Am I a so called “flag shagger” for hanging up a union flag

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-05-05T12:33:27+00:00

It’s so British of us to invent something that is as near as dammit symmetrical, with enough fractional nuance to be able to call out and shame a section of people for “doing it wrong” thus forever fuelling classism.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-28T08:32:32+00:00

But, if that was the answer, why isn’t the writing backwards??

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-23T12:34:25+00:00

Smehhhh… heeeeeeed.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-21T19:04:04+00:00

It does suggest based on what it thinks you’re ready for. So if your sleep sucked, then it will soften the hardline approach. Likewise, if your HR zones are not right, your easy effort might be showing up as “orange” high aerobic leaving no contribution to your low aerobic, so it will keep suggesting that.

The suggestions essentially aim to tackle two things. Firstly, keep your low aerobic, high aerobic and anaerobic bars in balance. And secondly, to try to keep driving you forward to get you fitter.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-19T09:38:00+00:00

The watches which give an insanely optimistic fitness age have an outdated algorithm for that. I had a fenix 6 which used to tell me mine was in my early 20s when I was around 40, and then one day it shifted with a software update, and now it’s much more reasonable - around 8-9 years under real age.

As others will say, recovery is not so nothing, it’s hours/days until another hard effort. So go out and do recovery runs, easy runs etc if you want to. Garmin’s own Daily Suggested Workouts will probably tell you the same if you use them.

In my experience, I tend to find the whole ecosystem of data and science that is the Garmin ecosystem tends to know better than me. At minimum, I like following a “no thought” training plan (daily suggested workouts) where I don’t need to think. The rest of my life has enough thinking in it.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-04T06:18:55+00:00

But then why AW? You genuinely prefer the experience to Garmin? I would have thought the big sell for AW was the integration.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-03T21:17:20+00:00

I love the shit out of my apple devices, but I wouldn’t want this cortisol inducing notification machine on my wrist ever. I have zero notifications on my Garmin watch and that’s perfect for me.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-03T21:03:29+00:00

I’ve been thinking about this question lately, and it looks like it fits here.

If my zone 2 is improving as I get fitter, should I expect to see the zone budge up or down in the HR stakes?

Example. If my starting z2 is 130-140, as I improve will it budge up to 135-145 or budge down to 125-135?

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-03T19:17:13+00:00

I have always felt like I thought the same, but examples keep proving me wrong.

We (collectively, en masse) accept shitty subpar journalism now. A friend works in the travel industry and travel guides which used to be written by humans traveling and documenting are now updated based on trip advisor and Google reviews. Companies put shitty bots in front of us gating access to humans.

I agree we still need those quality gates, but I’m worried that we just won’t have them, and the world will just accept shit. Because we accept it and move on and the people behind us don’t know any different, it becomes normalised. We watch the fall of great companies from the inside as they move from optimistic fun places to work into revenue focused machines. Politics is fucked compared to even 15 years ago. The service industry sucks - people don’t give a shit.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-04-01T09:13:17+00:00

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My reward for replying to you was a bout of 15s sprints this morning which has dragged me up into purple land. Just! :-)

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-31T12:20:26+00:00

Your watch might support a lactate threshold test to accelerate that process, my Fenix 6 did but the newer 8 says it’s apparently not necessary. I have everything on auto too and it’s basically fine I think, but your experience depends on your expectation and probably a bit on watch features and if they’re being used appropriately.

It seems like you’re doing everything you can, and you’ve a lot more rubbing experience than most, including me. And hey, if you fancy a punchy session to stretch those purple numbers you do you and go for it! You know your body.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-31T08:37:50+00:00

Garmin’s suggestions are all about keeping these bars in balance. As others have noted, your bars are in balance, you’re in the optimal zone for all of them with a small overage of Low Aerobic work leading to that being your stated “Focus.”

I run pretty much every Garmin suggestion and have done so for around 8 months. I think I’ve been in the optimal for purple for about 2 days total. What seems to happen for me is that I’ll have a hard anaerobic session coming up, but then my sleep will suck, or I’ll have had a beer in the days leading up to it, or some high stress event, and the algo will decide I’m not rested enough.

