Quick update and some coming reviews

Now the school term has started and holiday things fade away, I was hoping my blogging routine might improve.  Life, however, is once again very busy.  Family life is delightful and work is quite a strain right now.

Some might already know my full time job is looking a bit risky after a 23 year career in criminal justice.  This is a huge restructure taking place.  I’m not the only one and over the last few days a number of colleagues have come to either say farewell or to say they’re going soon.  This is bringing out so much camaraderie and I have seen so much support being shown amongst my colleagues it is quite emotional!  I am seeing the best side of people, not the worst.  For myself it is too soon to know how I will fare in this restructure but whatever happens, I will make it right for me.

Back to the world of cycling and some up and coming reviews…..

Firstly I have been testing out some Vertix headsets.  These are an intercom link between cyclists and include a microphone and ear pieces which fit neatly onto a helmet.  After a slightly slow start they are working fine and first impressions are mixed.  I think these will need a fairly detailed review in their own right.

Aldi have kindly sent some samples of their winter range of cycling gear, ahead of the launch on Thursday 24th September.  I have bib tights, a jersey, some lights, arm warmers, leg warmers, electrolyte tablets and some bike cleaner to try out.  Savvy shoppers to get ready!

Probikekit is, for myself, a new supplier and it’s been good getting to know them  They have asked me to review some Osmo products (preload hydration and some active hydration sachets) as well as some High 5 energy gels in a new flavour.

Also coming are some Primal Pantry bars.  I’m pretty excited about these as I remember meeting the producers at the London Bike Show and they’re just my kind of saddle bag food.  I understand I’m getting a mixed box containing a variety of different flavours.

I do enjoy blogging!

Blogging can be very rewarding at times and I do hope to develop things further during the winter months.  It’s a strange feeling knowing that I can be typing away quite happily at home, keeping a kind of “web log” reasoning in mind and yet minutes later someone on the other side of the world could be reading my blog!  Sure I get things to review which is nice.  Yes I get a little income through the affiliate adverts but the most engaging aspect are the people I gradually get to know and this is lovely.

My Ramblings gets translated into Vietnamese!

I've said it before, one of the lovely things about blogging is the interesting interactions with other people.  The most recent example is me being asked if I would allow a blog post to be translated into Vietnamese by a community group of people wanting to share knowledge around the world.  They came across my post about cycling up Kirkstone Pass, in Cumbria, northern England.

To know a little more about this work, click here.
To see the above post in Vietnamese, click here.
To see the original post in English, click here.

What have I been up to?

My apologies for neglecting my blog a little lately.  Here's a few things keeping me well occupied:

Work
My work in the criminal justice system has always been demanding and it never seems to let up.  I do like the variety and I like doing little projects in addition to having responsibility for a small team of fantastic colleagues.  I feel privileged.

Alas times are changing.  The profession is almost unrecognisable when compared to my entry as an assistant way back in 1992.  The prison population has almost doubled, I have seen first hand the impact of a succession of very different Home Secretaries, the Ministry of Justice has been formed and the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda has torn my profession apart.  Legislation has had huge impacts on the justice system as well as creating thousands of additional new laws for people to break.  Huge staff reductions have taken place since 2010 and an eye-watering number are still to go in the foreseeable future.

The chance of these staff reductions affecting me are high.  As you can imagine that has caused me to consider, reconsider and consider my future direction. As I seem to have a naturally optimistic outlook for the most part, I am almost looking forward to seeing what doors could open ahead of me. And then I think of all those bills to pay.  At that point it looks scary.

As a family we are incredibly blessed and I am sure the right things will happen, although these aren't always what we expect or want.  We cannot see ahead, although it is wise to plan ahead as best we can.  I will keep you posted as things unfold.

Running!
Yes Running!  The focus of this blog.  I'm not sure if I mentioned or not, I have given myself a little target for the year and this is to run 1000 miles in 2015.  At the time of writing I have just passed the 500 mile mark, so nicely on track.

My running pattern seems to have changed over the last year or so.  Instead of running early in the mornings for most of my runs, I find I'm now running after work on a couple of days each week.  As you know I'm based in Stevenage and I will either have a run there, or I might drive part of the way home and then run (having changed into my running gear before leaving the office).

