If you’re going to bother driving to Sherwood (40 minutes drive from central Nottingham), then you might as well drive out to the Dark Peak (eg. Rowsley or somewhere that way – 50 minutes drive), or Ambergate (30 minutes drive), for some riding with hills and stuff.

Having said that, the stuff near Ambergate / Cromford whilst definitely technical, and definitely good for 2 hours or more (you can link it in to a hundred miler without excessive road riding!), is mostly a bit unofficial and hard to describe where it is if you don’t know or have someone to ride with, whereas Sherwood Pines, whilst flat and easy, is at least easy to find.

The windows 7 on the lumia is about to be superceded by windows phone 8, and there isn’t going to be an upgrade for existing phones. Meaning hardly any new apps likely to come out. [wp8 apps won’t work on wp7 I think]

Does endomondo still do it entirely based on the full route distance and the average speed over the full route rather than on the actual time at each km?

It used to, and that was silly annoying, because I obviously go faster on the flat second half of my commute than the slow first half, so I’d always be behind for the first half then slowly catching up for the second half, making it meaningless.

of course you could always do the smart thing and not patent stuff when you really don’t want to tell people how you do it. ie the answer might be 4, but you can get there by yourself pal.

On the patent side, that’s kind of the argument against software patents in a sentence.

If you see that on an iphone, you can pinch two fingers to zoom, you basically know everything about what is covered by their ‘pinch to zoom’ patent, and assuming you’re a software developer, you could build software that does it. Whereas with a traditional patent, for example for a medical device, without the information given in the patent, you’d have to dissect the device to try and work out how it does whatever it does, for example you first see an x-ray machine, you know it shows pictures of the inside of the body, but you don’t immediately know how you could create a machine that does it.

What they have patented is not how to zoom an image based on two finger positions using some top secret algorithm to do it (which is just basic geometry and used in pretty much any old imaging soft, so obviously not patentable in itself), rather they’ve been allowed to patent the very idea of tracking two pinching fingers in order to zoom into an image.

So basically, much of the stuff these user interface patent fights are about is stuff where there is a patent for doing something, rather than really a patent for a method of doing something (which could like you say be hidden in the secret sauce of the software of the device), although they do use a bit of obfuscation in the patents to make it sound vaguely like it is a method of doing something. Basically, they are outlawing 4, rather than outlawing the use of 2+2 to make 4.

Obviously Apple are very big on this type of patent, because they are primarily innovators in fancy software, whereas old-school companies who make the parts that live inside apple stuff (eg. Samsung), or old technology mobile phone companies like Nokia have far more of the patents on the actual innards of devices (eg. things like radio transmission hardware).

Obviously whether allowing that is a good idea is an open question, and I know there are very clever IP people on both sides of the fence who know a lot more about the issues than me, but that is basically how it is.

I was going to say unicycling too (and unicyclist.com in particular). It is shocking how easy it is for even a complete non-organisational idiot like me to run and publicise an event with the help of internet forums, facebook etc.

One thing that is interesting about the internet is how accessible the ‘big’ names in minority sports are – I can think of several world record holding athletes I’ve ridden with, along with the owners of several of the companies involved in unicycling, and I am far from the most keen or skilled rider myself.

I wouldn’t say we collect art, but we have a couple of Polish communist era posters on our wall, and if I had oodles of money to spare we’d probably have more, but most of them are a bit expensive. We have one of the Cyrk polish circus posters , and a 1960s one promoting bike riding in Poland which was very widely printed so not super expensive (like this one: http://www.polishposter.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=0042 ). And some early 20th century Japanese prints which I can’t remember what the story behind them is, I think they might be woodblock prints, but I can’t remember what they were for. Oh and a small print of a Lucienne Day fabric pattern. Bit of a random hodgepodge of originally commercial/promotional stuff.

Joe

500m is only 10 or 11 minutes or so swum breaststroke hard in a wetsuit (obviously dependent on wind, tides, your fitness etc. it could be a bit longer but it isn’t going to be more than 15-20 minutes surely). Personally I wouldn’t be worrying too much about wetsuit rash or anything, just about being able to get the darned thing off afterwards.

The best advice for sea swimming, is go where you want to go, don’t piss around zig zagging and swimming further than you need to go. To do this you need to sight – before you get in, look for the buoy (assuming you’re swimming round a course with buoys) and if possible spot something tall on the horizon directly behind it, swimming directly towards that will get you close enough to the buoy in case you can’t actually sight off that (sometimes if the waves are high you can’t see it at all). Swimming breaststroke you can sight every stroke which makes this really easy.

