All posts by Andy Todd

Uncategorized

Sold Out Swimming (Andrew)

Since November I’ve tried to join a weekly swim session with Glasgow Triathlon Club at 7am on a Wednesday morning. I say “tried to join” because there’s only eight places and the on-line booking system is more popular than David Attenborough and places fill up within minutes of opening. It’s got to the stage where you need to camp out overnight if you want a spot. 

Who knew a 7am spot would be so popular? But, despite the early start to get there, it’s a great session as, for the first time, I’m swimming to a coached session rather than swimming back and forth until I get bored. 

Swimming is my least favourite sport. I enjoy it but, given the choice between running or cycling or smelling of chlorine, I choose with my nose every time. 

During an average session, we swim between 1.5km to 2km, which is more than I would swim on my own. So, as a good way of swimming longer, it’s good to join a coached session. On the downside, I also found out that everything I was doing was wrong. Wrong hands, wrong arms, wrong legs. Even my hips weren’t in the right place, and, as anyone who’s seen me dance know, they don’t move. 

For the first few weeks I’ve had to relearn how to swim. I need to pat the water not karate chop the water with my hands. I need stretch my arms out like I’m celebrating not bring them in like I’m about to fall asleep on them. Legs need to kick more. Hips need to turn. I need to ‘push’ the water back, not flail my arms like a helicopter. And I have to get up at 6am to get there.

Which is why I ask again – why is it so popular?! It’s torture. But maybe, because it’s torture, it’s popular because you then have the rest of the day to recover – as long as you can book a place!

Andrew

Watching The Tour De France at Alpe D’Huez (Andrew)

The plan was simple. We’d buy a tent and camp out on the mountain the night before the Tour arrived, only there was two problems. One, we didn’t know how to pitch a tent. The second, I’ll get to in a second.

The first problem was easy to solve. We bought a pop up tent. According to the ‘how to’ video on YouTube it was a simple to pitch as opening the cover and letting it open naturally. It took seconds, with no poles, pegs or skill required. Perfect.

The second problem was harder to solve. The day we arrived in Grenoble, the nearest city to Alpe D’Huez, it started to rain. And then the lightning started. And the thunder rolled in and we chickened out of using a tent and booked a hotel for the night instead with an aim to get up early and drive to Bourg-d Oisans, the town at the base of the climb.

And that’s what I’d recommend. We thought there would be a queue of cars, that would it would be difficult to get parked but, we left at 6am, got there for 7am and had no problem driving there or finding parking in the town. I admit, we then had eight hours before the tour passed through, but we were there, and we could explore the town to find… a bike shop run by a woman from Glasgow?!

We bought water, we bought breakfast, we bought supplies for lunch and filled our backpacks and then started to walk up Alpe D’Huez.

As the sun rose, it was a warm climb but not a difficult one. There was food and drinks for sale as you climbed and every corner was covered in flags, people and RV’s who’d booked there spot a week before and had set up home with barbecues and satellite dishes on their roof feeding live coverage of the day’s race.

As we climbed we got higher, as did the spectators. Corner 7 – Dutch Corner – was loud techno music, orange t-shirts, smoke and booze. The party had started and even the thunder & lightning hadn’t stopped it.

We found a spot overlooking corner 7 and had a cracking view of the spectators including one man who tried to run up to the summit while wearing a Borat mankini. He was last seen, buttocks jiggling, breath heaving on his way to corner 6. I hope he made it. It would have a tale to make his grandchildren proud. As long as he didn’t show them any photos…

As you wait for the tour, the excitement builds. You can see helicopters in the distance, the publicity caravan comes through around an hour before, throwing Bic pens and sweets from cars disguised as chickens or baguettes. Then security comes through. Cars get faster. Helicopters louder. Flares are fired. Smoke drifts. You can hear the cheering roll up the mountain before the road gets mobbed in an orange mass and the first rider breaks through. It’s half war film, half circus performance.

And the best bit is that unlike most days in the tour, it carries on for around 40 minutes as different riders take different times to climb to the summit. The GC contenders are first, the main peloton next and then a steady stream of spent domestiques and burly sprinters just about holding on at the back.

Once done, you can walk back down the mountain using a trail to cut the corners and to walk almost straight down rather than back and forth from corner to corner. You could use it to climb up, but, that would mean missing out on walking the same route as the riders climb.

Watching the Tour at Alpe D’Huez is a fantastic experience. One I would recommend if you’re thinking of going to watch the Tour.

