Appropriately enough...

Inappropriate behaviour - is it ever appropriate?.  Inappropriate as a word is really inappropriate when you're trying to type, it's one of the few words that moves the typing speed restriction from the physical i.e. the actual typing of the keys to the mental i.e. thinking about how you spell a word as you are typing it.  I have this problem with efficiency, although I'm getting better at it.  More efficient in fact.  Anyway, to get back to the appropriate thing - I read that in the 'old days' (and I have to assume these things are usually written by people in their 50s so they must be referring to the 70s or thereabouts) touching members of the opposite sex and what is often called 'groping' was a fact of life. Well, I'm not sure I concur with that.  I think what they are trying to say is that in their profession (journalism) that might have been the case, but in other walks of life it's never been acceptable.  In fact, my definition of 'groping' would surely not have been acceptable anywhere in any profession.  Would it?  Maybe I have had a restricted view on the working environment which I suppose I did in the 70s because my early working life was surrounded by butch men. One of them had a favourite line of "girls are alright, but you can't beat the real thing" which I have often stolen and used in appropriate circumstances.  I think he was joking.  An article on the subject in today's Guardian comes (eventually) to the conclusion that touching is 'best avoided' after various discussions about the degrees of touching.  Wow, that's worth knowing.

Fitted a new loft ladder at my mother's last night and up in the loft found an old lump of metal I had cut out for me circa 1976 to resemble a weight that went on a bit of round bar. Coincidentally, the guy who cut it out in the welding shop for me is now our managing director 37 years later. Small world.

She's just like you and me...

Time, she flexes like a whore... etc as David Bowie famously sang on Aladdin Sane. The second line is too rude for this blog.  I mean, someone might read it one day.  It's one of my favourite albums, not because of any specific song, but because of the overall quality of the songs.  Can't remember now if I pinched it from my sister or bought it myself, but I'm thinking I borrowed it from her, forgetting to give it her back.  The same went for a few singles I didn't think she deserved to own and which I have still got (for safe keeping you understand).
But to get back to time... The thing that I have noticed is that the less of it you have, the more you get done.  Which doesn't make sense on the face of it, but in reality it's definitely true. e.g. if I have a weekend with nothing specifically planned except a few small errands, I will simply mooch about, surf the web looking for nothing in particular, pass untidy rooms by without glancing at them, stare out of the window at a garden that needs weeding/forking over/pruning and do nothing.  But, on the other hand, if I have a weekend planned full of specific jobs, I seem to see loads of extra things to do and get frustrated that I can't fit them in.  It must be purely phsycological and obviously a weakness on my part not being able to plan my life.
Anyway, I had a short time to fill last night before dinner, so 45 mins or so on the rollers filled that.  (If I had had longer, I probably wouldn't have done anything!).  Another sweaty session, and I tried out my new instagram link to Strava where Strava automatically checks for instagram pics taken at the same time/location and links them to the ride.  I took a few poor shots of myself, uploaded as prescribed, but Strava either didn't put 2 and 2 together properly, or it didn't find location data because it was a 'stationery trainer' and therefore no GPS data was logged, so failed.  Never mind, I'll try when I'm out and about next time.

Load of balls.

Meatballs in Ikea contain horse meat.  Why is that so shocking?  It's no surprise to me that Ikea meatballs are not what they purport to be.  I wasn't expecting meat though - more cereal and floor sweepings than proper meat, so to find out the have a bit of meat in them is good news.  Pity that they have taken them off the menu - I can image the factory manager now - 'Meat?? What were we thinking of?  Substitute it for cereal or some other cheaper bulky substance immediately!'.  It might have been a slightly different conversation, but I'm sure Ikea are not going to lose much sleep about it.  Anyone who selects meatballs from the menu is a bit of a weirdo anyway.

20 miles on the rollers last night - that's the most ever in one session.  I maintained my interest by going for 1 minute fast, 1 minute recovery but really struggled to keep the speed up after about 15 mins.  It was an hour in total, but the first few mins were interrupted by replacing the battery on the speed/cadence sensor as well as swapping the music for a podcast.  I can't decide if a podcast makes the time go faster or not.  I struggle to listen to the podcast through the noise of the rollers, so maybe music is better, although I managed to hear what Harry Hill was talking about on the Front Row podcast with a bit of concentrating. Maybe I should move my speakers a bit nearer.

Sqeaky clean..

