Is this what happens to Blogs?

You start off all full of enthusiasm and determination. You ride out the first doldrums after about 10 posts and then a few further on, the spark dies and yet another blog on the slide into insignificance. Well, I’m back “Yay!”

A lot has happened in the last 2 and a half months. We now have a second daughter, Danica Kathryn. Born on the 2nd March 2012 weighing 6lb 10oz or 2.98kg. Mother and baby were remarkably chilled and well throughout the birth and recovery in hospital. Discharged with no issues and home to begin again the mayhem of trying to get through the first few weeks of newborn rearing.
Danica decided not to follow her older sister’s trend and put on weight from birth. She was following the 25th centile for growth for the first few health visitor checks. Then after 6 weeks there was a moderate slow down. You would think the sky was falling in from the amount of flap from the hv… typical. She is still doing well and ploughing her own slightly slower furrow than initially. Very smiley and animated when she is awake, not sleeping through yet, but a solid one feed a night isn’t so bad.

I didn’t go to the gym for the first 5 weeks due to my paternity leave. When I did get back it was a harsh lesson in the relative difficutly between gaining and losing conditioning. 10km runs were gruelling, slow and little cause for motivation. It wasn’t helping that my new Mp3 player had a habit of throwing up such classics as Harvest Moon by Neil Young at the point where I was needing a boost! I set to editing the play list which is now a majority of Pearl Jam at a higher tempo. This appeared to have an effect, as last week I managed to hit my stretch target of 43 mins for 10km after only 4 weeks back at the gym.
Well, I’ve been trying to write this all night, so I’ll post up something at least to get back in the groove.

This is Spartan… well one post in 11 days

Well, what’s going down in groove town? Not a lot! Lynne is getting closer to her due date and her SPD has advanced to the point where she is on crutches, poor thing. Makes it complicated even getting up the path to the car park. Ho hum.

My running has been going in fits and starts. Not managed 3 runs in a week for a long time and no two runs are the same. Today was a good one though. 5km in 20 minutes. I haven’t hit that pace for several months. I’m also trying to change my stride pattern a little, to have my foot plant underneath me and kick out backwards, rather than reaching with the front foot. This may be the cause of odd achilles soreness in the immediate aftermath of the run. Final HR was 190, but dropped to 130 after only 2 minutes of warm down. I did a few exercises on the weight machines as well. My friend Kev Rasdale hat suggested some large core exercises (squats, deadlifts, etc) which are a better way to burn sub-cut fat. Apparently me running like a scouser with someone else’s hubcaps only attacks visceral (internal) fat and doesn’t really touch the lardy bits on the outside!

Romilly goes from strength to strength, with occasional toddler meltdowns, normally over the most random inconsequential things. They rarely last long though and Romilly hugs soon help to make them a distant memory. She is learning the days of the week now, to go with her counting, colours and shapes. Her new favourite telly programme is Andy’s Wild Adventures. It is a nature program with nods to Johnny Morris, but with a modern feel. Only a week’s worth of shows so far, which means they are on heavy rotation on TV on Demand!

Run for home, run as fast as I can…

Managed a 1 hour run today for the first time since last January. A topsy-turvy affair that ended up reaching 12km or 7.5 miles. Hard work, not helped by a power brown-out in the building half-way through!

At that pace, it would take me 3 hours 20-ish for a marathon… I find the thought of running for that period of time uninterrupted to be difficult to really comprehend. What is even more mind-blowing is that elite athletes complete that distance in a shade over 2 hours. I can’t run at 20kph for more than a couple of hundred metres, let alone a marathon, crazy…

Lynne had a physio appointment today and they have given her crutches, It seems her pelvis is now looser than a professional footballer’s twitter account, so these next few weeks will be challenging. Getting out of a chair isn’t a lot of fun for her, so couple that with our kitchen being on a different floor to the lounge and it makes simple tasks like getting a drink of water a bit of a chore. When Romilly gets home from nursery she tends to be on a non-stop relay race back and forther from the kitchen for “What I like for breakfast?”. This creates an effect where I’m up and downstairs with her in tow, or Lynne struggles to take a shift and we balance her body falling apart with my stress levels not going stratospheric.