Andrew

Zwift Racing (Andrew)

It’s the end of January and I’ve already raced three times without leaving my house once. Every Saturday morning I’ve entered the Norseman Race Series on Zwift.

Racing on Zwift is a great way to keep your motivation up when training indoors. Not only do you get all the normal race feelings of “I’ve not prepared for this”, “why is everyone faster than me” and “Dear God, why did I enter this?” but it’s warm, so you don’t mind (as much!).

The Norseman Race Series is 12 week series of races over Zwift’s biggest climbs including, Alpe Du Zwift, the digital version of Alpe Du Huez.

I’ve been to Alpe Du Huez. I saw the Tour De France three years ago and walked from the base of the climb to corner 7 so I think I know exactly what it’s like to go very slowly up a very big climb. 🙂

And, though I’m basing this on memories of a hot French day three years ago, the climb in Zwift seems to be a very faithful version of the real climb, even down to the Scotsman at the side of the road walking up and wondering if he’s brought enough water for five hours on the side of a mountain. (This last bit may not be true).

The climb is not normally open for all Zwift riders. You have to be level 12 and above. Which I didn’t know, because I didn’t know that the experience points you collect had any bearing in game. So, if you want to try the climb then you need to enter a race unless you’ve already reached level 12.

If so, having others racing up the mountain is a great way to get to the top yourself. You can’t help but pedal harder when someone overtakes you, and you can’t help but pedal faster when you get near the finish and see someone just ahead of you and you decide that they are “going down!”.

Some tips for racing on Zwift:

  • Warm your legs up at the start and make sure you’re ready when the flag drops. I started one race 10 seconds before the start and, by the time I’d started spinning my legs, everyone else had blasted off.
  • Don’t use power ups. That’s cheating. Even if it’s allowed in the race, it’s still cheating – it’s digital doping! Don’t do it!
  • Do use real life power ups. If you’d have a gel in the real world and you’re racing for an hour or longer, have a gel with you too. It’s not doping if you can actually eat it and get a power up (unless what you’re eating is on the WADA banned list, then don’t do it either!).
  • Make sure to enter the right race. I’ve also tried some shorter races and these are categorised by power so that people race with others of the same ability. Races are graded A – E with A to D being increasing power and E being everyone. Of course, I entered a D. And got left behind…

Entering races on Zwift is fun and does give a sense of achievement missing from a normal session – unless your normal session finishes with a lap round the house, arms aloft and shouting “Championee!” in which case, well done you! 🙂

Andrew

My First Triathlon – The London Triathlon (Andrew)

Gordon Ramsay tried to kill me. Not once, not twice, but three times.

You’ve got to admire his determination.

We’d booked Sunday lunch at his then three Michelin star restaurant at Claridges. When we booked it, I said “no nuts – I’m allergic”. When we arrived, the Maître D asked if I had any allergies. I said, “yes, nuts.” He said, “we’ll make sure there’s no nuts on the plate.”

And then served me hazelnuts as part of my starter. Then more nuts from my main. And then, despite twice saying, “I don’t eat nuts!”, I was served a desert with some crunchy bits artistically scattered over the top. “Are those nuts,” I asked. The waiter said, “no”, then looked at them again. “I’ll ask the chef” and he took away the plate – and came back without the crunchy ‘nutty’ bits…

Afterwards I wrote to Gordon Ramsay to complain. The big man himself wrote back. “I’m very sorry that…” and then the letter went blank for half page before “yours sincerely, signed Gordon Ramsay”.

And all I could think was how many complaints does he get that he doesn’t even read the complaints letters to check what he’s apologizing for? But it did give me the perfect space to write my own apology in the space.

“I’m very sorry that I am a big twat, yours sincerely, signed Gordon Ramsay”

Thanks, Gordon!

Which was a bit harsh as I do like Gordon Ramsay because he got me into triathlons because he was competing in the first triathlon I tried.  In fact, he was only a couple of bikes away in transition.  And I remember reading that he used to get up at 5am to train and I thought, “well, if he can do it at 5am then it’ll be easy for me as I can run during the day!”.

I was so, so wrong…

I was working in London at the time and I’d entered the London Triathlon. I’d entered as a team and I agreed to run while my friend, Graham, would swim and a girl we knew from work, Sally, would cycle. It seems simple. He’d swim. She’d ride. I’d run. What could go wrong?

