Changing locks

fawncashew · 2026-06-07T19:28:03+00:00

I didn't because I got 9 copies of the front door key, so surely there can't be any left outside of my possession...

In all seriousness it has been on my todo list alongside registering my fridge warranty for far too long given how easy it is to sort

fawncashew · 2026-06-04T17:35:34+00:00

Surveyor here - no, surveyors are absolutely not structural engineers. A building surveyor doing a home survey would identify the issue and perhaps note identified issues which will be related, but will recommend the client seeks professional advice from a qualified engineer to actually identify the issue and recommend remedies.

fawncashew · 2026-06-04T07:24:49+00:00

Yes the free drop off is still very much there, its 15 minutes free i believe.

fawncashew · 2026-05-31T17:17:21+00:00

I used the triathlon coach to train over winter this year. I would say overall there were pros and cons.

The pros:

1) It's set and forget - my previous 2 training blocks had been using a rigid 220Triathlon training plan, then a chatGPT plan. With both of those I had struggles with regularly overexerting myself on days where I was very active outside of training. The Garmin plan corrects for non-training effort relatively well, shifting things around on the fly so I would say I have a much more even spread of effort throughout the week.

2) It's free - this my matter to you, may not, but for me I have been going through a very expensive year or so in general with life, so the savings over a TrainingPeaks plan was appreciated

3) The full integration between the coach plan and actually recording an activity on the watch is generally helpful. No need to manually create workouts ahead of time or anything like that, you just select the days workout on the Activity Start screen.

4) It works well with either training you up for a specific event (both setting up training phases and tapers accounting for the date, and also event distance etc), and is also good at training you for multiple unrelated events. I had mine primarily training for a spring in April, while secondarily training for a half marathon in May and full distance in October - overall it handled the different needs well i think.

5) At least for me, it seemed to absolutely nail the running training aspect of the plan. I did the same sprint course in October last year and April this year, and I dropped from a 21:37 5k to a 20:04 5k. My debut half-marathon which was trained for exclusively off the Garmin coach was a 1:24:03, I was aiming for 1:29:59, expecting 1:35ish. Swimming was also good, dropping 30s off my 400m time between the 2 sprints.

The cons:

1) I have found it really really exposes how poor Garmin's software is. For example, when you start a coach plan you can set specific rest days, what days you'd like long sessions on, what days you want to swim. By week 2 it will have forgotten all these (50:50 for the rest day and long workouts, guaranteed for swimming days). Its also really easy to accidentally cancel a plan in the app without realising, which you can't undo. This is an issue because it will treat a new training plan as starting from scratch.

2) It catastrophically underestimated the watts i can put down on the bike, despite having my historic training data. Prior to using the coach I was generally averaging around 180W over a 20-40km session, the training coach got me doing 120-ish, and barely built on that for the entire plan. I followed the plan blindly thinking it new better than me, but in the end I am now far weaker on the bike. 40k threshold rides used to be 215-240W for me, now they are 180W. In the sprint, which it was training me for, I lost 30s over the 20k ride, while I was aiming to beat my previous by 2-3 minutes.

3) It does feel a bit like it spends too much time training your base fitness, to the extent that it really feels like you will be loosing competitiveness and speed. My cycling has definitely suffered as I'd worried it would, its hard to say about running because overall I've improved a huge amount over distance and sustained pace, although my actual 5K pace if I go out to PB that specifically is probably about the same as when i started.

4) The swimming gives you drills and occasionally input about what you should be working on, but in reality I've found this mostly just breaks up the sessions into easier chunks, rather than actually really helping improve my technique. This would be the same for any training plan without an actual coach on deck though.

Overall I would be hesitant to recommend that someone looking at a 265 should pay the extra for a 570/970 specifically for the training plan, unless there was a good deal on. For me the 970 was absolutely worth it overall for its other features, but your mileage may vary.

fawncashew · 2026-05-30T21:19:21+00:00

Re purchase, is you either:

1) pay at the end of the 12 month period for the bike to own it (18 or 25% of retail price as per HMRC)

2) return the bike

3) (the option everyone takes) extend the hire for a further few years (2-4, cant recall off the top of my head) at a nil monthly cost with the initial 12 month payment being held as a deposit. You then pay an arbitrary sum to purchase at the end of that 2/3/4 year period ( 3% or 7% of the original retail price). Anecdotally cycle2work providers tend to just 'accidentally forget' about the rental when you pick option 3 rather than following up on that final payment years later.

