French Sabbatical Week 1: Lessons Learned

Here we go, in no particular order, in a handy bulleted list because I can't quite get work out of my system...

• Throwing petrol on a bonfire is a lot of fun, brilliantly effective, and not nearly as dangerous as you might think (I only singed the hairs on my forearms) - I won't be using any of that wimpy barbeque lighting fluid in the future, I can tell you
  
• When cleaning out a hen coop last used three years ago, check which way the wind is blowing before you throw all the doors open and start chucking bleach and water around, else you'll end up with a faceful of liquid hen shit. Hope it's good for the complexion
  
• If you buy a second hand trailer off some dodgy English hippies, accept you're in for a period of angst. One of the lightbulbs was out. 'I can mend that no problem' I thought. The iffy connection in there meant I blew a fuse in the car, which I couldn't find because the towbar fitter hadn't put it in the fusebox in his infinite wisdom.  And then having finally tracked down the location of the blown fuse and its type, going into battle with French websites, which seem to be explicitly designed to stop you actually buying anything.  They probably see online shopping as another evil Anglo-Saxon invention that should play no part of Liberte Egalite etc..Still got to sort the buggered wheel/tyre that loses 5psi a day as well yet
  
• If you do a nancy-boy office-based job most of the time, and you spend a week in the garden you'll break your hands, no matter what gloves you wear. Mine have got blisters, cuts, scratches, splinters and ingrained dirt, and are now rivalling my feet in own personal Ugly Extremities Competition
  
• Understand how hard it is to not drink beer at the end of every working day. Dammit, I've been outside labouring all day, I DESERVE it
  
• BBC4 can be a useful source of practical advice - I dismantled a shed and needed to move its parts 40 yards down the garden. It was too bulky and heavy to lift conventionally.  Aha! I remembered watching the porters on the Indian Mountain Railways, and how they bent double, then levered large items onto their back. I tried to do the same - it only flipping works, doesn't it?! Even if you do end up looking like a madman attempting unpowered flight
  
• If you need to trap a ginger-and-white feral cat that's terrorising your own cat, make sure you know the difference between that one, and your neighbours's ginger-and-white cat (I don't). This one's still playing out. Let's hope when I catch it and deposit it a good few kilometres away I'm not depriving our French friends of their beloved pet

So there we are; week 1 in France. I've got another week here on my own before Mrs Monmarduman turns up, then I can start on the properly dangerous jobs....

Video diary 2

Demolition Derby

So where were we?

Ah yes, being quite smug about my abilities to recover from a long run. Not so smug now though, heh?

Yes, things didn't quite go according to plan in the lead-up to my long-planned 75km ultra-marathon on Easter Sunday. It wasn't a surprise to me. I've always been one of those people whose successes (such as they are) tend to be the result of working and playing by the rules. The training rules in ultra-marathon training are, respectively, do a lot of miles, increase weekly mileage by no more than 10%, and increase the distance of your weekly long run by also by no more than 10%.

Well, I didn't play by the rules: my mileage was erratic, I didn't always do a lot of miles, and I lurched up to running 34 miles one particular Sunday - which was when the dreaded knee problem came on. Seems I have a very small tear to my medial meniscus, nothing that stops me running a few miles, but enough to cause anything upwards of a half-marathon to be excruciating.  Ho hum.  Time to repair it, do some cycling, and try again next winter.

Strangely, however, while I was disappointed I had to withdraw from my Canalathon, I wasn't devastated, probably because the withdrawal coincided with finishing work for a while, and soon afterwards (that being yesterday), coming across to France for an extended period.

Yes, I did it - I've made myself unavailable for work until the start of August, and I intend to spend as much of it as possible in France. The plan is the same as the one I hatched earlier in the year - manual work, cycle and learn a bit of French.

There are two cycling excursions planned - one to Provence with Mendip Rouleur for an attempt at joining the Club dec Cingles du Mont-Ventoux (that being 3 different ascents of the great mountain in a single day), plus some very civilised cafe-based riding besides, and one to Normandy with Mrs M for a spot of gentle cyclo-touring.

Right now though, I'm even more excited - rather sadly - to get stuck into some Bloke Stuff, most of which I've no idea how to do right now.  Quite a lot of it will involve Bloke Tools too. I've already bought a trailer for picking stuff up at Brico Depot (B&Q) and getting rid of it at the dechetterie (tip). There are steel toe-capped work boots in the garage, overalls, and best of all - I think I might need a cement mixer. Ten years ago I used to covet other men's bikes; now I sneak furtive looks at their tool shed.

What's the cause of all this Blokery? Three-quarters of an acre of unruly and disintegrating garden, that's what. There are fences, sheds and greenhouses to be taken down, other fences and roofs to be put up, and digging, seed sewing and weeding to be done. Not to mention power washing, mowing, strimming, hedgecutting, and bonfires...ahhh, lovely bonfires.

