www.m4sport.co.uk

I'm STILL waiting for the www.m4sport.co.uk domain name to be reregistered with the name servers. I'd best check I've set everything up right..... Oh.

http://m4sport.co.uk works fine. But www.m4sport.co.uk doesn't. Is this a cache problem? Hmmmm. I'll sort it out.

Anyway, go look at Bob Jone's new sports massage website, designed and created by me! Any comments?

If you want me to create a site for you, email me.

Sitting

The boy is almost sitting up on his own:

But he sure isn't crawling.

Bob's website

I've finished Bob's website, bar the shouting. Once the DNS servers have been updated I'll add links and adverts to the Jif and Tri websites. The address will be www.m4sport.co.uk.

He likes it!

Big Error

I can't believe I haven't got a camera phone.

The software running the massive advertising screen in Queen St, in the centre of Cardiff, has crashed, leaving a 6 foot Windows 98 error message.

I can't believe I missed out on that photo :( I'd better get on eBay.

Moblog

Oh dear. I'm blogging from Starbucks from my Palm Tungsten. How cliche. It'll be fun with a camera phone though.....

Jack's new room

Jack is 6 months old, and has moved into his own room:

There used to be 3 PCs on a desk on that back wall.

iBook

One of these should be turning up at work this week, fingers crossed:

I'm very interested to see how it changes how I work. I sold my last laptop because I wasn't using it any more (and it was v slow). Nowadays I need to carry around several GB of data and half a dozen websites, and it would be useful to have a computer on the move.

And its a Mac.......

Bob

I pretty much finished Bob's website yesterday afternoon. There are 3 or 4 things I need to add, But generally, it's done. The intro doesn't look too bad, and I fixed a couple of visual niggles in the page design. I'll upload and link to it this week I hope.

Ankle

Nice!

Massage

Would you get a massage from a man like this?

Don't worry, Bob, I got plenty of good ones ;)

Own Arse

I seem to be getting up my own arse with this blog. I'll stick to one liners and photos. Oops - that's 2 lines.

Feel free to comment on how much of a twat I am.

Jack and his Duck

I'm sat at home, nursing my ankle. So I've added a video to Jack's website, of him playing with his mum and his duck.

Ankle

Spot the difference:

I was having an excellent run. I've been doing too much work, so had been looking forward to stretching my legs, and the air was good: clean and fresh. Running downhill through Radyr woods I passed a loose section. The path cleared and I guess I must have been looking forward instead of down, because a powerful, deadening pain tried to signal my brain that my ankle had turned over. I'm still moving and land on my right foot. Lots of momentum. My left foot plants and the pain goes up a notch to overload: nausea and weakness. Right foot again, and my body's not going to let my left foot land and I'm flying, downhill. Landing on my left side and rollng to a stop like a premiership footballer the nausea sinks into my stomach. I lie still for a few minutes, muddy and grazed.

Eventually, I haul my sorry arse off the floor and weight the ankle. As usual, with a few steps it gets easier, and I limp and hobble my way home, embarrased. I am pretty depressed.

Tired

They say that most fathers work even harder after the birth of their first child. I'd agree with that. We've lost a salary, and outgoings have gone up so I have to earn more money. Luckily (if I can generate the business) I can do this at home in the evenings writing websites for people, so I still get to see Jack and Kim.

The flip side of this is that probably for the first time in my life I am starting to get sick of computers. I'm sure it's only temporary :(

Results

The Pembroke Tri results are out on www.the-multisport.org. I'm 254th, finishing in 2 hours 36 mins 7 secs. It looks as though all the Cardiff triathletes who know what they're doing are ahead of me, but of the "novices" I seem to be the fastest. Happy with that!

I guess for Bala I'll be aiming to get home in under 2 and a half hours. I'll try and do a bit more cycling, and some intervals running. That might help. I could do with working on my endurance, but I don't have the time, which is a bit of a requirement really, isn't it?

iBook

I have finally ordered my iBook at work! Woohoo! It'll take a couple of weeks to get to me though.

Bodies

"Our bodies are forged in the fire of our will."

Enter the Dragon.

