New fitness tracker watch

I was losing my patience with my Apple Watch. It has an incredibly short battery life, and it is getting increasingly unreliable. Ideally, you record activities with your smart watch, and they just upload. But with this thing it was getting rather hit and miss. And I like the metrics that come with exercising! So I want to be able to log what I do. Additionally; the battery time had got so short that it couldn't log a several hour activity (like the Marchlyn loop) anymore. It was probably time for a new watch.

Apple watches can do all sorts of things, but I basically use it only as a fitness tracker. So I figured I might as well get me a different brand, that recognises it is mainly a fitness tracker. So I had a little Google, and decided a Garmin might be a good idea. They seem to have a good battery life! And are compatible with Strava. And this time I didn't bother with anything refurbished; I just went for a new specimen.

It came partially charged. I charged it up to some 80%, and then took it with me on my runs. And it did the job marvellously! It does track your run, and it is reliable in uploading it onto Strava. And you don't have to charge it after every run. You don't have to charge it for days, even if you record at least one thing every day! So far so good. Next step: my commute.

The new watch

My commute is more complicated. I always want to recorded as one trip, even though of course it really is two, with many hours in between. One reason is that I think it would clutter up my Strava if I recorded the way to work separate from the way back home. Additionally; I always aim to have a picture on all my strava activities. And it is bad enough to find a nice picture every day if you're basically always biking the same route, and doing it twice would be worse! Is this important? No! But it would be nice if the Garmin could manage this. The Apple Watch initially was okay with it, even though I would probably have to charge it twice while at work. But it was getting increasingly common that I would get home and only the way to work had been recorded.

The first they didn't work out. I started my bike ride, but it seemed to give up recording anything when I was idle for hours. The second day wasn't a success either. I decided to just record the first half, but somehow nothing appeared on my Strava. At least I managed to record the way back.

I'm not quite sure if this is just me being clumsy with the new toy. One thing I did instigate was that it auto-pauses when I stop. Maybe that will help! That functionality wasn't toggled on by default. I'm sure that if I can't get it to record my entire commute in one go, then at least I will get enough routine to manage to record it in two separate journeys. Practically every day. Not ideal, but unacceptable sacrifice in return for a watch you don’t have to keep charging, and that can log an activity that takes several hours! 

Ankle progress

The physiotherapist told me to kick my peroneal tendon into submission. I am paraphrasing quite hard, but that's what it boils down to. Crank up the exercises and get it ready for some strong action again! I am even doing heel lifts on a step with a backpack on to make it harder. That's pretty hard work! But it pays off.

He also suggested interval training, so go either some 25 seconds slow and then 25 seconds fast, and then repeat that until you're done, or go 25 seconds uphill and then 25 seconds otherwise, be it on the flat, or walking. And again; you repeat that until you're done. I've been doing that!

I started out just running up the hill on the other side of the main road. And it was going okay! I can still feel my ankle, but it doesn't feel like I can't run on it. I'm not limping anymore.

Initially I would just run to the pub on the hill (which seems to be closing), but when it felt good I went a bit further. And after a few days I was all the way at the end of the road. Beyond that it becomes a path; that didn't attract me very much in this season, as it would on some days be a mud bath and on other days an icy mess. 

Beyond the pub

One day when it was icy I found a bit of steep road that was clear enough and did hill reps on it. And I did 160 m vertical! And soon after I decided to do the run to the end of the road, but run the top bit twice as I figured I could. And then I got roped into a search for a lost doggy. Altogether I had run a reasonable distance! And if I could do that, I could do it in general.

The day after I went, for the first time since the injury, for a normal size run. I did my bad weather loop through Mynydd Llandygai. It’s 5.5k, with 160m ascent. And then I did it two more times on the two days after. I’m back! 

View on one of the runs

Now I need to get myself back to 12k and 450m ascent. Then I would be ready to rejoin the Thursday Night Hill sessions! That would be fab…

Viking hand: getting symptomatic again

Some ten years ago I found out I have Viking hand, or, as it is more officially known, Dupuytren’s contracture. It’s a condition that pulls your fingers in, starting with the ring finger, so in the long run you can’t open your hand anymore. In my case, it starts with a lump on the tendon to my left ring finger. And it’s sore.