Oh and if you’re going through waves swimming breaststroke, try and time your stroke so that when your head goes down, it goes under the wave and it comes up out the other side. Saves you getting a face full of saltwater, and is supposedly faster too.

No helmets here, on or off road. No trailer injuries yet in well over 1000 miles (possibly coming up to 2000 now I think about it). Haven’t come anywhere near crashing it ever, I don’t ride it offroad anywhere near as recklessly as if I was riding alone.

We started off with the baby sling, and I can’t see how you’d fit one into that comfortably.

She’s fine wearing her bike hat on her bike now for anything from pottering in the garden to riding the bmx track, and I can safely say that the helmet appears to work for the kind of crashes she has had (a couple of high speed faceplants).

Joe

Standard dynamo hubs are limited to 500ma output but unlimited voltage, unless you fit the special voltace limiter (intended for old fashioned bulb lights, to stop them blowing bulbs).

Exposure light looks nice, but 200 quid for a light without a battery or charger or anything! Ouch. I guess it is t_e first commercially available proper off road dynamo, so they can charge whatever the hell they want, but I just hope it’s really successful so that some cheaper brands will start making good dynamo lights.

I really rate the strider balance bikes (strider the brand not the raleigh strider).

Very light (lighter than a rothan), pretty much the lowest possible seat height for a 12inch wheel (I think lower than a rothan), really well built, and a wide choice of colours. Particularly for small kids the weight makes a big difference.

They just seem like they really thought through what a balance bike needs to be rather than just downsi°ing a normal bike, things like having super light plastic wheels which make it easier to pick up for little kids [there is also a metal wheel upgrade so that adults can ride them too).

Oh, and the importers are also nice people, run weekly events for toddlers in Manchester and Birmingham at the big bmx tracks there, and big ‘Strider World Cup’ races which are great fun (the two year old category was a particularly comedy event!) – quite community oriented too – at the one I went to they had nearly 100 spare bikes for people to borrow who didn’t have one, and it was obviously attracting loads of local kijs who didn’t ride yet.

Cost less than the islabikes too which is nice

For us, the whole thing was quite useful, and the group of friends afterwards was a nice bonus too.

Contrary to what others are saying I actually found our NCT group leader was very positive and helpful about what happens if the natural-birth approach doesn’t work, she did a big session about the various interventions and I’m genuinely glad I was there.

Yes, us too. It seems like a bit of a lottery obviously from the posts above, but they aren’t necessarily pushing a particular thing as the only possible thing and everything else as failure.

(Apart from breast-feeding counsellors, they can all **** right off, **** judgemental nazis the lot of them, and they really are unqualified.)

Our NCT group leader was also one of these and was jolly useful, so again not guaranteed whether they are good or bad.

The midwife was good too.

Don’t get me started on our health visitor though – pretty much everyone locally doesn’t get on with this one particular health visitor, heard a few stories now.

Slime in the tube and schwalbe tyres rather than the manufacturers ones = no more punctures and probably less faff than tubeless.

Unless it is an old mac (pre 2008 or so), surely what you are calling a ‘mini vga’ is actually a mini-dp?

If so, you want a mini displayport to hdmi adapter that goes straight into the mac and the tv, and don’t want to go to vga. They’re cheap, any old one will do (even the apple one is not ridiculously expensive).

I think you usually have to run sound separately, although on newer computers they can put sound down it.

if it really is an ancient mac, it doesn’t have dvi does it? Some of them had dvi, which is easy to convert to hdmi as well as the vga.

With one of them plugged into the router (and the other wireless), I get 1ms ping in both directions.

With both of them hardwired together direct, I get <1ms ping time.

Joe

Further to this, if from either device I ping the router (even at the same time on both devices), it takes 1ms

To my work is 5.00 return – not bad for a 30 mile round trip. not to mention being cheaper than the sevene quid a day parking at work.

to the next village single is about 3 quid – a lot for 3 miles.

So I guess it can vary wildly as to whether it’s cheaper than the car.

Having said that, we don’t use our car much during the week, it’s more of a toy thing for weekends, and I worked out it cost us about a tenner a trip in fixed costs – it is nice to have it, and there are various personal reasons why we want it, but financially there is no way it is cheaper than a mix of public transport and taxis like we used to.

