Author: Buck

Wendy casually asked if I’d still like to retire to Cornwall the other day. Being who I am that promoted the prospect from under the radar to most important thing ever that need to be resolved immediately. I started thrashing the internet, but it was instantly apparent that wasn’t happening. Even that houses that have got weird stuff in the walls and mining subsidence warnings so were ineligible for a mortgage were starting at £100K. And that would be cash. I shifted my attention abroad. Relatives in Spain and Bulgaria seem to be doing fine. We could get a flat in Spain, or a mansion in Bulgaria. Yay! I was getting all excited, planning our best options. Then I thought I’d better see if Bozo had managed to finalise anything about Brexit. He has. Put the plebs right back in their place. The people who have already settled abroad can carry on as normal, us who would like to do the same can forget it. Now you have to apply for a long term visa, prove you’ve got €34K in savings, and pay for your own private healthcare. As a pensioner. Ha! This news following on the heels of someone trying to stop Bozo from scrapping holiday pay as he takes a blowtorch to worker’s rights and regulations. Super. Thanks Gammon Brexiteers. I know a lot of younger people were misguided by the empty “Take Back Control” slogan and the “£350 million a week to the NHS” lies, but statistically it was pensioners who were most rabidly Brexit. I read that between the vote and the implementation so many of them had died that it wouldn’t have passed if it had been called then. I also know that all the people I know personally of that generation were Remain. (As far as I know.) The sad thing was there was little to get excited about the Remain campaign, but a vague, jingoistic, racist dog whistle of hope in Leave. There was a cartoon, a fat cat rich person with 19 cookies, pointing at the starving underclass person with one cookie and saying to the working class person “Look out, that immigrant is stealing your cookie”. Statistically though, it’s hard not to feel a tad bitter that another door has been slammed behind the Boomer generation. Affordable/ council housing, free education, student grants, a benefits system that worked, worker’s rights, the NHS, and now the right to work and retire abroad. Ho hum. I just wish there was some way to opt back in. So that’s not happening. We are one month into Brexit and it’s already a disaster. The government have been advising companies to set up businesses in the EU to get around the restrictions that they have overseen. I say overseen, you can’t call saying “ner, ner, Johnny Foreigner, we’re not listening” negotiating. But. Blue Passports. Swings and roundabouts, innit? In better news, several good things have happened. I got an email this morning saying the wide fit […]

“Death sucks” “Again, you’re not dead.” The disincorporated voice said. “Explain this, he gestured randomly, and you. While I was alive I never heard voices.While I was awake. And not stoned off my face” he qualified. QDo you know the Matrix film? Off course, classic. Wait, are you saying I’ve been uploaded into a virtual reality matrix? Or that I’ve just awoken, my whole life a lie perpetrated by nefarious machine intelligences, merely to power their virtual utopia, and the reason all I can see is a blur and I can hear you but not see you because I’ve never used my eyes before and I don;t know how to focus yet? He drew a shuddering breath, although, possibly he didn’t. No. I was just making conversation. I love that film. He sighed, changed his mind and slammed his fist down. Onto nothing. Then explain the mist, the utter absence of solid matter apart from myself, and your voice without a source. Have you ever been to Wales? Rain. Not mist. And solid ground. I checked. And nobody speaks English when English people are around, so I’m not in Wales. Worth a shot. OK, I guess you’re dead. Which bums me out considerably as that seem to imply I am as well. What? All I’ve got is mist and your voice as well. Well. He paused. That’s awkward, seeing as I’m an atheist. Are you religious? I’m open to suggestions here. I’m a Pastarfarian. I was a Pastafarian. Doesn’t seem quite so funny now. The first sign of noodly appendages and I’m kicking your incorporeal arse. Says you! Atheists don’t have a hereafter. This is definitely not nothing. Well it’s not something, so I was half right.

I started to write this yesterday, but it turned into a long and boring (to everyone who’s not me) post about triathlon. The main reason I set to writing was to take my new keyboard for a test ride. The old one, after years of faithful service, decided it couldn’t endure one more blog post so took the easy way out. I was looking at what possible differences there were between an £18 keyboard and a £40 one. Coloured back lighting and such. Huh. That’s exactly what I look for in a keyboard, disco lighting. Then I saw this for one of the cheaper ones: Come on, what’s not to love? So I got it. To be honest, the docile cat in question was probably playing with a stiff Rubik’s cube when they made the comparison. It’s a bit clicky. But it really suits my typing for some reason, so all good. I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. Partly because of trying to get comfy with an awkward shoulder, I expect, but also I just can’t get my temperature right. With the window open on a -5C night, the very lightest tog summer duvet I could find (about 2.5 tog, I think) still bakes me. And if I use blankets instead they leave my knees cold. I think it’s the man-opause. Yesterday I had less than 4 hours sleep, then I was up until midnight, up again today at 05.40. I was sick with tiredness. I stayed up until Wendy went to work then managed to get 3 hours on the couch, so I’m feeling good now. I hope when I get back to work, and can lay on my side, this will quickly sort itself out. My shoulder is progressing apace. I’m still pretty confident I’ll get signed fit for work on the 10th. After Wendy saying to make a claim I’m now getting ESA (Employment Support Allowance, I think) so that’s £74 per week. It’s been so long since I was out of work I’d forgotten you can claim. I’ve been burning through a whole bunch of books. That’s one good thing about the enforced downtime, getting lost in a good read. That will stop when I get back to work, sadly. I won’t have the hours to dedicate to it once I’m working and training. Which brings me to my musings of last night. I’ll sum it up. I’ve had time to research some stuff. I found some lists of individual discipline times for a (benchmark) sub 10 hour triathlon. Swim 1.05 (mine is about 1.42), bike 5.15 (I’m 6.45) run 3.30 (I’m 4.18). I know I’ve said I wanted to go sub 10 before, but then I thought if I kept training it would just happen. Now I know that’s not the case, you have to make it happen. And Trainer Road have shown me how. Specifically the bike. For years I was commuting 22 miles a day. Always trying to push a little bit every […]