First, Graham had never swum outside. He was a strong swimmer. Had swum for his university but only ever in a pool. He borrowed a wet-suit and was near the front when he came out of the water. Then a man told him, “you need to take your wet-suit off”.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“You need to strip out your wet-suit and carry it to transition”.

“But I don’t have any trunks on!”

It hadn’t occurred to him that he might want to wear swim trunks. He thought a wet suit was enough.

“But you were borrowing it,” I said later. “Did you not want to wear trunks for a borrowed wet-suit?”

“I never thought about it,” he said.

“Clearly!”

I was watching in transition as he went from first to near last arguing with the race marshal about how much of the wet-suit he could keep on while not disqualifying himself from the race. Eventually, with legs pulled up and top pulled down and waddling towards us in what now looked like the Michelin man’s rubber pants, we started the bike race – and Sally admitted she’d never ridden a bike before in the UK.

She was South African, so that was okay, she knew how to ride on the left hand side of the road. But she’d been in the UK for four years so was actually admitting that she hadn’t trained at all. Not even to sit on her bike. A ladies bike. With side saddle and all.

We went from near last, to last.

And then I ran. The easy part. Though by this point Gordon Ramsay had gone home hours before.

And I ran. And I ran. And I kept going faster thinking “I can catch up with the man in second last place”.

And then I cam back to transition and thought: “that was quick and I’m glad this is over”.

Only to find that I was running laps and had three more laps to run.

D’oh!

I hadn’t checked the course at all.

Needless to say, we didn’t rise up the ranks, I started last and finished last.

Then, to cap it all, we found out the London Underground wouldn’t let bikes on the tube and I had to cycle Sally’s bike all the way back from Canary Wharf to West Hampstead because Sally swore never to ride again.

And I got lost and ended up in Wembley.

But, because Gordon Ramsay was doing it, we swore (no pun intended!) to come back the following year and do it right because “if that twat off the telly can do it, then we can do it too!”

Andrew

Ice Skating For Dafties (Andrew)

What is the point of ice skating?

Apparently, ice skating started back when cavemen decided to cross a frozen expanse by gliding across it by strapping bones to their feet – and that’s where it should have ended.

First Caveman: Dave – what are ya doing, mate?
Second Caveman: I’m using the bones of a woolly mammoth to reduce the friction between the sole of my feet and the ice of this here expanse.
First Caveman: Aye, Dave, I can see how you might want to reduce the friction in order to move faster by achieving an optimal glide but…
Second Caveman: What, Sebastian?
First Caveman: YER STRAPPING A BONE TO YER FOOT YA CREEPY WEIRDO!!!!

Yet they all joined in and didn’t stop, not even when Dave went out in the ice and fell through into the icy water.

Which is why I hesitate with ice skating. No sport should involve possible death-traps!

Unless…

Torvil and Dean may have got a perfect score for shoogling about on ice, but how much better would it be, if, two minutes into Bolero, instead of standing up, Jayne Torvill caught a sea trout with her mouth after falling through the rink?

Which isn’t to say I don’t like ice skating. I can see how strong and athletic you have to be to leap into the air, spin three times and then land on one leg while simultaneously doing the Floss. I can see that. But…

I hate ice skating. Or, to be specific, I hate me ice skating. Other people doing it is okay. It’s just not for me.

First, I can’t ice skate. Or skate. Or even stand. I fall over. A lot. So much, that spectators start to ask if I’m okay as I try and make my way round the ring, clutching the side and with an expression of pure terror.

I don’t get it. I know there’s a technique to skating but, whatever it is, I don’t have it. I just fall. And fall. And fall again.

And, what worse, knowing that I’ll fall, I went ice skating at the weekend and spent the whole time thinking “don’t fall on your left knee, that’s a bit sore, try and protect it. Just don’t fall!”

And I didn’t.

Well, fall on my left knee.

I fell on my right.

CRACK.

And now I not only hate ice skating, I have a massive bruise on my right knee.

And now, not only can I still not skate, I can’t run either.

I hate ice skating.

Andrew, Challenge Roth

New Year’s Resolution (Andrew)

Goals are meant to be SMART.

  • Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
  • Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
  • Assignable – specify who will do it.
  • Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
  • Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

Which is where most new year resolution’s fail. Resolutions are never SMART or smart. My resolutions involve

  • scoring a hat tick in the Scottish Cup final.
  • winning a gold medal at the Olympics.
  • do the floss.

Since I’m too old now for any of these to actually happen I’ve already failed my new year resolutions. They were DUM goals.

