Running 22-Aug-2014

I hate non-responsive tech. Actually finished this in 42:26, but it didn't accept my sweaty mitt swiping the screen to stop timing. Likely would have made this 7.6mph average instead but I can't be bothered calculating it.

5.38 miles in 42:49 average speed 7.5mph

Bench 22-Aug-2014

Gradual improvement

Bench
3 x 20 x 40kg

Shoulder press with discs
3 x 20 x 5kg a side

Standing overhead kettlebell tricep extensions
3 x 20 x 24kg

Running 21-Aug-2014

Recovered enough that my lungs were back to being my weakness again. 91% humidity certainly didn't help me today, but it was good to be able to run at a progressing pace.

5.38 miles in 41:58 average speed 7.7mph

Intervals 19-Aug-2014

I discovered that there is definitely something worse than being pathetic at intervals normally. It's being pathetic at intervals due to being slightly damaged.
I am recovering enough that I can tire myself with intervals but not enough to give all in the early sprints. This meant I was able to give all when I became slightly tired, then felt ready to drop and was so absent sensation wise that even getting stung by a wasp felt minor. The fact that something that is quite uncomfortable now barely made any impact when it happened means I could have been damaging myself and not known but it also explains why my body was feeling like this was easy but I couldn't go faster. It seems I am not sensitive enough to do remedial at maximum effectiveness because I get psyched and stop feeling some of the discomfort, how stupid is that?

The figures mean virtually nothing as always. The first 5 got progressively harder then the last 5 felt intense with last 2 being lung killers.

3.66 miles in 32:45 average speed 6.7mph

Squats 18-Aug-2014

Moderate endurance work, oo, my favourite! Starting to get a bit fed up with the softly softly approach but there is no doubt I have to do this for a few month at least.

Squats 3 x 15 x 40kg
Step forward lunges 3 x 20 x bodyweight
Calf raises with bar and block (as all have been) 3 x 12 x 40kg

Running 18-Aug-2014

Able to give it some effort without pain or issue today. This should have meant dramatic speed, it actually meant hitting minimum but that is a good start.

5.37 miles in 42:40 average speed 7.5mph

Bench/ Deadlift (sort of) 17-Aug-2014

This was me trying to make up for not doing any running or weights on Thursday evening or Friday at all due to life interfering.

Bench 40kg sets of 20, 15, 10 The 20 may have been a silly idea, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
1 set of 10 kettlebell deadlifts with 24kg
Rack Pulls form just below knees 3 x 10 x 40kg

This was definitely my limit and potentially a bad idea, but if nothing else it sets the bar for me.

Want a week of correct day training this time around. That will set me up properly.

Running 14-Aug-2014

So much better than I deserved or expected. After training yesterday I was not feeling totally sure about going for a run so was considering either running a shorter route or walking at lunch instead.
I decided to go for the run, got to the expected turnaround point and decided to go for full distance.
Nearly gave up when I got just passed the downhill section because it started to get uncomfortable. Finished the run with a bit of effort and feeling a little tender now but not sure tonight's bench session will go ahead as planned.

5.38 miles in 43:25 average speed 7.4mph

Squats 13-Aug-2014 (Remedial)

Still on remedial work, or movement perfecting stuff. So the weights are pathetic but boy the movements are spectacular.

Squats warm up 12 x 20kg, 3 x 10 x 40kg

Step forward lunges 3 x 20 bodyweight

Calf raises with barbell 3 x 10 x 40kg

Heavy Metal and the World Wide Web

Most people who enjoy metal seem to mellow their tastes as they age, preferring music that still has a nice sound but a slightly slower pace to go with the pipe and slippers.
There are exceptions of course and I would have to be one of them. Rather than slowing down and relaxing I seem to need ever heavier sounds and faster pace. Music I would have trained to happily a few decades ago is now too mellow for me to be listening to while working. So the stuff I am sat at my soft air conditioned desk listening too is what most consider ear bleeding noise, while the stuff I am training to takes offensive noise to a whole new level. This might explain the fact I have injured the same place 2 years on the trot, in fact after around 15 years of no injuries I have now injured myself 3 times in under 5. Age brings sense and moderation my foot, I swear I am getting worse.

