puddle

my favourite 365 image from the last 7 days

reading age

Ordering books for our holiday has been a bit of an eye-opener this year. It seems that my taste in authors is all but identical to that of my 13 year old son. OK so he is very nearly 14 and yes it is holiday readingl. None the less, I can't help but wonder if somehow I am failing to reach my appropriate reading grade.

Books that we are sharing include:

• Simon Kernick - Reckless
• Harlan Coben - Hold Tight
• Terry Pratchett - Nation
• Linwood Barclay- Too close to home

As the kids have gone through school there have been various tests that assess their reading age. Perhaps I need a test to see if I'm suffereing from some form of reverse reading development.

If these books are all too lightweight, what should I be reading instead?

red spokes

One of the goals on my list is to go cycling in Peru. A few minutes research on google threw up some interesting options. Including one company called red spokes.

It appears possible to combine a cycling tour with a hike on the Inca trail to Machu Piccu and include some white water rafting and maybe even fit in some kayaking on Lake Titicaca.

That would hit all of the following goals:

1. cycling in Peru

31. white water rafting

35. mountain biking on a proper mountain trail

36. sea kayaking (not strictly a sea but just as exciting)

Something I hadn't previously considered, is the altitude. I'm going to have to seek some medical advice on any expected complications due to my asthma. Thinking about this has also prompted me to add another goal to try and improve my breathing generally using a respiratory trainer such as powerlung.

training logs

I need to decide how I am going to log my training. It is surprising how quickly I forget even the broadest details of what I've done. Having an accurate record is really useful for staying motivated and for keeping variety in the training.

There's nothing wrong with just using a notebook or a spreadsheet. I already use mapmyrun.com to plan and measure running and cycling routes and they provide logging functionality as well. Unfortunately, I would have to upgrade (pay !) to use the mapmyrun log as they quite cleverly let me enter data for free but only let me look at the last 30 days worth of data unless I'm a premium user.

So far this week, my training has been:

Fri: run 40 mins

Sat: run 30 mins, cycle 40 mins

Sun: run 30 mins, cycle 50 mins

Mon: cycle 1 hour, rugby coaching

Tues: run 25 mins, cycle (with Alex) 35 mins

Weds: run 26 mins, gym circuits 20 mins

It has all been steady pace and on the flat. For the time being I am concentrating on developing good habits and building a fitness base that I can then work to improve from.

I think for the timebeing I will stick to using a spreadsheet in google-docs. At some point as I get fitter I will probably want to buy a heartrate monitor and gps watch to record details more accurately and I presume that will be packaged with some software.

slowly adding up

A few more goals have popped into my head during the day today.

36. Go sea kayaking again. It would be great to do this with the kids.

37.Travel (run, cycle, paddle, sail) the full length of the Medway - Turners Hill to Sheerness. It could be in one continuous journey or it could be broken up over a series of weekends.

38. Barbeque on the beach

39. Publish a blog entry every day for at least 31 days

Still a long way short of the 101 and in truth I'm not too worried if it doesn't reach that target. It's more important that the goals I have are relevant and achievable than that they meet a pre-determined quantity.

flying off the handle

On flickr, as well as belonging to the 365 group, I also try to join in with the weekly themes in the "52.5 weeks of 2009" group. This week's 52.5 theme is "something that it never occurred to you to take a picture of before". As I've taken a photo every day for the last 400ish days there aren't many things that I I haven't turned to in desperation to keep the sequence going. So to meet the remit the shot was going to have to be something incredibly mundane or unexpected.

This was the result:

Is it art?

Well no obviously it isn't. It does however move the 365 project on another day.

When I started this project back on Jan 1st 2008, I never expected that I would be publishing pictures of the toilet handle.

less than one hundred and one

For a while now, I have known that I need to take some action to get myself fit again. I have always found it easier to stick to a training programme when I know that I am aiming towards a challenge. Exercising for it's own sake quickly gets old.

In a similar vein, now that the children are growing up, it is also time to start thinking about using vacation time for some more adventurous travelling and activities.

With these thoughts in mind, I started trying to draw up a list of goals. One of my contacts (from flickr and twitter and now blogger as well ) http://twitter.com/101ofawolf has set themselves a challenge to complete 101 goals in 1001 days. This type of challenge has been something of an Internet meme with various websites and chat forums. Over the last few days I have been trying to draw up a 101 list.

