Get on your bike and ride! (Queen, 1979)

There's loads of articles in my daily read The Guardian about the attempts to make Britain a 'cycling nation' and they usually take the depressingly familiar route of 'no chance' despite quite a few government initiatives aimed at just that.  It seems to me that some of us want this 'cycling nation' thing to be presented to us on a plate, with gold plated roads, segregated lanes and those pesky pedestrians kept well away.  The reality is that most people don't cycle because they simply don't want to, based on hundreds of different reasons, one of them being the safety angle I'm sure, but my guess is for most, that is just a convenient excuse they can hang their raincoat on as they reach for the car keys or switch the TV on.
I would hazard a guess that if there was a guaranteed safety zone for all cyclists wherever they went take up would go up only a few percentage points, and probably drop down again after a while when the novelty has worn off (or it rains).  I'm not saying that safety isn't important, far from it, but we are used to quite a lazy lifestyle nowadays compared with, well... I'm not sure when to compare it with.  Let's say before the industrial revolution. i.e. before cars were ubiquitous, before regular work patterns were established, long travel to work was unknown and owning a bike (and using it) was the norm.  The basket on the front was quite useful to collect the day's groceries from the local shop (the bread shop with the Hovis was always up a hill), supermarkets were years away and work was always local, even if you had to move to find it.
Mind you, as one of the Lycra clad versions of cycling, I'm not really best placed to talk about this cycling nation lark.  I'm not one to bike to the shop (no basket), and I only bike to work twice a week at best (well, it is 40 miles away).  Maybe I should try harder.  I wonder if Wiggle do a basket for my Trek Madone?

Friend or foe?

A robot with the brain of a security guard has been developed at the University of Lincoln.  It is with a great deal of restraint that I have stopped myself writing the obvious about security guards' brains.
But this leads me onto apostrophes - the lack of them, mis-placing of them and general wrong use of.  I'm sure I don't need to list examples, that's what the great unwashed internet is for, but some of us really like so see them in the wrong place, it gives us a warm, smug sense of satisfactory superiority that we (the master class) know our plurals from our possessives.

Speak up!

What makes a good speech?  I reckon it's a combination of lots of things, but is there one specific thing in a speech that makes it truly memorable/rousing?  'I have a dream..'  is the one being remembered from 50 years ago today and its difficult to put yourself back then, when race relations were very different to now, when mass media meant turning up at a football stadium, and was reported in the following days news (maybe) rather than being transmitted to all and sundry by so many different mediums, all of them near instantaneous. So I think despite Martin Luther King's booming voice, his delivery, the words, his charisma etc etc, the most important thing about his speech was the moment in time - when the 'race question' was getting to the top of the political and chattering classes agenda.  Of course, if I had delivered the speech at that time, no-one would have taken any notice, so it definitely needed many ingredients to create the big effect, but timing is surely the biggest.
If I try and remember specific speeches, I struggle a bit.  There's Brian Hanrahan on the deck of the aircraft carrier in the Atlantic as we sent the Harriers out in the Falklands war - "I counted them all out...then counted them all back again"  I still remember the feeling that evoked in me, hoping he would be counting them all out and back again every time.  And that's it.  I thought I would be able to recall a Margaret Thatcher speech from the 80s, but not at the moment, and even though Tony Blair made quit a few good ones, I can't recall any.  I can see both sincere faces, but no words.
I suppose it's a bit like the Hitler speeches, sounds good, looks good, but in one ear and out the other in no time.

Did my weekly swim last night, missing 2 weeks out in the process. Managed to get 76 lengths in which is about 1.2 miles - half what I'll be doing next July.  The good thing is that I felt like the pull part of my stroke was improving, making me feel like I was faster, even though the clock didn't support the feeling.  Oh well, I need to get the technique sorted first.

X marks the spot.

I thought I would read a short article about Louis Walsh - the erstwhile X factor judge - on Yahoo where he appeared (according to the headline) to diss Mr Cowell and others.  In actual fact it was his usual babbling on that he does without any malicious intent at all, and (again, as usual) comes across as quite a genuine bloke.  However, what amused me was the ridiculous comments by readers below the article telling us all what a plonker he was (and worse) I really struggle to understand what these people are about.  Are they just trolling?  I don't think so, and they read like they mean what they say - such vitriolic language (often miss-spelt of course), I'm obviously missing something.

Well, entered the Outlaw triathlon this morning, so that's a milestone in my quest to finish an Ironman (or 'iron distance' as they have to call it).  It's late July 2014, and feels a bit like announcing a far off wedding date - it's exciting, but so far away I can put it to the back of my mind.
I managed a good bike ride yesterday (Bank holiday) as well as Sunday so August's total is racking up nicely.

