Swimming, 8th April 2019

Posted on April 8, 2019 by james

Gotta love Better’s website. First day of the school Easter holidays and their online pool timetable is a mess. The only way to find out what’s really happening is to get a piece of paper from the leisure centre with the actual timetable on. But I didn’t know that yet…

So, I arrived at the pool ready to swim only to find that it was actually a children’s session with floats and so on. Fortunately the life guards very kindly put a lane in just for me and I was able to get on with my current set:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target time 50.5s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

All things considered it actually went pretty well. If I’d not put in quite so many 48s reps I’d probably have made it through the entire set. As it was I started to drift into the 49s around rep fifteen, failed on rep seventeen and then stuck in the 49s until a fail on rep twenty-three.

I’m not desperately disappointed. Clearly I was doing well most of the time. I just couldn’t sustain things quite far enough when swimming at that speed. It’ll come.

On the way out I picked up a copy of the previously-mentioned bit of paper, so tomorrow I should be back at the right time for another try.

USRPT distance this year: 90,100m
Total distance this year: 92,650m


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Building an observatory. Construction #53

Posted on April 8, 2019 by james

A little at a time over the last week I’ve been lining the internal walls of the observatory, often just a couple of pieces in the evening. That has allowed me to finish off the insulation in the internal wall and I’ve now reached “lighting height” in the scope room. I need to get the positioning for the aluminium channel sorted out before I can continue with the upper sections of the walls.

I also need to think about how I’m going to hold the roof in place once the walls are lined as there’ll be no place for the sash clamps that I currently use to pull against. For much the same reason I also need to think about how the flap at the south end will be held in place.

But whilst I mull that over, I’ve also got the cladding on the outside of the door, and today I lined the inside and started to get the door stops in place. I had to put a temporary handle on the inside too, otherwise I can’t pull it closed.

This evening I also got around to taking a few photos of how things are progressing (yes, it is starting to look a bit like a sauna 🙂

Tonight the door is held closed by a timber prop, but it is the first time that the observatory could be said to be weathertight, a huge step forward.

Next must be a bit of a clean up as the inside is covered in sawdust at the moment, and then fitting the aluminium channel at which point I can finish as much of the lining as possible and then I have no choice but to put alternative locking mechanisms on the roof. Assuming there’s clearance I might look at using some over-centre latches for the time being, as they’ll be useful if I’m not going to be at home and want to leave the observatory secured.

Oh, I also need to fit a lock to the door. I have one somewhere. Just can’t find it at the moment.

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Swimming, 5th April 2019

Posted on April 5, 2019 by james

Same set as yesterday for today, hoping I could get a little better than a first failure at rep eighteen:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target time 50.5s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

I really did feel tired today though, and felt I was struggling from the start, though I was in the high 40s for many of the reps. In the end though I failed on rep fourteen and again on rep eighteen, after which I was able to complete the set. Not a bad result, perhaps, but I was slightly disappointed not to improve on yesterday.

USRPT distance this year: 88,400m
Total distance this year: 90,950m

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Swimming, 4th April 2019

Posted on April 5, 2019 by james

A new set for today, dropping half a second off my previous target time:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target time 50.5s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

Pretty much every time I go to the pool now I expect it to be hard work and I wasn’t wrong today, although I didn’t make it easy on myself by swimming so many reps in the 48s and 49s. In the end I had one failure, on rep eighteen, so I wasn’t unhappy with how things went. I’d have been very surprised to complete this set first time out.

USRPT distance this year: 86,700m
Total distance this year: 89,250m

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April, err, showers?

Posted on April 2, 2019 by james

I’ve just taken this photo from our doorway, barely five minutes ago.

I know that sleet was forecast, but this is hardly sleet. Winter seems to be slipping around the year until it starts in mid-January these days 🙁

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Building an observatory. Construction #52

Posted on April 2, 2019 by james

Taking advantage of the later daylight now we’ve switched to BST, this evening the observatory has started to take on the appearance, if not the temperature, of a sauna 🙂 It is in fact quite chilly out there are the moment — not a whole lot above freezing, and we’re forecast to get sleet from the small hours tomorrow.

Working with sheets of ply that are a third of the floor area of the scope room and storing all the others in the same space makes it a bit tricky to move about, but it does at least make work possible when it’s tipping down. This evening I have completed the lower section of the western wall of the scope room and I just have one section left for the eastern wall.  That should be fairly easy to sort tomorrow, and if I can get the internal door liner in as well then I should be able to fit the lower section of ply on the scope room side of the internal wall which means I’ll be up to “lights level” in the scope room, just in time for them to arrive towards the end of this week (I hope).

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Swimming, 2nd April 2019

Posted on April 2, 2019 by james

Off to the pool again today with hope in my heart that I might complete my current set:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target 51s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

When I walked out on poolside there were two lanes available, both occupied by swimmers clearly considerably slower than me 🙁 I decided I’d just have to get in and deal with the mess when it happened, but actually the swimmer in the lane I chose vacated it before I’d finished warming up.