Cardinal Keith O'Brian resigns - headlines today, page 2 tomorrow, possible back to headlines when the truth is out.  The establishment are just not as good as the used to be with covering things up are they?  Not that I am suggesting for one minute that the Roman Catholic church is covering up anything, I mean, why should they?  And it's not as if they need to be seen to be squeaky clean nowadays.  Anyone who thinks that anyone can go through life without a skeleton in the cupboard is kidding themselves.  I guess when it's a religious figure involved then we take on the big assumption they are already more than mere mortal, but that's just silly.  The press, of course, revel in anyone in that authority being 'taken down' like they do with anyone that's remotely famous and suffers a 'fall'.  It will be interesting how the RC church play it, it does seem that if he's retired just a few months before his official retirement there might be some truth in the allegations, but we'll see.
As for training, just did a 26 mile time trial on Saturday but nothing yesterday.  My knee is still a bit sore, so I'm hoping it will settle down during the week - I might try a run on Tuesday.  I spent some time trying to synchronise the activities from GarminConnect to Strava and Runkeeper, but it's not as easy as it sounds.  Evidently each server will only allow a limited number of activities per day, so it's taking much longer than I imagined.

It's all going swimmingly well.

Swimming last night.  As part of my quest to get ready for the half Ironman in June, I need to get my swimming up to scratch.  I've never been awfully good at it.  At school, I managed a respectable backstroke, coming 3rd at the swimming gala, or maybe second, whatever, it wasn't first because I would remember that wouldn't I?  Funnily enough, I had absolutely no sporting achievements at all (apart from the 2nd/3rd above) at school.  I didn't play for any school teams except rugby, and that was only because hardly anyone liked rugby and I did, so was picked just because there was no-one else.  I wonder if that's why I enjoy running and triathlons so much - because it's more about 'taking part' that 'the winning'.  If you enter a marathon with 20,000 people in it, you had better be good to stand a chance of winning, and that has definitely not bothered me in the slightest.  Having said all that, when I won the over 50s triathlon at Brigg, and then again at South Hunsley a couple of years ago, it did my ego no end of good so there must be some deep seated issue within me. Anyway, back to the swimming.  When I started triathlons about 5 years ago, I was, frankly, rubbish.  Mainly breaststroke with a couple of lengths of front crawl thrown in to get me puffed out, suffice to say my swim time was not good.  So, I managed to get a regular weekly swim in with son-in-law number 2 (who was much better than me), determined to crack the crawl for a sprint triathlon of 400 metres.  When I had done that, we both entered an Olympic distance event that needed 1500m of swimming and gradually got there.  Subsequently, I did some homework on technique using (mainly) a website call swimsmooth that advises you to swim as smooth as possible (the clue is in the website name).  So, I managed to teach myself bi-lateral breathing, high elbow arm raises, but, to be truthful, not much else.  But, after all that time, my swim time for 400m and 1500m has barely improved since I first started timing myself.  8 mins for 400m, 35mins for 1500m which is approx 30secs a length + a bit more for the 1500.  The half ironman is 1900m, so I'm guessing 38mins + a bit more, say, around 45 mins.  There - a prediction!  That's quite rare for me.

To log, or not to log.

13 miles on the rollers last night - very sweaty.  I tried the 20/40 reps again for about half an hour, then a couple of minutes warm down before my battery gave up on the Garmin.  Luckily it saved the ride, so I was able to upload it, it would be terrible if it lost it!  I mean, my stats would look bad.  Funny how I am terrified about not keeping my stats up to date.  Back in the 80s I used an A4 chart with pencilled lines showing the year's dates and entered daily mileage with monthly totals.  No spreadsheets back then, and definitely no GPS to keep track!  That was when I kept reminding myself the old adage of 'easiest person to kid is yourself' when putting done the daily miles.  There's no cheating nowadays, and we are spoilt for choice with GarminConnect, Strava, RunKeeper and a host of other training logs, not forgetting 'Fetcheveryone.com of course!  I found a synchronisation website a few days ago that would synch Strava, Runkeeper and Garmin.  Not sure if it would help, but they all show slightly different views of the same data which is no bad thing.  This probably all sounds a bit geeky, but remember, "Speak with Data"  If you don't know what you are doing, you can't improve what you are doing.

In stereo..

