It’s the 3rd anniversary of Anth’s CityCycling E-zine. I’m not plugging this issue just because I have an article in there, but also because there are plans for it to go to print copy later on in the year so the more readers (and thus potential subscribers) the better.

So get reading!

About 15 years ago Frood and I were living in a little flat above a garage in Southampton, just off Highfield Road. After we moved out of that flat it wasn’t until we moved to Scotland 2 years ago that we had our own (i.e. not shared) place. That was a great year, in that tiny flat in Southampton.

We got engaged when I was just 17, and, having had him in my life ever since, Frood is responsible for many things about me. One of them is a liking for black pepper. Another is my rather eclectic music taste. He turned me on to English Folk Music. He also turned me on to prog and psychedelic rock.

I’m working from home today and thus have the benefit of the stereo system. Last year I finally bought my long-desired copy of Warrior On The Edge Of Time. We’d only had a copy on second-hand tape before. Today I stuck it in the stereo because I’ve been listening to Faith No More a lot and wanted something different.

As soon as Assault and Battery came on I was right there in that flat in Southampton, with the Morning Glory growing on the fence around the Scout hut opposite; the smell of that wooden dresser in which we kept all our student-cheap dried goods; the sun baking the bathroom; the cat sulking about not being allowed in the bedroom; the desk tidy I’d made out of Irn Bru tins taped together; and Frood chopping carrots in that purple top he used to own.

We both had long hair then. He has short hair now but I’ve grown mine again. Other than the hair, the rather less parsimonious diet and the change of scenery, I don’t think all that much has changed.

Exxon Mobil’s corporate citizenship report makes for some interesting reading. As someone working in environmental regulation, with an interest in language, what I noticed first was the structure of the writing.

Scientists are trained to finish with the conclusion. When they write a paper they start with the premise, move on to the theory, formulate a hypothesis, tell you how they tested it, and finally tell you what the results were. It’s logical and follows clear cause and effect.

It’s also desperately dull.

That’s not the way to engage with the public and with people who are short of time. The way to do that is to put the conclusion right up front, reinforce it at the end and bury anything you want people to skip right in the middle. Time pressures mean that people skim read most things, only paying more attention if they spot a bold heading that catches their interest. It’s a bit like being in a crowded bar and still hearing your own name over the general background noise.

This entire document is structured that way. Every paragraph invites reading only the first and last sentences. The bits they really want the readers to remember are highlighted in boxes and pretty colours. Look how green and responsible they are!

Compare the highlighted box on their attitude to corruption on page 39 (it says 37 but it’s 39 for the purposes of GoTo) with the paragraph misleadingly titled “Public Policy Research Contributions” on page 41.

In the highlghted box they tell you all about how they support human rights, are environmentally responsible and they are anti-corruption.

In their paragraph on public policy research contributions they slip in the admission that they’re going to stop funding certain climate change denial groups. Right in the middle of the paragraph, after a particularly dull and lengthy sentence. The idea there is that your mind will be so numbed by the first half of the paragraph you’ll miss that part (oh, um, yeah, we were, um, wrong).

If you have the time, and the patience, try reading it and looking for the things they know they have to tell you to be able to claim transparency (so that they can point to it when the auditors come round and ask) but they would rather slipped your mind. Try to find the things that they think detract from the message they are trying to send in the document as a whole.

It’s a bit like the Eurovision drinking game. Drink a shot for every confession…

It’s the British Fireworks Championships tonight. In Newhaven. About 4km away.

I don’t like fireworks. Big, nasty, sudden bangs. Remember when they used to tell you to keep pets indoors on Bonfire Night in case they were frighened? They meant me too. Indoors. Under a table.

Frood is playing Half-Life 2 to distract me. I don’t like the headlice. They have nasty legs!

I’ve come across a reference to Aepyornis and have to look it up. Then I see Pelagornithidae. I find the current lack of megafauna distressing. I wanna see a giant toothy albatross.

“Why don’t we have any big animals any more?”

“Because they’re tasty. Eventually we’re going to be left eating cats, dogs and hamsters. No moo-cows, no sheeps.”

“But we grow those.”

“Ah, but we won’t grow them fast enough because people are making too many babies. We’ll eat them faster than we can grow them and then we’ll eat cats and dogs and hamsters until we realise that children are bigger than cats. Then we’ll eat those instead. Then we’ll go extinct! Hamsters will rule the world!”

A car dealership in the United States is offering a free handgun with every vehicle sold.

Mr Muller said that every buyer so far “except one guy from Canada and one old guy” chose the gun, rather than the gas card.

He recommends a Kel-Tec .380 pistol, which he describes as “a nice little handgun that fits in your pocket”.

He added that the promotion was inspired by recent comments from one of the Democratic nominees for the presidential election, saying: “We did it because of Barack Obama.

“He said all those people in the Midwest, you’ve got to have compassion for them because they’re clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive. We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns.”

Yeah. I think that was kind of Obama’s point.