3. The anti-competitive ethos has not been beneficial (ie, prizes for all)

Which ‘anti-competitive ethos’? Does that really exist? Has anyone actually seen this first hand (as opposed to ‘friend of a friend’ stories about everyone’s a winner races and rubbish like that?)

4. ” Some” teachers have “have not wanted to join in and play their part.”

What do you mean their part? If they’re not PE teachers, then their job is not to organise sports. If they are PE teachers, then their job is to organise PE during their working day. Along with that, the failure to prioritize sport in the school rankings etc. has meant that many schools have stopped employing specialist PE teachers at all.

Organising out of school sports clubs is something that teachers can choose to volunteer for, but it is hard to argue that by not doing that, they are ‘not taking their part’. Coincidentally in a lot of private schools, teachers are paid to do out of core hours stuff like organise sports teams, so more of it gets done.

Arguing that teachers have a duty to do out of school sports, is pretty hypocritical unless you also volunteer time at your workplace to run out of work time sporting activities for your colleagues and think that everyone should do the same.

The depressing thing about this speech is that it is just a rehash of big speeches that Tessa Jowell made (apparently in 2004) about doing sports days and all that.
( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-105459/Put-Sports-Day-track-schools-told.html# )

Personally, I am pretty fit, I’ve cycled most places since I was about 6 and continue to do so, swum most weeks (and nowadays swim quite a lot, and run a bit too). I really hated PE though. It was a load of rubbish, only really aimed at people who were good at a particular small range of competitive sports (rugby, football, cricket, basketball etc.), and with no real support for anyone other than the good kids. It didn’t ‘build my character’, it just meant that I grew up into someone who didn’t give a damn about those sports, and who only does exercise because I’ve always ridden bikes for fun. If I hadn’t have been a cyclist in the first place, I’m sure I’d be like many people I know, and do next to no exercise now.

All this talk of ‘competition’ ignores the fact that inter-school competitive sport, sports days etc. only really help with the fitness of people who are gifted at those sports, who by definition are usually pretty fit and active already. What about focusing on how exercise can be a fun and fulfilling thing to do, how even if you are a fat slacker, going on a bike ride or going for a swim can be a laugh, and coincidentally how it feels nice to be fit and fast.

Do you know what you’ve done wrong?

Have you asked on phone fixy type forums if there’s anything obvious you might have done wrong?

Just that when I replaced the screen on my phone (not an Apple one though), I missed clipping in a couple of tiny connectors, and dislodged one other one accidentally, and to start off with it wouldn’t read the sim card, and the gps wouldn’t work. Was an easy fix one I found someone to tell me what I needed to check for each problem.

Plus I have an upgrade available.

So, whats a good non smart phone these days?

Don’t take the upgrade – just go to sim only contract. Only a complete idiot would buy a non-smart phone on a contract – they typically cost about £20, whereas sim only contracts are dirt cheap compared to most with-phone contracts, meaning you pay a fortune for the phone – worth it for a £600 smart phone, but not so for a £20 normal phone.

Even with smart phones it is often a bit of a close thing – I checked recently and calculated someone’s phone was costing him 25 quid a month over the same sim only contract, ie. £600 over the two years, which would have bought him the same phone. And like a lot of people, he probably could have gone down to a £10 or £15 a month contract and still not have used his minutes, meaning that he was really spending closer to £900 on the phone (which as a unlocked phone is approx £500).

What a nice video. Rose (2 and a bit) really liked your other video of the 3 year old Alex riding singletrack on the balance bike – she’s watched that a few times before heading out on her bike – I’ll show her this one after she bikes home from the childminders tonight.

Thats great, He can ride really well. I just can’t think of anywhere for novices in the Peak where my daughter could ride singletrack. (when she starts to pedal).

I’d be up for some tips on this too if anyone knows good places.

We’ve tried a few places that worked okay – if you happen to be towards Matlock / Derby, we’ve ridden a little at Shining Cliff in Ambergate (the main paths not the mentalist downhill tracks), and there are some there that are fine, but a certain amount of ‘daddy carry bike’ moments. Same goes for Black Rocks if you know it – some bits of the singletrack there okay, and there are always the big wide high peak trail bits if you don’t get on with the singletrack (and little narrow gauge trains to ride on a Sunday in summer). Oh and we had a good time riding the main path on Froggat Edge – which is not a tight singletrack, more a very tame version of a classic Peak District rocky descent – very gentle descent, with a few tiny Rocks and things, but nothing too scary (check it out on the video of her here) – not somewhere I’d ride a bike as an adult, because it’s too busy, but running with a kid on a tiny bike seems fine, and there’s some lovely picnic spots on the rocks. None of that is massive loops or anything, but complete beginner kids are only going to go a mile or so anyway, so it doesn’t matter too much.