I think part of this is due to that marvel of modern society and mine of misinformation, the internet or world wide web.
When I was younger such tools were the stuff of science fiction so the music I could get hold of was limited to bands I'd heard about, could go see, or music at clubs. The metal scene in the UK wasn't quite dead but definitely in a coma many expected to be terminal. My travel around Europe meant exposure to some great bands singing in either English, surprisingly common, or languages I didn't understand by the time they were being screamed out at excessively high 3 figure decibels and beats per minute.
Don't get me wrong there is little to beat watching a live pub band from a few feet away, but there is a limit to what is available, and once back in the UK this became far worse.
Now we have YouTube which makes spectacular recommendations like Enya as you are listening to Fear Factory, I really wish I was kidding. Of course some of the suggestions are good but I would say the best thing about this is you can read the comments and find sounds that are similar suggested by people you will never meet. So relatively obscure bands like Strapping Young Lad become part of regular listening and the aural abuse continues.

Best of all we get to listen to these things free before buying their stuff and if they are rubbish simply move on Unless you are a bit dim-witted and post comments about the band members being too happy, gay, only to be abused by people intelligent enough to only listen to stuff they enjoy for any length of time.
So when I see people commenting on older stuff how they were born in the wrong era I tend to point out that they weren't and are likely getting to see more live music by the old bands than those of us old enough to have done so in person got too by a looong way.

I have tried a few online radio stations but some of their music matching is almost as bad as suggestions on YouTube. I guess it's difficult when you have someone who's less bothered by sub-genre and more by pace and sound.

The metal community is quite niche and many in it have picked up on the idea of being seriously pretentious. For them I will never be metal enough, I look very normal in an office, that's apparently as far as the normality goes, only have 1 tattoo and no piercings. I settle instead for actually enjoying a range of heavy sounding fast metal music from various sub-genres and artists.
Versions of heavy vary widely, to me it's a deep sound that your feel as much as hear and grabs your attention with both hands while a vocalist enters your mind with lyrics from the profound to the absurd or obscene. I am not a big fan of the full on deepest growling of some death metal but stuff like Heaven Shall Burn is perfectly good for me and some of the symphonic metal has a mix of operatic quality soprano with incredibly guttural death metal that just works incredibly well, though a lot of this tends to be a bit slower.

So a big thank you for the inventor of the world wide web, some random English guy who got nothing for it because in the UK innovation wasn't being encouraged, and the Americans for making it something for us all to play with.
Likewise thanks to all the people who upload music to YouTube for the world to see and hear and to YouTube for amusing me with some of their truly absurd suggestions and adverts, because of course having just selected some ear bleeding metal I am going to really enjoy sitting through a minute long ad for some production line rap or pop artist who has paid extra for an ad I can't skip after a few seconds.

Intervals 12-Aug-2014

I abstained from training deliberately last night for fear of not being able to do intervals today.
I am glad I did because these were pretty dreadful. To show how meaningless the figures are on this the distance covered and average speed is higher than on some really good ones. This is because my body couldn't cope with the rigours of flat out sprinting so I was able to run faster on the rests because breathing was easier, totally the opposite to what I want from intervals.
I am still glad to have done them but this has demonstrated that recovery is a way off yet.

3.71 miles in 33:01 average speed 6.7mph

Looking Back (Anti-Rosy Tints)

There are good things about getting older of course. One I like is the rapidly reducing number of people attributing the fitness I have worked hard on for decades to my youth. There are also bad things about getting older too, one I hate is the number of people, many younger than me, who look back on 'their day' with rosy tints. The world has never been perfect and it never will, it just changes.