Work has been okay this week. Completed a repetitive two week assignment without getting bored. Variation in the groups I worked with and learned a couple of things myself. So all good really.

The ups and downs of a gym bunny:

I’ve run a long way this week, for me at least. 10km on Monday in 44mins, then a disastrous attempt at a fast 5km on Wednesday that saw me crawling through the finish line in 23 mins. the fact that I was slower to the halfway mark of My Monday run was both frustrating and thought-provoking. I’d decided to try on Monday, to not eat from getting up to getting home. totally avoid the breakfast roll / snacky cake machine routine which seems to sabotage all my efforts at healthy eating. So before Wednesday’s run I’d had one cup of coffee all morning and nothing else. The lack of energy intake and the poor performance (in my mind) may well be related.

Thursday I broke the habit with a roll and a posh coffee (other posh coffees are available) and this morning I eschewed spending 2 quid on a cup of hot milk and only had the roll. A soft roll with double crispy bacon to be precise. Perhaps this is the key to my success at lunch time’s run: Moar bacon! It may have been a variety of other things, including the temperature being almost back above freezing: who knows?

So, all in all, 25km covered this week. Today’s run was 10km in 45 mins. Not the fastest ever, but considering Wednesday it felt pretty good to be back in the right direction. Heart rate recovery was brilliant too. 185 down to 130 in 2 mins. The fickleness of exercise, methinks. I spoke to Kieran Sullivan at work, who is planning on running the Berlin marathon this year and he mentioned that his boot camp training had run 5km in 22 mins outdoors with gradients, as a prelude to the rest of the class. I guess it is alays good to know that there is someone (or indeed many people) out there who are fitter than you. Kieran was talking about a protein / carb replenishment he has been put onto by one of the more seasoned runners at his club. I’ve not dabbled with the dark arts of supplements before, beyond the occasional isotonic / powerade type of drink. If I’m serious about maintaining this level of activity, maybe I need to think smarter and stop winging it so often. My legs felt pretty crook by mid-afternoon. They have recovered substantially now, to a point where I am not feeling discomfort at all. Onwards ever onwards!

Work has been good this week. It felt varied even though I did the same thing 6 times. Different audiences make for different discussions and findings.

Romilly continues to impress. She has the odd night where it takes 5 to 10 mins to get her to sleep. Once down she has slept through almost every night. She is fixated on a Little Ballerina book at nights now. On one occasion she asked for it twice, once from me and once from Mummy! I’m wondering if this will filter through to her about how to behave at Baby Ballet. Generally she is very good. The last couple of sessions she hasn’t really wanted to complete the last one or two activities and wants to go and stand in a corner banging on a cupboard door… Odd child!

Granny and Grandpa are going to try having her sleep over tomorrow night… so that will be four pairs of crossed fingers. I’m sure she will not go down without a murmur, I hope she is excited enough by her new room (well, newly redecorated) over there to enjoy it and have a good sleep. When I got her up this morning she stated blearily “I had a long sleep!” We are so lucky, 7.30 to 7.00 with rarely a peep. Although in an act of dramatic irony she just had a big coughing fit…

 

Way for car manufacturers to save money:

Remove the handbrake from your cars, because NOBODY USES THEM AT TRAFFIC LIGHTS! Make it so when you turn the engine off, it auto-engages the footbrake instead and have done with it. Especially with high-level LED brake lights, I begin to harbour “Falling Down-esque” fantasies involving a wheel brace and their rear light clusters. I remember a couple of winters back when we got caught in the snow, Lynne actually got out of the car and knocked on the window of the guy in front to ask him to get off his brake pedal. Really, how hard is it? It is part of the driving test! What are people doing? Worried they won’t be able to move off as the 7th car in a queue for the lights, if they have to do something complicated like release the handbrake? Grrrr! #firstworldproblems