  • Daft
  • Unrealistic
  • Mad

But aren’t DUM goals the best kind? Who knows what you can do unless you set yourself a completely unrealistic, definitely daft, probably mad goal? Columbus wouldn’t have crossed the ocean, Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have stood on the moon unless someone somewhere had said to themselves “you know what, I can do this!”.

And most of the times you fail. But in the failing you’ll probably do much more than you ever would have done with a SMART goal because realistic goals are boring. That’s why, for this year, my goal is to WIN Challenge Roth.

Now, the last time I tried an Ironman distance race I completed it in 15 hours. Now the winning time at Challenge Roth might be half that at 7 hours 46 minutes, but that only means I need to go twice as fast. And, last time I did an Ironman, I stopped for a sandwich halfway through the bike course. That’s already 15 minutes saved, if I eat it on the bike.

And I’m not very good at getting out of my wetsuit. I really struggle with getting my legs out once the wet suit bunches up around my ankles. At Challenge Roth, they have wetsuit assistants who help you get changed. That’s an extra five minutes.

Now, I just need to find another 7 hours and 20 minutes and I’ll be on the podium!

So, this year I have set myself the challenge of winning Challenge Roth. And while I know the chances of me winning are quite small, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. Because I have a goal. A DUMB goal. And that’s the best goal of all!

Andrew

Watching Stuff 2018 (Andrew)

As move stars become telly stars, and telly stars become movie stars, and films become 20 part series culminating in Avengers: Infinity Series Finale War, I feel justified in combining favourite telly and favourite films into one this year.

Also, I watch them on the same sofa, so I’m including them in the same category! 🙂

Best Programme About Digging a Hole

Better Call Saul spent most of the year rock blasting an underground meth lab in Albuquerque but The Americans had almost an entire episode dedicate to digging up a coffin in tedious, tedious minutes until… well… watch it. Also, if you ever need to pack a dead spy into a suitcase then The Americans shows you how to meet your Ryanair baggage allowance with a foot to spare.

Best Film

Mandy, which is both unwatchable and something I never want to sit through again but also the one film this year that made me think: “I’ve not seen that before!”. Nic Cage. Heavy metal. A bag of cocaine? Demons! A DIY axe! Ken Barlow’s son’s penis?! The apocalypse???

Best B-Movie

Shout out to the old school action of Braven but the best b-movies have a rock solid plot and a brilliant bad guy and Better Watch Out had both. A film so good, if you google the reviews you’ll find many call it sick, awful and one of the worst films of last year. Which is all you need to know because the best b-movies get the worst reviews. (Also see Aquaman).

Favourite film

Your best film is never your favourite film. Your favourite film is the one you watch again and again. This year, there was only one film I watched twice (to go with the once I watched it last year as well). Superstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Brilliant. Unless, like Lesley, you hate Andy Samberg then this film will be called Superstar: Please Stop!

Best Thing I Haven’t Finished Watching Yet

The Haunting of Hill House.

Best Thing I Saw All Year

No contest. The Leftovers. The first series has good moments but the second and third take everything from six series of Lost and said what if we remade Lost with all the single episode stories about different characters, with a whole dollop of religion, fantasy, conspiracy, an island (Australia) and a random kangaroo instead of a polar bear – but actually had an ending? Best thing all year (except for Andy Samburg singing The Bin Laden song so I’ve got a clip of that instead).

 

 

 

 

 

Andrew

Music 2019 (Andrew)

Someone told me that you lose interest in music when you get to 40. Can’t remember who it was, can’t remember why we were talking about it, but, it stayed with me. I love music. And when I heard it I thought: “Not me, grandad, I’ll still be buying CD’s and tapes when I’m 100!”

I was wrong. I haven’t bought music in 10 years – thank you, Mr Internet! And, apologies to all those struggling bands not getting paid any more, I promise I’ll buy a ticket for your live show!

But, as I’m now 41, and officially older than 40, I do try and listen to as much new music as I can to prove that comment wrong.  I do sometime wonder why this comment stuck with me and not a useful one like “you’ll lose interest in cases and statutes when you get to 40!” and I would now be working furiously to be a top notch lawyer to prove them wrong. But, hey ho, I got music.

So, in a challenge similar to Iain’s – see his post – I  also tried this year to listen to different types of music. I tried jazz, opera, classic, techno and Abba. All the ones I would normally avoid (except country because no one should listen to country, not even for a Christmas timed music blog).  And this is what I learned:

I hate jazz.

