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Now
It’s been a minute: time to reconsolidate. What have I been up to lately.
The Olympics...
...were on. I have good memories of watching the Tokyo Olympics 3 years ago, so we dropped £6 on Discovery+ so that we could watch the catchups at the end of the day, or watch the full versions of high-profile events like the cycling time trials or triathlons or athletics. The announcers on Discovery+ weren’t quite as good as I remember the BBC ones being.
I love the spirit and the aesthetics of the Olympics: people of all backgrounds coming together in one place to show everyone else just how good they are at stuff. I'm not bothered by the endless firehose of People Are Amazing YouTube videos that seem to be published at a rate of several lifetimes of footage per day, but I will get out of bed (or, more likely, not get into bed) for the Olympics every time.
Right on schedule, the Internet Content Hot Take Machine spooled up to produce a boatload of dumb Olympics opinions, and right on schedule I loaded up my internet browser to consume and scoff at them. I don’t have a ton to say about any of it except for that I agree with the proposal to hold the Games in the same place every year. Pick a summer spot (probably Greece) and a winter spot (I don’t know) and just have them there every year.
Running
Some progress on the running front. Conscious that it’s not particularly interesting to hear the news of someone’s work-in-progress, but I’ve mostly shaken free of the knee troubles that bothered me throughout the summer and I’m back on a running plan that at least temporarily nudges me into the “Productive” status on my Garmin. If the app says it’s progress, then it’s progress!
Here is a complaint about Jack White
I listened to a lot of The White Stripes in university, but when he went off to do his own thing and swapped all of his red t-shirts for blue ones I sort of tuned out. Apparently he’s been doing some critically-panned stuff since then, I don’t know. Anyway he’s got a new album out and it’s return-to-form-adjacent, mostly big licks.
I think I read Jack White described as having “beaten all of the levels of real-life Guitar Hero” somewhere and I thought that was accurate.
I listened through the new album on a run recently and I can’t help but feel like Jack White has the same kind of naive righteousness that John Lennon gives off. But like where John Lennon would say things like, “Give peace a chance,” or “All you need is love,” as if tapping a deep well of morality, Jack White says things like, “I’m backseat driving when you’re driving me crazy / But I can’t drive a stick,” as if tapping a deep well of cool. I like the sounds he makes with a guitar but I have to force myself not to listen to the words.
And here is a complaint about Siri
I don’t have the right silicon to get Apple Intelligence™ whenever it comes out, so I’m stuck with Vanilla Siri. Siri is very good for setting timers and adding things to the Groceries list and getting directions back to my house and occasionally for getting directions to a postcode if I have the patience to try three or four times.
Sometimes I find new things that Siri can do, as when I asked it recently to put on “the latest Decemberists album” and it correctly starts playing As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.
Other times,
—Hey Siri, play a random album from my library.
—Okay, what would you like to play?
—A random album.
—Here’s what I found for ‘a random album’ on the web.I don’t know how after so many years it continues to be quite this bad.
Counting calories
I’ve started counting calories with an app called Lose It. I don’t know if I want to Lose It. But I want to be a little bit more deliberate about what I eat: I spent much of my training for the Fellsman just shoving back whole bags of sweets and McDonald’s on top of my regular meals and while I don’t think it’s done me irrevocable harm, I just know that one day in my forties I’m going to wake up and rue the quantities of sugar that I consumed when I was younger.
Anyway, the whole thing has been an instructive exercise in the sheer volume of calories that Asda seems to be able to squeeze into e.g. muffins, jellybeans, yogurt bars. I don’t know how they do it.
Back outdoors
After we got Ghyll, we sort of put wild camping on hold while he grew up and settled down a bit. Now he’s a bit grown up and a bit settled down, and we’ve busted the tent and sleeping bags back out for a couple of overnight walks through the countryside.
It’s gone well: it turns out that traipsing 20 kilometres across heath and moor puts a real Weariness into the bones of a mutt with an unslakable enthusiasm for such things. As a result he’s quite happy to curl up in a corner of the tent (usually the corner where we have heaped the sleeping bags to fluff up) while we cook dinner and settle in for the night.
The first night, in the Lakes, we only brought the flysheet and slept on a thin Polycryo groundsheet, which was a mistake: torrential rain descended while we slept, and I awoke to a Morning Dampness in the Sleeping Bag. This past weekend in the Cheviots we brought the full tent and he slept through the night with nary a bother. Plus I woke up dry.
The prospect of further nights in the wilderness ahead and another (admittedly farty) body in the tent to keep us warm through the lingering dark makes the upcoming winter marginally more bearable.
