Sunday just gone was our wedding anniversary. So I'd spent a few hours with the kids back in the Wyre Forrest, having a picnic and an hour's biking through the trees, giving D a few hours peace and quiet, before returning for the England vs Ecuador match at 4pm local time. (Sorry, no countryside photos this time!). A lot of things were riding on this match, but most important was whether D would be happy or miserable in the restaurant later on.
Thankfully, the result was a happy one. So we headed off joyously to a virtually empty Japanese restaurant, Wagamama, in Birmingham. We ate lots. It's hard not too as the food is just delicious and the service lightning fast. But all day today, I've just felt bloated. And even though I didn't feel like it, I dragged myself out the door into the evening drizzle to burn off miso ramen, yaki soba and plenty of gyoza, while sane people watched Switzerland Vs Ukraine.
Now, between my last post and this have been 3 runs. Thursday and Friday, both at 4:1 run:walk and this evening up to 5:1. Friday was strange, as I had a sudden urge to run, even though I normally keep (at least) one rest day between runs. So I just went with it and there were no problems. I was a bit concerned this evening that the biking yesterday might have strained something, but again – aside from a bit of stitch, no problems.
So it's all still going well. I've even started looking at the Phedippidations half marathon training programme, but that's too optimistic. Surely?
Mr Stumble
5 comments:
Andy ... great job! What did we tell you? We knew you'd get out to the 5:1 mark and just feel as if you could keep going! You're almost there.
I didn't find your comments offensive. I had a similar conversation with a couple of friends around pitch while our kids were practicing a few days ok. Those of us that enjoy football, really enjoy the sport. Most of the country couldn't care less. However, I do find it ironic that a country that will not get excited about watching its national team play football on the biggest international stage there is because there isn't enough action, has television channels dedicated to Bass Fishing. Now, I've got nothing against fishing; however, I'd posit that watching Beckham curve a penalty kick around a wall of defenders is at least as interesting as watching someone pull a 15 lb fish out of a lake.
Phil
Phil,
I'm relieved! Have you ever sent an email and regretted it as soon as you hit the send button? It was like that with the comment in question.
To atone, I've been learning all about baseball from the Wikipedia Baseball Portal. I thought soccers off-side rule was complex! However, I can see how the intricacies of baseball rules, once understood make the game complusive.
As for popularity of football - perhaps we'll hold further discussion until we can discuss it over a beer some day!
All the best.
Andy
Andy,
You published something about an "Atom Feed" on Ann's blog earlier today. What is an Atom Feed? What would I do with one? Where could I get one?
Phil
Phil,
It's weird doing email like this! I own the stumbleguy.com domain, so you might guess my email address!
One of the other reasons for me blogging, apart from keeping me on course, is to learn more about RSS - "Real Simple Syndication". Ecery blog on blogspot, and most other blog environments comes with a default feed, and you can opt to turn it off in the blog settings.
Don't though!
I check on the status of blogs and news services I subscribe to using a feed aggregator. I used to use www.bloglines.com where I have an account and still look at things occasionally. However, if you get Internet Explorer 7 (assuming you're not on a Mac) then it has a feed reader built in.
You give the feedreader the address of an atom or rss resource and every so often (say 1 hour) it checks to see if there has been a change. Every time you post an entry, your atom.xml file is updated by blogger and feed readers spot this, telling you there are new posts to read.
It saves you trawling through every blog or news site looking to see if a change has happened.
Your atom feed is at http://arizonaphil.blogspot.com/atom.xml
So, if you want to try it out, go to Bloglines and open a free account (I have no affiliation!!). In the account add a couple of feeds, say yours and mine (http://stumbleguy.blogspot.com/atom.xml).
You will find that as soon as you create the entry, all previous blog posts are shown and will then be marked as read, as you will see them all in a pane on the right hand side.
Every time you or I make an entry to our blogs, you will see the entry flagged as waiting to be read in bloglines.
If you read loads of blogs (I know you do!) then using an aggregator really starts making sense.
Next step up from this is a podcast aggregator - but you're already using one of these to get FDip!!! (iTunes? Juice?).
If you want a better description that makes more sense, try looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29
With email becoming increasingly unusable, RSS actually starts a new framework for personal communication - as this shows - although it's not a private conversation here - you can communicate in a SPAM free environment as both user identities are known and established.
But thats a few years off yet.....
Andy
Andy,
Thanks for the input. I'm dragging a bit right now (one very long day here in the upper mid-west). I'll check this out tomorrow. Sounds great.
Phil
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