I don’t like cars and I don’t like guns. I know the argument is that guns don’t kill people, people do. Same can be said for cars. Both are pieces of equipment that cause death and injury to thousands every year, and we do very little about it. We’ll ban smoking in public, make drugs illegal, prevent people doing all sorts of things that may be risky but do no harm to anyone else: and yet across the world we hum and hah over guns and cars.

Being fat, smoking or drinking are now considered socially unacceptable, because of the health implications. But driving around in a car? Everyone does it.

To me it seems suitably fitting that you buy a car and you get a gun. Both are tools that will kill people. One of them is designed specifically to do that outright: the other one just kills incidentally, whether in the carnage of a wreck or the slow death of air pollution and lack of exercise.

I can thoroughly recommend the Shoestring Cafe. Proper filter coffee, friendly service, quirky décor, local produce… The salad I had was fantastic. When our waitress-come-chef asked if I liked spicy I should have taken her “Are you sure?” as a warning. It certainly had a kick.

My eating companions were impressed by the mini breakfast and the ham and cheese panini (although our veggie thought the lentil soup was under-seasoned).

Given the location, at Dunbar Railway Station, and the rather lovely local scenery (hey, I like the Bladerunner meets Brazil architecture of Lafarge!) this might prove to be a good spot for fuelling up before a ride round East Lothian.

The last paragraph from the article of the same name in the April edition of The Environmentalist, written by Simon Hodgson of Acona:

So which am I in, the optimist tribe or the pessimist? Neither: I’m a fatalist. Problems come (and [global warming] is a big one) and people and societies respond, reorganise and re-invent themselves. Not without pain, and accompanied by major change, I admit. But we live today in a world unrecognisable to people even one hundred years ago. And no global government masterminded the transition — it just happened as billions of ordinary people took trillions of decisions in a system of unimaginable complexity. And here’s the paradox: most environmental campaigns push for orthodoxy. “Believe this!” they say, “Think and act like me. Know what I know and you’ll do what I do.” Wrong. Tackling climate change is going to need all the magnificent diversity of human nature. Even Jeremy Clarkson has a part to play. Long live the tribes.

It’s the first time in a long while I’ve read something that has given me a whiff of potential hope. Not for the reasons you might think. I am of the opinion that ‘free will’ is a moot point. I have been guilty of the anthropic principle: treating humans as somehow something different. Stupid. Damned stupid.

The human species is yet another of the complex biological mechanisms that exist on this world. Individually humans are greedy, selfish, self-centred, idiotic, superficial and insanely religious. As individuals they are cultural. As a species they are still biological.

So there’s still hope. Because survival is an organic imperative. On a species scale I suspect humans can be modelled using the same simple but emergently complex maths that can mimic the massing of starlings or the shoaling of silver jacks.

Maybe the solution will come from the interplay of tribes. Humans are tribal: humans are strongest on the level of community. At the level of the monkeysphere. Maybe if we quit trying to do things either individually or globally and instead play to our strengths, we’ll get somewhere.

Long live the tribes indeed.

I still thanked the race organisers and marshals for their efforts, as I always do. That the race sucked ass does not negate the value of them giving up their Sunday to run it for us. They voluntarily gave time and effort to enable the race to go ahead, and that is entirely separate from the race format itself.

Dalkeith was TEH SUCK.

I observed some days ago, upon learning of how the swim was to be conducted, that the continuous wave format blows goats. The organiser’s arguments, after I emailed him to complain that I’d never have entered if I’d known, were that they had insufficient marshals (fair enough); they had insufficient time-keepers (but we had chips); and this format reduced drafting, bringing the race back to its original time-trial design.

I emphasised that last for a reason. Keep note of it.

He did offer to put me on one of their other races if I had a really big problem with the format, but that would have done me no good at all as I’d have lost my May event. So Dalkeith it had to be. It was too late to enter the Strathclyde Open Water (this coming weekend) and I’ve had no open water training this year anyway.

The alarm went off at 06:00 (“COME OOOON, EVERYBODY!!!! Daaaaa da daaaaaa, daaaaaa da daaaaa, da da da da…”) Fuck me. It’s Sunday morning. It’s early Sunday morning.

Up and at ’em soldier!

I’m not good first thing in the morning.

Loaded the car with tri kit, bananas and caffeine and drove out to Dalkeith. Arrived 07:30. Frood sat in the car and dozed while I went in to register and get my number written on my skin in evil black marker pen (and the only thing guaranteed to take that sucker off is, ironically, my guaranteed 8-hour, triathlon-special waterproof sunblock).

Urgh. Number stickers for helmet and bike. What the fuck is ever the point of that? The stickers are about the size of my thumb. They tell you to yell out your number at every transition anyway, because the big black ones on your arm and leg and the number pinned to your front aren’t enough of a giveaway. Why put tiny stickers no one will see on helmet and bike? They’re a bitch to get off.

Grumble.

What’s the freebie? Ooooh. Honey Stinger sachet, my favourite. In… what flavour? Cola nut. Blech. No water? Damn. Have to hydrate with coffee then. What else? A MUG?

