat in a 2hr exam, aka the SJT... So bizarre, how your entire medical school career counts for the same amount as the SJT!! And in fact it's slightly less as there's some extra points for additional degrees. After a few hours browsing numerous websites claiming to 'demystify' FPAS I wasn't really any the wiser, and so headed out to meet Jonny from HebSAR at 1800 for a spot of mountain biking instead!

Nice bike that Jonny leant me, a Cube Aim Disc!

Met Jonny in the golf club carpark in Lews Castle grounds. He runs a bike hire business and kindly leant me one of his bikes to ride for the evening, a really nice Cube hardtail. One his mates came along for the trails, normally they have a good group of them on a Friday evening but as it's the end of summer a lot of people are away apparently. Go going on the trails before long - really cool specially designed mountain bike trails. They're really new, and in fact some of them haven't been finished yet. The other two knew them like the back of their hands, so I was just following, trying to keep up... When they both rocked up in shin pads/gloves I felt a bit of a numpty in my hoody!

Great views over Stornoway harbour and town

Beautiful evening for a ride, sun low on the horizon and blue sky. Midges were out though, so couldn't stop for long without getting annihilated! The trails were quite short, only taking a couple of minutes downhill to ride, but there were loads of them that we linked up to make great circuits. Amazing to have this facility literally across the harbour from the town, and all for free! After warming up on some of the easier tracks we tackled the more technical ones, with rocky drop off's and split logs to ride along.

Jonny and his mate, part of the Friday night biking crew!

Beautiful evening to be out riding

After an hour of riding Jonny's mate had to head off but we carried on for another 30mins, heading right up to the top of the grounds for some more superb views before one last long descent through the trails. Along the way I was chatting to Jonny about his summer ML - he's going for his training in October. Back at the car, 1h30m after starting my legs were wasted, still feeling the run from yesterday on top of some hard biking! Got a lift back to the flat in his pimped out Golf, covered in mud.

Quick bite to eat before heading out to town with the Aberdeen med students for 9ish. Went to MacNeil's, the irish bar in the middle. Not that busy, was expecting it to be rammed on a Friday night. Jonny joined us later on and after a couple of drinks we got turfed out as it was closing, moving on to The Lewis bar. Possibly a bit of an error, was dead, with the only people in being either alcoholics or underagers! Another few drinks before again being turfed out, second time in one night! Did a spot of lapping - the local past time here. The idea is to walk around the town, doing 'laps'. I'd highly recommend it. You can either do it on foot or in a car, indeed after a couple of minutes walking I'd already spotted the same cars coming round 3 or 4 times! Bit of late night sustenance from the chippy before heading back to the flat.

Guinness in MacNeil's - when in Rome...