One thing that sparked this is the way people talk about music of set eras as great and modern stuff as meaningless and soulless, or of course my favourite, less moral. There has been pop music for as long as there has been music and I'm sorry but if you don't see an immoral message in 'If you can't be with the one you love, Love the one you're with' there isn't a lot of hope for you.
Every type of music changes over time, there is classic and nu metal, because it's far too cool to be spelt new. Some of the classic stuff is pure musical excrement, and even some of the bands who have produced it have stated so in later years. How many of us haven't looked back at work we used to do with a sense of shame? Some of the new stuff is as bad but some of it is truly awesome and you can clearly hear the inspiration from the older stuff.
The message changes because time changes, strangely there are no songs about the war in Vietnam anymore, because most of the bands weren't even born when it ended, but there are plenty singing about the new corruptions etc.
There are of course classic themes that will always endure, topics that haven't changed much, desire for love, sex, good times and of course some that are simply setting out to be hilarious, with varying levels of success.
It is quite strange to think that this is now a long time ago but there was a period of pop songs in the UK that seemed to be going for having the word sex in the title and as the adage goes they were selling well. Someone who is now likely middle aged too announced to me that you wouldn't have been able to listen to music with such crude lyrics years ago. I introduced her to a few examples of how wrong she was from the metal genre and resisted the temptation to tell her what her gaping mouth should be used for, in fairness not difficult I like people who can count above their IQ.

My grandfather seems to have been responsible for my earliest realisations that the world wasn't perfect in any era, now it looks as though I am set to follow his example.
I remember him upsetting several his age when I was a child. One class example being when someone was getting him to agree that they didn't have trouble with all these illegal drugs when they were younger, she seemed less than pleased to have the fact this was because they were all legal back then pointed out.
I find it interesting to watch people talk about the way things were so much better when they were younger, who so evidently haven't a clue what was happening at that time. Watching people criticise the, in all fairness, ridiculous fashion of displaying the waist band of underwear while having the trousers draping past the feet. However the usual criticism is about the visibility of the underwear. I remember being a child during the punk era when there were a few people wearing see through trousers, one couple in particular would have assisted any struggling bulimic with how low slung their buttocks were, so by comparison G-string and see through trousers from the old days is nowhere near as tame and inoffensive as the flash of waistband from recent times. Fashion is always ridiculous, that's the whole point, if you don't want to look cool copy me, I never have.
Crime and violence. The all time classic, because of course the fact we know the majority of crime is committed by people under 25 is only from this generation, we haven't gained this knowledge by looking back over decades of data. The youth of today are very similar in most ways to the youth of my day, my parents day etc. In fact the truth is that per capita there are less youths being involved in crime than there was in my youth, and it has been attributed in part to one of the very things that has been blamed for violence for years. Video games are the way a lot of people interact now and they have friends who they only know through their games consoles. It is not practical to be indoors playing and outdoors creating trouble so many mis-spent youths are now being mis-spent in front of the TV with a controller in hand.
My grandfather told me about the way the police were encouraged to let things slide a lot just after the war (WW2) because they needed people working not locked up. Then years later when crime was getting to be an issue the government cared about again they had to start arresting people. Lo and behold the post war crime figures are really low and a bit later skyrocket, the world didn't change just priorities. He even admitted himself that he was fortunate to have noticed others getting locked up for being in fights before him to give him time to start using restraint, otherwise he would have been one of them.

There are many parts of this which confuse me. One is the increased use of 'never did me any harm' or 'character building'. Even bullying has been put down as character building, and yes it built characteristics into me, but fortunately I have worked those out since so the harm has been undone. The question I tend to ask when I hear the 'did me no harm' argument is 'Did it do you any good?' Most either look dumbfounded or snap to answer yes before they have had chance to engage their brains. Many things that have built my character have definitely caused me harm and there are a good number I wish hadn't happened. Some were my choice and show that sometimes getting what you want is not a great idea. Truth is we have things happen to us and will have to deal with them after, wishing they never happened doesn't undo the harm, it isn't that easy, especially if you don't accept there may have been harm.
One of the more fundamental is how rapidly people forget how much they hated people talking to them as second rate citizens because they were the youth of the day. I see people now seeing a group of teens messing around in a group, laughing and being loud and assuming they are automatically trouble as per tabloid media. Truth is some are, but the largest majority aren't. They are often hanging around in groups because of the fear we are drip fed telling them they need to for safety, so they are as scared of elders as elders are of them. They get loud because that's what happens when large groups get together. Unfortunately some of these groups get so fed up of being treated like thugs they start acting like them, making it a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Voluntary amnesia goes further still of course and the respect people hated being demanded instead of earned by their elders is now something they don't understand why they aren't just getting.