So how am I? rolling along as per always. A series of monumentally stupid bouts of forgetfulness robbed me of the chance to get to the gym until yesterday. I ran 44.50 for 10km. First time this year under 45 mins, so that was pleasing. no instant leg muscle bunching either, so I will be able to push on next week and hopefully use it as a platform to consolidate and then build on. If I was being sensible I’d start interval training, or hills, or anything other than flat track speed trialling… I am obstinate about running though and the thought of signing up for spin or body pump or something like that doesn’t enthuse me.

At work, I’ve started self-study for my CCNA, which is a project only overdue by about 10 years. It won’t be easy, but hopefully I can get my head back round anything above basic networking. The prize, if I can get this going, is to try for a VCP later in the year.

Romilly has continued to be happy in her, as she describes it “lovely new room”, which is very heartening, considering we did manage to get it done 3 months ahead of d-day! Recently with one of her favourite books she has taken to making jokes. She deliberately describes all animals as geese and says they all make a “honk honk” noise. If you try and double bluff her, she moves onto another, equally incorrect global animal, like the donkey. Incredible to see her developing the idea of things that she finds funny. Her main passion at home is still “Green Balloon Club”, although she is starting to branch out to other things like Abney and Teal, Abadas and I can cook.

She is going through a possessive phase at the moment. Everything is “mine”, or more accurately “my’s”… It is a little bit annoying, but it does help with moving things along if she is dragging her heels. “Okay then, I’ll put your shoes on, shall I?”…”NO! My shoes!” and then she is happy to have them put on. Better than the previous tack of “If you aren’t going to help, then you will have to go back to bed”. We hadn’t ever wanted bed to be a punshment and getting away from that has helped cement her positive feelings towards her new room.

Lynne has been struggling this week with hip pain, low energy, return of the sinus and throat problems and general /meh feelings. Not long now until we have a whole new set of challenges! It seems the physio visit she had this week has left her in more (different) pain than she went to them with. Couple that with Doctors who don’t read notes and don’t listen to the patient and then try and refuse a repeat prescription and offer something worse than useless instead… all hassle we don’t need.

Ho hum…

Is the weekend respite from the week, or the other way round?

A busy Saturday and one tinged with sadness / frustration. My bro pinged me on Friday morning to let me know he was coming back down from a holiday in Glencoe and would I be around? Romilly is at Baby Ballet at 11.50 and we had finally organised to friend-cycle  our kitchen table and chairs on the Saturday afternoon. Queue me being under a cloud all day feeling like the bad guy as I haven’t seen my bro in over a year. There will be other times sooner I hope.

Baby Ballet was a bit of an event in itself: Romilly has been really enjoying it recently and paying loads of attention. This week had to be an exception. She was really on it for most of the session. Towards the end they do an activity to “Music man”, which goes on too long for her and she gets bored. On top of that, about a third of the class were not paying attention and were running around / sulking / doing their own thing and she got sucked into it. She sat out the last activity with Mummy, whilst I sat on the mats with poor old Twinkle Bear who had been thrown unceremoniously onto the floor.

When we got out to the car, all hell broke loose. We had arrived early to the class, so to pass the time we had taken Romilly out of her seat and let her sit on my lap in the drivers seat. I started the engine so she could move the steering wheel. It was a throwaway event for us… for Romilly it was a magical moment. she was desperate to have another go, when we really needed to get to Granny and Grandpa’s. I let her know that when we got there, I would let her have another play. This was not good enough and she screamed like a busted car alarm the whole way across. Whilst parking, she then changed tack and demanded we go home. I tried to get her out of the carseat to bring her into the front, but she again demanded to go home and batted my hands away. At this point I lost it and shut the car door and walked off. Hardly mature, but better then slamming her head repeatedly in the door, in a homage to Vinny Jones from Lock, Stock; which is what I was feeling like doing. Lynne, who had been driving Granny’s car back, extricated her as I stomped off up the road to get some space between us.

