I bought the Google Pixel 7 after all. It was essentially a choice between that and the Samsung A54. The Pixel was reduced on Prime Day, the A54 wasn’t. I was leaning towards the Pixel anyway as 1) I don’t really like Samsung’s Android UI style that much and 2) The camera comparisons I could find all had the Pixel producing better photos. On the A54’s side, the battery is probably significantly better and the connectivity is supposedly better, but I am a bit sceptical of this because my mum has an A34 (mid range model below the A54) which frequently drops wifi if the signal strength dips temporarily and refuses to reconnect until the “signal is stronger” despite the signal recovering almost instantly – it turns out there is a setting under ‘Intelligent’ wifi to disable this stupid feature, though.
I am super pleased with the camera. The picture quality in low light is amazing. Here are some examples of the Pixel 7 versus my Pocophone F1 in artificial light. I won’t bother to label which one is which because it’s pretty obvious! And as well as being actually in focus, the photos are smaller (1.7MB vs 5.6MB for the first two, 3.4MB vs 4.8MB for the second).
I finished Rings of Power S1. Taking a broad view, it was pretty good and I enjoyed it. But taking a more detailed view there were a lot of plotholes and things that made no sense. These are on a tiny detail level (like why did Galadriel give away her sword before going out on a 10 day ride – you might need it, you know?). I’m pretty sure you could choose any scene and come up with a long list of tiny interactions that don’t make sense. But they are also on a bigger level: Halbrand’s position is really important to the overall plot and his own scheming goals, but he seems to have ended up where he is only because he was very passive and let himself be pushed around by Galadriel. Also, I found it frustrating how much screen time was given to the Harfoots in the last episode and how little was given to the elves and Celebrimbor, which are far more interesting and important to later events. The writing is pretty terrible really, it just looks good and it’s well acted. Galadriel’s pronunciation of ‘Sauron’ and Elrond’s ‘Galadriel’ are highlights.
I’m also watching Andor. I found the first episode a bit slow and the second to be a likely cure for insomnia, but now I’m on epsiode 9 and it’s really, really good! It’s very different to all the other Star Wars media. I think the difference is that it’s written for adults. In other Star Wars, the evilness of the Empire is almost abstract; you never really see the real, personal effects of it. In Andor you see a lot more of the almost casual evil and callousness. The prison design really subverts expectations for prison episodes, and I found it very unsettling. Andor is very well made TV.
In other entertainment news… I seem to have ended up watching some Vietnam war films lately, because I watched one and then there were lots of recommendations…
Full Metal Jacket. This is a strange film because it’s split into three parts and, while they’re connected by following the same character, they feel quite disconnected. The first part, of his experience at boot camp, is unique due to the drill instructor. The second part follows him to Vietnam as he takes on a role of a military reporter, but keeps the war itself at a distance, and the third part has him take part in real battle with all the grim experience that comes with it. That’s the journey of the film. But it feels a little unsatisfying because the main character is never explored very deeply so the fact that he alone is what connects the first to the second two sections feels like there’s something missing. Some of the first section feels quite surreal with odd dialog and deliveries and stylistic choices, and some of the weird dialog and deliveries continue throughout. I wondered if this signified anything. After reading about it online, I think if there’s any more to it, then it was lost on everyone but the director. It’s a strange film.
The Deer Hunter is another strange film, but in a completely different way. It’s a long film (3h) with the first hour moving at a glacial pace. Most of the scenes feel far too long, and it also feels like there’s a lot missing in between scenes. There is an interesting story about maturity and trauma in here somewhere, but it’s very unfocused. It’s mostly carried by Robert De Niro. I wouldn’t recommend it, unless you really like both weddings and Russian roulette.
Platoon. Unlike the other films, Platoon is a straightforward war film. It feels like a modern film. In some ways, the details are strong. The combat scenes are disorientating and confusing and (except at the end) you rarely even see the enemy other than the odd flash of a silhouette, which I’d imagine is pretty on point for jungle warfare. The costumes are also really strong, with how the characters often look drenched in sweat and rain and the clothes stick to them. They look like they’re really living in a dense, humid jungle. It’s well made with convincing details. But on the negative side, the story is a bit weak. It’s not bad, there’s just not a lot to it.
The time is coming to upgrade my phone. I have a Xioami Pocophone F1, which has been a pretty good phone for the price I paid (£200), but is now quite a long way out of date and hasn’t had security updates for years, which is not great. I think the priorities I have are: 1. The camera, because I take a lot of photos of my dog and 2. It has to be a pretty OK general purpose device.