Pembroke 03 Race Report

OK, here's a race report from yesterday's olympic distance Pembroke triathlon in Fishguard:

Kim, Jack and I actually left the house on time, at 8am, to get to Fishguard by 10.30. With very little traffic about, except for other triathletes, we made good time, and got there just before Dave (Gumby) Gunthorpe. You could tell there was a race on; on the way there there were bikes on tops of cars, in the backs of vans, and triathletes stopping for a piss in every layby (me included).

The wind was up: a 15mph southerly. Not good.

We had plenty of time to register, sort out the bikes, lay out transition stuff and generally prepare. I met plenty of other Cardiff Tri members, some I had known were competing, others were a pleasant surprise. There must have been more then 10 of us.

At about 12.20 Dave and I got into our wetsuits on the breakwater, dumped the rest of our stuff with Kim, and I went down to the beach for a warm-up and a stretch in the sea. People were complaining the water was too cold, but that's what a wetsuit's for, right? It felt OK to me. I regrouped with other Cardiff Tri people, and Ewan gave me a good stretch of my pecs by pulling my arms around my back. I have a climbing related shoulder problem, so I need to make sure I'm loose before swimming or my right shoulder fails.

10 minutes to go and the master of cermonies sounded out the rules and regulations, warning of disqualification for this, that, and the other, and dished out a few bits of useful information. We all stepped behind the water's edge, and got positioned relative to our swim abilities, ready to start.

Remember, this is my first olympic distance triathlon (1500m swim, 40k bike, 10k run), and my 2nd ever triathlon. The last was done for a free curry in 1996. I'm racing in triathlons this year as motivation to stay fit and thin while Jack's little and I can't climb as much as usual. I was getting in at the deep end. I never do anything by halves.

Now, we all need psychological motivation, and I'm afraid mine was Dave. I'd guessed that we were evenly matched. We're good mates, and he has been training hard all year (I don't think I've ever seen him so fit), but his swim isn't as good as mine yet because he hasn't been training his technique as long as me. So in theory I should come out of the water ahead of him, and he should take time off me on the bike. The run was anybody's guess, but I reckoned we were going to be fairly equal by the end of a long triathlon. If anything he should be slightly faster as he's fitter than me. So my motivation was to beat Dave. A tough goal, because he can take a lot of time out of me on the bike leg, but there it was. Rivalry as motivation.

So my game plan was to swim hard and put a big gap between us, but ease up in the last couple of hundred metres so I'm not completely mullered in the transition. Then do the bike leg at a reasonable intensity - sensible out into the headwind, and harder on the return leg, again easing up on the descent to the transition. On the run see how you feel, settle into the first couple of km, raising the intensity with 5km to go, and raising again with 2.5km to the finish. It was assumed that Dave would pass me early on in the bike leg.

So, stood back from the water's edge, the klaxon sounded, and we entered the water. I got on somebody's toes and into an 800m pace, but they were too slow. I found myself overtaking lots of swimmers before I could get into a bit of space and a rhythm. I wanted to stay in the melee to take advantage of drafting other swimmers, but ended up in a bit of space, aiming out towards Ireland. I sighted the turn buoy and corrected my direction, dropping my pace to something hard but sustainable. We were swimming out and back beside a breakwater, so with each breath on the left I could sight it and keep direction.

At the turn everything got a bit tight as swimmers came together, and it became hard to get back into a smooth rhythm and even stroke as swimmers swam into me, and me into them. You could tell you were getting close to the end as the taste (or smell) of the water changed for the worse. I eased up as we got closer. I hadn't been swimming hard, but the distance had taken it's toll, and I was pretty groggy geting out of the water on the edge of the slipway. I had to concentrate on not slipping off the side.

Right, hands down, stand up, walk out of the water. I can breathe! Everyone else is running. I guess I better had too. Jog. Reach round, pull neck velcro, pull cord and get top half of me out of wetsuit. Goggles off. Hat off. Jog.

At my transition spot I pulled my wetsuit legs down, and stepped on my left suit leg and pulled my foot out. Ow - hamstring cramping. Swap legs. My right leg came out OK, so feeling groggy I braced myself on the bike rack and pulled my left leg out. Stepping on my towel I sat down, pulled my socks on, then my shoes and stood up to grab my helmet, which had fallen off my bike into someone else's box. That retrieved I grabbed my bike and jogged/skated out of the transition behind Ben. As we started up the first hill I shouted, "Will I catch you today?", knowing I wouldn't.