I think there’s probably a lot of places I wouldn’t really know because you wouldn’t ride a bike there – I know some of our local woods are a bit too dog walkery for proper bike riding, or the trails are too short for a decent ride, but they are just right for me running whilst Rose rides.

Also, I don’t know quite how it works with bikes with pedals yet, but I find Rose will go down a surprising amount of stuff if I give her the option of a hand on the front slowing her down on anything too steep. I tend to run rather than ride with her right now, so I can catch her and stop her if she’s about to do something silly! I wouldn’t take her down Cave Dale or ‘The Beast’, but pretty much anything that is smooth or only has small rocky steps without big consequences for falling off the track seems good.

To get it running squeezebox stream and all the automated stuff you’re talking about would be beyond me i think. your plan sounds good though!

Yeah, I’m not sure if mine’ll be fast enough for much streaming either – at least not video. It’s basically just a cheap and cheerful emergency backup plan – I’m not expecting to run all our music off it or anything. Although now you say that, it has an audio output, so I could stick another one behind the hifi, and build a web interface to choose the music that is streamed. Hmmm. More tinkering in the future maybe.

Joe

Alvaston’s fine, it’s not Surrey but your bike will be fine locked at the side of the track, or why not give it a go, the local CX races used to use it!

I’d love to, but her majesty doesn’t really have the sense to ride things on her own without daddy running alongside yet, and quite often gets stuck half way up any steep jumps! I think it might be a bit much on 23mm tyres with a bike trailer attached anyway.

furry muff. just (IMO) i will NEVER jump much at Derby. the commitment/speed required for Derby is just out of this world.

We’ll not be doing proper jumping, she’ll just be zooming around on her little bike. It appears from their website that there is a pump track & skatepark for if the main track is too big (which it probably is from the sound of it), and if the worst comes to the worst and it’s all too mental, or the track is busy with people, it’s a new park with new swings to play on, and there’s a tearoom, so she’ll have a good day.

This is probably useless to you, but I’m a sad nerd, so I’m building my own cheap one, out of a raspberry pi and a bunch of drives, USB enclosures etc. that I have hanging around.

Plan for mine is big disk to store photos on, plus a magic script to upload all photos to a flickr pro account as they come in for off-site backup. Possibly videos -> youtube also (although obviously they don’t keep the original, or short videos -> flickr – I don’t shoot much video and it isn’t super important or good quality.

It won’t be super fast or anything, but I was just shocked at how much proper NAS enclosures cost, and most of them don’t even let you write your own scripts for them, for off site backup or whatever, so you’re stuck with whatever they support. It should also be quite low power which is nice – some of the NAS enclosures are quite high power, so it’s worth paying attention to that.

Not sure about pump tracks though… don’t think I have ever seen one around these parts…

The sign at Rushcliffe says ‘bmx / 4x / pump track’ – it kind of seems like a slightly downhill bmx track to me, but I am no expert on these things at all.

mansfield
bulwell
chessy
derby (huge)
bolehills
wincobank
kimberworth
brampton
and…. there’s one at a park near chp that i forget the name of.

Brilliant, that’s quite a list. Thanks.

I’m thinking I’ll give Derby a go – I’m guessing early on a Thursday morning it won’t be super busy, even in the holidays? From this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAjAjY5-0E) that bit of it looks like just the sort of thing we’re looking for – ie. I’m not too terrified just looking at it! It’s also a sensible distance away – is hard work towing daughter dearest + trailer + her bike long distances up towards Sheffield / across to Mansfield way, whereas the way to Derby and Alvaston is flat.

Not sure about pump tracks though… don’t think I have ever seen one around these parts…

The sign at Rushcliffe says ‘bmx / 4x / pump track’ – it kind of seems like a slightly downhill bmx track to me, but I am no expert on these things at all.

mansfield
bulwell
chessy
derby (huge)
bolehills
wincobank
kimberworth
brampton
and…. there’s one at a park near chp that i forget the name of.

Brilliant, that’s quite a list. Thanks.

I’m thinking I’ll give Derby a go – I’m guessing early on a Thursday morning it won’t be super busy, even in the holidays? From this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAjAjY5-0E) that bit of it looks like just the sort of thing we’re looking for – ie. I’m not too terrified just looking at it! It’s also a sensible distance away – is hard work towing daughter dearest + trailer + her bike long distances up towards Sheffield / across to Mansfield way, whereas the way to Derby and Alvaston is flat.

