The Warren's Web

Ironman Copenhagen - Training Update - A long and windy road

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A long and windy road! What have I been up to?!

My last post was written in April, while I had Covid. While I tested positive for 10 days, thankfully I didn’t have too many days with symptoms and therefore was able to continue with some light indoor bike sessions towards the later stages of that 10day perdiod.

Post-Covid Training

The first few “proper” sessions post-Covid were harder work for the same effort, which I guess was to be expected and that phase passed pretty quickly. I also got my first Open Water swim of the year done which was great to do.

Ironman Copenhagen Training - How are we doing? - April 2022

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a little over 6 months since my last blog post. I tested positive for Covid a few days ago, so this enforced mini-period of rest seems like a good opportunity for a brief recap on how the journey is progressing.

Training plan

One of the first tasks after booking my place was to research and find a training plan that would help get me from my current levels of fitness and ability to the point where I successfully finish an Ironman. After some searching, I came across TriDot (https://tridot.com). It appeared to meet all of my needs in terms of scheduling sessions across each of the disciplines, appealed to my inner data-nerd as the platform takes in the data from each activity and then tailors future sessions to your current ability. Initially, I had some reservations, but the community feedback I saw at the time spoke of people using the platform experiencing significant performance improvements and “race” day successes. I’m now 6 months into using TriDot and can safely say my experience has been amazing. Through periodic “assessments”, you can monitor performance progress over time. During these 6 months, I have seen my 5k run time improve from over 22minutes to 20:36, my swim CSS times go from 2:05m/100 to 1:55m/100 - I know 10seconds per 100metres may not sound a lot, but for me, this is solid progress in the weakest of the disciplines.

The start of my Ironman Journey

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, it’s true - I have entered a full Iron-distance event: Ironman Copenhagen 2022.

If you are new to the site, my name is Anthony and I’m based in Maidstone, UK.

I intend to document my journey along the way, to share my thoughts and experiences as my training progresses.

But first, a little bit of back story to set the scene.

My fitness journey started around January 2015 when I joined Beginners2Runners in Coxheath, near Maidstone. Up to this point, I hadn’t really been doing any exercise and felt that I should be doing something to keep active and healthy.

Instagram Links

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

London Marathon Fundraising Page

Marathon Stuff

IRONMAN COPENHAGEN

Self-Hosted Streaming Server - NGINX + RTMP - YouTube + Facebook Live

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m writing these notes up, mainly as a reference for me in the future - but they might just help others looking to do similar.

Issue:

During the Coronavirus season, our church, like many, ventured into the world of streaming services, primarily to YouTube but with an eye to multiplexing to both YouTube and Facebook at the same time.

Initially, the plan was to stream from OBS Studio to an intermediate platform, restream.io

Bluetooth Foot Pedal for Onsong - an alternative to Airturn ?

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Project History!

The intention of this post is to serve as an aide-memoire for a little project I’ve been working on recently.

From time to time, I lead worship at my church, and play acoustic guitar. For song lyrics / chord charts I use a popular app on IOS called Onsong.

A while ago I found an old guitar foot switch unit that started life belonging to a Marshall amp. I took most of it’s inwards out and wired up a simple Bluetooth keyboard to the 4 main switches, and then in turn, paired this with my Ipad. Within Onsong settings, I configured the footpedal options to respond to “keyboard” presses - u = Up, d = down, n = next song .and p = previous song.

8 more sleeps! We're nearly there

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The lovely London Marathon page on Facebook today popped up to say there are 9 days to go!!!

The most fantastic way to start this update is to be able to say I have reached my Fundraising target and at the time of posting it stands at - £ 2127.65 I am truly humbled and blessed by the generosity that people have shown in supporting WaterAid in helping me reach this target.

Counting down...as the miles go up!!

Wed, 10 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Having been a month since my last post, I figured it’s about time for a quick update.

I took part in the Cancer Research ‘Winter Run’ on the 31st January. It’s a popular 10k race starting in Trafalgar Square, and finishing along Whitehall. It was the first race of it’s size that I’ve taken part in, with around 15,000 people taking part. I really enjoyed it, especially as I finished in 53:32 which is about 4 minutes off my previous 10k PB!

100 Days to Go - And Counting!

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Eek!! So it seems I’ve hit the big 100 day countdown, and now it’s time to get serious!

I started my formal training plan at the beginning of the year, but now its crunch time! So far, it seems to be going really well - running 3 - 4 times a week, with a longer run most Sundays!

I’ve forcefully become acclimatised to arctic temperatures to run in - all included in the fun of being a crazy marathon runner!

Running for WaterAid

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I realised it would probably be helpful to share some of the background to why I am running the Marathon, who I will be running for and why.

Why am I doing this ?

I had the opportunity to go to Rwanda in 2005 and I have very clear memories from that trip of seeing people walking huge distances, carrying heavy water containers - on a daily basis. Everyone appeared to have to go through this - from the youngest to the oldest.

Marathon Training plan choices?

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I know there is a long way to go before April, but I figured I would start looking at choices for Training plans….and I’m glad I looked now.

