Author: Buck

Technology is just a demonstration of how stupid I am. Last week I bought the shiny new computer and thought all was well with world. Then I tried to activate my email accounts and was reduced to *headdesk* and getting others to fix it for me. Then there was the blue-ray debacle. This week I bought a router to try to fix that drop-out problem I’m having with my connection. It arrived (when I was in the shower, obviously) on Friday. I had a quick play with it before work but couldn’t get it set up. I set to in earnest today (Saturday) and got it recognizing the PC and working, but saying the ethernet cable wasn’t connected. I trotted up and down stairs many times, sticking cables in different slots and generally being puzzled. I looked at my old modem/ router jobby and followed what I knew to be the wiring of that. It’s only 3 wires, 2 if you take the power lead out of the equation. One from the ADSL/ ‘phone line, one from the router to the computer (via the mains, in my case.) After quite a while, and some vigorous and heartfelt cussing I had a moment of epiphany. An ADSL connection is not an ethernet one. The ‘phone line goes into a ‘phone line (ADSL) slot, an ethernet goes into an ethernet slot (something fancy and computery, I don’t know!) The router doesn’t have an ADSL slot. It is a router. Not, as it transpires, an ADSL/ router. They are not the same thing. Super. A router, it appears is just a transmitter for making Wi-Fi. You need to have a modem/ ADSL jobby as well. Double super. I bought it to replace the modem jobby, to try and get a stable connection to the internet. But that’s the kit it needs to work. *sets fire to internet*   BTW, (By The Way) I don’t know how much of Twitter/ internet grammar has leaked into RL (Real Life) but the asterisk thing is a way of expressing an action or emphasising a written word. Someone described it as a meta-commentary. Some people will say anything, though. It looks pretty self-explanatory to me, but everything does when you are used to it. Anywho, I have now bought a DVD white elephant and router one. Got to love learning by your mistakes, it’s like buying my education in small, irritating chunks. Talking of which, not content with the above frustrations, I took Anonymous’ (the hack-tivist collective) advice (on Twitter) and bought a VPN (Virtual Privacy Network) which is just running your internet stuff through some proxy server (as I understand it). So I want X but don’t want The Man knowing about it, I get it but it goes through my proxy’s computers first where, presumably, it is anonymized. Anyway, easier said than done. I’ve been fighting with it most of the week. Lots of partial successes. I got a 12 month contract which was only […]

Well, apart from my running, which I may have mentioned is a total bitch, other stuff has indeed been happening. My fancy-pants new computer has arrived, and after five days of sorting out niggling issues, is now all peachy. I was having a bit of a nightmare getting in to my email accounts, but with help from Luke and Plusnet (who now take over your pc and sort it out for you remotely, as you watch. Ace!) they are all working and integrated into one place. My next issues was with blue-ray’s. I had a blue-ray film and wanted to burn it off. The pc said it was the wrong kind of disc. Fair enough, apparently DVD’s and blue-ray’s are different discs. I bought some blue ray discs. Wrong burner. A DVD burner doesn’t burn blue ray’s. Now you’re just taking the piss. This means I’ve had to order a blue ray burner for the pc. The brand new, build to your own spec, pc. Or to put it another way, I’ve just bought a brand new DVD burner in my pc that is never going to be used because it is obsolete tech. Balls. It never even occurred to me that blue rays and DVD’s were different. Grrr. Hopefully when it gets here it will be easy to install. The other thing I’ve ordered is a new router. For some reason whenever you turn the landline on or off (and often when you’ve done nothing) you lose the connection to the internet and have to reboot the router. Hopefully it’s the ancient router that is at fault. If not it’s only £40 and a new router is worth having anyway. With the new pc I included a new keyboard and mouse. Nice easy set up, no messy wires (the old wireless ones had plug-in  receivers on wires, this one just has a dongle thing that plugs into a USB port. Tidy.) and the keyboard is quiet. The old one sounded like a manual typewriter. I can get away with typing now without Wendy killing me.   Work continues to be inconvenient hours but it’s steady, 5 days a week work. To the same place, doing the same job. That I like. Saying that, on Friday I got to Crewe to pick up my trailer for Cowley and they couldn’t find it (not unusual, Crewe is a farce of a depot) after an hour and a half they declared they couldn’t find it because they didn’t have one for me. They sent me to Barnoldswick instead. I’d been there once before and hated it, tiny roads and that stupid, four barrier-ed, impossibly tight crossroads. This time, expecting the worst, I found I took it all in my stride. I may be improving. Yay! And I’m definitely getting better at that hideous reverse at Cowley. I was saying to Wendy, I think I’ll stick at it until February before looking for another job. This is the time of the year when […]