SMART is a handy mnemonic to help avoid pit falls when producing a list of this sort. Is the goal:

• Specific?
• Measurable?
• Aligned to a wider strategy?
• Realistic?
• Time-boxed?

The goals that I first came up with were specific and measurable and they were fairly well aligned to my vision of becoming fitter and of making the most of the precious holiday time. However the costs of a lot of travelling soon mounted up to make the combined list unrealistic. I also found it difficult to set deadlines to each of them. Life round here is way to chaotic to plan far in advance. This first list of goals was about 20 items long.

Some refining of the list saw the travelling thinned down. The fitness goal was split into a number of sub-goals and some additional goals around career and financial planning were added in. However another pit-fall opened up, a surprisingly large number of chores began to appear as goals. Now there is no doubt that I do need to sort out the guttering, lay a new bathroom floor and clear out the shed (and more and more) but these can't really count as being aligned to my greater strategy. I settled for consolidating all of these into a single goal of having a "maintenance plan" for the house.

All of these revisions left me with a list that I feel very positive about. Albeit this is still a long way short of the 101 mark. I have decided to keep the list open until we return from our holiday in Crete. I plan to blog more extensively about several of the items on the list in future posts but for now this is how the goals look:

1. Go cycling in Peru
2. Visit Rome
3. Travel around America
4. Travel around New Zealand
5. Visit Venice
6. Visit Corsica
7. Buy a new car
8. Get fit - beep test level 10
9. Get fit enough to run 10K in 45 minutes
10. Get fit enough to run 10K in under 40 minutes
11. Get fit enough to sprint 100M in 12 seconds
12. Get fit enough to cycle 40 miles in 2.25 hours
13. Get fit enough to cycle 40 miles in under 2 hours
14. Bring to an end my involvement in rugby coaching
15. Finish 2009 365 project
16. Edit my nanowrimo "Zen Looks Down" novel to a finished version
17. Write a Zen sequel
18. Send Zen novels to agents / publishers
19. Organise a charity event
20. Generate a maintenance plan for house
21. Keep the maintenance plan up to date and keep it decreasing
22. Ride one of the classic Tour de France mountains
23. Complete an Etape (Giro or Tour de France)
24. Complete an adventure race
25. Gain the Business Continuity qualification
26. Become self-employed
27. Buy a DSLR camera
28. Organise university funding for the children
29. Organise a "post college" fund for the children
30. Pension funding
31. Go white water rafting
32. Go for a hot air balloon ride
33. Smarten up my personal website
34. Take down the overgrown tree in the garden
35. Do some mountain biking on a "proper" mountain trail

the Giant of Provence

Today's Tour de France stage was a classic. The penultimate stage of the race took on the infamous Mont Ventoux. This mountain, nicknamed the Giant of Provence, is imposing rather than beautiful. It is a relentlessly steep climb of 30 km. The last 6 kilometres are across a barren limestone wasteland. This is the road on which the famous British cyclist Tommy Simpson died from exhaustion in 1967; he literally rode himself into the ground.

I am currently preparing a list of goals for myself (more about this in another post soon) and in my draft version I have "cycle one of the great mountains from the Tour". The obvious contenders are:

• Mont Ventoux
• Alpe d'Huez
• Sestriere

Cycling fans will recognise all of these and be able to vividly recall the great battles that have taken place on their slopes. After watching today's racing I think Mont Ventoux has edged to the top of my list. I will have to do some serious training if I am to get fit enough to tackle any one of these monsters. Hopefully having a challenging goal like this will provide some of the motivation that I need to stick with the training programme.

And speaking of the training programme: I found time today to fit in a run (30 mins) and a ride (45 mins). Although both were slow, I felt strong and able to breathe easily. Hopefully tomorrow I will get the study tidied up so that I have some space to start doing some weight training as well.

pipeline photographs and numbers

This was my shot for the 365 project for yesterday. After so many days & weeks of taking and posting "cop out" shots just for the sake of keeping the project going it felt good to capture an image that I was actually pleased with.

I am on my second consecutive 365 project. Today is day 205 of the year which means that I have taken at least one image every day for 572 days. I can say with some confidence that I will not be carrying this on to 2010. So I have just 160 left to go. Sadly I have to report that today's shot was nowhere near as good as yesterday's.