Despite it being a cheap phone I find it can take very striking photos, with a bit of coaxing in bright light. Photos are very, very subjective, especially regarding colour, and you could criticise the camera here for artifically increasing the vibrancy of the greens, but to me it looks good and I like it (though sometimes it makes the reds of the harness and lead look pink). I’m less bothered by that kind of processing than cameras that use AI to add detail where there is none, like faking moon photos, which is just ridiculous.
But it can struggle with exposure, and it’s particularly poor in artificial light. I think I might be at a disadvantage with the auto focus in low light because my favourite model is black and he probably wouldn’t let me dye him white.
Hasn’t focused in artificial lightBad exposureA bit overexposedNot bad for an action shot, but the sky is a bit bright and the focus isn’t great
We have various possible sales coming up soon – Prime Day in a few weeks, Black Friday in November, so I’m trying to get a head start in understanding the market.
The best cameras are the Google Pixel series. The Pixel 7a is about £450 (I could just about be convinced to spend this much) and the 7 is £550 (I could not be convinced to spend this much) but you can get a 7 for about £400 from marketplace sellers on Amazon. But I am suspicious and think these are probably ‘grey market’ sellers, so, assuming you actually end up with the phone, Google might not honour the warranty. I’m not sure about Pixels. They seem to be a camera with a phone attached to them and there are plenty of complaints about the non-camera aspects of the phone (overheating, battery, unreliable fingerprint sensor), so while I would probably love the camera I might not love the phone. The price may come down officially though as the Pixel 8 is launching in a couple of weeks, so I’m keeping an eye on this. The official Google store is currently leading with “Pixel 8: Coming in hot”, which is an interesting choice of phrase for a phone with a reputation for overheating.
Other possibilities in the £300-450 range are the Nothing Phone(1), Samsung A54, OnePlus Nord 2T 5G, and a confusing array of Xioami phones. Generally all of these have a camera that is either slightly or substantially worse than the Pixel’s, with the Pixel’s being especially competitive in low light. But every other feature is probably the same or better.
Xioami probably offers the best value for money for the hardware but the short software support time I got with my Poco F1 puts me off. Maybe they have improved that now. The Samsung A54 is probably the safe choice.
I woke up on Monday with a sore throat, and then as soon as I started eating breakfast my stomach announced it was upset too. Three days later and, yep, it’s definitely a virus of some kind. So far it’s not been too bad. My stomach is still a bit iffy but not terrible, and the sore throat has progressed to a bit of a cold but nothing much. Is it COVID? I don’t know, I don’t have any tests. The first time I had COVID it started with an upset stomach a few days before other symptoms appeared and the second time (in January) it started with a sore throat. So… maybe? Not that it makes any difference either way, except that hopefully since I had it relatively recently I’ve still got enough immunity that it won’t be too bad this time.
In computer game news, I finished Shadow of Mordor. I enjoyed it a lot and as it’s a long time since I last played a big budget computer game I was surprised by how polished it was. Maybe that’s just the standard now, but it I felt it was really well made. It also prompted me to start watching Rings of Power (the Amazon Lord of the Rings series), as the stories kind of overlap a little bit. Except that in the game Celebrimbor is a force to be reckoned with, whereas in the TV show he looks like a geography teacher.
I thought I’d have a break from Lord of the Rings before moving onto Shadow of War, the sequel. In the mean time I went with the Mad Max game. The Mad Max game is conceptually quite similar to Shadow Of Mordor (in terms of gameplay mechanics), but I’ve been underwhelmed by it. It feels like they made about 80% of the game really well but didn’t think about the final 20%. The writing is immature. It’s been a very long time since I saw Mad Max, so maybe this is in, but the first person you meet is called “Scrotus” and it doesn’t improve from then onwards. Almost everyone you meet is an angry psychopath who in the kind of lawless reality depicated would have been killed for being a total liability to themselves and everyone around them. Overall, though, the game is very polished but repetitive and not all that fun. Even just playing in short bursts on my Steam Deck I’m feeling bored by it. The driving feels nice, but wandering around on foot is dull.
I might try Subnautica next. People keep telling me that it’s amazing.
I’m about half way through the three month coaching period now and I can say it’s definitely improved my form. Has it improved my performance? Well I don’t really know, because I’d normally measure it by my Parkrun times, but we’ve been doing an interval workout on Thursday evenings, so by Saturday morning I’m not recovered enough for a 5k race effort (which I learnt the hard way – several times, just to make sure). I have a reasonably flat 10k on Sunday which I’m going to treat as a race effort, so as long as I can get the pacing right (big if) then the result will be informative.