There are a few things I have seen become abolished or introduced that people criticise now as if they were the key to ultimate peace, harmony and perfection.
Corporal punishment. Because of course who wouldn't be brought into line by a swift whack with a piece of bamboo? Well me for one. I was one of many unpopular kids at school who realised there was a bit of temporary celebrity to be gained from taking a whack without reacting too much, so we would do just enough to get the beating we could stand without too much hardship for playground bragging rights. By the time I was attending school I was at one of the last remaining to have this so it was only part of my education until I was 9 years of age, when we moved to a new area and therefore a new school. The secondary school I was near when I was a lot younger stopped using it after some pressure but the people who had received the beatings before this would boast about the way they had damaged the teacher issuing this's car etc. for revenge. This was while they weren't big enough to hit back against full grown adults, a few who found they suddenly were found themselves excluded from school when they struck back against what was in fairness a legalised armed assailant. Fair to say corporal punishment is a great way of building hatred, animosity or getting noticed by your peers, not even remotely a useful form of punishment to instil discipline.
Lack of technology. I grew up before mobile phones were common, in fact it was quite something to have a home phone and for reasons I never got, most people kept them in the hallway. So people get all nostalgic talking of days when we didn't feel the need for children to have mobile phones in case we need to get hold of them or vice versa. Of course this is them forgetting the sheer panic if the child was late because they had missed the bus and had no way to contact them. My mother used to issue me with 2 10p coins and strict instructions to call her if I was going to be late. Of course sometimes I was nowhere near a payphone and this wasn't practical, on those occasions she would have worried. Technology has it's faults when used badly, spam mail etc. but I am glad my son has a mobile phone and knows how to quickly call us if he needs to. We had a call from him on one occasion because he was in a game of hide and seek we didn't know about in a large outdoor park and we had no idea where he was. Having heard us shouting for him he called us to say he was OK just hiding. This may seem daft but it worked, we were all happy because he was fine and able to continue playing.

I often wonder if there isn't more than a little bit of jealousy behind the rosy tints. Wonder how the world looks through the green mist of envy and rosy tinted glasses. I know my son gets life better than I did, I have worked hard to ensure this is the case and intend it to remain so. He still has to work for things but he was born to my wife and I at a time when we were as ready as we could be and truly wanted him, which makes a massive difference. As with all children he would like things we can't or won't give him, but unlike many he is not being fed nonsense about how our day was so much better, we show him the good and bad so he knows it wasn't better or worse just different.

Running 11-Aug-2014

Tired and it's windy. There is a certain joy to running during times of severe weather warnings, looking at your time at the end isn't one of them.

Intervals tomorrow, that will be an unmitigated disaster no mistake.

5.37 miles in 43:27 average speed 7.4mph

Emotional Preparation (Parenting)

Those who know me well understand I am very hard on parents in general, and as one that includes myself.
I have my list of things I feel all parents should have before they consider having a child and I will support people who are unsure about having a child waiting every time. When it comes to having children if in real doubt, don't.

My opinions here have been strengthened by the fact my son is Asperger's and I have had to work hard to prepare him to deal with emotions he simply doesn't naturally understand but in fairness I have held these beliefs for a long time.

I tend not to go in for sob stories and the below is not a cry for sympathy, it is the life I had and the lessons I learned from it.