The area I have explored in terms of running is around Preston, just outside Hitchin in Hertfordshire. Preston is a little pretty village on the top of a hill with a network of footpaths, bridleways and lanes around.  All very scenic and as an added bonus some of the hills are great to get my heart beating at a fairly high rate (I should say these are short bursts for a couple of minutes and I have been used to doing this for the last few years).  According to Strava I am 14th out of 84 runners on this short steep hill.  My time is 2:31 (which coincidentally I have hit twice now) and I know I can do better.  I'm already looking forward to the next time.

My long runs remain along the tow path of the Grand Union canal, while my youngest daughter is kayaking.  This gives me a 90 minute window to do roughly 10 miles.  It is a real joy seeing the canal through the different seasons now that we have reached summer: I enjoy them all, even the winter!

A while back I blogged about running up Bison Hill and increasing my lead in the Strava course record.  More recently I was beaten by another athlete and it was by quite a margin.  Although I can't recall the new time, I do remember thinking there was no way I could beat it.  Having checked it again I see that new time has disappeared and perhaps I'm back in holding the course record.

Another course record which I have held since December in along the Busway and a flat 0.6 mile sprint.  I can see others are closing in on me and it is only a matter of time before I'm beaten.  One of my friends, Joe C is the one to watch as he has youth on his side and there's less than 10 seconds between us!

Earlier this year I picked up an over-use injury which is completely healed.  That's good.  What isn't so good is that I think I ran slightly differently and consequently "transferred" the problem to my left hip.  It's not too bad and once again it's about keeping the right balance between keeping some running going and resting.  This is a tricky balance!

Cycling
Haven't done much, to be honest, just a few leisure rides.  I have, however, been able to encourage a couple of my friends in taking to two wheels and that has been great to see.  This has involved advising on pedals, what kind of bike to buy etc.

We did get the opportunity to see the Women's Tour of Britain flash past at Ashridge a couple of weeks ago.  That was fun, although it has to be said, road cycling is not really a spectator sport.

Back to blogging

I must blog more.  Partly as a personal journal of things that happen and also the interaction with readers out there which brings the world of blogging to life.  It seems the more I blog, the higher the stats go each day.  If I go through a quiet patch, the daily hit rate falls.

If you want to get in touch at all, please either leave a comment below or email me at ramblingsofdoug@gmail.com

More on blogging

Back in April I blogged about blogging (click here for the post) and I just wanted to add a little to that.

In the time which I have been blogging, I have really appreciated the comments people make and I especially value the times when people email me directly (ramblingsofdoug@gmail.com) to raise questions, make further comments and generally have a little further correspondence.  I am also grateful for the opportunities I have had to review healthy food, clothing and cycling products, plus being commissioned to write for other people.  Here's a huge 'thank you' to every one of you out there!

I wanted to mention another blogger who kindly left a comment on one of my posts, with a link to her own website.  It would have been so easy to have simply let it go without really noticing.  My original post was about the healthy benefits of Pressure Cookers.

So after a while I took a look at her blog which was dedicated to pressure cookers and I was pretty impressed, so I emailed her.

I was very heartened at the friendly reply which quickly came, full of ideas and encouragement.  It's so heartening to know that there are so many helpful people out there in the blogging community who engage with others via the web for no reason other than being helpful.  That's cool.

So if you'd like to know a little more about pressure cookers, recipes and so on, here's her website: http://www.pressurecookercentre.com

Learned about blogging

Time to pause and reflect on blogging, taking stock, looking to refresh?  Time to consider what’s been learned about blogging.

Never underestimate your reach

Sometimes the most unexpected blog can really take off, or even a post within a mediocre blog.  I recently blogged about UKIP and their views on cyclists (click for post) and this led to finding Mum Juice who had already gone viral in breaking the same story.  Reading her relatively young blog Mum Juice commented that she had 77,000 hits in a short period of time, simply because of her own post.

In this blog, I once did a “filler” post where I took a swipe at the drivers of black Range Rovers and this has turned out to be my most popular post to date in quickly hitting well over 22,000 page views.  Following closely behind is a more serious post which I did on giving up smoking, also scoring 22,000 hits but over a longer period of time.  No doubt other bloggers have had similar experiences with far more hits and have perhaps been seriously viral.