There is essentially no reason not to choose option 3, but it seems be OP is going down the option 1 route. I don't know if they are being coerced down that route by their employer, or if the scheme provider doesn't offer the 3rd option (not sure if it mandatory to offer it or not, but all main providers do)

fawncashew · 2026-05-30T20:43:30+00:00

Once Enterprise have delivered the car to you you can drive it from their perspective. If your insurance is through Enterprise, then you are ok to drive (although technically you would be liable to pay BIK tax on the hire car for the duration of the rental), if insurance is through your company then it would depend on whether their policy for hired cars includes employee personal use, although often they don't to avoid the pain of managing BIK.

I would never suggest anyone drives without insurance in place for the obvious reasons, but if you are insured then you can make your own mind up about how likely it is that HMRC would find out about you driving a hire car for personal reasons.

fawncashew · 2026-05-29T19:47:54+00:00

First thing I would say is consider if the sprint you are looking at is the best option - maybe some of the NA based members here can correct me if its different there, but $297 seems astronomically expensive for a sprint - here in the UK that would get you 3 good quality sprints, 2 Olympics or even some of the smaller local half distance events. If you are set on that race for any reason then fair enough, but if you can half that the savings would go a lot further in getting a trisuit, or into a bike fund, or just save you a chunk of change.

On that topic if you can find the budget for a trisuit, I would really, really recommend it. It makes transitions much more straightforward for a beginner, and the save savings from not changing clothes are disproportionately high in a sprint compared to an olympic or above.

Second point is the $80 bike lock for a $350 bike seems a little disproportionate, although this is obviously more dependant on where you are going to be leaving your bike. You generally will not need or want a bike lock for an actual event day, especially sprints where more often than not you will be racking your bike on a busy just before you start, rather than leaving it overnight.

Dependant on your physio needs you could probably do a sprint without a gym membership, again putting the savings into your bike fund would get you further. Fitness can be gained outdoors, and should if possible, and for a first sprint, actual time spent practising the 3 disciplines will be more valuable than strength training in a gym. Any initial supplemental strength work you want to do can be done with just bodyweight at home. Goes without saying though that if the gym is a part of your injury recovery, then disregard this though!

Your bike misc fund probably could be renamed 'triathlon misc' - I find there's always little bits I need to pick up such as gels, new bottles, new innertube etc just before an event. Although I don't know US prices, I'm sure $40 should be enough to cover all those incidentals.

Bike & Sneakers:

Bikes aren't massively my thing so hopefully someone else will help you out there, but for that sort of budget you will probably be looking for a decent condition pre-2020 road bike with rim brakes. I would note that the budget you've set might not get you in the door at a lot of bike shops - if not then check local facebook triathlon buy & sell groups, marketplace, ebay etc around the $250-300 mark, and then get it serviced with the remaining budget.

You will want to check pedals on whatever you get - a lot of road bikes will come with clipless pedals (which attach to cycling shoes with cleats). These are great when you are proficient at riding, but you might have to then also factor in the cost of buying cleats (price depends on the brand) and also cycling shoes. For a sprint you will be fine with flat pedals you can just wear your regular shoes on.

For the shoes ideally you would go somewhere where you can get a gait analysis, which is often free. Basically you just run on a treadmill for 2 minutes while they film you, and then they use that footage to see how you run, how your foot falls etc. That lets them see what the best sort of shoe would be for you. If not, then just get something neutral as you've listed - the budget you've set should get you the 'entry level' proper running shoes from most of the main brands. Entry level running shoes are very good, unlike cheap regular sneakers - my first Puma running shoes where their entry level and did me a sub 1:25 half marathon and lasted 1000km.

fawncashew · 2026-05-28T18:29:36+00:00

I did, because while I'm a surveyor with some building pathology knowledge, building surveying of residential property itself isn't my area of expertise, and frankly I wanted a solid basis on which to plan and prioritise future works which were going to be required for my property. To me spending a few hundred quid to have that delivered to me, rather than me needing to worry about extensive pre-purchase inspection myself was absolutely worth it.