My gran was my gran and of course wonderful, to me at least. My mother had a different view of here and some of the things she said I felt were too horrendous to be true until in her later years the barrier between my gran's brain and her mouth started to collapse and I realised where a lot of my mothers issues came from.
Bringing someone up to believe they would only become worthwhile once married and their sole purpose in life was to be a wife and mother and dreams otherwise were worthless is unforgivable and I have heard the 'times were different' argument too many times to accept it. Point out the obstacles and things that would need to be overcome of course and help your child overcome them, don't simply state they will be a failure before they even get a chance.
My grandfather was brought up to be tough, not violent just untouchable and was taught as many are that emotions are for the weak. Ironically it is the genuinely strongest who are most connected to their emotions. This along with an abusive relationship with my gran where as my uncle declared after her death he hit her several times but never struck the first blow, meant he was a classically cold and by appearance heartless man. He had one relationship after divorcing my gran which lasted far longer, to the day he died he was too scared to tell her he loved her, asking my mother to do it for him. I admire him for many things but if this fact doesn't prove that truly tough guys are those who don't need to hide their emotions nothing is.
My father's parents died before I got time to know them enough to even remember them. I do know however that had his mother lived he would have a shape remarkably similar to her boot in his buttocks for the way he was with me when I was younger. His aim was to be husband, father and bread winner with wife at home bringing up his children. My mother was desperate for a way out of home so they were married and I became living proof condoms don't always work some months later. After some persuasion my mother abandoned the idea of an abortion which as a future parent of an unwanted child who felt she wasn't ready for such a responsibility. I know she was young and scared to lose the only person she had in her life who was offering her a life she preferred to being at home, but by this time she had done 2 things I don't agree in, married without really knowing the other person assuming that would be for life, and had a child she knew she didn't want.
They divorced a few years later when the love they declared was shown to be an illusion. In fairness when you haven't been shown a lot of this in your youth it's hard to know if you have it when older, I don't know what love my father was shown but my mother was shown practically none, so while I think she made stupid decisions, I understand why and this is part of why I am harsh on parents.
My father went on to find another wife who was content to play housewife and mother for him and the plan was for him to get custody of me too. At this time the courts were heavily in favour of mothers, likely still are, so when my mother fought for custody she got it. I have discussed this with her, pointing out I wasn't wanted, she declares that by then she felt too much love for me to simply let me go, I will take her at her word on this, but like many who hadn't been brought up to understand emotion she never expressed this to me in any way a child could understand.
With the new family and bad blood between him and my mum most of my memories of my father are of broken promises to come and see me. While I understand he had his other family, this is still not acceptable, if you aren't going to be there don't say otherwise. It hurt me less when he said nothing than when he told me he would and didn't show up. This got to the point where I remember him telling me he would be there on Friday and I asked which one and walked away unable to face him.
One question a number have asked is how I could possibly know I was due for abortion, after all no parent in their right mind would tell a child something like this. As with many who have lives they can't handle my mother hid away in various bottles of alcohol, this lasted my entire childhood in fact it was only in my twenties when I realised I'd had to give her present real thought instead of simply buying a bottle for her that I reflected on how long this had been the norm. She was sober in the day time in order to be able to drive and work but every evening was time for a bottle or more. When I was a lot younger there was very little money in the household so this was generally a solitary of small group affair. When she married my stepfather and he funded her starting a business there was enough money to have frequent celebrations at our home. As the nights wore on the alcohol would mean things she wouldn't ordinarily say became normal. On one of these evenings she declared before a group of people we knew that I was only born because my father wouldn't let her have an abortion. In a very un-Hollywood manner I didn't cry or leave the room I simply smiled and shrugged it off, by that time I wasn't hiding feelings anymore, I had genuinely stopped feeling anything at all, a sign of just how weak I had become out of necessity.

So I am the result of parents who showed me no love or emotional support because as far as I can tell they had none from theirs. After doing what most who are born after abortion is decided against do by attempting suicide a few times and failing so mentally painfully the final time when I realised that no matter how much you want to die your body will over-rule you and make you able to do things you wouldn't believe possible to achieve this, I felt I was the most worthless loser on the planet, doomed to always be.
Forward over a decade and after a lot of work which involved hurting a lot of people who didn't deserve it, I finally figured out how to start allowing emotion back into my life and that being hurt is worth it for the times of feeling good.
Forward even further and I found out I was going to be a dad and was determined above all else that the chain of not showing love or preparing for emotions was going to stop here. My wife's story is infinitely worse than mine so she was totally behind me in ensuring our son understood how precious he is to us, and would understand that anything is possible if you are willing to make the sacrifices. He doesn't like all of this of course, because no child likes being told, yes you can do this but in order to do so you have to sacrifice playtime to prepare for it, and there are times when he is angry with me and genuinely hates me at that time so doesn't want to be reminded that I do love him, but I do it anyway.
Preparing him for an emotional life is becoming harder as he gets older and the situations he encounters become more socially complex. So we work harder on it and when he lashes out emotionally because it was too much we often take the battering, that's just part of the job. Refusing to do this would mean him growing up the same sort of mess as his previous 3 or likely more generations and I will not accept this without at least trying to prevent it.

