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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Building an observatory. Construction #50

Posted on April 1, 2019 by james

My 50th construction post!

Saturday was spent outside in the sun dealing with other domestic chores, but the sudden drop in temperature on Sunday meant no-one else wanted to be outdoors for any longer than they absolutely had to be, so I gathered up some 4×2″ with a couple of offcuts of 6×2″ and 8×2″ to make up a frame for the external observatory door (a frame for the door, rather than a door frame 🙂 I used the 4×2 to make the stiles and top rail, the 8×2 for the middle rail and the 6×2 for the bottom rail. Much as I’d have loved to join them all using dowelled mortise and tenon joints, it would have taken an age, so I just went for glued and screwed lap joints in the end. That still took more than long enough.

Once the frame was made I decided I’d fit the hinges and hang it before I fitted any of the cladding, the door being much easier to support when I could put my arm all the way through it. I needed a small amount of work with the electric plane to get it to fit, and that’s as far as I got. I still have to fix on some membrane, add the cladding, line the inside, fit a lock and put the door stop on the inside of the frame. I’m sure I have several locks lying about somewhere if I can just remember what I did with them. I must remember not to try to put cladding nails where I need to mortise the frame for inserting the lock (or try to nail the cladding on through the lock if I install the lock first).

Tomorrow I’ll try to get some membrane fixed on the front. At least then it should mean that there’s no possibility of rain getting into the scope room through the opening, and after quite a long period of dry weather it appears that rain is once again forecast for midweek.

No photos of the new door yet. I worked right down to the wire and didn’t have time before it was dark.

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Swimming, 29th March 2019

Posted on April 1, 2019 by james

Off to the pool today not really knowing what to expect. After yesterday’s set went so well it might have been another really good session. On the other hand perhaps that was just a flash in the pan. The set was:

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

As it turned out, I wasn’t able to reproduce yesterday’s form. I felt tired from the start and really couldn’t find the power in my arms. By rep six I’d already failed once, had another on rep ten and then managed a bit of a recovery before finally bombing out on rep twenty-one.

Not a great day, but such is the way of USRPT. I shall return to the pool next time with the target of doing better. I guess I did at least manage to hit 80km for my first three months this year. Considerably less than I was doing, say, two years ago, but much faster.

USRPT distance this year: 81,400m
Total distance this year: 83,950m

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Swimming, 28th March 2019

Posted on March 28, 2019 by james

I hard the pool to myself at the start of today’s session. I was expecting a tough set, having dropped down from a target time of 55s a week ago to 52s today:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target 52s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

I started out and just didn’t seem to be able to go slower than 50s! Even when I thought I’d slowed the pace a little I was almost always in the 49s. By halfway through I was getting a little concerned that I’d just burn out before the end because I’d gone too fast at the start. I can’t deny that the last three reps were quite tough, but when I got to the last one I pushed on the way back to be sure I made it and still ended up completing it in 47s. I think they must have put something in the water 🙂

I ended up with all but three reps being under 50s, those three being under 51s. I have to admit that I’m slightly bemused. A week ago I’d have struggled with this set and today it really didn’t seem any harder than it was doing reps three seconds slower then.

I’m starting to think that this kind of improvement can’t last and that I’ll have to start working towards improvements of 0.5s at some point soon, but next time at least I’m going to go for a target time of 51s and decide what happens from there when I see how it goes.

USRPT distance this year: 79,800m
Total distance this year: 82,350m


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Swimming, 26th March 2019

Posted on March 26, 2019 by james

It was all a bit of a rush to get to the pool today as we had a visit from a structural engineer to assess the barn we’re planning to convert to a holiday cottage that didn’t leave much time to make it to the sports centre. Fortunately I was only 15 minutes late getting there which left me enough time for my set, which today was:

  • 400m f/c warm-up
  • 24 x 50m f/c, target 53s, turnaround 75s
  • 200m swim down

The first half-dozen reps were all mid- to high-40s which was a bit worrying. I was sure I’d run out of steam later on at that sort of pace. Fortunately I managed to calm things down a bit and from then on most of the reps were between 50 and 51 seconds, with all but one of the remainder under 52 and just one somewhere around 52.2 when I messed up the turn.

I was quite surprised (and pleased) at how comfortably I’d made it through the set without any failures. I really can’t expect them all to go that well. I can’t deny that I felt very tired afterwards.

So, a new target time of 52 seconds for the next session.

USRPT distance this year: 78,000m
Total distance this year: 80,550m

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