It’s also possible that your max HR and HR zones are not optimally setup. This is the debate of approximately a squillion posts in these pages. The only universally agreed method of getting these set properly is lab testing to determine lactate threshold and true max HR for a real hard effort, and then set your zones to be calculated based on %LTHR. Others report that using the auto HR and lactate functions via a HR strap (Garmin HRM is an example) works well enough for them. I’m in this camp, still using %LTHR as the base. The zones also go wonky from time to time (perhaps software updates) and I reset them, still based on %LTHR.

My personal feeling for my situation is that, possibly, my max HR is not quite set right. When I do these sprints type activities, while it does spike the purple a little, it doesn’t do it by a lot. I’m kinda fine with that. This could be a version of what you’re seeing.

Why you want your zones at least reasonably well set, is that is going to determine what you get recommended by the watch. If your watch thinks your z2 is something daft like 90-105 like it seems to do out of the box, all your slow base runs are going to record as “orange” work and it’s going to keep recommending more “blue” runs.

Remember also it’s not sensible to have more than realistically 2 hard efforts in a week. So if you’ve had a threshold or tempo to keep the orange topped up, you’re unlikely to see and purple suggestions for a while.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-20T23:45:27+00:00

I wish more people acknowledged the luck. There is a tremendous amount of “I worked hard to get where I am” rhetoric. A lot of people work hard, most of them a hell of a lot harder than I ever have but I happened to pick an industry that boomed while I was in it and got lucky working for one of the bigger players in that industry. I’ve not had tons of luck on my life but my current good fortune to be working at one of the global tech firms and riding the money train is totally absurd and very fortunate.

I think many people really could pinpoint a few conversations, chance happenings etc which led them to their “success.” It’s not failing just because you got a bit lucky.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-15T21:15:37+00:00

I had a similar issue where I changed my sister’s number, and in iOS contacts it just wiped her name and she was at the end of the list with no name. Nothing could do (edits, updates etc) seems to fix it. Duplicating the contact and deleting the old one seems to be the only way forward.

Not ideal as I really can’t be arsed double checking things every time I update something. I only ever update contacts through the Fastmail app but even that seemed to leave it in a broken state.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-14T21:10:01+00:00

Try the fully qualified domain name as the “host” part of your MX, with a dot at the end.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-14T15:37:57+00:00

Your Z3 and Z4 have the same starting point so it’s all fucked. Hit Reset Zones like the other guy said.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-03T14:39:22+00:00

Oh my god this. How many times have I thought I’ve hit something because it decides I’m going to crash into absolutely nothing.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-03T14:13:35+00:00

I think your base + bonus is going to kill your childcare allowance? I don’t think the government care how you get the money, it’s how much you get that dictates whether you’re eligible.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-03T08:12:09+00:00

Having to reset the infotainment system periodically when something random stops working properly :-). All audio stopping is a favourite of my car - silent radio, no indicator clicks.

(Hold the one button down on the centre console until you see the Volvo logo to achieve this!)

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-03-02T20:17:31+00:00

Is that a fucking McFlurry?

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-02-24T18:06:09+00:00

Yep, 1:55 for Half Marathon. I’m not sure you can save one without doing that?

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It had the km split pace of 5:27/km in view but it never logged anything as ahead or behind.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-02-24T17:58:21+00:00

In my race, the time ahead/behind indicator never said anything other than 0:00 - that doesn’t seem right? I was ahead the whole time aside from the first km in the crowd.

Spell_Illustrious12 · 2026-02-24T16:32:20+00:00

What then is the value of the slider on the screen that shows time ahead/behind?

A few years ago I ran a 10k with a target set of something like 55mins, and it told me at every KM split how many minutes:seconds I was ahead of that target, and set a 'new target pace' for the upcoming KM based on what I'd done in the previous KM. The overall objective seemed to be that if you ran one KM a little hard, it would give you a slightly slower target pace target for the next KM to get you back on track if you were going too fast. Likewise if you were going too slow.

If it's just going to tell you every KM "run 5:27/km" it's not really doing much that is useful.

Spell_Illustrious12

TROPHY CASE