A fucking MUG?

Let me just email Profile and see if they do a special MUG MOUNT for me to put this on my carbon aerobars. I can HAVE TEA while I RACE. I’m sure I can stick a STRAW in there so I can drink TEA while I’m down on the TRI-BARS. The straw won’t FALL OUT at all, even if the road surface is bumpy. Sure, the mug’s quite a lot HEAVIER than my ordinary bike bottles, but what the fuck. What’s a little weight, eh? I’ll just have to make sure to have a really huge DUMP before I get in the pool.

It’s not like this is a TRIATHLON, or anything.

By this time I realise I’ve got 20 minutes to get my transition area sorted out and get changed before the race briefing at 08:20. Frood at this point tells me I’m 4th in the pool so I’d better hurry.

After organising my space it takes me 5 minutes to find the changing rooms. Get changed, run (barefoot) back to find Frood, hand over my clothes and phone, dash back to the changing rooms for the inevitable toilet visit. Briefing is at poolside. At 08:20. It’s 08:17.

08:20 comes and goes and no sign of the race organiser. I go to the loo again.

I observe that my fetching yellow swim hat says “Portobello Triathlon” on it. Humph.

08:30 race briefing starts. Blah blah blah continuous wave format… blah blah blah cycle route change… blah blah blah no drafting… blah blah blah traffic light penalites.

Fine.

Back to that continuous wave format. I have drawn an explanatory diagram:

Get your head round that, folks. Lane 1 was a warm-up lane (except for Wave 1, which included me, because they were running late so we had to forego ours). Enter lane 2. Swim up and down, under the rope, repeat all the way to the end. Get out. WALK (don’t run) to the start of lane 2. You may not dive or jump in. One hand must be on the side of the pool when you enter. Repeat all of the above a further 2 times for three “laps” of the pool. Get out and run to your bike.

Reduced drafting my arse. In my second 50m someone swimming in the other direction caught my HRM watch strap and undid it, so I had to stop for a couple of seconds to refasten it rather than lose it or try to swim holding onto it. This allowed one girl to go past and I was stuffed. I went past her in the end, but she’d bunched up with 3 others. I couldn’t get past the whole bunch. Plus, there was no consistency over whether people hopped out of the pool at the end or used the steps, which led to some confusion.

I spent the whole swim languishing in the bubbles of some other girl. It’s the first race that has had me so angry and frustrated that I felt like quitting after the first 250m. It seemed utterly pointless. I just gave up. I didn’t care. I didn’t bother trying. I just swam along, trying to ignore my feet being brushed by the person drafting me because there was bugger all I could do about it.

Got out of the pool. Running to T1 I was cursing and swearing and so was the big bloke next to me. “That sucked ass!” I said to him. “Damn right,” he replied.

I experienced a major dizzy spell bending over to put my shoes on in T1. By this time I was so far past caring that it didn’t matter to me if I fell over so I ignored it. I didn’t fall over. Yay.

Bike. Great. Draftbusters getting in my way even as I’m trying to exit transition. Little did I know at the time that they would be doing that all the way through the bike leg.

I’m good on the bike. The bike is my thing. Destroy destroy destroy.

Peregrine nearly threw me off on the steep descent (again). We hit the manhole that nearly had me last year so hard I bit my tongue. Then he got a speed wobble I couldn’t control. It felt like the wheels were moving side-to-side on their axles. I was petrified. Suddenly I was very aware that I was doing 40mph wearing little more than lycra [ObUS: spandex] and a polystyrene hat.

Managed to get to the bottom, but I was sick with fear. Just like last year. Then he threw his chain in Whitecraigs, which jammed. It took me 3 minutes to get it unjammed and back on the transmission. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

On lap two I fell foul of the draftbusters. Again. Whenever someone went past I’d pull out to the side so I wasn’t drafting him and put my head down to retake him, but on this race the draftbusters would be there. Two of them, on motorcycles, and they’d slow right down in my path, side by side, and force me to drop back. I lost three places that way.

By the run leg I just didn’t care any more about any of it. So I plodded along, enjoying the sunshine, chatting with my imaginary friends about all sorts of rubbish.

Run was just over 26 minutes. Which isn’t great, but, crucially, I wasn’t trying. Last year I was. I did it in about the same time.

Swim was 16:40 to the timing mat, but 15:47 to the end of the pool (by my watch). Last year’s swim was 15:49 and that was a proper format. Bike was around 40 minutes (last year’s roughly 39) despite all the difficulties.

I was about 20 seconds slower this year overall. I had a blistering T1, despite the massive wobbly spell when I bent over to put my shoes on.

But most of all I realised that I don’t actually care all that much. Triathlon for me is a means to an end. I don’t train for triathlon: I do triathlon for the training. Every race is a benchmark, something to punctuate the schedule and keep me on track. That’s all.

The weather was perfect. So while it was most definitely TEH SUCK in terms of races, and I doubt I’ll be returning to this event, it wasn’t all bad.

Final results:

You can see the photos here.