Told you so!

And as if someone at ITV was reading my thoughts, there was a program last night comparing old style GCEs against today's GCSEs and how the standards compare.  Those that had taken recent GCSEs fared quite badly when they took old GCEs e.g. an A in GCSE scraped a C in GCE and a C in GCSE was a fail at GCSE.  Read yesterday blog if you're really bored.

Managed a 9 mile run last night without too much difficulty.  It's Outlaw entry time on Monday, so I'm going to go for it - 2.4m swim, 112 bike, 26.2 run.  Easy.

Schools Out.

So, Sharapova has pulled out of the US Open.  Hopefully she will have more time to sell a few sweeties now.

Its the annual GCSE results day today, and the stats show that the grades have fallen by the biggest drop in years which is, to me, a good thing given the ridiculous situation during the Blair/Brown years of an ever upward trend which purported to show how good their style of education was.  Its not that I'm anti-Labour government, they did a lot of decent things in their time, but its the politicisation of education that annoys me and how they (and others) use the results stats to 'demonstrate' how good their policies were. e.g. In the Brown years, they would trumpet another increase in the number of A* grades, 5 A-C grades etc. etc.  What they didn't manage to convey was that the school leavers were just as think as the previous generations and that these 'improvements' were just because of the education examination process and system, not the real education levels of school children.  For instance, in my day (my goodness, do I sound like an old fuddy duddy?) top grades were quite unusual, even at my grammar school, and A*s hadn't even been invented (I don't think).  A graders were the obvious top pupils and, if I remember correctly numbered about 10 in my year out of around 100, and if you got an A, you were considered to be very bright indeed.  That's 10% if my (grade C) maths is correct.  Now, assuming grammar schools were taking the top 25% (or was it 10%) that would mean that this 10% was actually about 2.5% of the total number of exam takes for that year.  I know that's not the full story, because non-grammar school pupils could have done (and did) as well as grammar school versions, but lets assume that that is balanced by grammar schoolers who did not do as well (like me!) and then it balances out.  So, we have a very small number (2.5%) who got, say, a few grade A's as opposed to today when 21% got an A or A* , and this has gone down from it's peak in 2011.  The conclusion is that kids nowadays are much brighter on average than in the 70s.  Hmmm, I'm sure that's right.

Sugar me..

It appears that Maria Sharapova was going to change her name to Sugarpova for the duration of the US Open tennis tournament to promote her brand of sweets (candy to you Americans), then change it back again.  This news appeared in all news outlets and went into some debate over how she can do this, what it entails etc etc, only to find out (not very surprisingly) that she has now decided not to do it, therefore rendering all the speculation pointless, but did raise the hoped for profile so much more than any advertising, and all for free!  I also notice that the articles are still up there to read along with some quite fetching photographs of Ms Sharapova to assist with identification if it was needed.

Quite an event for me this morning, I conducted an experiment by getting up early (5:10) and going out for a 5 mile run to test the effects.  The first half mile were a bit of a blur and really got me puffing and panting, but I settled down into my normal speed and surprisingly enough managed it quite well.  The theory was that I can get out on my bike for 2 hours at that time, I should be able to do a much shorter run without suffering.  Not sure how much running you have to do to equate to a 2 hour bike ride, but I was probably not too far off at 5 miles.

Just joking..

The Chinese Wispa joke was voted the funniest joke at the Edinburgh fringe, and I must admit it made me smile along with the other top one liners.  It's a funny thing, humour, but there again I would say that wouldn't I?  I wonder if there is something universally funny i.e. funny to everyone, or do we each have our own personal humour 'switches' that only respond to certain types of humour.  I can't, for instance imagine my mother finding the Chinese Wispa joke that funny, which makes me think there is no such thing as universal humour.  ..or maybe it's that some people don't have a 'sense of humour' what ever that means.  I know that my sense of humour is well removed from my wife's, and some of my pals wonder why on earth I laugh at some things, whereupon I find some 'humour' totally crass, offensive, cruel etc.  Maybe some people will think that I don't have this sense of humour, but I fool myself into thinking I see the funny side in everything - well, almost everything.  I can't abide jokes that make fun of people, or try too hard to be offensive to someone or other.  I'm a sensitive sole you know.

Biked to work and back yesterday, that's 80 miles or thereabouts and together with Sunday's 45 into the wind there's no wonder I was tired out last night. 

