Merak

But I DO look ridiculous! It’s entirely my own fault – I’m an idiot – I did the County Cross Country Championships in a vest, arm-warmers and a bobble hat! Entirely ridiculous! :-)

And man alive! Be grateful that the photo cuts me off there – I’ve got on the shortest short shorts known to man!

That’s because I am a douche (it really is me in the photo) it was bitter that day…

Your point caller…

Ha ha! Totally!

I do worry a bit about burglars – but they won’t all fit in a knife block…

This is what 18.5 looks like – A SOLID WALL OF MUSCLE! Like a Greek God I tell you! – Who wears short shorts? Me obviously!

Ooh ooh ooh! I’ve just looked – I think judging by the previous pages I might look the most like a smack addict!

Anyone else get baggy legs in small running tights? :-)

We have a despatch office at work, with calibrated parcel scales – so after coming back from a run at lunch I kicked off my trainers and wearing short shorts and a t shirt, jumped on ’em. Although there may have been some weight loss from water loss – I only ran 6 miles, and it was a recovery run too, so I wasn’t hammering it and it’s been drizzling.

So I’ve got NEW up to the minute stats!

180cm   60Kg   18.5 (still in the healthy BMI category – just)…

But the truth is I am really quite skinny compared to most people – I struggle to get clothes to fit; but I’m quite careful about my diet – I don’t carry weight at all well, at 180cm and 70Kg I look fat.

Mind you, when I run cross country in the winter, if you look at the start line compared to some of the real headbanging xc whippets I look relatively podgy!

I’m still a medium in Castelli though – has anyone ever been a small?

19.1

180cm, 62Kg, 73cm waist – built like a Greek God (whoever the Greek God for Malnutrition was)…

Through lots of running/cycling and careful diet I lost about 10Kg 18 months ago, and it’s stayed off thankfully – but my running times especially have improved massively – my speed appears to be completely connected to my weight – climbing on the bike’s better too!

Hey Duckman!

How much do you want for it?

I won an orienteering race with martinb of this parish – but they threatened to disqualify me because of my special outfit of short shorts, red shoes and white calf sleeves – “why have you come dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl?”…

After borking my knee at the county cx champs, I struggled to walk up stairs. A load of people at my running club recommended a local sports therapist (the wife of a club member) – she had a good look at my knee/stance/movement – did some kind of mad painful massage and got me walking pain free straight away. I tried some gentle running a couple of days later but could still feel the pain in my knee (although much, much less severe). I gave her a call to ask her advice, saw her again – more knee massage (something technical was stuck to something else medical sounding!), she freed my IT band (I’m glad I didn’t know in advance how much THAT was going to hurt) – and a couple of days later I’m running again – there’s some slight discomfort – but it;s not getting worse – and she’s banned me from running faster than 8:30s until there is no discomfort. So it’s not pretty, it’s not very fast; but it IS running – finally…

I’ve never actually done a Parkrun, but since joining our local fun runners last October I’ve knocked about 3 minutes off my 5k time (we have a 5k race around town on the first Tuesday of every month followed by cake)- which last Tuesday (after waiting to cross a road and getting held up behind some slower runners) was 20:59 – and I can feel that there is loads more improvement to come.
What really worked for me (I can’t afford to lose any weight as I’m 5’11” and only 9 stone 11lb) was running 1km at around 5:00 pace, then 1km at 4:00 pace (or as close as I could get) and repeating it for 8km. After a while the faster stuff felt almost normal.
I’ve badly twisted my knee cross country racing at the weekend, so I’ll have to see how that goes, but I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get to 19 minutes this year.

I had the Beds & Bucks County XC Championships yesterday – that was brutal – it was supposed to be 11km (which I was pacing for) but ended up at 14km! Good measuring AAA! Results not properly out yet, but I think we got 3rd vets team. I’ve wrecked my knee though so no running for a couple of days I think :-(

Pics or it didn’t happen!

It’s almost impossible to tell your own attractiveness as you are so numbed to your own face, but maybe a 5? Maybe less? – I’ve got a broken nose and thinning hair. Mrs Tarka is much higher – I punch WELL above my weight for which I am endlessly thankful!

Yes, it’s called AR or Accurate Recording, and it is the system which superceded PDC. The theory is that in addition to the normal EPG data, there is a “Now/Next” flag which should be turned on as soon as the programme starts, and which changes as soon as the programme finishes – your PVR can use this flag to start/stop the recordings.
But, there’s a catch – you have to rely on the broadcaster being punctilious about this – the BBC are amazing as it is generated in their playout suites so it is “live”, ITV less so, CH5 even less so – and us (un-named channel) even less so! AR is good, but you are at the behest of the broadcaster. We record hundreds of mass off-air recordings here – and pad everything – we don’t trust AR at all.

Although this doesn’t help you with your problem directly, what the fella from JL said was true – I work in TV playout and we pass the EPGs in advance to the broadcasters – Sky, Freeview etc. based on our planned schedule.
However, these schedules can be anything up to 5 minutes out, as things slip, or the billed times in the schedules use nice round numbers etc. And we don’t send new EPGs unless there is a programme change. The EPGs aren’t “live”.
Most PVRs take this into account and have a “padding” setting to record 5 or 10 minutes before and after the billed time from the EPG, your television may well have this as a global setting to record a bit of video extra – look for the phrase “padding” in the menus.

Hell yeah!

