Month: May 2016

Giant Steps

This is the start of my week off. I’m going to blog my attempts at bike restoration. The engine has had two winters of English rain and salt and is starting to look tatty. First the other things that have been occurring. I’ve just found out that Igloo, the primary agency for Hermes drivers, has lost the contract. As of the 3rd of July they are off site. This means all of us who are Limited Company drivers have to register with a new agency, Extra Personnel. Change is always a gamble. At the moment I’ve got my own truck (a 64 plate DAF) when they remember to save it for me, I’m getting regular work and at a decent start time. A sort of 08.00- 11.00 window. Mostly about 09.30. I’m going to have to see if this new lot will stick with it. I’m not doing nights for a start.   My flute head finally arrived back, it is splendid. Should prevent my allergic reaction. Seems to blow free-er as well. Bonus.   I’ve gone back to calligraphy as well. Copperplate, which is *so* hard, and Gothic Blackletter which is hard but in a different way.   Copperplate is weird as you have to do ovals, at a 40 degree slant with hairlines up and squash the nib to make fat lines down. As you can see from my first attempts, bloody solid. Early attempt at Blackletter.   What else? Ooh, finally sorted a bit of my garden into a a permanent feature that I like. I moved my acer last winter, carrying a back breaking amount of dirt in the roots, to try to minimise the stress and sulking. Seems to have worked. I’m not so sure about everything else, especially the box hedge running alongside it, but the box circle with the acer sitting atop it is spot on. Now just got to wait for it to fill in. I’ve found a bit of box blight since the picture, when I was trimming it. Monty Don says you can grow through it just by giving a weekly feed of seaweed compost. I’ve got a new T-shirt. Today I went out to get a speaker for my ‘phone for the long hours I’m going to be spending in the shed. I put the washing on before I went out, came back to this: Totally wasn’t expecting that.   I was caught up in an altercation on my run on Sunday, between some cyclists and a herd, 20 at least, of dog walkers. It made me think of martial arts again. And Lettie, my niece, was asking about weight loss martial arts. I’m thinking of doing Muay Thai (kickboxing). It’s not pretty but it is practical. The main selling point is that the traditional grading is by fighting people of other clubs. It’s like traditional boxing in so much as there’s a huge emphasis on fitness and lots of time in the ring, actually fighting. That is the […]

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Back in the saddle.

It’s been a while. I kind of stopped updating this because all I was doing was working and sleeping. However, things are changing. I’ve been back at my running for a month or two and not buggered myself up. I went at it too hard, too fast, as ever and got warning pains in my legs. I decided to go back to basics so I’ve downloaded a basic marathon training plan. It’s a stage 2 intermediate one. The utter noob ones are walk/ run ones so no good to me. This is pitched at getting a former marathoner back up to fitness. Perfect. I started at the end of week five, with 12 miles as the ‘long’ run. I’m a week and a half in and have achieved some good results already. I will be up to 20 mile long run in 7 weeks. That’s as long as this plan goes, but the logic of it is two weeks increase, one week step back, I can carry on in that style for another few weeks until I’m up to full race distance. Then, when I’m fit enough and hardened, I can go back and start speed training and pushing the distance. I’ve entered the Warrington half marathon and the Chester marathon, then I want to see where I am. If I could realistically get my speed up to a sub 3 hour marathon pace (a *huge* ask) I might enter next years Manchester marathon (flat as a pancake) if not I’ll do the Liverpool- Manchester ultra. 47 miles along the transpenine trail. Which is all old converted railway tracks and canals. Nice scenic day out. The big problem is the November/ December working stupid hours thing. If you are doing 12+ hours a day you can only sleep after it. Both of the runs are in April. So realistically I can only commit to one. If I’m running 40 miles as 10 m/m to conserve energy that;s the opposite of running 20 miles at flat out 6.30 m/m. I was just looking for the figures for that. 6.40 is a 2 hrs 55 min marathon. Yesterday the training plan called for 4 miles easy. (I know! 4 miles!) Anyway I went out against a strong wind and I was doing 8.30’s (it said to run 60-90 seconds off your race pace, which, pitifully is only 8 m/m’s for me at the moment.) I couldn’t force myself to run it at 9.30, which is my bad. I turned around and putting the same effort in but with the wind at my back I did a 7.55! I’d broke the 8 minute barrier! I put my back into it for the last mile (again, I shouldn’t have. The plan is to get there slowly but without breaking) and did a 7.22! In a few weeks I’ve gone from 8.30 being a tough pace to breaking 7.30. I’m looking at that 6.40. That is do-able. OK, I only did one mile, but I’m […]

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