Needless to say when I got to the house, Romilly was hysterical / disconsolate. She didn’t realise I had come into the house behind her and into the back room. She was yelling for me and came running through to get a cuddle, but couldn’t calm down. I ended up walking off again towards the front door, where she chased me down, had more cuddles and eventually calmed down. I am at times perplexed as to how she can keep me firmly as the “favoured parent” when I think I am a complete asshole to her.

Within 5 minutes all was forgotten and she tucked into a bowl of Grandpa’s chicken noodle soup. Guaranteed to bring smiles to a two year old. We bailed out and headed home. I set about dis-assembly of the table. Go-go trusty Kamasa socket set! We headed off to Kings Park, divested ourselves of the table and chairs, grabbed a cuppa and some cake and headed back to Falkirk. As per normal, Romilly had barely registered we were away.

Bedtime last night was no bath, due to tiredness. 3 books as normal, although of late Romilly has decided it is a brilliant joke to say that everything in the Farm book after the birds page is a goose! Turkey “honk honk”, duck “honk honk”, chicken “honk honk”, tractor “honk honk!”. It cracks her up at any rate. We had 15 minutes of not wanting to go to bed, but it was the same tired game; like two grandmasters blasting through the same 30 chess moves to force a draw over and over again.

I was going to write up today as part of this entry, but it is getting late.

Back to the gym then:

Arrived late today, to find them ripping out the rubbish old lockers in the men’s changing and replacing them with “new to them” fancy dan bigger lockers with compartments in them. It was a bit of a struggle to get changed amidst the chaos, plus I then realised I was without a change of socks or underwear… Do I wimp out and spend another day in the sauna, or do I tough it out with the inevitable consequence of spending the remainder of the afternoon rocking the “Dennistoun Vice” sockless look… The treadmill won.

Even in my current Mp3-less state and with my calf muscle telling me interesting stories as I went along, I managed 10km in 45mins. Final HR was a more respectable 185, down to 135 after 3 mins. It amazes me that on Tuesday I could barely scrape 5km and blew out my calf muscel, finishing with my HR over 190. Yet 5 days later, I’m pulling double the distance with a better final CV output. Swings and roundabouts, eh? I took a top tip from my friend Kev Rasdale and used the gym’s fancy wobble board machine as an impromptu leg massage as part of my warm down. Calf hasn’t bunched yet, so it seems like it might be a  good shout.

Submitted my end of year review today (My company’s year runs from 1st Feb…). Re-wrote the draft today in the third person, which will hopefully help my boss to do a cut’n'paste job of all the good stuff I wrote about myself, without him needing to expend energy on it!

Romilly was straight down to bed last night, without a murmur. Tonight was back to 15 mins of protestations. It is a bit of a game though and the conclusion is always the same. My biggest difficulty is not bursting out laughing at her (must be some kind of stress response).

Other than that, not a lot is going on. Romilly goes to dancing tomorrow lunch and then we are “friend-cycling our unused kitchen table / dumping ground. We haven’t sat and eaten a meal at it for about 4 Xmases, so it is dead space that we could use for… well something!

Another Blog bites the dust?

Seems as if the early rythmn I achieved has been rudely interrupted this week. Primarily because the timeslot I had been using suddenly became significantly after “tired o’clock”. Not tonight though, so here I am again. Work is slow this week. Planned activities were “re-prioritised” which means you then have to scrabble round for something to do, in order to look productive. My habitual tendency is to fall into a pattern of looking distinctly unproductive, so it has been a challenge.

Sauna on Monday. The gym are fixing the floor in the steam room, so there was a chippy ripping up bits of sodden plywood as I trooped past to the sauna. Peace and quiet, had the place to myself again.