Nice one. I expect next weeks video he’ll be dropping in to the halfpipe!

We took Rose (who is two too) down the local pump / bmx track the other day (Rushcliffe track). I can recommend that – lots of lovely smooth whoopy bits. She can’t quite get up most of the jumps without a push, but was enjoying the frankly teriffying speeds possible on the downslopes of the jumps and out of the start gate. Did three full runs and then had to stop because I had no energy left from running round after her.

oh, and mountain biking is a laugh too – not super steep, but narrow and slightly descending seems good we’ve ridden Froggat Edge and Shining Cliff Woods, both were a laugh.

Rose has a decathlon ‘kiddy one’. Now we’ve managed to teach her to do up the straps, it is fine. It is very lightweight. She has crashed pretty hard with it (includihg faceplanting at faster than my running speed on a mud covered asphalt track a couple of weeks back) and it appears to stay on and leave her head uninjured. They do a decent range of sizes they are quite lightweight compared to ones that just do ‘small kid’ and ‘teenager’ sizes or whatever.

She also has an expensive and fancy ‘crazy stuff’ tiger helmet, which looks lovely, but is bigger and heavier, and every time we’ve tried to put it on she screams her head off. I think it is just too bulky.

I cannot resist another showoff moment, so here she is riding with it on (when she was a bit on and off as to whether she’d do the straps, hence them sometimes being undone):

As for it being silly – no sillier than athletics or swimming, is it?

Just the same, they even have indoor and proper events too (marathon and 10k swim). Just a slightly different balance between sports as to which ones most people do (eg. in swimming, most people don’t do outdoor events, because they are all big girls blouses or something).

Copilot is very good and cheap enough that you can afford to pay the developers for it.

If you’re not used to driving in France, turn on the speed limit display / warning, very useful because it converts it to mph so you can see it at all times and also knows about the funny red town signs that don’t have a number on but mean a 50kmh limit.

Oh and personally I’d recommend making as much use of the toll roads as possible – if you’re going any distance south they save masses of time and don’t cost all that much.

There was a which report on helmets. Most of them passed the CE tests, but they ran some slightly more hardcore testing (simulating whacking it against a kerb I think it was), and some of the really cheap like £10 ones actually failed that, whereas the £30 ones were fine. So really really cheap helmets might not be as good.

Oh hang on, it’s on this page – the mean I said up there is right, this page has the variance too:

http://blog.cordiner.net/2010/06/16/calculating-variance-and-mean-with-mapreduce-python/

the formulas under ‘parallel statistics’ are what you want. I suspect it may be a bit mathsy for you if you’re not used to greek letters and that.

Joe

Yes, you can – you can calculate the mean pretty easily –

if groupmean(x) is the mean of group x, and groupsize(x) is the number of people in group x, then

mean = (groupmean(1)*groupsize(1) + groupmean(2)*groupsize(2) + … ) / (total number of people)

I think you can do similar with variance (which is standard deviation squared), but I have a cold and my brain is not working well enough to work it out.

Pelican sell these cases in the US – take out the memory card insert and you’d have a waterproof and rugged box that’s small enough to fit into a pocket. Likely to be available soon in the UK . . .

ipX4 water resistant – ie. not waterproof – designed to be splash proof. No good for sitting underwater for an hours swim.

Try a small canoeing dry bag as they are designed to be waterproof even when immersed. LOMO do good stuff at sensible prices

Aha, the small ‘dry boxes’ that LOMO make appear to be something like what I might need (and they say they’re waterproof enough for swimming). Annoyingly they say that their small and jolly convenient looking drybag isn’t waterproof enough for swimming (it appears most drybags aren’t really, because even in canoeing you don’t usually leave the kit completely underwater for hours at a time).

Hmm.

Ziploc bags = not waterproof enough, leak at the zip bit after a while.
Bin bags = not waterproof, not sturdy.
Double fold over plastic ‘swim wallets’ – don’t work – leak at the top.
The roll top nylon bags – I’m guessing they’ll leak somewhere when bashed around and submerged for a long time.

Essentially I’m looking for something that will cope with being underwater for an hour or more, and won’t mind a little bump against a rock or whatever every so often.