There are so many choices! In fact, it’s quite bewildering how many variations there are. Some focus on time-based runs, some on mileage, while others different again.

So far for other training , I have been using the plan feature of the Asics website and I quite like this as it syncs with my Google Calendars.

Ballot results are in!

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This week the ballot results for entry into the Virgin London Marathon 2016 are being sent out.

I have seen a lot of posts on Facebook from friends receiving the pack through the post, containing the magazine indicating whether the ballot entry was successful or not.

Well, yesterday, Royal Mail visited my letterbox and popped my pack through. It too was a Sorry! version of the magazine - no ballot result for me.

My journey to the London Marathon 2016

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This will be me in around 34 weeks time!

This is the first of my blog posts about my journey to run the London Marathon 2106

SSL Certificates from StartSSL for WebVPN on Cisco IOS

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This document is intended to walk-through the steps I took to successfully implement a free SSL certificate for use with WebVPN on a Cisco IOS Router.

I had tried a couple of times to use StartSSL certificates but fell at different hurdles. However, this time I crossed the line. The credit for this success goes 100% to a member on the StartSSL forum, dlambert - he documented his steps and I merely followed them! This post is as much for my own reference, and if it helps someone else along - great! Dlambert’s original post can be found at https://forum.startcom.org/viewtopic.php?p=6568&sid=1750512d3d6a4bbcc95dcd3cd94d228b#p6568

Worship: Sound: Mixing with your eyes closed!

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Saw this great post over at behindthemixer.com fron anyone who is involved in mixing live sound.

Check it out: http://www.behindthemixer.com/content/cant-get-mix-right-blame-eyes

Creating Exchange 2007 Shared mailbox Under SBS 2008 - Solved!

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall recently with what should be a straightforward task.

I look after an SBS 2008 install and we are preparing to rationalise the email setup in the very near future by using Exchange 2007 that comes as part of SBS 2008

In preparation for that switchover I needed to create a shared mailbox for the “Admin” team. However, in SBS2008/Ex2k7 you can’t create a shared mailbox through the GUI’s, it can only be done by the Exchange Management shell (aka Powershell).

Cisco ACE Modules with Windows Sharepoint 2010

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I recently ran into issues with a Windows Sharepoint 2010 environment that is load-balanced by Cisco ACE modules.

I’m no Sharepoint expert so if I get the WSS terminology slightly wrong - you’ll know why!

Basically the issues presented themselves in the following ways:

1. A Sharepoint site had some sort of webpart that enabled “live” view of Excel spreadsheets within the browser.

When you first visited the page, everything was fine and the spreadsheet loaded successfully, however upon navigating away to a different page, any subsequent requests were either met with a browser dialog box stating that an error occurred finding the file, or an HTTP 503 Gateway error.

Cisco VPN authentication using NPS on Windows SBS 2008

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Wow - what a title!!

Hopefully this post will make things a bit clearer.

I have a Cisco 1721 router configured to be a VPN server for a few IPsec client PC’s. Currently the user authentication part is just being done with local users setup within the router config.

However we have Windows SBS 2008 internally providing Active Directory services, amongst other things.

So, my aim in this piece of work was to get the Cisco VPN using the AD accounts for client VPN user authentication.

Saphir 40

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Well, with the sun shining, and a bit of breeze blowing it was time for the maiden yesterday, of my Dave Smith Models Saphir 40.

The Magnum 70 (Tuned by West) produced loads of power and with controls checked it was time to take to the sky. After a bit of trimming out, Paul put the Saphir through it’s paces - it looked fantastic in the air, and flew brilliantly. Once that flight was over, (and a quick cuppa) it was my turn.

Saphir 40 Build Log

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Here is a build log for my Dave Smith Model’s Saphir 40

I first started building this plane about 18 years ago (when I was very young an inexperienced). I didn’t learn to fly until October last year, and since properly getting the ‘bug’ have been trying to complete it.

It’s nearly done, and will post a photo or two shortly.

Stream Spotify to Airport Express Using Airfoil

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A friend recently introduced me to Spotify (http://www.spotify.com) and it’s superb!!! For those that don’t know, Spotify is a streaming music service. It has a huge database of songs, just search away, hit play and let your ears be filled! There are different account schemes available, starting with a Free service, that is advertisment-supported. I have to say, that is is a great way to listen to music as the frequency of adverts is so few and far between that it doesn’t distract from the music at all.

Wot 4

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Well, here is a page about my little Chris Foss Designs Wot 4. (Ripmax version)

I bought it on eBay in April 2012.

Engine: Thunder Tiger F-54S Four Stroke

Prop: Master Airscrew

Servos:

Throttle: Futaba S3003

Elevator: Futaba S3003

Rudder: Futaba S3003

Ailerons: 2 x Spektrum DS821

Receiver: Spektrum AR6200

Battery: 4.8v NiMh

The Thunder Tiger F-54S engine is brilliant. It literally sips fuel. I ran it at the field the other day when it was too windy to fly - on 3/4 tank, at a variety of throttle speeds it ran for 22 minutes !