Two things made this condition worse: hard manual work and old age. I got symptomatic because I did multi-week research cruises, in which I would do 12-hour shifts 7 days a week lugging heavy sediment core sections around. But if I’m not on a research cruise, my job isn’t very manual, so after that initial flare-up, my symptoms vanished again. 

When manual work won’t get you, old age will. And it looks like I have reached the age now where even if you’re a bit of a pen-pusher, you get symptomatic. Bugger! 

Back in the days, I dealt with the issue using swing top bottle washers. I could place them over the lump on my tendon, and then it would be protected. I still have them. I even made a clever slip-on thing that was a lot more low-key than taping the washer to my hand. I haven’t found that yet! But if I won’t, I can make one again. 

I now also have to think about radiotherapy. It seems to be able to significantly slow down or even stop the progression of the disease, according to the British Dupuytren Society. But it looks like a difficult thing to get if you live in Wales! I’ll have to look into this a bit more. And in the meantime, I’ll just try to deal with the symptoms as they are. I suppose that this time, they’re here to stay! 

No visible symptoms yet, but for how long? 

Dealing with an appeal

I've been in this current job for some 10 years, but new things still happen. Recently, I had to deal with a student appeal for the first time. If students think that something was really wrong with an assignment, or with the grade they got, they can appeal. Maybe they think the grade wasn't correctly calculated from the constituent parts, or maybe they think the instructions were wrong, or any such thing. They can't appeal the academic judgement of the marker. But in practice, appeals never happen. Students might directly contact you if they're not happy,  or tell the course reps so the staff- student liaison officer tells you, and then you can talk about it. In the olden days, when exams were on paper, there would be special feedback sessions. I do remember that it had come up that a grade wasn't correctly calculated, but nowadays computers do all that, and they are very good at that sort of thing. And sometimes a student complains through the module evaluations, but what you can do with that is limited. But it had never happened that a student took the formal route. Until now! And the student appealed against their grades in three different assignments in one go, and one of them was mine.

The procedure is that the student fills out a form in which they set out their complaint, and send it to the Quality Enhancement Unit. They send it on to the School involved. Then the person(s) responsible for the assignment(s) in question write(s) a response. I had to look up what happens next! Luckily, the procedure is explained on the University website. The whole pile of documents goes, via the Head of School, back to the Quality Enhancement Unit, and they report back to the student.

I wrote my response. It took a fair amount of time. The student had listed a whole array of things they said were wrong with my assignment, and how I had dealt with it. My response boiled down to that there wasn't anything actually wrong with any of that. I have seen one more response; the third one might take a bit longer, as the lecturing staff in question has since retired, so the response will have to be written by someone who was not directly involved in the assignment.

We were given 10 days to respond, so I suppose the documentation will go to main campus, and from there to the student, soon. If they don't agree with our response they can request a review, and they have to do that within 10 days as well. So I suppose by the end of the month we will know how this panned out.

I think it's good that there is an appeal procedure, but I do hope that it doesn't become all too popular. We really genuinely do our best to do a good job! And literally every assignment we set is also scrutinised by the external examiners. And student satisfaction is deemed very important, so messing up instructions is quite bad for your career. So the chance a bad grade is not due to the student, but to the assignment itself, is not high. And it can be a lot of work to respond to these appeals. But we'll see! Let's first find out if this student is successful.  Stay tuned!

Gluteus maximus getting in the way of sleep

For the last four years, I have had to stretch my gluteus maximus every day, in order to make it not get in the way of my daily life. And it has been working all right. I sometimes have to do an emergency bum stretch, but not very often. And sometimes I am lying in bed and am a bit uncomfortable in the buttock, and that tends to be difficult to deal with, as I am soft in the heart, and doing anything to relieve that would disturb the cat, which I actively avoid doing. But given that I can't remember ever having had that issue for a long time, I assume I normally just fall asleep in spite of it.

Sometimes, my exercise regime gets disrupted, for instance when I travel, or am ill. And maybe some activities make it worse, such as sitting on your bum in a train all day. And recently, I did all of these in quite short succession. I don't know if that was the reason for that things escalated a bit, but it could well be. 

