Swimming, 15th October 2018

Posted on October 15, 2018 by james

Arrived poolside to find the pool empty today and so it remained for most of my set which was a repeat of last Thursday:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 54s, rest interval 21s
200m front crawl swim down

Today this felt much easier — first few reps in the high 40s, then mostly 50s and 51s for the rest of the set. I think I was over 52s once.

So, tomorrow… Target time 53s, rest interval 22s. We’ll see how it goes, but given today’s performance hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad at all.

USRPT distance this year: 62,300m
Total distance this year: 155,200m

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Building an observatory. Construction #22

Posted on October 14, 2018 by james

Not a good weekend weather-wise here thanks to “Storm Callum”, but nowhere near as bad as it seems to have been a few tens of miles north on the other side of the Severn Estuary, so I shan’t be complaining too loudly.

I overrode the objections of #1 offspring that “he wasn’t strong enough” and made him help me lift the roof frame into position. In the end it really wasn’t hard. I propped one end of the frame up on the end wall, then he “wiggled” the frame into position whilst I supported the other end. Once the first set of wheels reached the wall it was just a question of lifting them onto the rails and then rolling it along until the second set of wheels were in position.

Standing inside it looks enormous. The total wall height (including the sides of the roof) is now 2.08m which should be plenty large enough to allow the roof to be closed without needing to move telescopes out of the way.

I’d always planned to clad the roof with OSB and cover that with EPDM, but it was suggested in the last couple of days that I should consider PVC-coated box section steel sheeting. My main objection to that was the potential for condensation to form on the underside of the roof when it cools at night, but in fact it’s now possible to get anti-condensation coatings on the underside of the sheets. The idea was finally spiked however by the fact that delivery charges are very high considering the small number of sheets I need (if in fact the manufacturer will deliver small orders at all) and lack of guarantees over delivery times (because small orders have to be tacked onto the end of larger orders for manufacturing). Unfortunately it doesn’t appear there is anywhere selling these sheets locally either. So it looks like the OSB and EPDM solution will be the way I go.

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Swimming, 12th October 2018

Posted on October 12, 2018 by james

Late night at work last night and an early morning today left me feeling less than energetic when it came to swimming today. That added to the fact that the school session ate into swimming time again left me deciding to just do some technique work today, so it was back to working on tumble turns for the session.

USRPT distance this year: 61,050m
Total distance this year: 154,350m

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Swimming, 11th October 2018

Posted on October 11, 2018 by james

Tough day today. A new, faster set and my upper arms were feeling tired even before I’d finished the warm-up:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 54s, rest interval 21s
200m front crawl swim down

Like last time however, the first half-dozen reps were in the 47s and 48s, but then I got settled down and was hitting 50 or 51 pretty much every rep. I had one rep drop into the 52s about halfway through, but then got things back on track, had another 52
on rep 23 and then did a 51 and 50 for my last two reps, completing the set. I was surprised to have got through the entire set, I have to admit. I was expecting some difficulty on the first attempt given my recent performances on slower target times, but despite the tiredness I think I actually did better today than previously.

I don’t think I can attempt to repeat this one tomorrow however. I think I really will be too tired to manage that. I’ll think of some technique work to do instead.

USRPT distance this year: 61,050m
Total distance this year: 153,000m

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Building an observatory. Construction #21

Posted on October 10, 2018 by james

But for a foggy start it has been a lovely day here today, allowing me to skip off work for a few hours and get some welding done. So at long last, here we have it. Pretty much all the welding work complete (anything else I’ll do once the roof is in place).

The second horizontal brace on the right hand end should fit just above the roof of the warm room and press up against a lip on the top of the warm room roof to stop the wind blowing rain into the observatory between the two.

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Swimming, 9th October 2018

Posted on October 10, 2018 by james

Wasn’t sure what to expect today, having completed my current set yesterday and still feeling a bit of tiredness in my arms and shoulders. Things didn’t start well when I discovered that the goggles I’d removed from my bag to clean were still at home and I had to wear a spare pair 🙁 My plan was to attempt the same set as yesterday:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 55s, rest interval 20s
200m front crawl swim down

The first five or six reps were around 47 or 48 seconds and after that I settled into a reasonable pace at around 51s with a few reps dropping into the 52s, but I was making them all. I had a minor scare at rep 23 when I was over 54s, but got it back together for the last two reps and successfully completed the set. Then my spare goggles broke with 50m to go of my swim down 🙂

So, next time a new set with a target time of 54s and rest interval of 21s. Given that I’ve gone over 54s for at least one rep every time recently, that might be a bit more challenging.

USRPT distance this year: 59,800m
Total distance this year: 151,150m

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Swimming, 8th October 2018

Posted on October 8, 2018 by james

Back to the pool today for a repeat of last Friday’s session when I didn’t feel that I’d done very well at all:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 55s, rest interval 20s
200m front crawl swim down

Today went much better. The first half dozen reps were down in the 47s and 48s which is still getting a bit too aggressive at the moment if I want to feel confident of finishing the set, but after that I managed to keep them all in the 51s and 52s apart from a slip down to 54s for rep 24. So, all 25 reps made today and I felt very pleased with my performance.

USRPT distance this year: 58,550m
Total distance this year: 149,300m

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Building an observatory. Construction #20

Posted on October 8, 2018 by james

I had hoped to get to the point where the roof frame could be put in place this weekend, but the weather had other ideas and my time to work on the roof was limited to a couple of hours on Sunday morning.

I did get the bracing along the ridge line all welded into place, but that was the limit of what was possible.

My intention now is to get the rest of the pieces cut in the evening when it’s too dark to work and then do one more day of welding work at the end of which I’ll lift the roof into place. If there’s any welding left to do after that then it can be done with the roof in situ.

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Swimming, 5th October 2018

Posted on October 5, 2018 by james

Missed my intended session yesterday as I didn’t have a car to get to the pool, but I went today to attempt a new set similar to the last but with a reduced rest interval:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 55s, rest interval 20s
200m front crawl swim down

This was fairly tough. I had two fails. The first was on rep 6. I think I’d probably gone a bit too fast for the first five and after those I couldn’t control my breathing properly. The second was rep 11. After that things went ok, one or two reps drifting into the 53s and low 54s, but mainly around 51 or 52 seconds.

USRPT distance this year: 57,300m
Total distance this year: 147,450m

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Building an observatory. Construction #19

Posted on October 2, 2018 by james

The next step with the roof is to put some bracing across some of the joins, partly to strengthen them, but also to provide fixing points for the rest of the roof. I had some spare steel sheet to do this with, but cutting it took somewhat longer than planned as it was just too big to fit in the cut-off saw. I ended up doing it all with the angle grinder in the end, which took quite a while. Good job I bought some more metal-cutting discs the other day…

Anyhow, that done I got the frame back up on the saw benches so I didn’t have to grovel around on the ground too much whilst doing the welding.

Then it was just a case of working my way around, clamping a plate into position and welding as I went. The welding wasn’t that easy and I’ve not made as good a job of it as I’d like because the breeze was a bit gusty, but I think it’s ok if not very pretty.

In all I got half of the pieces attached before having to call it a day, though the ones on the roof are only welded on one side at the moment, whereas those on the sides are welded on both sides.

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