Danwichmann

I finish on the 20th. I get just over 2 months off. Not bad.

Doesn't sound very far fetched in China. Have to scan a QR code to enter pretty much anywhere. And there is so little logic, could easily see the phones taken afterwards.

This is a translation of what is currently doing the rounds on my students social media. I doubt it will stay up very long.

I'm working in China right now. The university I'm on has been in closed loop management for over a month. Teachers and staff have sometimes been allowed out and in but students need special permission to leave if they want to return home, and they can't come back. Despite that, we are still not allowed in classrooms and have to teach online. The protests are not that widely known here, although the Xinxinang fire definitely got through more. But I have noticed a big shift in attitude. A few weeks ago, a majority of students would say the restrictions were needed for public safety, that we had to stay strong and fight and pandemic. Now, they are tired, fed up and seriously questioning if this is necessary.

I have done, with added humidity. It's not particularly enjoyable to be honest, and you'll likely be pretty slow. If you do you do go out, make sure you're carrying a decent amount of water, wearing a hat and try to run somewhere with shade. Personally, I'm taking a couple of days off and will go out again tomorrow.

I'm doing my road running in the Kalenji Jogflow 500.1 from Decathlon at the moment. £35 and a very comfortable up to about 10 miles.

Couch 2 5k is a good place to start. Stick with it and don't worry if you have to repeat weeks because you struggled. It's good to have aims, so maybe look at going on to Parkrun from there. Remember, your progress won't always be a straight line, you'll have bad weeks and good weeks and times when you feel like you're going backwards. That's a normal part of the process. It's always best to go to a proper running shop and get an analysis before buying trainers. But if you don't want to do that Decathlon have some great value trainers to get you started.

My first marathon wasn't a lot better than that. Less than a year later I did my second and ran 3:31. It's definitely worth another go!

Congratulations, that's an awesome marathon time, especially if it's your first attempt at that distance.

The Nepali people are really blind on this, it's actually quite funny. Even now, people will insist that no one really knows what happens, that the prince was innocent and the gunman was someone in disguise, it was a conspiracy by the Moaists etc etc. It really shows how blinkered people can be about royalty. The truth is pretty straight forward. The prince was a spoiled, gun obsessed maniac, high on drink and drugs. He was most likely motivated by the fact that he wasn't allowed to marry his girlfriend.

Listen to your body, not your Garmin. It can be a useful guide but go according to what you think your body needs. Out of interest, which Garmin is that? I have body battery on mine but nothing that's ever told me I'm over reaching.

It sounds like your training is well on track and you have a good plan. Don't forget to throw in a low mileage week every 4 weeks or so, your body will need it and you'll progress better having given yourself a chance to do some proper recovery.

Take up trail running! Get's you off the hard surfaces and because you are constantly changing your stride and engaging different muscles, it's generally a lot easier on the joints. It's also a lot more fun!

Put walk breaks into your runs. Don't wait until you hit the wall to take the break, decide when you are going to take them and stick with it. If you are doing 20 min runs right now, I'd suggest trying something like 4 minutes running, 2 minutes walking and see how you get on. You'll be building time on feet and before long you'll need a lot less breaks.

I go for months without posting, but this topic always manages to drag me back in.... I would pretty much just keeping doing what you're doing, except for adding a long run once a week. Obviously, slower than your regular running, but once you've got in to the swing of them start adding some faster intervals. I think you could also aim for something closer to 3:30 given your 10km pace. Congratulations on the big miles and the consistency. Targeting annual miles is an interesting one. I did it last year with a target of 2000 miles. Although it was good to get lots of miles in and to have some target in the absence of races, I wound up doing a lot of pretty worthless junk miles that didn't help me progress as all. This year, I deliberately focused on quality of quality and have gone down to 1660 miles but am running much better and have had a couple of good races toward the end of the year.

If you are have a lot of pronation or supination look for shoes that have a lot of support, and less cushioning. If you have only a little you can probably get away with a neutral shoe, which has a mix of support and cushioning. If you don't need any correction you can take a more cushioned shoe if you prefer it to the neutral. If the websites you are looking at don't tell you enough about the shoes, try looking some on a site like run repeat.com where they give all the details. Edit: this is better advice than mine! https://runrepeat.com/guides/best-stability-running-shoes

Go to proper running store that can put you on a treadmill and do a proper analysis. I think it's really the only way to make sure you get the right shoes. As long as they explain everything properly then next time you'll have a good idea what to look for without doing it again.

That would vaccinate the whole of Nepal, or some other countries in similar situations. India obviously has a crazy population, but they're also the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world so if blocks on materials were lifted (the US has been holding up exports of some of the materials needed) and intellectual property rights done away with they could get a lot out quite quickly. To be clear, I've no problem with people being able to travel to see family (I was lucky enough to be able to travel to the UK last year to see my Dad before he died) or travel between safer countries. But any talk of normality is premature because it can only be a limited normal until it includes everyone.

I've no issue with travel corridors or arrangements between safer countries, but it's far too early to talk of travel going back to normal because most of the world isn't in a normal situation. There still need to be limits on mobility. Free travel between safer countries sure but restrictions elsewhere. It's talk of normality that gets my back up at the moment, and a general anger at western governments that are hoarding vaccines and holding up efforts for free patents, wider manufacturing etc in the name of profit.

There are certainly some good reasons for travel and blanket bans aren't the answer, but it needs to be a cautious approach. God knows, I'd like to escape from here if there were any flights. I don't blame anyone for taking the vaccine or think it's their fault, I'll take any opportunity I can to get jabbed, but I am angry that the west has ordered millions more vaccines than it needs and countries that are in absolute crisis can't get any. Some of the complaints about restrictions (and I'm not particularly referring to you, I only dip in this thread now and then and have no idea what your general position is) don't sit right while we're burning bodies in car parks and putting covid patients 3 to a bed.

My perspective is going to be different because I'm sitting here in Nepal and frankly shitting myself at the moment because the situation is seriously scary. I know if I get sick there is almost zero chance of getting help, so anything that could increase the risk in South Asia, South America or Africa is going to get a negative reaction from me. Focus on getting the world vaccinated, then you can have your international holidays. Until then it's pretty low down on my list of priorities.

Theoretical maybe, but it's new variants are popping up all the time and some of them are going to be vaccine resistant and serious if people from all over the place start mixing freely. Then what about the unvaccinated populations (?I.e, most of the world). Open up travel, vaccinated travellers can still carry the virus to unvaccinated populations. Just having the west vaccinated is not enough. There needs to be a serious effort to get everyone vaccinated and that is not happening.

A lot of people in rich counties have been vaccinated. But most of the world hasn't. If you open up travel, people start jetting off to different locations with lower vaccination rates and bringing back new, vaccine resistant variants. Time for the west to stop hoarding all the vaccines, get them out where they needed, then maybe international travel can return to some sort of normality.

Ha ha, yeah I remember spraying blood up all the walls, my bedroom looked like a murder scene. Even while it was happening I was finding it funny, and as it happened in a shared student house with all my mates there I knew it was going enter into legend.

Likewise. I remember eating and drinking as little as possible to minimise the numbers of times I'd have to go to the toilet. The incident itself I don't remember as being very painful, but that may have been to do with how drunk I was.