I’ve referenced it before but I’ll jog your memory. It’s a war drama film, a German sergeant who has an Iron Cross and his younger, vainglorious officer who desperately wants one. The officer lies to try and get one and tries to get the sergeant killed to cover his lie. In the end, as the allies are closing in and all hell is breaking loose, the sergeant prepares to run out into the fight he says to the officer “Come with me, I’ll show you where the Iron Crosses grow.”   That is where my rather pretentious and somewhat tenuous blog post title came from. I’m using it to refer to my latest ambition, the sub 3 hour marathon. It’s that special. I thought, now I’ve broken the 7 minute/mile barrier I’d just trot in at that pace. This training plan I’m trying to follow says: “week 1, run 3 miles in 18 minutes.” You have to remember it’s only a week or so ago I was thrilled to set a new PB of 6.45 m/m. That wasn’t an accident. That was going at it full-on. Then I tried to the 3 mile sprint (19.43). Not good. I mean, new PB for the mile and 3 miles, but not up to scratch. In the week one of the training days was 10 minutes (easy) run to warm up, then 4 X 1 mile sprint. It was blowing a gale so the runs into the wind were slower, but none of them were brilliant. (6.45, 6.23, 7.08, 6.22) Again, that was two new PB miles, but PB doesn’t count for shit. It just means my best isn’t good enough. Today I jogged an easy mile to get warmed up then sprinted the 3 miles again. It is pure hell. I’d prefer to run a full, steady, marathon than sprint 3 miles. This time was even slower (20.15) but that was because I burned out. I seriously can’t get enough air in my lungs to support that much effort. I set another PB for the mile (6.05, so close!) but then dropped to 6.45 and 7.23! 7.23! Let’s focus on the positive here, I’ve managed to knock over a minute off my best mile from 3 weeks ago. I think I’ll have to adjust the training plan. I have plenty of time, it’s a 14 week plan and I have just under a year until the Chester marathon. I’ve booked into some races roughly where they should be on the plan though. A 10 mile, a half marathon and a ‘fun’ hilly-as-buggery marathon. That should keep the momentum up. I need to train to reach the base standard. I’ve proved to myself that a 6 minute mile is possible. If I run a mile sprint one day, a long, easy paced run the next, a day of rest and repeat it might be a better plan. Get used to doing a single mile in 6 minutes, then 1½,  2 miles, etc. I […]

Bugger. You know how I’ve set myself the goal of the landmark sub 3 hour marathon for next year? And how 4 runs ago I was pleased to get back to my pre-injury PB 10 mile time of 1:15 (7.30 m/m)? Yesterday I was over the moon to do it in 1:14.43 (just under 7 m/m). Today I started looking for flattest/ fastest marathon courses for next year. This lead me to Runners World website and from there to training plans and an equivalence calculator. ie, if you can run 5 miles in X you can run 10 miles in Y. It turns out the sub 3 is equivalent to a 10 mile time of 1:03.46 (6.20 m/m). Oh dear. The (10 week) training plan said week 1: do a 3 mile run in18 minutes! Just been out and ran my chubby little heart out and it took me 19.43, which (taking off someone stopping me for directions!) I reckon was about 6.32 m/m.   Holy, holy crap.   Mountain to climb. That was hellish hard. I really wanted to stop for virtually all of it and I was still 30+ seconds per mile off the pace.  I suppose it’s better that I’ve got a realistic goal, but it’s a bit of a gutter just how hard and far away it is. Still, if it was easy it wouldn’t be a landmark. I’ve knocked nearly a minute per mile off my time in 2 weeks and still have 30 seconds to go to reach the starting point! Larf! Buck.

Fun weekend off, after a fashion. Actually, not so much fun. Fulfilling, maybe.   Last week at work was something of a nightmare. They closed the M6 in two places on one night, two different sections the next night, and it was just miserable. The main lesson I have learned is; whatever the circumstances *NEVER* divert through Stafford. It took me about two hours to get through the 8 or so miles of diversion one afternoon, and an hour and a half to get back then next day at gone midnight. It takes you straight through a poxy town centre, replete with traffic lights, single lane streets and road works. The first night I ran out of driving hours (maximum of ten driving hours a shift, three times a week. Normally your maximum is nine hours.) The second night I just scraped in at ten hours. As I say, you can only do that three times in a week, after that you have to just do nine hours, so I was a bit worried for the rest of the week. The godawful reverse is still godawful, but I’m getting the hang of it. I’ve noticed my reversing in our yard is improving vastly due to the practice I’m getting at Cowley. That was a 60+ hour week. The bum thing being the start time is 1400 so twice I finished at 0400, not in bed until 0530 then you start stirring when it gets light. Up at 1030 first day, can’t remember the second but it wasn’t great. By the end of the week I was shagged. I got in Friday, well, Saturday at about 0230 and thought I’d get my race pack and kit sorted for the Rivington half marathon at 1000, it was gone. I spent an hour or so going through all the draws, the bins, all the draws again, under the draws, in  my sports bags, through the draws, I woke Wendy (not pleased) and finally gave up. One of us must have thrown the envelope out.  When I say ‘one of us’ I mean ‘Wendy’. Not best chuffed. Possibly it will turn up in a month or two and we will laugh about it. Or not. Either way, no race on Saturday.   Last week I was feeling a bit off colour, possibly just psychosomatically as Wendy was ill as buggery, but I put off my training and cycling to work. That and the being shagged every day. The odd thing is; the more exercise you do the more you want to do, the less you do the less you want to do. So it was a struggle to put my trainers on Saturday and go for a run. I forced myself into it as I’d missed out on the half. I ran my flat 10 miles course, which it turns out was 10.24 miles. I was right the first time, my Map My Run app on my ‘phone said it was too short because […]