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Garmin HRM 1G not pairing
In the spirit of writing a blog post when you search for a problem and the search results consist exclusively of generic manufacturer troubleshooting pages and AI-adjacent advertising vehicles: here is what to do if your Garmin HRM 1G heart rate monitor won't pair with your {watch,phone,computer} after changing the battery:
Use a paperclip to short the battery contacts for 5-10 seconds, then reinstall the battery and pair the device. Here is a link to the YouTube video that taught me this.
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Willow Miner trail race
Ran the Willow Miner trail race hosted by Elvet Striders last week. It's a fantastic race on an exciting course winding through the woods, parks, and hillsides south of Durham. I'd wanted to run it but missed the signup window—as a popular race it sold out quickly. I was able to race thanks to a fellow Strider dropping out a couple weeks before the race, and made my way to the starting line with 200-odd other runners in all colours of race vest.
The race went well—I ran my darndest, paced it well, and finished strong. The downside of running such a popular local race, however, is that it attracts the best of the best—and so what feels to me like a well-run race often winds up looking pretty mediocre in the results. Still, I don't reckon I could have run it much better than I did. Now I'm going to go back and try running it on my own to better my time for next year.
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Durham Coastal Half Marathon
Two races in one week! Sunday morning found me with a couple hundred other runners at Nose's Point in Seaham for the Durham Coastal Half Marathon, a trail-ish half following the line of the coast from Seaham down to Crimdon Dene, just outside of Hartlepool. We take Ghyll walking along these trails pretty often, so a lot of it is familiar territory to me.
We started out under sunny skies but dark clouds in the distance forebode. I started near the back so for the first half hour or so I focused on trying to squeeze past folks and avoid stepping on any heels. Soon we were heading deep into Hawthorne Dene for a bit of a loop—slower going on the climb to the top of the dene but easy miles on the way out and along the relatively even clifftops heading towards Easington.
At a small aid station I scarfed a handful of jellybeans and a cup of water and continued on my way. A short spell behind a slower runner on an overgrown path gave me a chance to catch my breath, and then it was into the up/down/up at the mouths of Warren House, Blackhills, and Limekiln Gill. This last is familiar territory, being Ghyll's favourite beach—today packed with dogwalkers trying to beat the ominously advancing bad weather.
At Blue House Gill I'm passed by a man from Billingham Running Club who asks whether I was part of the group that got lost and ran down the beach instead of following the trail along the clifftops. I tell him no, and boil with secret envy at his avoidance of the awful overgrown climbs I've been navigating for the last half hour. A little while later, I'm overtaken by a European guy—Italian, I think—who seems to be taking at least twice as many steps as me. He encourages me vigorously and I run with him for a little while. I overtake him again just before we enter the holiday park above Crimdon but he keeps with me all the way to the end.
The descent through the Crimdon Dene car park makes me feel like a movie star. People double-take and leap out of their way with strollers and pint-sized dogs; cars yield. (This is, I think, how people react to movie stars.) I hurtle down the final hill towards the finish line and cross at what feels to me like great speed but which, on viewing the footage that Sam takes of the moment, turns out only to be average speed. I come to an abrupt stop and collect a medal, three cups of red cream soda, and a lukewarm bottle of Staropramen lager. It tastes like victory.
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Saltwell Harriers Fell Race
A Tuesday evening fell race in Weardale saw me out in the light wind at the top of Crawleyside bank with some 80 other people to run across open moorland just about as fast as we can. A total distance of less than 10 kilometers promised a fast race, but the thick heather and tall swaying grasses would prove to put up a tough fight.
The start of the run took us across the moor to the old mining road up ill-fated Collier Law, where once upon a time I broke a metacarpal. No such foul luck this time: I made it to the top of the hill with nary a stumble.
Then following a fence along a gentle decline for a while: high knees required to clear the heather overgrowing the trod sapped me of my energy even while descending. By the time I reached Park Head I was puffing.
A short traverse took me to a long grassy descent to Stanhope Burn. Reasonably clear quad bike trail here, which helped me catch my breath before a short, precipitous descent into the burn itself. By longstanding tradition, runners of the SHFR must climb into the burn, punch their race number on the far bank, and then continue on their way. I wondered privately if I would ever finish a fell run with dry feet.
Soon we reached some old cottages on the burnside and hung a sharp left to start the climb back up to the finish line. I'd expected this climb to be a real doozy but I felt pretty good by the end, and even finished alongside another Strider, 10 seconds under the 1-hour mark.
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