Run on Tuesday was intended to be a 10km, or at least a 30 min. This was curtailed by a badly bunched right calf muscle. 5km in 22.5mins had to suffice. Final HR was 190, down to 130 after 3 mins. Did a few stretches, 100 crunches and a few weights to work on my shoulders.

Today, back to the sauna again. Had to step through damp sawdust from the chippy laying the new floor, which was nice. For once I was joined by others. 3 blokes, all varying degrees of “weight trainers”. One, who seemed a tad unhinged, talked about steroids and growth hormone and other enhancing products as if they were a penny mix. The obviously more experienced and rational of the three shook his head and told the guy in no uncertain terms he was taking 3X the safe dose and he was heading for liver failure: nice. As it is only a 6-8 person sauna, when you have 3 fast-talking Glaswegians in there (the nutty one also had a shave, including his chest), it gets a bit crowded. Sat and talked to the sensible guy after the two younger ones left, about conditioning, the need to listen to your body and the self-defeating nature of having fitness routines to follow from a book. If you have a bad session and miss your targets, it can be psychologically damaging and easily knock your motivation to go to the gym. Far better to listn to your body and work hard but in tune with how you feel.

Romilly’s bedtime has been a bit fraught again the last few nights. The first two in her new room she was still so wowed by it, that she went straight to sleep with no fuss. Once the novelty wore off we were back to 25 minute battles of wills. Tonight we were down to 5 mins again, so hopefully things will maintain more of an even keel from now on.

Our friends Jon and Nicola have been on holiday in Scotland this week. Romilly got to re-adopt another Auntie and Uncle! She hasn’t seen them for over a year, but was very sociable and gave Nic a big cuddle before we left from a Sunday afternoon meal and visit to a country park near Linlithgow. Granny and Grandpa very kindly babysat last night so we could go out and meet them for a grown-up meal. Tony Roma’s at Braehead was excellent value on their midweek menu: Buffalo wings starter (which was 4 large double wings, ie the wing bit and the drumstick bit together) and a full rack of ribs! They do really nice non-alco cocktails there, so Lynne had one to celebrate her excellent exam result from last semester’s big one.

So, life goes on. Nothing of any great import. I’m not sure if blogs have to be lofty and erstwhile and full of wonderment. If so, this one is bucking the trend somewhat so far.

It’s the end of the week as we know it:

And I feel meh… Odd really, as all in all it hasn’t been a bad week. Assignment finished with better than expected feedback, place all tidied up ready for a head honcho from head office coming in on Monday and I even got an acknowledgement in the team meeting for recent results. On top of that, my gym work has been strong, a 7k and a 10k run this week, with no breakdowns. Also, Romilly went to bed under her own steam tonight with no complaints, capping a week that started off with a 40 minute power-struggle. So why then?

I managed 11 days without a beer, barely ate for a couple of days and ran 17km, yet I feel as if I haven’t lost a 1lb in weight. Maybe that is the fabled fat to muscle conversion, I doubt it. On top of that I’m feeling like I don’t have any goals. I’m drifting along rather than forging ahead. My career has been treading water for 5 years whilst other people get on and get ahead. Nobody to blame but myself. Maybe this year I’ll figure out where I want to go and how to get there?

Wifi in UK hotels:

On a recent trip to Finland /namedrop I was appreciative of the wifi access. Free for the entire stay, access through a key system displayed on the tv in the room. On the one occasion where I had to connect 3 devices (work nbook, home nbook and phone), I found out that they had a limit of two devices. I phoned reception to explain my dilemma and they instantly gave me an extra code, free of charge. What really blew my mind was that the wifi signal strength was so good, it reached to a small pub round the corner from the hotel.

Contrast that with the UK: I received a flyer email from a UK hotel chain today extolling the fact that they offered 30 mins of free wifi access per day. Admittedly 24 hour access is only £3, but the difference is staggering. Home broadband in the UK is seen as the poor cousin of Europe. Hotel wifi is definitely the disowned and never spoken of distant relation!