So, there's going to be a lot of outdoor time. I've done one day so far, and my hands are already red and chapped, I'm so soft from the last few months of keyboard-jockeying. Tales from French France and - hopefully - progress that doesn't involve loss of limbs or too much blood to follow.

Recover

...nothing much of interest in this post for non-runners, though I guess cyclists might be half-interested...

Now I'm not saying I've been doing my training runs recently at any great pace, but they have at least been quite long - marathon plus in a few cases. And amazingly, I've not had any DOMS the day after, and been comfortable running again two days later. I don't know whether or not this is the down to the following regime, but in case it is, I share it in a spirit of not wanting to see old men walking on a Monday like they've had an accident in their underwear.

So, when finishing long run / ride and enter the house, I, in order, and starting the moment I've said 'hello' to anyone who's around:

• Drink a pint of water to top fluids up (having taken electrolytes whilst exercising)
• Lie on my back with my legs in the air, resting against a wall or chair, for 5-10 minutes
• Have a hot shower - not sure it contributes to recovery, but it feels good. Don't have a bath, unless it's a cold one, and who wants that?
• Eat some quality food, including some protein - eggs, whey powder, or similar
• Later on, take lots of ginger - a cubic inch or so - in whatever form it can be stomached; I like soya milk, apple and ginger smoothies
• Sleep within 90 minutes of finishing exercise - doesn't have to be much (30 mins will do), but it just seems to kickstart recovery
• Consume as little sugar as possible - I still have some lovely dark chocolate, but it's tempting to shovel cake down your neck after hours of exercise; the less you do, the better you'll feel

That's it; nothing funny, nothing more. Just shared because I seem to have stumbled on something that works.

Fewer and further between...

I don't seem to have blogged much lately. I'm not sure why - it could be my usual autumn bout of SAD, or it could be that after nearly five years of doing this, I've lost a bit of motivation. What I do know, however, is that when I've got something interesting to report, this is the medium through which that happens.

A lot of people these days, it seems to me, and especially at this time of year, love to make a statement and/or draw attention to themselves: "I've gone vegetarian!", "I'm having a dry January!", "I'm going to the gym 18 times a week!". What's really happening is that they're cutting down on meat/having a couple of weeks off the sauce/doing a bit more exercise than usual - but saying those things isn't nearly as eye-catching (in their eyes), as the Grand Gesture, the thing that enables them to say "look at me!", and frankly, it's a bit annoying.

I'm not going to fall into that trap and renounce blogging forever. It may well continue, and 2016 looks like it might be a year with plenty to report - I'm 50 during the year, and plan to mark it by having a decent length of time not working (in France), learning a bit more French (in France), doing a bit of cycle touring with Mrs Monmarduman (in France), riding my bike for a week in Provence (yes, that's in France), attempting an ultramarathon (not in France), and having a trip to Iceland (definitely not in France). I'm not going to expand on any of that now, because you know what they say about God having a good laugh what you announce your plans - and whilst I'm not religious I think I'm going to play it safe on this occasion.

So the blogging will continue; there'll just be less of it, and probably concentrated in the summer when I'll probably be glad to swap bike or spade for keyboard once in a while. A Very Happy 2016 everyone, and if you make a single resolution, promise me you'll learn the difference (if you don't already know it) between 'purposely' and 'purposefully'. I thank you.

Paris

I was going to write something deep, meaningful and insightful about last Friday, but frankly I don't think it would add much to the sum of human understanding.

I'm also not going to change my Facebook profile pic so that it has red, white and blue running through it, nor post any virtue-signalling tweets.

Instead, I'm going to support the French by doing what me and the missus are lucky enough to be able to do regularly, and what we're doing the weekend after next. That involves paying our French taxes, buying French wine, and talking to our French neighbours.

We talk to our neighbours regularly of course, particularly Mrs M with her reasonably fluent French. She had what media people would call a "breakthrough moment" during the summer, when on showing our 80 year old retired farmer neighbour a calendar featuring pictures of Macclesfield from the early decades of last century, he declared (in French obviously, for never a word of English has knowingly escaped his lips), "you're not that different to us really" - the "you" being the English/British of course. For someone who's barely left the local commune in his 80 years, this was a cultural earthquake.

By telling them we were just as shocked by last Friday as we would have been had it happened in London or anywhere else in the UK, by them seeing (I hope) 80,000 football fans singing the Marseillaise tonight, and by mentioning that parts of the debate on the prevention of terrorism in the British parliament yesterday were conducted in French, it would be nice to think a few more of them will realise that "we're not that different".

That's not to defend the EU or suggest that we should have closer political ties; I haven't made my mind up on all that referendum-related stuff yet. It is, however, to make clear that there's far more that unites us than divides us - and that unity may prove quite useful against a common foe in the next year or two, especially if it filters through to our political and intelligence communities.