Creatively speaking

More absolute cobblers that purports to be journalism.  This time an article about how 'isolated Wayne Rooney looks as his teammates celebrate a goal.  The picture 'taken by a fan' shows Rooney well away from about 6 of his team mates cuddling each other as some teams do when they score a goal.  What it fails to convey (as the comments below prove) that he was one of 5 players not taking part in the group hug, and he had also just been tackled and was limping back.
The article writers (it would be unkind to journalists to call him a journalist) must have a quota to fill on 1. footballers 2. Celebrities of any description 3. Meaningless surveys.  Either that, or they are good at creative writing.

As for training, I managed 3 runs last week - that's the first time in about 6 months, clocking 22 miles in total for the week without much in the way of niggles, aches and pains.  It must be down to my increased cadence/mid-sole striking which is gradually beginning to feel like 'normal' although I guess it will take a while yet.  It took me about 2 years to make bi-lateral breathing for swimming feel normal.
I also got a good ride in although it was windy.

Thinly disguised.

I read that Lady Gaga has been criticised for being too thin, and this is especially newsworthy (they say) because she has recently been given grief for being too porky.  Well, that's interesting isn't it? 
The thing is, I was drawn to the article (in an online publication), not because I give a monkeys about her being fat/thin/etc, but because I wanted to learn about the criticism and how it had been handled.  The link took me to their 'celebrity news' page (with colourful backgrounds and left the reader in no doubt it was not serious news), but I couldn't really make out if they were merely repeating what had been stated i.e."she's too thin" in other news outlets, or actually offering the same criticism.
Whatever it was, I annoyed myself that I clicked on it and bothered to read/skim it.

Anyway, I steeled myself to do a run last night and managed 8 miles with my new improved higher cadence technique, trying to land on my mid-foot rather than the heel.  Seems to be working to some extent, it definitely helps with the knee issue.

Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day.

Time, its a funny thing.  Take this morning for instance, I managed to set my alarm incorrectly and didn't wake up until about 20 minutes after my prescribed time thereby having to rush to get all my important jobs (e.g. eating breakfast) done in time before I had to leave for work.  What is a bit odd (or not, actually) is our obsession with timing and what it would mean if we freed ourselves up from this.  For example, if we could go to work for 7 and a half hours at our 'leisure' without being tied to a specific time would we still do it?  I'm not sure we would and maybe its not a good example anyway.  Some things of course have to be timed, like trains, buses etc. and maybe, I could argue that everything should be timed, otherwise we would just float around at our own selfishly led pace not bothering about anything/anybody else.  Perhaps this is why timing was invented in the first place, to get us organised, drilled or call it what you will.  I can't think of many 'organised' things that would exist without some element of timing - shop opening hours, pubs etc.  You can't really say to your mates 'see you in the pub!' without indicating some sort of timing however loose.
Anyway, I'm over my lunch break so I had better get out of here in time!

The truth, honest!

Truth and Reconciliation.  That's the process advocated by many in the cycling world as a means of putting the doping days behind and 'moving on'.  I'm not 100% convinced about this, I mean, I fail to see how it would actually work without having direct affect on those 'confessing'.  We have just seen a high profile Australian 'coming out' on doping 3 days after he retired, which was conveniently timed.  Tyler Hamilton, the US ex-doper only confessed when he had to so its going to take a very special person to be the one to stand up if he's already in a current contract.  Its a job and livelihood to most people, so unless there are cast iron guarantees that they will not lose existing income, contracts etc. then we can only expect those retiring and nothing to lose that will be confessing all.  When we have teams like Sky with a zero tolerance policy (otherwise they get sacked) then we can assume that no-one in their team would confess to anything remotely associated with doping.  Also, I can't help but note that the most vocal people pressing for this truth and reconciliation stuff are those that have already confessed and/or been found out.  I am not expecting much in the way of action any time soon.

On my own (drug free) cycling, I got out with son-on-law number 2 yesterday for a few miles, taking in a visit to the grandchildren taking part in a ridden fancy dress followed by calling into my mother's to finish off an extension cable job I should have done about 6 months ago.

You're not welcome any more..

The Home Office are trying to encourage illegal immigrants to leave by putting information on how to leave on a truck and driving it around some streets of London.  It also features a few politically arousing phrases to help the right wingers feel like the government are doing something.  So far, so good, but now it appears that the advertising standards agency have stepped in and are 'investigating'  to see if it breaks any advertising rules.  How very odd.  I can't for one minute see why this should be classified as advertising, although I must admit I am not an expert in the matter (or any other matter come to that), but common sense tells me that advising people to stick to the law i.e. don't be in this country unless you are allowed to be, cannot be advertising can it?  In the same way that a 'No Left Turn' sign is not advertising.
How very odd.

