I’ve also had a birthday, and tried to keep up with some semblance of a decent training plan whilst I can.
So, to start with the gym first, we used to have a 1.5 car
garage attached to the house, in which I had a turbo trainer, indoor rower, weights
bench, large workbench, tool storage, wine storage, spare bike storage etc and
all the other general crap that tends to go with a garage. My wife decided that she wanted to turn this
into a new room for the house. She also
decided that my gym should move outside to the single detached garage that we
have. The only problem with that is that
i) it’s not heated and has poor lighting ii) it’s not a tardis and is already
full of garden tools, lawnmowers, pots, compost, chemicals etc.
A veto was duly exercised and I got a part of the garage
walled off as a gym, greatly reduced, but enough to have turbo trainer, rower,
bike storage, wine storage and, finally give me enough room to fit a pull-up
bar on the wall (a focus on running and cycling over the last few years has
left my upper body horribly feeble compared with my rugby playing days). Since I’ve got back from Indonesia I’ve used
it once, and that was a pretty favourable impression. I certainly don’t think that I’ll need to
bother with much in the way of heating, even in the coldest parts of the winter
as the underfloor insulation combined with the latest double glazing technology
seems to be working pretty well. If
anything I’m going to be needing to leave doors and windows open most of the
time.
I took a sequence of photos from old exercise space in the
full garage through to dedicated gym, but I’ve mislaid some of them, mainly the
before’s so here’s just a few.
Starting to fit out, the shelves at the end got moved as I’d planned to use the white block-wall for bike storage, but decided that the blocks were too soft to anchor the brackets.
Final gym with wallbar area, and looking the other way, the all-important
bike and wine storage. Rower and turbo
trainer in the foreground. The wall bar
is slightly too low and may end up getting moved higher by about 6-8 inches
The problem with this trip is that we arrive in Jakarta one
day, jetlagged and then have to get up at 04:30 the next morning to take a
3-hour turboprop flight to a place called Matak, on the Anambas Islands and
then wait around there again before taking another chopper flight out to the
platform. Overall that first day is
brutal. This time we had the added
logistical requirement to visit three installations, and FPSO and its older
linked platform, and then the newly installed platform about 6 months old.
Over the ten days I was there I managed to get in six
treadmill runs and a yoga session, not bad really considering I also had a job
to do. Unfortunately the garmin threw a bit of a wobbly and failed to record
two of the sessions, but I managed to log the details anyway from memory.
The exciting thing from these is that of the six treadmill
runs, three of them showed some real progress in pace vs HR level. Given the
environmental conditions of humidity and higher temp than I’m used to I’m very
pleased with that. Now you can argue
that this is due to the ease of running on the treadmill, or due to a screwy
foot pod (I never rely on a treadmill for speed/distance) but I would counter
with
1) I set a slope on the treadmill to make it more realistic2) A previous calibration of the footpod suggested that it was accurate to about 1 or 2% (needs rechecking)
3) I’ve run a similar distance (using gps for distance) since getting back, in windy conditions and seen a similar improvement
Since I got back I’ve also had a great long run of 38km in
3:39, very calm and relaxed. Still trying to work out the best hydration and nutrition
strategy, and on this occasion I probably got the hydration part of it a bit
wrong, thinking that as it was a cool day I could get away with less. That was probably true, but not to the extent
that I did, and it showed in dark urine for the rest of the day even though I
was drinking well after I got back.
I almost forgot, it was my birthday while I was away. On the
day itself I was busy working away with my colleague in the hotel bar over
dinner and a martini and went back up to my room around 10:30, wandered around my
room for a bit, went back into the sitting room (very plush hotel, with very
nice rooms) and found a cake sat on the desk that they’d left while I was at
dinner. It was very nice as well, but
far too large for me, so I had a slice and had the rest boxed up to take into
the clients offices the next day to share with their HSE team.
The other cool thing that happened this month was a free
pair of shoes!
While I was looking for what was eventually purchased as the
New Balance Trail zero drop, I also came across Altra on the web and really
liked the look of them. Only one
drawback, I couldn’t find them anywhere in the UK, and e-mails to the company
went unanswered. I was happily surprised
therefore when a fellow forumite from New York sent me a message saying he
would try and get me a pair through his contacts as a buyer for a sports
store. I was on tenterhooks hoping they’d
get to me before I went away, but no luck.
So my new pair of Altra Samsons finally arrived on Tuesday of this week
and my first impressions are very favourable.
They look good, even good enough to wear as a casual shoe
with a pair of jeans. They appear to
have some very similar construction characteristics to the New Balance Minimus
Trail with a very lightweight mesh and minimal stitching with use of some welded
construction. The soles look good, the rubber
feels robust enough and while the tread is not going to handle any heavy
off-road terrain, they look well suited to the road and light trail use in
mainly dry conditions. They also feel
extremely comfortable with the 3mm insole in them, definitely wide enough
across the toes.
The only misgiving I have on first trying them on is the
laceholes. They stretched a bit, and I’m
wondering whether they could have done with a bit more reinforcement. There is
also a little roughness to the finish where the sole is sealed to the upper with
a few loose fibres, but I’m not expecting that to be any kind of issue. First impressions on running are very
favourable. Light and comfy, and very
grippy on tarmac even in the wet weather we are having at the moment. Not waterproof, but then I wouldn’t expect
it, and they are no less waterproof than any of my other minimalist shoes. I think both these and the NB minimus are
showing the age of my Trail Gloves at the moment, which is not to say that I
have anything against the trail gloves, they are just showing the 500+ miles
that I’ve put into them. I’m also
thinking of late that my feet may have changed shape over the last year or so
as I’m finding the fit off the trail gloves a bit less comfortable than I used
to.
Anyway, I digress, so back to the main theme. After two runs of 12 and 11km, one very wet,
the other damp, the soles are showing absolutely no wear at all and the
silver/grey is not yet showing any dirt (though that will come, I’m sure). In use, the one thing that really stands out
other than the comfort is the heel-claw thingy, which really provides a snug
but unobtrusive security around the heel.
I’ve only tried them in socks and with the insole so far as that’s how I’ll
probably use them in the Grim Reaper, but I’ll also try them out with no socks
and no insoles as time goes.
I can definitely see these as being a go-to shoe for road
work and light trails.
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