I hate opera.

I hate any form of metal. Death. Thrash. Doom or -icca.

But… I did discover a love of modern classical, obscure German techno that goes BOOM, BOOM, BOOM and Kylie. (Who doesn’t love Kylie!)

Most of all I learned that music doesn’t have to end at a specific age because hearing new music is easier than it’s ever been. There’s millions of songs just a click away and the challenge now is not just to remain interested but to actually listen to music more than once. As soon I listen to an album, I listen to another then another and then it’s the next week and there’s more albums out and more tracks and I never get back to the songs I liked just seven days ago.

So, this year, when I was thinking of what music I loved, my favourites are those I returned to again and again such as:

Daithi – Have To Go

Calvin Harris should sue for plagiarism.

Sarah Blasko – Heaven Sent

Richard Marx should sue for ‘Hazard’.

Pictures of You – HMLTD

Lady Gaga should sue.

(I’m noticing a theme)

Confide In Me – Kylie (from the Abbey Road Session)

An original. Well, a live version of an original.

Teleman – Cactus

Finally, an actual original. Pity the rest of the album didn’t equal this.

Brockhampton – BOOGIE

And neither did this. But this is P A R T Y with a capital [expletive deleted – parental advisory warning]

The Joubert Singers – Stand On The Word – Larry Levan Mix 

Praise the lord, this list is nearly over because we have the two best songs of the year.

Let’s Eat Grandma – Donnie Darko

Ten minutes. Doesn’t get going for two of them but, when it does, does it beat…

Sufjan Stevens – Visions of Gideon

And it does. While Visions of Gideon is pure heart breaking Sufjan Stevens it has the in-built advantage of me loving everything Sufjan has does for the last 10 years. So, in the spirit of new music, this year’s best song is….

Donnie Darko and here’s a video of it live with an awkward Dutch man in the front row wishing that he was anywhere else.

Andrew

Getting Started On Zwift (Andrew)

_JCcDuLouXjLVLaTtgLsirQpoZoM4tkHRjjsfNVT3Sc-2048x1536

A few weeks ago I bought a smart trainer. Until then I had a dumb trainer, it would only do what I told it, and I told it to “woah – take it easy, there’s no need to go too fast!”

What I needed was a trainer with a PHD. That’s a trainer with a Pedal Harder Damnit attitude – and a smart trainer seemed the answer. A smart trainer is one that links to a laptop or tablet and adjusts your workout as you ride. And not just to make it easier, as I would adjust it, but it also makes it harder (damnit!).

With the trainer sorted, I knew I needed a training programme that would help me ride smarter too. I had a look at a few but Training Peaks seemed to require a spreadsheet and Sufferfest had the word Suffer in it’s title and who wants to suffer? Harderfest maybe? PushYouALittleBitMoreFest? But not Sufferbest? You might as well call it Quitfest. ‘Cause that’s what I’d be doing…

Instead, I tried Zwift on an iPad linked to my trainer because it promised I wouldn’t suffer as I’d be using it like a computer game. And, instead of spreadsheets like Training Peaks, I’d see a wee rider cycle round New York’s Central Park and the centre of London. It would be like Mario Kart!

Untitled

The first time I used it, I didn’t know what I was doing. My wee man on screen was surrounded by other riders. I tried to ride round New York’s Central Park and keep my speed around 20mph. And I didn’t get it. It was slow. The trainer would increase resistance as I rode up hills and I didn’t understand why because I’d just drop the gears to make it easier and then –

– someone shot past me and I thought “follow them!” and then

– a group formed around me and I was in a peloton and we’re all doing 25mph and I’m thinking “I can’t be dropped”.

– then I’m climbing a hill and a message is telling me that if I keep this pace I’ll be in the top 50.

And I think “Now, I get it!”. Zwift is for folk who need a bit of competition to motivate themselves. It’s a game of jealousy and better my neighbour. Even though you don’t know the people around you, you suddenly want to be better than them just because they’re real people too. You’re no longer training on your own. You’re not just Mario – you’re also racing Luigi!

Since then, I’ve spent around 10 hours on Zwift trying various routes and features. But, despite the ability to customise my wee man on screen, I’ve point blank refused to do so. I know I can change the colour of his socks but why would you?! This is Zwift not Barbiefest.

In a few weeks I’ll report again and see how a month of Zwift compares to a month of trying to cycle in Scotland in December.