Aha – maybe this will do the job:

http://usstore.aquapac.net/explore-product-range/backpacks-drybags-pouches/keymaster-fits-asthma-inhalers-uss608.html

You can get a box with a pin-keypad that screws onto a wall and holds a spare key. Seen them for elderly people’s houses, Nurses / home help or whatever they are seem to like to have them fitted, so they don’t need to carry keys for all the houses they visit. Low tech (no batteries required) and cheap, and your door is still normal.

Joe

Ours we went and saw, and she seemed nice, which is the big thing. Other than that, the house was clean, they get outside to do things, and walk round the town when they need to go out, rather than being driven everywhere, so lots of outside time, which we liked. Oh and not too fussed about early years learning framework and all that target driven teaching stuff which personally I think is a bit of a waste of time.

We also talked to someone we know who runs baby activity groups, which this childminder happened to go to, and she said that our childminder was very active and involved with their kids there, whereas a lot of the childminders were more just taking the kids to the groups and sitting back and having a cup of tea. So I guess people who know the childminder would be a good one.

Worked out great for us. Lovely childminder, Rose has a great time, and they know up at the childminders to unleash her outside a lot which means she comes home tired, which is impressive as tiring out Rose is a
bit of a mission (eg. when I had her on Thursday, we did: picnic and bike riding and tree climbing and jumping in a lake in the woods, then an hour and a half of swimming after lunch, then another bike ride after dinner, and just about managed to tire her out enough that she wasn’t asking for more playtime at bedtime.)

Joe

Dynamo hub, and probably a B&M cyo for the light. Unless exposure have built their fancy really good dynamo light yet, which will be way better (although that’ll blow your budget I guess).

No charging, next to no extra weight in my case (couple of hundred grams on the hub, but the light units weigh significantly less than a battery light – especially one with enough batteries for a regular 30 mile commute), always attached, bright enough for road riding. Brilliant for unexpected late nights in summer. The b+m ones even have a light sensor so they magically come on when you go through a tunnel, or when it gets dark because there’s a storm. Oh and you can wire in a rear light too, which auto-switches along with the front light.

I wouldn’t have anything else for commuting – particularly for a long commute. The b+m lights are not as bright as the fancy mountain biking lights, but are very well set up for road riding to put the light in the right place, and I’m happy enough riding unlit roads with mine. And did I mention that you never have to charge them.

Basically, I fitted my dynamo lights about 3 or 4 years ago. Turned the switch to ‘auto’. Since then, I’ve ridden thousands of miles, and have never considered lights, they’re just there when I need them, and off when I don’t.

Oh, and drag, the drag is basically zero when they’re off and extremely small when they are on, I can’t notice when they turn on or off at all without looking at the lights.

Unless you have splits for each leg then this is still speculation.

on here:
http://www.london2012.com/swimming/event/women-400m-individual-medley/index.html

he said her performance was unbelievable…..which it was, considering it was faster than the mens version!

But if you actually look at it, it wasn’t in any way faster than the men’s version. She was over 20 seconds slower than Ryan Lochte.

She had a different balance of splits – her first three splits (the other three strokes) were slow, and the last one was fast, whereas he was more even in his splits.

Saying that she swum better than a man for 100m but ignoring the rest of the race is weird – you might as well compare that 100m with the womens 100m race (she’d come last at that speed) and use that as evidence against her.

They were jolly fast, and faster than the final splits in the 400m freestyle, which is impressive, but then she had been swimming a whole lot slower for the other 300m than they do. If you look at Rebecca Adlington in the 400m, she did slower splits until the last 100m where she really hammered it (even more so at the last Olympics I think), and I take it no one is saying she is cheating?

It’s also weird the argument that the last 100m split being faster than the others means that she was obviously cheating – surely if you were taking performance enhancing drugs, they wouldn’t drug you for only one stroke, they’d work for breaststroke etc too.

She did go jolly fast, and like all the extremely fast athletes, there is a real chance she was cheating, but to say ‘she did 100m faster than a man’ is completely ignoring the context of that 100m. It’s been picked up on by the press because it’s a nice figure, but does ignore that she was actually 20s slower over 400m than the same man.

It is also worth remembering that the person who is putting out all this stuff about doping is a big US coach – and the USA swimmers, particularly the high profile male ones who’ve turned up hoping to take back all the gold medals, are going to be a bit annoyed about Chinese swimmers being so jolly fast.

30ish I think.

Thursdays off to look after our daughter. I can totally recommend anyone with kids trying to move down to a 4 day week. One whole day of bike rides, swimming, trips to the park, it’s a really fun thing to do.

Joe