Up the hill I was going backwards. My body was trying to get used to being out of the water, but everyone else seemed OK. It was a long drag out of Fishguard, at an easy gradient. I settled into a rhythm, looking over my shoulder for Dave. At the top of the hill I felt OK, and got my legs into a decent cadence. The course was far from flat, and the headwind was also slightly across us, blowing us out into the road at every farm gate and junction. The big hedges gave some protection, so I stayed close.

I was overtaking women, but being overtaken by a lot of men. I was constantly looking over my shoulder for Dave. Jerry passed me, and we swapped positions a couple of times. I just about managed a wave.

The sea was in my throat. I tried to wash the briny taste away with orangey/lemony high-5, trying to breathe at the same time, forcing it down.

The first 5 miles took an age to cover. As the mileage crept up I felt better. I was already patting myself on the back for staying away from Gumby for so long.

As I started to see returning cyclists I felt better. I knew the turn was close. I reached it and turned fast and jumped out of the saddle to accelerate back up to speed, quads burning. I couldn't believe Gumby hadn't caught me yet! The tailwind helped, but it was still across me. I upped the pace and started to take back some places. I saw Dave going in the opposite direction and shouted at him, but he was in "the zone". I don't think he even saw me. I forgot to look at my computer to check the distance between us.

The return leg was much better. With the help of the tailwind the undulations didn't feel so bad, my legs felt better, and I could spin and put out a decent effort. With only 5 miles to go a short, steep hill pushed me down to 39x21 and out of the saddle, tiring my legs for the run, but when I saw the sea I was elated. I knew it was downhill from here. Spinning out 52x12 we were doing up to 40 mph and I was able to loosen up my legs a little, and relax into an aerodynamic position, knees together and hands aside the stem, head down, trying to recover a bit before the run. At the roundabout I swung around perfectly, before braking hard for the transition. I dismounted and ran to my racking position.

I ran down the wrong aisle before finding my spot. Bike racked, I dumped my helmet and swapped into my running shoes. The elastic was too tight and I cramped up my left calf squeezing my foot in. Aaaargh! On a full tetanic calf I forced my foot in, and pulled a muscle in my left shoulder. Crap! With a quick puff of my inhaler I jogged out, and spotted Dave taking his helmet off. I shouted at him but he didn't hear me.

The run started as more of a hobble, with my calves, hamstrings, quads, abs and chest feeling as though they were all going to cramp up at once. I didn't know how long I'd last, so I tried to settle into my usual stride pattern but it was too long, and I swapped to a shorter shuffle.

Dave caught me with a cheery, "Alright, Sam?". I can't remember my response, but no doubt I was hiding the pain. We ran alongside one another exchanging words, but before long I had to settle in behind him. I followed his shoulder, keeping pace. The first 5km were painful, but with each kilometer my muscles eased and my body settled into run-mode. The imminent-cramp sensation dissipated, and my stride improved. Dave started to get away from me, but I was unwilling to respond. I couldn't go any faster yet. He didn't get very far in front when he stopped to stretch a cramping calf or foot, and we settled in along side one another again.

At the turn he was ahead again, and Knoxy shouted at me, completely missing her boyfriend in front of me. Oops. Kim shouted at me from behind a bush.

With 5km to go I felt more confident. I could hold Dave and out-sprint him if it came to it. We swapped places and I moved ahead, stretching my stride. After the water stop we were side-by-side and he stopped for a piss. With 3km to go! Sod that, I'm not waiting for him. I maintained my pace, planning to push from the next turn. A heavy shower of rain came down and chilled my hot legs, bringing back the imminent cramp sensation, and taking away my confidence.

After the turn I saw Dave, and that he hadn't taken a long stop. I had increased my pace, and was giving all that I could muster to lift my speed, catching other runners. The headwind was gusting, trying to stop me dead. A small boy in a high-viz jacket, marshalling, was leaning into it with his big arrow card.