My form has improved in the sense that I’m getting my weight and my hips more forward and I have better awareness of where my weight is while I’m running, my stride length has increased quite a lot because I’m spending more time in flight (though whether I can keep the stride at high cadence is another matter – I think this will require more endurance), and my left-right balance is steadily improving. The balance of ‘bad’ runs are now at the level that my good runs were to begin with, though there is still room for improvement.
Up until now the 1 to 1 sessions have been focused purely on weights to try to even up my strength, but we are going to shift to me-specific drills from now on. I’m not sure exactly what those are yet.
We do a lot of various drill routines before the interval session and also in the strength class. I do think they have a noticeable effect just before running because you are getting the motion into your legs and muscle memory which you then draw on when you start moving. A lot of it is focused on getting your knees high. You see it and think “isn’t that just wasted energy?” but actually it starts to make your stride feel very cyclical, with your leg kicking out behind you then swinging forward towards the high knee position and suddenly your stride is far longer than it was before.
But it’s only recently I feel like I’ve really got the movements working smoothly enough for it to help. Drills look so easy and fluid when you see someone on YouTube do them, but you have to practice the drill a lot before you can do it to a level that it’s actually beneficial. You don’t see the hours of them starting off and lifting their left leg and then thinking “err, my right arm should be coming up, not my left”.
I’ve enjoyed the weights though and she wants me to continue with them twice a week myself. I have a 50kg barbell/dumbell set from years ago and I’ve bought an extra 2x10kg plates for the deadlifts. This morning I deadlifted 40kg which is the most I’ve ever done, and it didn’t feel that heavy! I don’t think lifting any more than that is really going to help with running, but I would quite like to get it up to bodyweight.
As I have jury service coming up in a few months I find myself being more interested by news stories about court proceedings than I would otherwise have been. As such, I’ve been following the Lucy Letby case. She is a neonatal nurse who last week was convicted of murdering 7 babies. Overall I think it is very odd because none of the evidence seems particularly strong and I don’t think I would have reached the same conclusion that the jury did. Much was made of a supposedly confessional note that she had written, but having read it I think it’s a bit of a leap to consider it a confession instead of a mental outlet of someone under an incredible amount of stress. Some people are very willing to mentally entertain the idea that they have done something wrong when accused, even if they haven’t. I think the strongest evidence is the statistics, but I’m not convinced you can find someone guilty of multiple individual murders by statistical aggregation, and statistics is fraught with caveats anyway. You can prove a lot of nonsense with data if you are selective about what data you publish, and it can be difficult for an observer, especially one not well versed in statistics, to tell what data is not there.
I have tried to do more reading on this. It’s a very frustrating experience. The first thing is that news articles post-verdict are absolutely ghoulish. It’s just peering into someone’s rather banal private life. Even the BBC put out an article saying “what I learnt about Lucy Letby…” (spoiler alert: the author learnt that she had a crush on someone, she cries in high stress scenarios , she has a pink fluffy dressing gown, and other equally fascinating facts). The focus on her text messages is silly. They are only sinister if you assume she is a serial killer referring cryptically to her serial killing. Otherwise they’re just the exact same type of boring everyday messages that are on everyone’s phone.
News articles are quick to point out that deaths stopped after she was moved off the unit, but (following on from the concept of proving nonsense with statistics,) they never say if the unit is still treating the same number of patients, and other sources say that the unit was “downgraded” and no longer treats more serious cases.
I think you could find her guilty on the balance of probabilities, but not beyond reasonable doubt.
My coach finished her video analysis and the next stage was to go around to her home gym where she assessed my mobility. There was a lot of detail, but the main outcomes are:
1. My right hip flexor has nowhere near the same range of motion as my left. This is surprising to me as my left always feels very tight! Perhaps because it works harder. She’d spotted it on the video that I wasn’t getting as much hip extension on the right and confirmed it in her gym. It wasn’t just a small difference either.
2. My left shoulder/trap is very tight. She thinks this is contributing to my imbalance on a rotational level as it intereferes with my arm swing and I kind of throw my weight over to the right side. I’m not sure if she’d completely figured it out from the video, but she’d picked up that something was going on with my left arm. She had my do a few overhead squats and the moment I said the main place I was feeling it was in my left trap she started smirking as if she knew I was going to say that.
3. My landing is forward from my centre of balance, which seems to be caused by me leaning backwards a bit. It’s very obvious in the video stills. She thinks I’m a bit unusual with this because I seem to have a strong core and I’m not sagging in the middle, which is usually the problem with landing too far forward, I’m just getting my centre of balance wrong. Apparently I’m missing out on a lot of speed because I’m having to use my hamstrings to pull myself forward as soon as I hit the ground, rather than already being the right place (I think she’s right on this – I think I should be quite a bit faster and this looks like a big energy cost).