I am not sure whether to be amazed at these figures or not.  To think how any of us, all ordinary people, can set up a blog and then have an audience across the world.  Isn’t that amazing?

Bloggers need a strategy

When I started my first blog, I didn’t really have a strategy at all and I have since learned every blogger needs to be clear about this.  The need to be sure about WHY you are blogging is important and equally important is to stick to that.  Without a strategy a blog can become meaningless and without direction.

Therefore I believe it is important to pause every now and then to make sure the blog is still on track and ticking the right boxes.  For me, this blog is about running, staying healthy, eating well on my journey through life, giving mostly personal reflections on things.  The hit rate and my income from that is secondary.

Other bloggers will have a different purpose and these are all equally valid.  Examples can include being a resource for other like-minded people, to campaign or raise awareness, to market something, to amuse, to generate an income, to record a “project” i.e. my training and journey to XXXX event.

It is also important to be clear on how much time you will be required to invest and how often you’re prepared to write a post.  On this I could do much better, I know I am erratic.  Likewise it is important to know what style you’re adopting.  Is a blog going to be funny, heartening, encouraging, informative etc.  Again, be clear about this.

Don’t be afraid to “be yourself”

With so much identify theft taking place these days, it’s easy to understand how people can become paranoid about their place on the web, hiding behind some kind of anonymous avatar.  Speaking honestly I remember being cautious myself.

The blogs from other people I enjoy the most are those who write personally and not distantly.  By that I mean they are honestly sharing something about themselves, rather than hiding behind some virtual wall so the reader has no idea who they really are.

This leads me to comment on the advantages of being more personal in a blog.  I have enjoyed, far more, the interaction with readers when they leave comments and email me directly on a more human basis, rather than those pointless bland comments which are only a level above spam.

So, if a blog writer is being honest and open, why shouldn’t their readers behave in a like-minded way?  It all adds to the richness of interactions between people who might be on different sides of the world and will probably never meet face-to-face.

Google Blogger, WordPress

This has been a steep learning curve for me.  Like many amateur bloggers, the first foray into this fascinating world is through Google’s Blogger platform (and used for this very blog).  Some people knock Google for being so global, intrusive and universal, while this might be true they have done us all a favour by being able to blog easily.

Conversely I have had arguments from people saying the ease in which almost anyone can get on-line and blog has lowered the quality of the web’s content.  It is true there’s a lot of garbage around but the most important thing is the freedom people have in being able to enjoy free speech.  Their audience maybe small, perhaps deliberately restricted to a small family group, or it might potentially be world-wide.

Back to my learning curve.  Google’s Blogger is absolutely fine for a number of reasons – it’s free of charge, relatively easy to do and you can still be quite creative with different formats, colours and templates.  For another blog I have gone down the domain buying, hosting and figuring out WordPress.  

Being accountable

Being accountable has been an unexpected aspect of blogging for me.  When I write, I am accountable for what I say and I do take this seriously.  I say this for a couple of reasons:

• If I say “I am a runner, or a cyclist, or a Christian, or a father” I have to live up to that.  In practice this is more than simply minding my Ps and Qs; it is about living up to these things.  An armchair runner is not really a runner, therefore blogging about running also makes me get my running shoes on when I don’t really feel like it.
• If I talk about a product, I know that can have an effect on the reputation of the brand, or the supplier.  So when I say I like or dislike something, I have to do this in a defensible way.  I don’t expect everyone to agree with me but I must be able to stand my ground as well.

To be grateful for free speech
I am thankful I live in the UK and have the privilege of enjoying free speech.  I do not have to “look over my shoulder” or live in any kind of fear.  We do not live in a land where people disappear for saying the wrong things or having a different ideology or religious faith.

However we cannot take this for granted and I can see there are many threats to this, even in Europe and the UK.  These threats can come from the increasing pressure to live in a secular world, or to appease terrorism or be annoyingly politically correct.

Therefore I do value being able to sit here at home typing this, with no fear at all.  I am here in our house, April 2015, in an armchair by the sitting room window.   I can press the publish button and know within seconds this post can be picked up almost anywhere in the world.  Marvellous.  Free speech.  Such a precious thing.