I didn't afford a look behind, assuming Dave was on my heels, psyching myself up. With about 1 km to go I pushed again, aiming to break Gumby if he was chasing me, and just about held it to the line. I was so relieved to finish. I was so relieved it hadn't been a sprint - I would have puked and cramped for sure - but I would have won it ;)

A small boy handed me some water, a banana and some High5. Once Kim and the others had found me I sent her off to find me some Coke and a couple of cans of that sorted me out. Dave came in about 30 seconds later. I was surprised and chuffed that I had beaten him. I rubbed it in something rotten. Sorry Dave!

My first triathlon went well. I achieved my goals, and set myself a PB of just under 2.36 (official result should go up tomorrow). I was surprised how hard the distance was, but fairly happy with how I coped. Bala at the end of September is next, and I need to work on my bike section, and improve my bike to run endurance. Plenty of time.

Sam and Dave

Post-Pembroke 03.

Dave's got a bloody nipple. Race report later. Tired now. Must eat food.

I beat Dave

I beat Dave! By about 20 seconds!

I'm no. 69, but of course.

Getting ready

Dave's just picked my bike up. My bag's packed with all my race gear, and I'm about to sort my running shoes out with elastic laces for a quick bike-to-run transition tomorrow, and fix in my arch supports. I've been knackered today, so hopefully I'll be a bit more awake tomorrow. I mustn't forget to make up my bottles.

I wonder if I can get a leg massage tonight....

I'm looking forward to the swim; a flat 1500m around the Fishguard breakwater, and the bike should be fast with just the one hill at the start. The big question is when will Dave catch me on the bike? Maybe I should do a hard swim to put as much time between us as possible. The run is flat, so I should finish OK, but not well enough to catch him if he overtakes me early on the bike. Oh well. We'll see tomorrow!

Webmastering - coder or designer?

I've always written websites by hand, using only an HTML text-based aid, like CoffeeCup's HTML Editor and an image editor like Adobe Photoshop. I've learnt new techniques as I've progressed, and tried to keep up. The trouble is that as websites get older, new technologies and standards arise, and you look at your code and think, "I could do this" or "I could do that" to make my life easier. But usually it would require rejigging the entire website, so you save it for the winter when you're not training so much. You procrastinate. The longer you leave it, the older your site looks, and the more work you plan to do on it, until it reaches a point where you might as well rewrite the whole thing. So you procrastinate some more. After all, it's hard enough generating content and keeping the whole thing up to date anyway, if it's a regularly updated news-based site like the Tri or Jif sites. And the longer you leave it, the more you have to learn, if you want to code it by hand. The world passes you by.

Question: Would it be prudent to concentrate less on code, and more on design and function, by using, say, one of Macromedia's products? Would I be selling out some of my geekness? I suppose you can still view and work with the code, but would you?

The big advantage is that as the software improves, you get updated, and you can work with your website in new ways, without necessarily having to sit down and learn the raw mechanics (fun as it may be). It would save me (and my clients) time.

I think I'll have a play with some software. What do you reckon? Am I selling out, or is the product all that matters in the end? What might I lose out on?

Sore

I've woken up a little sore this morning - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness in my legs from the race on Wednesday night. The swim last night was good, but didn't do much to loosen me up. I'll have a rest day today, taking it easy. I need to sort all my kit out tonight so we can get away early tomorrow morning for the triathlon in Fishguard. The traffic will probably be bad as most of the kids break up from school today.

Dave's picking up my bike today to take up, so we can have more room in the car for Jack's stuff. He's a good 'un, isn't he?

Speeding Offense Database

Here's a useful site if you've ever been worried whether you've been caught by a speed camera:

http://www.i-connect.co.uk/speedoffence/default.asp

Login with-
u: ccpolice
p: 999

and stick in your license plate. If you've been caught you can even check the photos. Superb resource.

Cosmeston 5k

After 3x 6.16 min miles.

Cosmeston 5k

Kim and Jack watching Dad racing!

Cosmeston 5k

I just did the Cosmeston 4x 5km relay with the Cardiff Triathletes. 5k in 18mins 48secs. Not bad for my fitness I guess, and a very fun evening; great atmosphere and a nice course. Kim and Jack went too! It's been in the low 30's (C) the last few days, so a bit of rain cooled the air down, but the humidity was still high.