The first two she was quite pleased about because she thinks it’s easily fixable outside of running. I just need to loosen up the muscles and fascia. Ok, easier said than done, but lying on a foam roller for 15 minutes a day is a lot easier than altering my running form.
The leaning thing, however, is going to take some work. We were focusing on it last night during the group session. I think some of it is mental, in that you feel like you’re going to fall forward, and you just kind of need to switch off from that and keep putting your feet underneath you to catch yourself. I felt like I was keeping a lean for brief periods but it wasn’t coming easily.
I’m pleased about this too because the first two are things I would never have worked out on my own. I hadn’t realised that my right hip flexor was restricted and although I was vaguely aware of tension in my left shoulder I would never have considered that it would affect my running. I had worked out that my lean needed some work, but I’m sure I’ll get much better results with her than on my own with this.
It’s interesting how the verbs ‘coach’ and ‘train’ in the context of sports both mean something similar, and, as nouns, they are both public transport vehicles. I wonder what’s going on there.
Anyway, the more interesting thing is that I now have a running coach! I thought I was making progress with my balance but then I had a series of very unbalanced runs and my knee starting feeling a bit funny again, so I was going to go to the physio… and then it occurred to me that what I really need is someone who’s going to watch me regularly and give me feedback on how I’m moving, which you don’t get in a physio’s office. Conveniently there happens to be a parkrun regular who’s a professional coach and I know someone who’s been to her group sessions who says she’s very hot on running form. I sent her an email explaining it all and asked if she’d be interested, and she is!
So I’m with her for three months, and I get a weekly one to one session, a weekly group running session and a weekly group strength/mobility class. I did the first group running session last week. It involved a lot of agility work which I’ve never really done before and then a few intervals. On Monday I had the first one to one, which consisted of her filming me at increasing paces so she can analyse it and see how I’m moving. Last night was the first strength session, which included a lot of running drills. On Friday she’s going to assess my strength and mobility in her gym and then she’ll come up with a plan…
In other news, I took advantage of the recent sale on Steam to load up my Steam Deck with games! Even though I’m going to have even less time to play them for the next three months…
I also got a bunch from Humble Bundle choice for £8.99. I now have a big backlog to work through. I’ve played a few minutes of Fallout 4 and had to laugh when I tried to explore the town instead of going to the fallout shelter (vault) and was prompted evaporated by a nuclear explosion. But, to my surprise, Middle-Earth Shadow Of Mordor has really grabbed me. It’s an action adventure thingy that’s really well made and works well on controllers, and I’m enjoying sword fighting orcs. I think the Steam Deck might be my favourite purchase of the last decade. Other games I nabbed were Lego Star Wars, Star Wars Squadrons, The Outer Worlds (big RPG, but mixed reviews), Factory Town (low expectations but might be fun) and Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate, which is possibly the stupidest concept I’ve seen for a game (in a good way).
Also in very unrelated news, this Huw Edwards thing is terrible! The Sun ran a story accusing an unnamed person of soliciting child pornography citing the victim’s mother, but included enough information that it was quickly discerned to be Huw Edwards. Then the “victim’s” lawyer released a statement saying it was nonsense, and now the police have said that there’s no evidence a crime was committed and won’t be taking it any further. Now Huw Edwards is in hospital because of the effect to his mental health. I hope that he sues the Sun out of existence, but it’s a poor reflection on the country in general that people actually exchange money for these newspapers.
Since I got my Running Dynamics Pod I’ve been focusing really hard on trying to get my left/right balance to centre. I think I’ve probably always had a strong right bias because I remember years ago noticing that the heel wears down on my right trainer much faster than the left. I think I probably overstride on my right leg, but not on the left. I became a bit more focused on this lately because my right hip keeps getting tight (which happens every so often) and then it progressed into knee pain too.
The good news is that my balance is improving! Not only that, but my overall contact time has reduced a little bit and my flight time (i.e. time off the ground) has increased quite a lot, which are proxies for good/efficient form.
But the trend still has me at only about 51.5%, so there’s still a way to go.
It’s actually quite difficult to work on this, because there isn’t much information online about left/right imbalances. Mostly advice is pretty generic and either not really actionable or not useful, so I’ve had to experiment quite a lot.
