It’s been a strange time.
Work are introducing spy cameras into the trucks, against the express wish of every driver there. I got into a principled huff and have been looking for other jobs. I applied online to Royal Mail, Chorley, but didn’t make it past their online personality test thing. Then I saw two other jobs that looked OK. I applied for them, and got invitations to go further, but then I found reviews. It’s not just Amazon that do online reviews anymore. These were from actual drivers, past and present. The first job is a total lie, with terrible kit and long hours, being treated like dirt. The second, which looked on the advert to be local drops, loading and unloading your own trailer, good money, and most importantly only 8 hour shifts, was nothing of the sort. Long, long shifts, bullying culture, treated like crap, admittedly the money is still good.
I was getting a bit low but I think I’m bouncing back. It’s not that my job is ideal, but it’s still SO much better than the alternatives. I’ll keep my eyes open, if Royal Mail, Warrington, advertise I’ll be all over that, but I’m not leaving my job for a worse one. I mentioned that I was looking for other work to a trainer at work today. Because of the spy cameras, but also because I never know when I’m going home. He had a good suggestion. Ask to be trained as a shunter. They are the drivers who stay in the yard all day, moving trailers around. A tedious job but one with fixed hours. I could be on the good money I am on now and know when I was going home. And it would remove the other, otherwise unavoidable, irritant in my job; traffic.
It’s certainly worth an ask.
Another downer is my bike. I bought the red one because it did everything the black on did and had great bodywork so looked fantastic. I got to work a few days ago and noticed half of a fairing panel was missing. It’s completely inexplicable. If it had been a full panel I would have thought it had fallen off or been nicked, but half was left behind as though it had snapped off. but there were five bolts holding the snapped off bit in place. I haven’t crashed it or dropped it, there is no plastic debris at ours, so not kids vandalising it. It makes no sense. Gutted though.
I spent hours searching for a replacement fairing panel. It’s a 24 year old bike, and apparently left hand side ones are most sought after from people getting it wrong with the sidestand and dropping it. Found one, tried to buy it but eBay said there was an error, so I went back and tried again but it had sold. I found another panel and bought that. Then eBay sent me an invoice for the first one. It was a glitch, it had sold to me. Super. Still, I couldn’t get either panel in red, so one will do while I get the nicer one sprayed.
In training news I’m pretty sure the wellness has taken this time. I’ve had about 3 false starts since the lurgy where I thought I was all well, did a bit of really tough, very poor, training, only to be weak and useless a few days later.
I did two workouts on the bike, the first followed by and 18 mile run, then tonight managed my first attempt at a fast run session in about 6 weeks.
I’ve had sports watch envy for a while. I got the Timex Ironman watch last year, when you turn the GPS on it drains the battery, the same with every watch, but the so-called Ironman watch died completely half way through my marathon at the end of my tri last year. The cut off point for Iron distance tri-s is 16 hours, I finished in 13.17, and the battery was dead long before that. Not a lot of use then. Since then I’ve been using my old, brick-sized Garmin watch for runs and the Timex as normal watch.
Wendy was asking me what I wanted for my birthday, so I’ve upgraded and got myself a Garmin triathlon watch. The battery is supposed to be good for 15 hours plus with GPS on and other data devices streaming to it.
It arrived today so I forced myself to go for a run to try it out.
You can set it with 4 data metrics on display or one big one per page. That is ideal for me. I need readers now, so 4 little readouts are no good to me unless I want to run in glasses. The one big display is clearly legible.
My old Garmin took a few minutes to find the satellites, so if I’d been on the bike I was cooling off waiting to start running. The Timex sometimes couldn’t find the satellites at all. My funky new watch I pressed the run button, it instantly connected! Ace.
I monitors your heart rate on your wrist to an acceptable degree, but comes with a chest strap heart rate monitor for exact results. So far this afternoon/ evening, my lowest resting heart rate has been 47bpm. I’ll be interested to see what I score overnight!
The grooviest thing though, is when I uploaded the run data. SO MANY METRICS! ALL THE STATS!
Usual stuff, route, elevation, pace.
Heart rate. But then, Stride Length, Run Cadence, Vertical Ratio, Ground Contact Time Balance…
It goes on. Steps Per Minute, Heart Rate As Percent Of Max, Average Vertical Oscillation…
I don’t even know what half of this is, or how I could possibly improve it, but it’s FUN!
As someone said on one of the reviews I was obsessively reading whilst trying to decide which model was best for me, “Why do we need all these stats and data? Because it’s like catnip to a triathlete.”
Or words to that effect.
I almost forgot in the new watch excitement, after struggling for a few weeks to stay under 8.30 m/m I did that short run tonight, but decided to try and be quick. I managed two miles under 7 m/m! That’s more like it! At someone’s suggestion on Twitter, I’ve bought a highly recommended book that people rate to get you under the 3 hour marathon. I’ll start on that tomorrow.
Right, just a quick catch up.
Later,
Buck.
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