A parents job is to prepare the child(ren) for a life where we are no longer there, because in most cases that will happen at some point. I see far too many who seem to feel their children should suffer anything they have because that's how they did it. My son knows he is better than I was in every possible way and this gives him pride and confidence because he sees what I have been able to achieve despite my failings so knows he will be able to do far more, if he chooses to. He also knows that he will have our support regardless so is able to make choices based on what he truly wants to make a priority in his life, and understanding what gives his life meaning and how he feels is a valuable part of this.
This is not the softly approach of making out the world will be handed to him on a plate just a way of saying things may be hard work for a long time, but we will be right there with him. This goes for everything including relationships with others.

Running 08-Aug-2014

83% humidity! What the heck is that about?
Gradual improvement took a bit of a back step when I was out running and needed an aqualung.

5.38 miles in 43:32 average speed 7.4mph

Running 07-Aug-2014

The pace is slowly coming back. I am back in the realms of minimum acceptable speed again, just.
Absolutely no pain whatsoever today. The slower pace is due to being out of practice, it being hot as hades outside and me being pathetic. I can fix the first and last of these and will seek to do so in the coming months.

5.39 miles in 43:16 average pace 7.5mph

Running 05-Aug-2014

Today there was some mild discomfort at the start, some physical fatigue from getting back to training again, heat and in fairness not the worst humidity. There is no way I could have safely done intervals and not set myself back but the standard plod is starting to feel like the only reason it's slow is because I am out of practice and it's hot. Of course I have been wrong before and the years of ignoring damage may mean I am doing so without realising.

6 whole seconds faster than yesterday.

5.38 miles in 43:30 average speed 7.4mph

Squats 05-Aug-2014 (Remedial)

As is often the case in early remedial this was a session of pathetically low intensity and experimentation.

The weight when used was huge at a full 20kg bar with no additional plates.

I have decided to think of this less as remedial and more as perfecting form while I have to use negligible weights. It doesn't stop it being remedial to cover for my stupidity but it feels better this way.

Squats, full parallel, aiming for perfect form. 3 x 10 x 20kg. I was getting most of these to be perfect once warmed into movement and realising that my back and hips were going to let me do them.

Step forward lunges. 3 x 10 bodyweight only. Torso remained totally upright, finished with knees and hips at right angles, knees just touching or above the matting.

Overhead squats 1 x 3 x 20kg. This was a step too far, but I didn't harm myself and know this needs to be switched out for something else for now. The sensation here said stop before you mess yourself up so I did.

Running 04-Aug-2014

I have had plenty of better runs but for a week into recovery training I am very pleased with this.
Barely any discomfort, only on downhill sections and at the very start, no proper pain at all, stretches had some discomfort in a few positions but virtually full range of movement is back. Once again I have been stupid and my body has forgiven me for it far better than I deserve.

Even the pace wasn't too bad, especially considering it was the full distance again. Need to decide if to attempt intervals tomorrow or just go plodding again, expect it will be another plod, don't think sprints would be a good plan.

5.39 mile in 43:36 average speed 7.4mph

Running 01-Aug-2014

Mixed day really. I decided to try shortening the time it took to warm through discomfort and succeeded. The obvious trade off being the discomfort was more severe during the very start, think I'll go back to doing it properly.
This quicker start saw an average pace of 7.8mph on my app for a very short while. It rapidly dropped to 7.4 once I moved to the pace I can do safely at the moment. With me deciding to do the full distance today the final downhill stint, which is the main one at just over a hundred metres and not very steep, hurt and I finished off the run more slowly than I intended but pleased to have done it.
I could try blaming the humidity which was horrible, but this one was as fast as I could have gone in the most ideal weather.

5.38 miles in 44:07 average speed 7.3mph