I’ve found generally that it helps to foam roll my quads and hips before I run, but some days the balance is way off and there’s not much I can do about it. I find that it’s worse on faster runs and tends to go downhill as I fatigue. However, it is improving. The outlier dot on the 11th is Two Castles, which was a 10k I ran at roughly tempo pace, which had me at about 54.7%. The last most dot is a 9k I ran yesterday at roughly the same tempo pace, and I was on 52.8%, which is still way off centre but a huge improvement.
I think I’m having most success with thinking about pushing off from the ground behind me. There are two competing schools of thought on this. One is to think about pulling your feet off the ground quickly, the other is to think about pushing behind you. I’ve tried both and I seem to get along better with the pushing idea.
I find that when I think about pushing, the weight in my feet shifts a bit more underneath and maybe behind me and my body seems to lean forward to compensate. The slight lean is important, I think the pushing idea doesn’t really make sense without it.
The second cue is to think about keeping my hips level and forward, which seems to help a lot with balance. It also kind of creates a pull through my abdomen and feels like (although I’m sure it doesn’t look like) the kind of classic elite runner pose with the strong hip extension that you see often in very fast runners, like Eluid Kipchoge here (who has the most graceful and effortless form I’ve seen):
For exercises to support this, I’m mostly focusing on:
Stretching and foam rolling my quads and hip flexors, because I sit down too much and tightness here interferes with proper hip extension
Core/abdominal exercises like bicycles and dead bugs
Hamstring/glute strength like exercise ball curls (I bought such a ball for Monty, so I might as well use it!) and extensions against a resistance band.
You can spend a lot of time doing general hip strength exercises like fire hydrants and bridges and even squats, and I used to, but I’ve become a bit sceptical that they realy apply to running.
Two Castles is a 10k run between Warwick Castle and Kenilworth Castle. It’s a nice idea with two main disadvantages: 1. Kenilworth is about 40m higher than Warwick so it’s really the wrong way around, and 2. There’s not a lot of shade on the roads between them.
As is becoming tradition, it was a race day so the weather was really hot. There were a few familiar faces from parkrun there so we were standing around before hand, chatting in the grounds of Warwick Castle. Castles tend to have quite wide courtyard areas and relatively short walls, which means they aren’t very shady. I could feel my exposed skin getting baked even at 8:30 in the morning. The past few runs have been unusually warm for the time of year, but I think we’re now in official heat wave territory. I have to credit the organisers with handling it well, though. Compared to the Solihull half marathon, which I ran last August during a heatwave, there were more water stations and a lot more marshalls around.
Unlike on some previous races, my death-wish tolerance was quite low this time so I took it pretty steady and ran just under 48 minutes. Last weekend I did a 13k at 4:30/km, this one was 10k at 4:45/km. So that’s quite a bit slower. I decided that if I raced it, I might hit 45 minutes (which I wouldn’t even be happy with for a race effort anyway) and I’d feel grim for the next day or two. So I kept it at more of a mid tempo effort and felt all the better for it. It was actually very congested anyway, not helped by the weather causing people to slow down all the way along the course and walk up hills, so even at a more sedate pace I was having to weave around people the whole way, which meant I was expending a bit more energy than I should have been for the pace.
I think I made the right choice. One of my Strava enemiesrivals friends who finished less than a minute behind me on the 13km last weekend ran it in 45:30 but said she felt sick the whole way. Been there, done that, this way was much better.
The hills weren’t too bad. Maybe I’m just getting better at them. A lot of people walking them whereas to me they felt alright. It was quite an undulating route with a lot of gradual climbing. Anything steep was pretty short lived.
Warwick Castle. Sorry about the lighting.He didn’t run it with us
So anyway, let’s talk about ground contact time balance. This was the worst one yet, with 54.7% of my ground contact time on the right foot. 54.7% maybe doesn’t sound that bad looking at percentage points, but in terms of actual percentage difference it means I spent 20% more time on my right foot than my left, and that’s a lot!
I don’t want to read too much into one reading though. I’m using the Garmin Running Dynamics Pod, which clips onto the back of my shorts. I suspect that if it’s not perfectly centred it’ll bias it one way or the other, so it’s more something you have to look at in terms of trends rather than single data points. Regardless, it fits with my suspicion that I tend to rely on my right leg for power a lot more, which is going to show up on faster runs and hills.
In doing a few easy runs since, I’ve found that my left hip flexor is tight (well I knew that already) and I tend to move nearer to 50% if I really focus on pushing against that tightness through my stride. Yesterday I did a run that that was roughly 50-50 for the first few kilometres, which I think is because I did some squats and hip hikes to warm up. There’s lots to work on.
Rambles 