RichRock : Running Free

These guys rule the roost with their DVD’s showing the best mountain biking action in the most creative way, using film as the media…

Watch… I can’t wait…

Haha!!! In my posting of photo’s on recent posts, I completely neglected to do an obligatory ‘new year‘ post. So here it is.

I have resolved to improve my personal life in one main way, which in the whole ‘cliched new year resolutions’ scheme of things, it to lose some weight and get fit.

So a little of my past, to understand where I’m coming from. I used to do road cycling, many years (10) ago. I would think nothing of eating up 30-40 miles 2-3 times a week, as I was unemployed at the time. I had a resting heart rate of 54bpm. I still had some flab, which would not shift, but I was fit.

I would love to return to something of these glory days of peak fitness, and my current lifestyle is not going to help that. Curse the DVD player, my love for foreign cinema, for making me sit on my behind, as my job now lacks any physical effort also!!!

I have planned to attain a return to fitness using an approved ‘ease in’ plan, which involves combinations of run/walks for eight weeks. I was never much of a runner, and hated the 1500m at school, so I find it amusing that I have started something which I used to hate, and it’s turned to something I enjoy. I guess one of the things being on a mountain bike taught me was that you must push the limits of what your body can do. I watched a trailer of a film, called ‘Spirit Of The Marathon’, which illustrated to me what running is all about. There seems to be an underlying philosophy that pretty much any other sport doesn’t have. It’s just you and the elements. No equipment (save shoes), no gadgets, racquets, wheels, clubs, etc. Just your legs. I’ve linked to the youtube video version below, although you can visit the site: www.marathonmovie.com.

So I’m into running. At the moment, I can last for 7 minutes. Not bad for someone who pretty much hasn’t run since school. I am desperately unfit, and am learning new things about pain, my body, and how I should treat it. Obviously, I’ve had digestive issues which are being investigated, but a diet geared towards running/general fitness if of benefit to me. Also, the nature of running and it’s physiological changes on the body will help, as my metabolism will change accordingly.

My new year resolution is an old, cliched one. But it’s by far the best one. And it’s nothing to do with resolutions, but with determination, willpower and a definite feeling of achieving something, even if other people don’t understand or appreciate it.

The aim of this? To complete a marathon. Had I thought earlier, I would have been getting ready for this year’s marathon in London. However, I believe that my fitness, the levels to which I need to achieve, are too great a stress on me, so I have decided that the London Marathon 2009 is a more realistic probability. It’s a definite goal, and I want to achieve it.

On a completely separate note - it was quite easy to place youtube videos on the site - so you may start to see more of them…

Well, finally, the weekend is here. I’m sitting here in front of my PC, listening to some mixes by Jonah and Gabriel, you can check em out at http://stickybeatz.com/wordpress/ for the awesome funky/tech/house mixes they post online. My favourite at the moment is Stickybeatz Volume four, about 37 minutes in. There’s an awesome tune that still gives me goosepimples!
Anyway, the babe came over tonight, we watched some Simpsons, had dinner together, and just talked about a few things I’m not going to type here. That was cool, great even. Got to go and photograph some hedgehogs tomorrow afternoon, but before that, my favourite weekend activity (church excepted) - Mountain Biking!! There should be a group of us, so that will be good. It’ll be good for me if this blooming headache goes away!
The nervous thing is that I’m meeting the girlfriend’s parents this weekend. That could be interesting, and we’ll see what happens. My parents seem to have taken to my babe, and they ask after her, how she’s doing. They’ll probably get her something for her birthday no doubt. It’s something of an occasion for me to have a girlfriend, so I’m sure they’ll do something. No worries if they don’t, but that’s my personal hunch. If my parents are reading this, don’t stress about that last part!!
Today in work was cool, just trying to figure out some custom code to do dynamic dropdown searches on specific table entries in MySQL. What do you mean that’s easy? Try that with someone who’s had to do a ‘Teach Yourself PHP in 24Hours!” in order to figure this out. One day I’m sure I’ll be figured out for a sham. I’m not a trained Web Developer, but I’ve self-taught myself what I needed to know. It’ll be interesting meeting one of our clients soon - he’s a Linux user! Hurrah! My first real contact with another human who uses Linux. Although he was surprised that I use it for a desktop environment - he asked me if I did everything on the command line!! I said I do a fair bit there, but also a fair proportion graphically. That’s the beauty of Linux, especially Ubuntu - you can choose to do things the graphical way, or dive into the machine and command line it all the way.
Anyway, my beer’s finished, and I’m going to bed.

Yes, at last, the weekend has landed. The weather was ok, so me and a friend went out mountain biking for the first time in a couple of months. We rode a trail that skirts round the edge of one of the local mountains, but goes up high enough so there’s a decent downhill the other side of it.
After recovery from that, I popped into town and spotted my girlfriend. She had been to the library to get some books. Reading is helping her to relax quite a lot so it’s good she had a few more books to get through.
Now I am waiting for my father to ring so I can go up and visit them. I also have an ulterior motive in that a training course I have written needs to be proof-read and tested for clarity. So it’s vital that is done this weekend, as I can then make revisions next week and have it all ready for the following week.
I’m enjoying using Wordpress, it’s a good system, fairly extensible, but my only issue is the whole tag thing. Categories cannot be accessed from a cloud, it’s a checkbox list that is more annoying the larger amount of Categories you have. As this is a new blog, it’s not going to have much, but I know over time it will have many many more.

And it comes when I should be nicely tucked up in bed…

Just going to do a little to-do list:

• Tweak the header image - scan a photo from my collection.
• Get the exported database of all my old blogger entries imported.
• Eat the rest of the pack of Cheddars.
• Add more functionality to the site.
• Define the site’s aims and objectives in a couple of separate pages.
• Scan the rest of my photo’s and have a download page.
• Go to bed so I can get up and go mountain biking.

And the curse of Arial continues. Today I did some research at work into web typography, and found this: sIFR - it stands for Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, which is a nifty way to say that someone has created a Truetype font in a flash .swf file, and it can dynamically replace standard text using CSS and javascript to id the relevant text. Cool. I think we’ll be using that at work real soon.
Anyway, the title of the blog - awesome evenings. Why? Just because they are. Spending time with the babe, or with a group praying together, or just on my own in the flat like now (the flatmate’s away) listening to some chilled dance tunes, writing this post. Evenings can be fun if there is a variety in life. I know, people can say variety is the spice of life, and seem to think that they can then do what they want to. To be honest, I sometimes don’t do what I want to in an evening, but it can still be fun. How? Simple. The fact that I am exercising a variety to my life. Many people who would claim to be bored are probably only driven by one or two things in their lives. For example, Playstation and PC. What fun is that? Or you could choose two things and still be bored.
Imagine if I went mountain biking everyday. I would get bored, not because I would get used to the adrenalin rush, but the same trail, same ride, it would lose its appeal. I love mountain biking because I do it most weekends (not every) and it’s often a different trail. The last time I went was awesome because me and my mate hit this fire road the other side of our local mountain, and it was a blast, it was fast and fun. Next time I ride that, it won’t have that new exhiliration, but I’ll want to do it faster, slide that corner, whatever. If I rode it every week I’d be bored.
Variety to what we do is essential. The same in our spiritual lives too. If we seek the same song styles, or sit in the same place, or react the same way to things, we will get bored. We have to look outside of the hole we are in and see new things. That’s why I love the praying with a different group, bringing something fresh to homegroup, etc. When I teach, I try to look at things differently. I see people light up because it’s new.
Anyway. I’m tired now. The cat allergy at my friend’s did it for me. I can breathe now, but man am I tired. I’ll post more tomorrow.