I've got a stiff one today - my knee, that is.  Whatever else at my age?  Hopefully a few days not running will sort it out.
Just spent all morning doing some data migration for just one user.  That's not an efficient way to spend my time, not when there's other things to do as well.
I read an article this morning about why we should eat less meat.  There's not enough time/space to go into the details, but suffice to say I don't agree with the basic premise, although I do appreciate the problem.  To say the cutting back on meat will solve most of the issues around food production, world hunger, mis-labelling scandals, environmental issues such as nitrogen run-off is a bit of a joke and unfortunately taking this type of stance just entrenches views like it did mine.  It's not as if the writer was a nerdy left wing liberal (although he might have been), he was a professor of something or other so should be able to put a good argument forward.  Unfortunately he came across as if he was employed by a cereal business such was his extreme point of view.  Not that he was extreme in the 'do it or die' type of extremism, but his savaging of the meat industry was just that bit too much for me.  He must be a veggie.  ..and that's another issue.  I have this in-built association of vegetarians with 'weirdos', which is based on absolutely nothing, and in fact most of the vegetarians I know are quite ordinary people (even if they are a bit pasty looking).  See!  there I go again, stereotyping.
Now, where did I put my sandals?

Mumbai Jumbo..

My goodness, Mr Cameron sucking up to the Indians like they're his new best friends.  Of course the British were very interested in India a couple of hundred years ago, but I reckon the times have changed since then.  I wonder what the ordinary Indian in the street thinks about it?  ..if there is such as thing as an 'ordinary Indian'.  There seems to be a gaping chasm between the haves and the have nots, so much that finding an average must be really difficult - and then when you think you have found an 'average' whats the betting he's a weirdo like much of the interviewed in the UK?  You know the sort - the ones that when they see a microphone, they simply refer back to the latest article thay have read/seen on the subject and imagine they invented that particular point of view.  It's not that I wouldn't be the same, but I would not volunteer my thoughts on a subject in that way.  Then there's the Look North street interviews when they pick on anyone passing - usually a granny, a couple of students and an unemployed fellow in his 20s that have the bad luck to be passing.  These types usually couldn't give a toss about the subject but have to say something after being accosted by the 'roving reporter'.  Being caught unawares by 'what do you think about the closure of your local rabbit shop?' or similar, they are then forced to say the first thing that comes into their head such as 'I didn't know we had a rabbit shop', or 'I never use it myself' which is then broadcast to the local public as if it was representative of everyone living nearby.  As far as I remember, I have never seen them ask an Indian.

A Horse, a horse...

Horsemeat and the Pope, is there any link?  I hope it's just a coincidence that the Pope decides to resign just as the horsemeat scandal has broken.  Do you think he could be implicated?  It could be that he is part of the Vatican horsemeat laundering scam that has been going on for years - slaughtering the papal guard horses and saving money by selling them as horsemeat to avoid paying for Pedigree to come and pick them up.  There's been some fishy laundering going on in Vatican City for years.
Actually, I don't think I have ever seen the Pope on a horse, nor any other cardinal.  I wonder if that is significant?  Maybe they keep them at arms length to avoid being associated with the animals.  They don't even have horsedrawn carriages - preferring instead to have a motorised 'Popemobile'.  Very odd.

On another note, managed to do 10 miles on the rollers last night, trying out 20:40 reps. i.e. 20 secs flat out in top gear, then 40 secs recovery spinning as advised by JH.  The time went quicker, and I got the usual sweat on so it must have done some good although I feel 10 miles (about half an hour) is not enough to really do a lot of good training-wise.  I must think of something to relieve the boredom.

Piles.  I'm not saying anything else - except ouch.
I'm able to watch a bit of the Tour of Qatar on my PC at lunchtimes which has been surprisingly entertaining given that it's taking place in a flat country with commentary in the local lingo (whatever that is) on Al Jazeera TV.  As I write this Cavendish is in the gold jersey with a 1 second lead.  It looks to be a sprinters dream with all those flat finishes, but evidently there can be some vicious side winds.  They have just reeled in the breakaway with 15km to go, so unless Cav is unlucky he should retain the jersey.  I think it finishes tomorrow.
Thursday is swimming night, that's assuming son-in-law number 1 is keen, and I am feeling up to it.

More than lakely..

I read that the UK is spending the equivalent of £1000 per person to bury nuclear waste.  Last week it was £1000 per person for HS2, the high speed rail network.   Wonder where I will find the money?
The difference between the projects is that one is a discretionary spend (HS2), whilst the other is not.  I suppose they could leave the waste in containers for a few thousand years up in Cumbria, but would still incur a high cost, and it doesn't get less, it gets more as our nuclear industry carries on generating electricity for us.
On the training front, I've got a stiff knee, probably due to an 11 miler on Sunday. Don't think it's connected to my old misaligned kneecap issue, it's more like the joint itself, so I'll put running on hold for a day or 2 and catch up with my cycling.  Talking of which, I went out for 26 on Saturday, the first time since about Christmas and it felt good to be out there.  Did the usual time trial loop round by Brandy Wharf without tearing any tress up, but enough to know I'm not too badly out of shape. It will be rollers tonight all being well.