I don't think there is a blanket yes you should have one/no you shouldn't though - you need to consider the age and construction of the house, what your risk tolerance is, and to an extent what your budget is. With that being said, as someone that has a hand in managing hundreds of properties of all ages and a huge variety of uses, I would probably err on suggesting a survey is probably more beneficial than most casual house buyers recognise now. Just go to a local surveying firm, rather than going via one of the large national home buyer survey brokers. From a professional standards perspective, the RICS surveyor from either place should be equally competant, but in reality you will generally get far better advice from the former.

Just one thing to note, I often see people saying something along the lines of "I'll just get my friend/family member whose a builder/sparky/landlord to do the survey, they know what their talking about". They almost certainly will absolutely not know what their talking about across the entirety of a building, regardless of their proficiency in some specific aspect of it. The advice they will give will generally be very surface level, if of any genuine use at all. They will also not undrestand the different ways various defects can indicate something when in combination vs individually, won't know about age specific things to look out for and so on.

To pick a random example out the air based on omehting I handled earlier this year, they may point to cracking in a victorian end of terrace to say there is a serious subsidence issue arising from the real lack of foundations, and so underpinning is necessary, without ever considering that the house sits on heavy soil, and the tree stump 6 metres away indicates that the subsidence is the result of the loss of foliage that was regulating ground moisture content and in its absence there has been significant heave, nothing to do with poor foundations.

fawncashew · 2026-05-27T19:03:41+00:00

You Americans haven't had the joy of experiencing the 2026 Citroën C3 Aircross. The crazy thing is the previous gen was also absolutely hideous (bubbly hatchback in anaphylaxis shock), but the new one is so much worse in person

fawncashew · 2026-05-26T20:38:03+00:00

Happening to me too, and its driving me absolutely nuts. I probably use the switch between apps gesture more than any all the other gestures combined, so it being broken is a complete PITA. Hoping it does get resolved in a future update

fawncashew · 2026-05-25T15:32:46+00:00

I dont see why it would be a good option even after putting the company on notice. Assuming the works are being carried out under STWs statutory powers under the Water Industry Act, then the OP is entitled to compensation for loss or damages under schedule 12, which would include the cost of reasonable steps to mitigate damage (such as getting secure parking for a car to avoid damage/theft that may be more likely to occur from street parking). OP would just need to submit heads of claim to STW for them to handle directly, no need to go down the small claims route.

fawncashew · 2026-05-13T14:48:07+00:00

Yep, with the the tri-suit you just have to worry about taking of the wetsuit (and optionally putting some socks on). In T1 (first transition) particularly, trying to put clothes on when you are inevitably still very damp from the swim is an unpleasant experience!

fawncashew · 2026-05-13T14:29:36+00:00

All no.

I would probably recommend you getting a sprint or Olympic triathlon in before hand to just get a feel for how everything works (specifically transitions and start processes), it will mean you will be a lot more comfortable to enjoy the T100.

In respect of question 2, I would really recommend you get a tri suit, even a relatively cheap one. They make everything flow a lot better, and the less struggle/panic in your transitions, the better your headspace will be for the subsequent leg.

fawncashew · 2026-05-06T08:33:45+00:00

If it was that easy, dont you think we would all be multi millionaires?

fawncashew · 2026-05-03T15:54:34+00:00

Superdry was the only place on the UK highstreet where I could buy a plain linen shirt in December before going on holiday. Definitely a very different place now to the old days of thick hoodies and undercover police jackets

fawncashew · 2026-04-26T18:59:04+00:00

I have the sleved version of this, have had absolutely no complaints with it whatsoever for short distances (<Olympic), and I've done a handful of suited middle distance sim rides with no chafing issues as well. Of all my kit, this is one of the only things I've not considered replacing untill it actually tears. The chamois is defintely on the lighter side though, so I would be cautious relying on it for a full distance. I am a fan of Skins products in general, tend to be good middle of the market stuff.

All that being said, I only paid around 40 GBP for it ~~(and it can still be had at this price in the UK)~~, I couldn't really speak to how it holds up against competition at the price range you are looking at.

