I made the most of the last of the Indian Summer we’re enjoying at the moment to go for another run near the Premier Inn at Wigan (M6, J25). Â The first mile is uphill which means a bit of an effort to start off with.
Because my Garmin Forerunner 410 has decided it doesn’t want to work, I’ve had to switch to using iMapMyRun on my iPhone, but the benefit is Google Earth fly-through:
Am I mad?
So my shiny newish HP ProBook 5320m has the facility to take a SIM card which means no worries about a dongle being lost or losing a USB port.
HP’s Connection Manager software allows you to chose the connection speed: 2G or 3G or Auto for either.
All this is fine.
The trouble is when the coverage is dodgy: the HSPA connection automatically switches to UMTS but Windows doesn’t like this so your ability to use the connection is in effect removed. You have to then disconnect and reconnect.
Very annoying, especially when it happens multiple times each day!
Changing the Connection Manager to only 3G doesn’t help as it classifies both UMTS and HSPA as 3G.
Grr!
Another great weekend: an early-ish start for me, as I had another photoshoot planned with the fab Anita De Bauch at her home in North London. She’s a great hostess as well as model: knowing I’m watching my weight and love my coffee, she’d laid on decent coffee and some very low calorie snacks to munch on during the shoot, which was on a Hollywood/Film Noir/Boudoir theme.
Some great results already despite my not really having much if any time for edits on Saturday afternoon before I headed over to Epsom for Dinner and a film: the really rather dull “Paranormal Activity 2”.
Sunday morning and off we went over towards Swindon for  our second attempt at skydiving … and our second postponement, again due to weather. Grr! Trying again in October.
Back to Epsom before heading out for an 11.5 miles bike ride over the downs and country parks accompanying GT who’s doing another half marathon in a couple of weeks and hasn’t really trained. Trained? Trust me, she doesn’t need to: she treated it with disdain like a stroll to the shops. Awesome, as they say…
I decided that I should go for a quick run this afternoon to make up for a mahoosive meal at Nando’s in Epsom last night – we won’t mention the cake and jelly at IKEA Croydon {shudder} – and knowing that it’s pasta and partying tonight.
So I chose a nice and easy 2 mile jog. I felt fine a mile into the route so carried on, and the same after a mile and a half so I decided I’d head on to the 2 mile mark before turning back. Worked well, I think.
Oh dear! It seems that the bigwigs at Premier Inn aren’t aware of the philosophy that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Some dabbling seems to be spreading around their hotels when it comes to the Premier Inn “eat as much as you like” breakfast: whereas before it was all freshly cooked to order (or at least it seemed to be that way), now they appear to be rolling out a hot buffet style. I saw this for the first time recently at the Premier Inn, Norwich Central South where there was plenty of food laid out but invariably it wasn’t piping hot, the beans and the eggs were drying out under the hot lamps and it just looked generally not as fresh as one cooked to order. OK, if you ask, they’ll do you poached eggs and vegetarian sausages especially for you, but even so…
And as of this week – much to the chagrin of the chef! – the Premier Inn Wigan (M6, J25) is doing the same thing. I was told that they used to do this if there were 40+ guests staying, but today, for instance, there were only 15 people and of course the restaurant is open from 7am until 10.30am. The buffet therefore has to have sufficient food cooked and on display but of course it dries out or cools down and of course there’s the wasted food to consider.
I suppose the benefit is that a buffet is quicker for guests in a hurry, but for those of us who plan enough time to eat our breakfasts, the quality of the food suffers.
Oh and whilst I’m moaning, it would be nice if the Premier Inn published nutritional information for the food it serves. I was told that because the restaurants are operated by different groups, they couldn’t tell me, but that’s rubbish as the breakfast menu is the same at every location.
To end on a positive note for Premier Inn though: of the budget hotels, they’re by far the best. Travelodges are atrocious and appear to me to be generally tatty – I went to one where the leg of the bed was broken! – and the buffet breakfast I had at the Hilton Express in Norwich was simply dire.
Just a short run tonight as I’m still very sore from the crash and because it was late, between rain storms and just before dusk. Those are my excuses anyway!
As part of my new fitness drive, I took part today in the London Sky Ride: a loop from Tower Bridge to St James’s Park and back plus the two miles or so each way along the Thames Path from my apartment to Tower Bridge. Here are the stats:
It was looking overcast when I left but by the time I reached Tower Bridge, it had started raining and by the time I was on the route itself it was lashing down. The route was still very busy indeed with many cyclists not being aware I was coming up behind them fairly swiftly despite the regular stops to allow pedestrians to cross. By the time I was halfway around the ‘course’, I was absolutely soaked to the skin and my canvas Adidas trainers were full of rainwater and squelching – eeyyoo!
Not quite sure how I managed speeds of 112.8mph – see charts – or a max. speed of 64.8mph – see summary – but the rest is pretty accurate!
On my way home, I had an ‘off’ on the now-slippery Thames Path, landing heavily on my bad shoulder and also banging my head on the block paviors. Maybe a bike helmet might be a good idea after all? I crashed with sufficient force to buckle the front rim too, so I’ll need to get that fixed soon too.
I was invited by Mazda UK to Brands Hatch today as part of their “Experience Mazda” “Adrenaline Rush” summer series. This was a chance – in my case, in the afternoon – to try out an MX-5 and a Mazda3 MPS on the track. And who was I to say no?!
When I turned up, I realised that the MX-5s they had for us were the new, limited edition Sport Black models: 160ps 2.0 litre engines, retractable hard tops and lots of piano black details. They’d brought along all three colours: Velocity Red Mica (hmm, that doesn’t work with the black features); Crystal White Pearlescent (which does work!) and Spirited Green Metallic which looks so-so in photos but which is great in sunlight. Here are some crappy iPhone shots of the cars:
Mazda MX-5 Sport Black Limited Edition
Velocity Red Mica
Crystal White Pearlescent
Spirited Green Metallic
For my first drive, I was paired up with an instructor called Paul who sat beside me in the fab green MX-5 and gave me instructions as to the correct positioning, when to feed in power and when to feather the throttle and when to lift off altogether. After this session we came back in and Paul suggested he’d be happy to be my “wingman” for a later session. Excellent! Sadly, I was asked to wear something with sleeves or have to have the roof up, so despite it being warm and sunny I had to don my Superdry windcheater which was in the back of the RX-8 – I was a tad warm after each session.
I took that as my cue and for my next MX-5 session we teamed up again and with his help put in some faster laps, keeping up even with a Radical! You could tell I was getting quicker as I was needing to grab 4th gear earlier and earlier out of Clark Curve onto the Brabham Straight.
My third session should have been in the more powerful Mazda3 MPS, but:
So I asked the Mazda guys and they said I could carry on with the green meanie (and Paul too!).
For the final rush of the day, I was taken out by another instructor, this time in the passenger seat whilst he showed why he’s a racing driver and I’m not! Much, much faster and pushing the MX-5 to (and almost beyond) the limits of adhesion of the poor tortured tyres.
Talking of which, at the end of a day of being driven ragged around a tight circuit, I was amazed that the MX-5′s tyres looked hardly worn and the brakes still had excellent stopping power despite being very hot. Brake dust sprinkled all down the sides showed how hard the cars had been driven and they’d not complained once.
The Mazda MX-5 Black Sport Limited Edition: understated excellence!
You must be logged in to post a comment.