Floater

There's been a bit of a hoo-ha at a fete sort of event in Sotland where one of the participants in the parade of floats thought it would be a jolly wheeze to decorate a trailer in the style of Jim'll Fix It with someone appropriately clad in Jimmy Saville 'outfit' surrounded by children.  Looks like it embarrassed the organiser somewhat who thought it was wholly inappropriate etc etc.  I expect they were in a right quandary when it showed up and took it's place in the float queue, wondering whether to have a word with the owners or not.  Or maybe they didn't see it until it paraded proudly past their executive box whereupon they would have choked on their cucumber sandwiches or similar.  Personally, it gave me a chuckle for a number of reasons.  The main one being that it is such an extreme thing to do - dress up as one of the UKs most notorious paedophiles in a most public way, in the same way that some comedians try to get a reaction with 'extreme' jokes.  It's not as if the joke is funny -it's the context, and this float parade is just that - a harmless genteel event being hi-jacked by some extreme costuming. 
This is not to say I condone anything Mr Saville did!  (just in case anyone has doubts).

Biked to and from work yesterday, finding a slightly different route home through a village (Glentworth) I had never been to before.  Maybe I should aim for a new village/road every ride.

Great twit.

All this twitter talk about twitter, it's quite messy.  Essentially, twitter is the medium used to convey messages (albeit short, and usually pointless), so why they should be in the dock for 'allowing' nasty things to be said is a bit odd to me.  A perfect analogy for me is the sewage system - it exists for people to put their $hit through it, which is just what most of twitter is.  If you decide to put some horrible chemical down the loo, you can't blame Anglian Water for letting you do it can you?
Anyway, I guess they'll arrive at some way of reporting it and everyone will be happy-ish, although I'm surprised that they don't know who is sending which messages I didn't realise it was so anonymous.

I managed 80 lengths in the pool last night, that's about 1.2 miles.  It was only the fact that my goggles were pressing too tightly on my face that I stopped so I need to get them sorted.  An Ironman at 2.4 miles needs some comfy equipment.

Olympic Breakfast.

Bad news for the catering industry at the weekend with the news that the Little Chef chain has been bought and 'saved' to fight another day.  I can't see why anyone would want to eat in a Little Chef, or am I missing something that has happened to them in the last 15 years? (15 years is about the gap since I last ate in one, and left thinking 'never again'.  Can't remember if it was the interminable wait, the rubbish food or the price that put me off the most.,  Price I think- it can't have been on expenses, but actually now I recall I think it was when I was on expenses driving to/from Levington so it must have been the time it took to get served.  I note that it's a Kuwait company that has bought them out, so maybe they have different standards.  It can't be for the brand - that would be a waste of money.

I managed a windy 35 miles on Saturday (busy all day yesterday).  Went out into the wind and got a couple of PBs on the way back.  Felt really knackered when I got going, probably due to the extra running I had done so a good job I didn't do anything yesterday.

TV Critics..

So, Mr Berlusconi is not a happy chappie after his appeal against a jail sentence was turned down.  Luckily he has his own TV channel where is able to rant about it and get it off his chest.  Its a good job he has that to use, or he would be boring his friends to death with it.  One of them probably told him to get on air and 'you tell 'em!'  The thing with Berlusconi is that he probably really believes he is innocent, thinking that those particular laws don't really count, well, not for him anyway.  If he wasn't such a potentially powerful politician it would be funny, but as it is, he's just a bit dangerous.  I would be a bit worried if I was an Italian.

As for biking last night - I think I picked the hottest evening of the year.  It was 31 when I got home from work so my guess I set off in 30 degrees but it was cooling down.  I managed 50+ miles on one water bottle - should have taken 2 really, so there's a lesson there.

Don't look back in anger.

I am always interested when the government release papers in line with the '30 year rule'.  They provide an insight into what was happening in the inner workings of parliament, what politicians were contemplating and plans that were on the table but were never actioned.  Today, we see a batch of papers from Margaret Thatcher's era, just before the miners strike and what the planning was and all the possible contingency plans.  We also see that the Queen had a speech prepared in the event of nuclear war which would have advised us to 'keep calm and carry on'.  Just a joke.  It actually would have told us to pray - that would have been really useful wouldn't it?  Keep calm and carry on would have been just as good I guess. 

Biked to work yesterday, chancing the traffic through Lincoln, but at the time of the morning it was reasonably quiet.  I plan to ride out with one of my ex-colleagues tonight, taking in some of the Wolds so I'm hoping the rain stays away for the evening at least.