Discomfort in the buttocks to such extent it made it hard to sleep became a thing in January. And I am not enjoying that at all! And unfortunately, both buttocks were involved in this. And the left one I could stretch as usual, and I had been doing industrial amount of stretching, but the right one really protested against stretching. It hurt! I couldn’t do it without making a plethora of unelegant sounds.

A bum stretch

I also took the yoga roller I have out of the cupboard. It had been gathering dust there for a while. But now it was all hands on deck. I also did industrial amounts of rolling. Anything to get my comfort back. I really need my sleep!

After a night in which I saw it get to 4am (which was the night I got the message from Nick) I contacted the physio. He suggested exercises to increase mobility of the lumbar spine. I googled a bunch. The one that seemed to do the most was the ‘sphinx stretch’ so I now do that too. 

Luckily, after that one night I at least could sleep. I’m still not back to normal, but that’s a start. And I just keep stretching, hoping I will get my full comfort back sooner or later…

Exit Nick

I suppose was too good to be true! In early October, Nick asked if we could go from the dating stage to the relationship stage. And although it was going a bit fast I said yes. And then we had three months in which I greatly enjoyed having a man by my side. Someone to go on adventures with! Someone to wake up next to! Someone with whom to do mundane things such as food shopping, but together. And he claimed to enjoy it too. The only gripe he had was that he said I was being overly kind to him, if I for instance bought him a bara brith, because I know he likes them.

But then he wasn't keen on seeing me on New Year's Eve. That didn't ring the alarm; he must have had his reasons. If something was wrong he would have brought it up, right? But then a few days later he didn't text me at all, the entire day. When I couldn't sleep I just thought I'd see if he might have texted me since I had gone to bed. And he had. And in that message he basically broke up with me because he said it wasn't working out for him. And that was it! One message of a few lines, and the whole relationship was null and void.

It was a punch in the face. What sort of bollocks is this? If he doesn't want to be with me he shouldn't be with me, but at his age he should have the maturity to flag up with me in person if things are not going the way he wants to. I suppose he doesn't like to bring people bad news, but I was really disappointed that he dealt with that by maximising the pain for me and minimising it for himself. I thought he was a better man. But I'm clearly a bad judge of character. 

I suppose this isn't a repeat of what happened with Dave; Dave turned cold after two lovely months, but then spent two further months stone cold denying that anything was wrong, even though he knew damn well it was. Only when he couldn't run away anymore on the Llŷn peninsula did he admit to the scale of the problem. I suppose that was even worse. (Time has also revealed that when he claimed he would be interested in any sort of friendship, he wasn't entirely honest.) So Nick might not have been quite that bad, but still, well below par.

So what now? Well, I have a life to get on with. I'm getting on with it. I sent Nick back his now useless birthday present. And I have reinstated my dating profiles. Has online dating brought me anything good? No. But could it potentially do so in the future? Well yes, I suppose it could. I know I have something to lose; I could have done without these two chaps stomping into and out of my life. And by continuing with it, I run the risk that it will happen again. But it is still possible to gain something. So I’m persevering. 

Pre-emptively changing a difficult battery

When I realised, upon my return from the Netherlands, what a deeply annoying sound my smoke/heat alarms make when they are running low on battery, I got worried about the alarm on the top floor. The electrician places right above the stairs, which makes it really difficult to get to. Stairs are not good places to put ladders, then putting a ladder on the landing would mean you would have to reach out sideways so far it looks risky. So how would I solve that? I would be in a hurry! Anything to make the sound stop. I figured I needed to be prepared. I wanted to find some solution or other before it would become urgent. And I used a rainy Sunday for it. 

I tried the ladders that are part of my working platform. I couldn't make that work. Then I tried my extendable ladder. I couldn't make that work either. And I was keeping my friends updated. They were worried about my antics! And Sue and Dean were so worried that they decided to come down with the working platform they have; it is different from mine, and probably a bit more manoeuvrable.

Trying the extendable ladder

Their platform is easier to put into position than mine. And they plonked it on the stairs with a short leg on the landing and a short leg on the stairs. That worked! With that, Dean could reach. So he sorted it. 

Dean sorting it

I don’t know how much charge that battery still had! But it now has a fresh one. When the easier-to-reach alarm on the ground floor runs out it can use up the tail end of this battery. And then get an entirely new one after it has done that. 

I should be sorted for years now! That’s a good feeling.