Bellend Sebastian

Let's me start by saying I am NOT an expert runner in any sense (I peaked with a very average half marathon time more years ago than I care to admit) but I always tell people starting out to master the art of running slowly, or at least, so you're not pushing yourself very hard. Once you can run for over half an hour and not feel spent you realise that running a bit further isn't a big deal and there comes a point when you start thinking that running another mile is just another 8/9/10 minutes or whatever and if you've already been running for an hour or so, that doesn't seem like much, does it? Like James says, you just get into a rhythm and become a lot less aware that you're actually running. You have to take a bit of care as when your head can cope with the idea it's easy to overdo it and if you build up too quickly that's when your body won't thank you and you'll get niggles and injuries. Apologies if I've pitched this wrong or oversimplified it, but I still get people looking at me like I've done something amazing if I've ran 8 or 9 miles but seriously if I can do that anybody can

Did the worst ever stop/start 5k this morning but that was down to my dreadful, dreadful fitness at present, not my achilles. In all honesty I didn't give it a second's thought once I got started - I'm certainly not ruining through any kind of discomfort and it's nowhere near the level where I'd think of getting something treated. Sat here I can tell it's not quite right but relatively light running doesn't seem to be troubling it. Guess I've got to just be careful

Anyone got experience of achilles problems? It's about the one thing I've never had an issue with, but I'm getting a twinge and occasional slight discomfort at the bottom of the back of my foot, extending into the back of my sole. I've done a couple of slow 5ks on it with no issues, but should I be resting it or strengthening and stretching? It's not really a problem at the minute but I've known so many people in my peer group (40s/50s) that have had real problems with this and long recovery times when it gets out of hand

Radical! Intended as a trigger word but increasingly makes the user just look a bit hysterical. It's like when they just started putting the word "woke" in front of things until it became meaningless and was used to describe things like bond markets

Yesterday's The Rest Is Politics is an interesting listen, where they interview Gerald Knauss, an Austrian social scientist, about immigration and how it should be handled. It drives me potty how it's become one of those issues that is politicised to the extent that far more energy seems to go into either saying it's out of control or how tough you're being on it than actually taking the practical steps to address it. Old Gerald might be being a tad optimistic but presents the issue as being completely solvable, and - and this is important (to the likes of me, anyway) in a humane way and that it's simply an issue of management and proper collaboration between nations that just needs a bit of political will of the right sort

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4kx8n2vwxo I know the Conservatives have been in a bit of a doom loop in recent years in terms of always taking the most right wing path available when presented with any sort of choice but this was going a bit far

The only solution is probably to kill your account. I've got quite a few FB friends still and what they put on there is dwarfed by the absolute nonsense being churned out by engagement farmers. I'm still getting bombarded by stuff deliberately winding people up about electric vehicles (often accompanied by a fun AI picture of someone plugging a charging cable into the door handle of their car that's in the middle of the road) and Reform related stuff that is often wildly inaccurate and talking as if Farage will be PM in a matter of weeks

I'm expecting to get kicked off Facebook soon for reporting all AI slop I see for sexual content

Fun reading the Rod Liddle social media discourse, which consists of a couple of people posting shouldn't-speak-ill-of-the-dead type stuff, vastly outnumbered by folk saying he was a massive piece of s*** and I'll say what I want. Someone pointed out, and I think they've got a point, that Rod Liddle wouldn't be remotely arsed about any of this given that he has made a pretty successful career out of being the worst person he could possibly be so to be sad that you're not mourned on your own death would be a bit rich

All the reports on this I've read mention the vulnerable status of the bloke in question. I'm not convinced that someone who sleeps downstairs to be close to his mum in a freezer and is regularly putting flowers on that freezer is a strong candidate for defrauding the state with malice aforethought but there you go, I'm old fashioned

Not sure that fits the definition here, old boy. I read it and just felt really sad

I never took water with me even when I was training for half marathons (a long time ago), never found I needed it as long as I'd been drinking plenty of fluid for a couple of days beforehand. More than that distance I might well need some but those days are gone

My own shit driving. Half pulled into a car park space with plan to reverse into one across the way, but the car I I had clocked but assumed (wrongly) wasn't turning into the bit of the car park I was in was right behind me. I put car into reverse without realising he's there and start to move off and the car's collision detection kicks in and stops the car dead, disaster averted. It's never done that before like that - it's usually a warning and a bit of a nudge on the brakes but this was a proper intervention, not just a suggestion. Thanks very much, car boffins

Rained a bit for about 3 minutes just now. We've reached the stage where I post on the internet about this

I would say enough to make everything less likely to catch fire until at least tomorrow morning

Two Tier Kier! Justice for coercive control weirdos and wife beaters now! I suppose they were channeling their cold rage elsewhere for a bit which might have given their other halves some respite, especially if they were put away for it https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/24/most-people-arrested-during-henry-nowak-protests-had-been-reported-for-domestic-abuse

Half way through and really like it. Paul Ready doesn't seem to mind being typecast as well intentioned but feckless characters, does he? Nice to see the horrible mum out of Andor as well

Police helicopter was hovering over our house yesterday (I've done nothing, guvnor!). Typical! They're usually too late to do anything so for a change they turned up too early. Broken Britain etc

We think it moved its kill to behind my neighbour's car, as the fuss continued even though we couldn't see it. It has at last gone quiet, mercifully. Was just reading how magpies sometimes team up with other corvids, and there a WERE a couple of crows getting involved but very much on the fringes so I doubt their efforts will be particularly appreciated

This is still going on. Bloody hell

A Peregrine Falcon has just killed a Magpie on my neighbour's driveway and about ten other Magpies are going absolutely mental at it. I've never heard such a racket, I'm trying to sleep here, lads

Bleak isn't it? I'm always interested in how much influence they have on public perceptions in reality. Whenever the media is under any scrutiny itself it tends to downplay the extent to which people pay it any mind but in some demographics (I'm thinking of my parents' generation here, mostly well into their 80s) tabloid newspapers are still their go-to for pretty much everything

I suppose I should be pleased that Farage has got The Mail on Sunday on top of the Times after him now and his popularity taking an actual hit for once but you cannot ignore that they could have done this years ago but chose not to

Like Reform Home Affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf, for example

I'll add this to my library of things to respond with when the bleeding doom-mongers that cross my path too often tell me that "the country's not what it used to be" etc etc. I've just seen this story on Threads and the most common response is that it isn't true, which I guess just underlines that not many people go on the internet to say things like "that's good then" and "nice to hear that progress is being made"