I started this year, and indeed my current training regime, with no clear goals. Do an Ironman, and go sub three on a marathon. While I’ve been stuck at home and bored I’ve been reading up some aspects of that. Advice on how to go sub 10 hour on the triathlon. What goals you need to set for each discipline. The swim needs to be an hour. That will be my biggest challenge. I’m consistently about 1 hour 40. The thing is though, following this bike training plan has made me realise what I’ve been doing wrong. If you put the same effort in, time after time, you train your body to do that effort. You get fitter, and it becomes a bit easier, so you can go a little bit faster, but on race day you just grind it out exactly the same. Same effort in, same results out. Since I’ve been doing this bike training plan on Trainer Road I’m being driven forward. I started by building a base of fitness and putting in some harder efforts in the first 6 week cycle. Then at the start of the second 6 week week cycle I got my fitness tested again (FTP), got a better score, so they made the workouts harder. And now they are paying me the compliment of assuming I’ve built enough stamina and fitness for them to really start to beast me. Last Saturday was a 1½ hour ride, with 6 blocks of 10 minutes, 2 minutes hard, 2 minutes more at 98% of FTP (very hard), 2 minutes 102% of FTP, then down again. It doesn’t sound too bad, but the whole point of FTP is that is the point beyond which your legs can’t clear the lactic acid. So you accumulate burn even at 102%, then have to hang in there, legs on fire, as you slowly reduce power and clear the burn. The first few sets I was clearing the burn by the last minute of drop down. Then you have a minute to get your breath and do it again. By the last block of 2 x 10 minute I didn’t think I could hold on until the minute rest. I lost my pace, I was standing up and sitting down, heart rate a few beats off maximum, gasping for air. I somehow managed to force myself to keep going until the rest, then I had minute until I had to do it again. I am quite amazed I made it. Half of the battle is mental, knowing how desperately close to quitting you are at the end of one block and knowing you’re going to be in a worse state for the next one. The point I am eventually making, is: I did 1½ hours of training, and over an hour of it (with the warm up) was close to or over my new PB FTP. The FTP is test is 20 minutes long (which near kills me as you’re […]

I’m fairly confident I made the right call with my shoulder. I’m just over two weeks in and I can take my sling off for periods and quite easily put my hand on my head now. I put the sling back on as soon as I have to move about, or I forget and, for instance, grab the handrail going down the stairs. That is definitely not a good thing to do. The way it’s going I’m fairly sure the doctor will sign me fit for work on the 10th. My shoulder droop is no longer so pronounced. I’ve still got a lump and my poorly shoulder is a bit lower than the other one, but now it isn’t so sore I can come to attention and the difference isn’t massive. In other good news my sister’s sciatica seems to be on the mend. She’s got a hospital appointment with a specialist in Liverpool on the 10th of February as well. Hopefully they’ll be able to numb her up while she fully mends. She wants to get back to work. She’s been stuck at home since November, until recently too done in to get out. I’d have gone mad. She says her back isn’t bothering her anymore and the electric shocks up her leg are really improving. She said her leg is 50% now. That’s good. I’ve told her I’ll go running with her to build up her back muscles. She wasn’t enthusiastic. I’ve been keeping up with my bike training. It’s not fun, like The Sufferfest. They were shouting at you, encouraging you and making in-jokes. Trainer Road is just a bunch of boring blocks. The blocks are the power, or more accurately, the resistance. The horizontal line is my maximum sustainable power (FTP). The yellow line is the power I’m putting out, the red line is my heart rate. So you ride along for 2 minutes at, say, 120 watts, then it goes up a step and the trainer moves the resistance up to 140W etc. The big blocks are 95- 98% of my FTP, the spikes which are only 5 seconds on this particular workout, are 150%. I looked at this one and thought “That looks do-able. 5 seconds!Ha!” Another one that nearly killed me. The 5 seconds burns your legs then you have to carry on at more or less your maximum for 2 minutes then do it again. By the final block I was hanging on by a thread. But this is how you improve. And how I stay sane while I’m housebound and can’t do anything with my arm. We’ve been getting weird symptoms again. We went for a Covid test, but it was negative. It could be Long Covid, or some weird other bug. It keeps on giving us sore throats and bits of weakness, with the insatiable hunger. Though the last could just be my bored gluttony. On the bright side, it’s nothing like the wipe-you-out bouts we were getting. It’s just […]