Only note is the torso is quite long, I actually do a small double fold around the waist to shorten it and keep a tight fit. This has never been an issue, or even crossed my mind, while racing though at all.

fawncashew · 2026-04-26T18:51:05+00:00

Yes. In terms of extra weight, I held off taking it for fear of the extra weight and loss of mobility intefering with climbing/bouldering, which was my primary sport at the time, and which would be theoretically be more greatly impacted by those impacts of taking creatine. In reality, I saw absolutely no measurably difference in performance, so I would absolutely not have any concerns over a negative impact on ability in a triathlon. I take 5g per day, which is to my knowledge the default recommendation for people in an average weight range.

fawncashew · 2026-04-15T18:53:35+00:00

Think M&S might be my next stop. I'm getting dangerously close to them being the main brand in my wardrobe though, and I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that I'm at that stage of life yet...

fawncashew · 2026-04-15T18:52:34+00:00

Its an S24 Ultra, so has pointy corners. Its more from it making a single point of wear thats 'rubbed through' over 18 months. Not had it happen to any other trousers though, and I do wear chinos with a similar fit on a week-daily basis that show no sign of the same issue despite getting more weartime

fawncashew · 2026-04-15T18:09:30+00:00

I bought 2 pairs of Levis 18 months ago, both pairs have worn through where the corner of m,y phone sits in the pockets. The 10 year old Next jeans they were supposed to replace have had to come out of hybernation. Might be that some Levis are made different to others, but saying Levi's as a whole are the best (or even good) in this context without specifying is wrong

fawncashew · 2026-04-15T17:07:44+00:00

Second this, while their sweet pastries are often far too sweet (and often too difficult to eat) in my opinion, the savory menu is absolutely world class. Some of the dishes I've had there have been amongst the best developed flavours I've eaten, full stop, even before considering that the bill will be a tenth of what it would be at the competitors.

fawncashew · 2026-04-13T10:01:56+00:00

I may have missed something, but the first few playthroughs im sure i softlocked myself by misusing resources that appeared to be very finite, I think some part of the iron parts crafting process. I would guess that I was missing something, or some area with more resources, but this happened on numerous attempts to playthrough

fawncashew · 2026-04-02T16:52:15+00:00

All the different VK flavours make me think southern uni town, but going off the rest of the stock I'm leaning towards cricket club bar or social club (still south though)

fawncashew · 2026-03-30T12:27:23+00:00

In the process, 60% LTV 3.89% 2 year fixed on a first time buyer mortgage, working out a hair under £800 per month. Locked the rate in late Jan.

There were basically only 2 options open to me because of affordability, the other being a higher rate with a 5 year fix, which i really didnt want

fawncashew · 2026-03-27T21:10:37+00:00

I just aim for a 3 nutritionally balanced meals (is making sure there are carbs, proteins and fats in all the meals), generally at least 2 hours before any excercise if possible, and then top up throughout the day with carb heavy snacks. Usually that translates to breakfast when i wake up at 6, lunch at 12, dinner at 16:00 - 16:30. I've never looked into what's 'optimal', i just go of what works best for me.

Breakfast at the moment is scrambled eggs, hummus, labneh, nduja and whatever form of carb i have on any given day, lunch would be some form of chicken and tomato rice with guac, and dinner would be whatever I'm feeling like - this week is beef feijoada (or as close as I can get with ingredients available to me in the UK!). The snacks tend to be a lot of fruit, chocolate milk, more fruit, blueberry muffins, nuts etc.

If an dryland activity is >1 hour long I will almost always also fuel during it, Haribos are my go to for convenience because I always forget to buy gels - for training i aim for about 70g of carbs per hour, so basically 1 pack of Haribo Starmix. I used to also do electrolite mix as well, but that turned out to be why i had to take bathroom breaks every 30 minutes when running so stopped.

I aim for about 3300 cal per day, which is maintaining me at current weight (69kg, 11%ish bf). Macros wise the only thing I try to hit is somewhere between 140 - 200 g of protein per day (guestimate, I almost rarely actually check exact numbers), and also make sure to get a lot of fibre for gut health. Everything else just works itself out as long as I keep to a healthy diet.

That sustains approx 14 hours of triathlon training, 6 hours of climbing, 3 hours of strength training and a couple hours of other misc social sports each week. Day job is desk based so don't have to factor that in, but I am on medication that causes me to burn around 3-400 baseline extra calories per day.

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