Gumby came in at 19.04.... not much difference. What does that spell for the Pembroke triathlon on Saturday? He'll catch me on the bike, but when? What will the time difference be by the end?

Jack on solids

Jack is well into his solid food.

Email

Email seems to be working perfectly today. I'm confused.

Sports Testing

I spent the morning as a guinea pig for a Sports Science MSc student. He's asking whether going flat out in the swim section of a triathlon makes any difference to the bike section so has a bunch of Cardiff Triathletes (and others) swimming 750m in a pool and then cycling for 30 minutes, both at max intensity. I put in a nice effort - lots of lactate in my blood, apparently. I want to put all the results on the Cardiff Tri website if I can. That should stimulate some competition at Bala!

Instead of feeding myself I'm updating www.cardifftri.net and www.cardiffjif.com. Sod that. I'm off to the union to get a load of scoff.

Email Hassle

My email doesn't seem to be working properly, so apologies if I've missed your email. I have not had any emails today. I can see them on the server but Outlook won't download them. If yuo sent me something today, do you want to to try resending it, maybe to webmaster@cardifftri.net?

This is complicated, but it might be worth fleshing out. webmaster@cardiffjif.com and webmaster@cardifftri.net are separate accounts, which I pick email up from directly. sam@samwebster.net, samwebster@softhome.net and webstersv@cf.ac.uk all forward to samwebster@hotpop.com, so I can pick my email up from wherever I am. This used to work perfectly, but has started to screw around recently. I don't understand it. Is it Outlook? Or is it a forwarding problem? Some emails get forwarded, and some disappear. Some get downloaded, and some get stuck on the server. It's driving me nuts!

Hopefully it'll sort itself out. Off out climbing now, after bathing the boy. Damn, its hot in Cardiff today.

Jif Rant

I've just uploaded a photo album to the jif website. There are 51 photos, and it took me hours to look through them, move them around, create the album and a title page thumbnail, work it into the website, and then upload the whole lot, using my time, equipment and bandwidth. I'd much rather be drinking beer in front of a good DVD, or (chance would be a fine thing) out training.

And people ask, "How hard could it be?" I'd ask, "How many other people put this much time into Jif?" I update the Jif website 52 weeks of the year. At the moment, the triathletes are subsidising JIf, as they pay for some of my time and equipment. It's not right, is it?

As I get older I have less time.

I feel better now. This blogging lark is top therapy!

Don't get me wrong. I'm chuffed that Andy gave me the photos for the website (content is king!), and thanks to his dad for taking them. But I've also got to put Lisa's Ironman Austria photos up tonight, and it's already gone 10pm. The missus is not impressed.

Green shed

The shed is green:

and my new website is live. And I painted the fence too. A productive weekend!

Now to create some photoalbums for the Jif and Tri websites, and get out for a run.

Fancy

That's better. A little bit of graphic design. Like the dark, dark blue background and orange highlights? And the header? Hmmm. Might tweak a few bits though.

I'm going to be busy putting photo galleries together for www.cardifftri.net (Lisa's Ironman Austria pics) and www.cardiffjif.com (Andy's collection from this year's races) tomorrow. And there's that shed to finish painting.

1996

While we're at it, and I'm trying to add lots of posts to sort out the formatting of this page, here's another fishy photo. Same lake, different carp, 1996:

The girls at work don't believe it's me.

Weekends

This is what I was doing last Sunday. A double figure carp on light float tackle. No chance of this tomorrow *groan*

Maybe I'll get out running for an hour. (Pembroke triathlon next Saturday).

Jack and that

Top banana - Jack's website is now hosted here, at chez samwebster.net, so no more advertising there either. The amount of advertising on Lycos' free sites was becoming atrocious (sp?).

Back to painting the shed green. For an hour or so.

1st post

Ug. I've finished setting up the new server so I can bung it in the attic and clear out Jack's future room. I've finally got Movable Type working, with mySQL and perl, hosted from my own server with (of course) Apache (woohoo, no more adverts, and total control!) It wasn't that hard, and so far I'm impressed with the results.

Right. On to designing this page properly. No doubt it will mould itself over the next few weeks.