I have to admit that I wasn’t feeling entirely up for a good performance today, but I just got my head down and kept going. My intention was to at least improve on yesterday’s first failure at rep 20. I put in quite a mix of 50s and sub-50s reps, probably around 50/50 of each, but by rep nineteen I was really starting to feel tired and it just became a matter of hanging in there. The last two were very tough, but on the second length of the final rep I really pushed hard to get back in time and actually managed a 47s 50m, which seems pretty good at that point.

So, another completed set and time to make it more difficult again. As I’ve previously posted I think it might be time to start dropping the target by half a second after each completed set in order to maintain a balance between making the set harder and making it so hard that insufficient swimming takes place to stimulate an improvement, so my target time for the next session will be 50.5s.

Looking through my records for last year it appears that I have never completed a set with a target time faster than 51s so even if it is half a second, this next one will be a big step forward. More so because at that time I was doing open turns because I couldn’t stay on the pace doing tumble turns. Since then I have gone back to the drawing board and will now be doing tumble turns every time, so there should be more improvement to come.

USRPT distance this year: 84,950m
Total distance this year: 87,500m

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Building an observatory. Design #4

Posted on April 1, 2019 by james

Seems a long time since my last “design” post (and indeed it is — nine months or thereabouts), but that’s largely because I’ve not had to think too much about what I was doing. Once the basic plan was decided much of what has happened thus far followed on naturally.

Now however I need to start thinking about electrics, and in particular lighting, as I’ll need to know what I’m going to do as I work through lining the walls.

Discussing the lighting with someone who is a little further ahead with their own build than I am led me to believe that their solution, about which I did originally have concerns if I were to use it, would actually work in my case. So the intention now is to install multi-coloured LED strip lights in a recessed aluminium channel in the walls, all the way around from the window between the warm room and the scope room to the external door. The LED strips come with red, green, blue and white LEDs, but I’ll just ignore the green and blue ones, using dim red or bright white depending on my needs at the time. My intention is to fix the ply lining sheets horizontally, so that the recessed channel can sit on top of them, 1220mm off the level of the floor.

I have also ordered a wifi-attached controller for the LEDs, so I can turn them on and off from an app on my phone or similar device. It’s also possible to use a wall-mounted controller and I may do that if I don’t like using the phone, or I may attempt to hack the protocol for the controller (assuming someone else hasn’t done so already) and do my own thing. Looking at the images of the wall-mounted controller I’m inclined to believe there’s some sort of PWM control system with the pulse being created by connecting and disconnecting the return line from the LEDs. Otherwise it would have been quite nice just to have a standard domestic wall switch unit with “red” and “white” switches.

All the parts have apparently now been dispatched, so I should see what they actually look like in the next few days. The LED strips come in ten metre lengths and I think I’ll end up using nearly all of it. If it looks good then I may well look to do the same thing in the warm room ceiling, but I won’t need anywhere near as much of it — perhaps two strips about 2.4m long, or a single U-shaped run where the bottom of the “U” is above my desk.

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Building an observatory. Construction #51

Posted on April 1, 2019 by james

Late last week I needed some timber from the builders’ merchant for another job, and to get them to deliver it I decided to order the ply for lining the internal walls. That wasn’t supposed to turn up until tomorrow, but it arrived just after lunch today. The first job of the evening then was to get that all under cover in case the weather forecast for the remainder of the week is correct.

That done I covered the outside of the door with breathable membrane, and as there was still sufficient daylight (thanks, BST), took a photo.

That done, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to fix up one of the sheets of ply, just to make a start on it. There aren’t too many sheets that are going to go up without cutting, so I’ll try to get them done first and get materials out of the way more quickly. I also want to get one side of the internal wall covered so I can finish off the insulation.

Before I can complete the cladding I’ll need to do some work for the lighting. More details for that probably belongs in another “planning” post however.

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Swimming, 1st April 2019

Posted on April 1, 2019 by james

Off to the pool this afternoon for another attempt at my latest set:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target 51s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

I was first into the pool because there was a school session beforehand, but more swimmers than usual turned up whilst I was warming up and it started to get a little busy. I ended up stuck between two swimmers who were both making quite large bow waves and the water became a bit choppy, which isn’t something I enjoy.

Then about halfway through my set someone joined in next to me, splitting the two lanes (there were no lane ropes in today) swimming breaststroke. I don’t really mind people swimming that close as I don’t take up a lot of room myself, but she just didn’t appear to be able to swim parallel to the side of the pool. She might start from the shallow end perhaps a metre and a half from me, but by the time she’d reached the deep end she was swimming down the lane line I was using. This isn’t a great situation to be in when swimming front crawl 🙁

Fortunately the swimmer the other side of me left fairly soon after and she moved into their position, but not before we’d had a few near misses, one before I’d even breathed after coming off the wall in the turn. Hey ho 🙁

Anyhow, the set… It went much better today than on Friday. Despite the near misses I managed to complete nineteen reps before failing on twenty and then finished off the last few reps in the set without failing again. It would be nice if that means I can complete the set next time, but I’m probably at the point of going as fast as I’ve ever managed now, so perhaps I can’t expect progress to be too fast.

Talking of progressing, I think from here on in I’m going to drop the target time by half a second each time I complete a set unless I’m clearly managing it easily. At the moment it feels like a more realistic target, rather than knocking off an entire second and having a large number of failures.

USRPT distance this year: 83,150m
Total distance this year: 85,700m

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