A hand-canvassed three piece suit (in progress!). I go to a local group sometimes, I am the only man there :-)

For shame…

No, nobody at all – not even a furious Brummie chef…

I work near there, you’re not far from the Chilterns – and so the riding’s not bad at all (if not exactly trail centre stuff), and the local towns are all pretty good. You could do worse…

I work in TV and we effectively “repackage” CBeebies for a different worldwide audience. The BBC forgot to tell us that they were moving CBeebies and replacing it with the Olympics, so, last Friday, at 06:00, we automatically and completely unknowingly switched to re-runs of old Olympics. Nobody complained! Fingers crossed, we’ve got away with it. Anyway, tiny children LOVE the steeplechase :-)

Rusty Spanner – Member
Mark? He’s the rummest ol’ rooster ever flopped out a Noah’s Ark….

You think you’re cock of the wark!

Hell yeah! I’ve got some Arizonas and more contentiously – some Gizehs! Try before you buy though – as their sizing is insane – I take a 41 normally, but a 39 in Birks…

I had a great race – except for the bit around midnight where I came off at the first drop-off, smashed my face into a rock, and pushed my teeth through my face, resulting in a pleasant rest of the evening at Gloucester Infirmary having my face stitched back together – yeah, apart from that, all good! The previous laps had been ace though! ;-)

This is so cathartic isn’t it? I’m saving a fortune on therapy here…

Okay, this isn’t going to be easy to write but here goes…

I badly broke my thumb on a dry-ski slope about 10 years ago – this meant that I had to have it pinned back into position. After I woke up from the operation, I found my left hand and wrist covered in a massive theatre cast – which was suspended above my head in a sling to reduce the swelling, and I’d also had a nerve block in my left armpit so I had no feeling in my left arm at all.
I woke up in the night, feeling a bit uncomfortable, moved in the bed, and my arm fell out of the sling and started to fall towards me – because of the nerve block I couldn’t control the muscles to stop it falling, and so I moved out of the way – this didn’t work, as my arm was still attached at the shoulder and so it came with me and kept falling -and promptly broke my nose!

This meant that after my nose healed it leaned to one side a bit – and so, for the rest of my natural life, I will always have to live with *takes deep breath*…

Slightly wonky sunglasses – the horror!

Oh, and the human slavery case too – that’s two miles away! Human Slaves

The Great Train Robbery – about a mile away – ‘tho Jack Mills probably didn’t think it was that great… Great Train Robbery

I can tell you from experience (hang on a bit – don’t jump to conclusions!) that women’s sizing is a tiny bit smaller than men’s, but there’s not much in it.

I’m a 7, but I’ve got very narrow heels – so I always buy walking boots from the women’s range as they fit better. I think that a men’s 7 is a euro 41, but a women’s 7 is a euro 40.

I’m wearing my twenty-odd year old Tag Formula One – it’s 34mm with a 17mm strap – even taking my comedy thin wrists into account – it’s a perfectly normal size – a lot of watches these days are about the size of a dinner plate anyway…

Oy! It’s not just women who sew – I “may” be a devil for the sewing – and it doesn’t in any way impinge on my masculinity! *takes thimble off finger, puts back in special sewing bag*

I’ve got an Elna 340 and it’s bulletproof – they use the same model in my local sewing club. Typically they cost £230-ish. It does all the standard stitches, some fancy ones and it has a really nice overcasting foot included (and it will do a buttonhole in one go)…

That might be too much money, but depending on how into it your wife is, a cheap machine may be a false economy, as they don’t last and can’t always be serviced.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that Elna are owned by Janome, so the feet are interchangeable if she wants to get a nice zip foot etc.

Hmmm…

Brogues x 3
Brogue boots x 3
Oxfords x 2
Dress shoes x 1
Chelsea Boots x 4
Chukka boots (colours various) x 5
Deck shoes x 2
Plimsoles x 5
Running shoes x 7
Walking boots x 2
Trainers x 2
Moccassins x 3
Flip flops x 2
Wellies x 2
Cycling shoes x 2

I make that 45 – blimey

A word of warning though – I’ve got a beautiful Stanley Ley Covert Coat with a velvet collar – and although this is perhaps as a result of the rarefied circles I move in – whenever I wear it, people make sarky comments :-(

Hmmm…

Brogues x 3
Brogue boots x 3
Oxfords x 2
Dress shoes x 1
Chelsea Boots x 4
Chukka boots (colours various) x 5
Deck shoes x 2
Plimsoles x 4
Running shoes x 7
Walking boots x 2
Trainers x 2
Moccassins x 3
Flip flops x 2
Wellies x 2
Cycling shoes x 2

I make that 44 – blimey :-(

Oh yeah – Letchworth is good too – and you get black squirrels too!

Oldgit and Elliott_20 speak the truth – it’s all good in the Buzzard! We’ve lived on and off in the general Luton area (Hitchin, Hemel Hempstead & Leighton Buzzard) for nearly 20 years; and although I’d happily work in Luton – I wouldn’t choose to live there.
We ended up in Leighton Buzzard after living abroad for a couple of years – we had no particular ties to anywhere, except for some friends in the Herts/ Beds/ Bucks area; and we needed good transport links to London. So, my wife visited every market town (for us villages are too small, and cities are too big) we could find, and asked people in the street what they thought about their town. Passers-by in Leighton Buzzard were unanimously positive about their town; which they hadn’t been anywhere else.
There’s some great biking on your doorstep – reasonably priced housing (Bedfordshire and a Luton postcode make a huge difference) – and some great pubs and restaurants.
On a slightly less partisan note – Hitchin is also nice (and an easier commute to Luton); and Harpenden and St Albans are very pleasant – if insanely expensive.
Maybe see you in the Wheaty…

Me,

As he’d been dead for 6 months at my age (40 3/4)…

Pik n Mix
Yunki
Khani +1

Stumpy01 my wife could not hate it any more if she tried – you should be fitting in a treat in Aachen with your soup-strainer – our sausage-noshing cousins are mad for the facial hair!