Went down a Mount Everest YouTube rabbit hole this weekend. Some crazy, and also tragic stories. People trying to go up there with little experience, a guy from the UK trying to go up there on the cheap with no assistance from the Sherpas, no oxygen for the "Death Zone". Bodies that have been up there for decades frozen in time laying there in their gear. One of the most shocking things to me was the queueing/bottleneck issue where people stand around waiting for their turn up Hillary Step while the time is ticking for the 2pm turnaround cut off and they're using up their limited oxygen supply.

Everything is more expensive in the UK compared to the US. These Patagonia Storm Racer jackets are £270 from Alpinetrek & direct from Patagonia unless you want the talon color for £202. You can pick up a blue one up for £180, same jacket and spec but Endless Blue is a 2024 color.

Went out with no plan of what I was supposed to be doing or trying, stop starting, messing around with the watch settings, started the run again 3 times, deleted one of them 😂 Managed to decipher some data though, from previous runs I know I can plod on around 10min mile pace and 158spm cadence. Tried some shorter bursts/sprints and the best one was 0.13 miles in 0:41.9 seconds at 5:34 min mile pace, I couldn't hold this pace any longer. Don't know how accurate these watches are but max cadence hit 248spm and 11.9mph. #exercise #running #running

Anyone got any experience or recommendations for a running jacket to go out in the rain? Yeah you'll get a bit sweaty but don't want to get drenched. 2.5 layer 3? 20,000mm? 30,000g? Something fairly tough if used in conjunction with a hydration vest and won't start falling apart. Looked at a Cimalp Storm Pro but would get hit with import duties 🇫🇷 Omm Kamleika seem popular in the UK Salomon Bonatti trail Patagonia Storm Racer Arc'teryx Norvan £££ #runstr #running #gear #askstr #ask #asknostr

Nothing is ever straight forward. You're supposed to be able to isolate the CH system from the boiler and just drain down the boiler to work on it but the quarter turn valves weren't playing ball, had my whole bodyweight leaning on a big flatblade screwdriver trying to get them to budge, the return shut off but the flow wasn't having it and got seized halfway so had to fart around with a hosepipe out the front door and drain some CH water from one of the rads, enough to work on the boiler which is thankfully the highest part of the system. Fitted the new expansion vessel, prv, siphon assembly and also fitted a new dhw heat exchange because sometimes when running hot water full bore from the kitchen mixer tap the boiler would bang (kettling) given the age of the boiler it was most likely scale build up in the heat exchange from the mains water. Took the boiler CH union valve off and put it in the vice and it appears it's the head that's stuck but was able to open/move the ball valve with a flatblade screwdriver from inside. Although the expansion vessel was new I still checked the pressure and it was 12psi so topped the system back up via the filling loop and everything works okay. There's 10 rads on the system and I set the pressure to just over 1 bar and ran the CH, pressure maxed out around 1.8bar. 👇Old parts inc the temporary repair syphon assembly that did the job while I waited for new parts to arrive. #fixstr 🔧

Stacked some sats today. Felt like a drop in the ocean but they're real sats native $BTC to a clean wallet that I'm never going to use just send to. Tried that BTC defi garbage once and got burnt, tried to earn yield on btc.b (BTC on Avalanche) and lost 50% of the holding because the vault went bad, never a-fucking-gain 🤬 It ain't much but it's stacking sats and staying humble.

Tried to run based on effort rather than worrying about time, mins per mile averaged out just over 10. Mile 3 was the slowest at 10:57 because there's a fairly big hill, felt I had some left in the tank near the end so picked up the pace for the last few miles and mile 20 was the fastest at 8:20. Took a hydration vest with me and 2 500ml soft flasks on the chest, 1 had 300ml water, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of Maple syrup, the other flask just had 300ml water but tasted rank and plastic even though the flasks had been washed out (still new) Did some small sipping every 15-20mins after mile 10 and seemed to make a difference, maybe heart rate is still a bit high overall but brought it down to153bpm average whereas it's been 160bpm on previous runs - probably too high for training/longer runs. Finding a route can be a bit of a pain, running on undulating pavements, trying to cross roads, uphills, downhills, could do with one of those beachfront promenade runs that's all flat and settle in slightly faster. "If you want to get faster ~ run slower" seems to be the consensus on YouTube. Going to try some faster but shorter running later in the week. #exercise #running #runstr

Depressing, what happened to those cool crisp days where you at least get some light? The UK is like Silent Hill, people will be buying UVB lamps at this rate.

More boiler woes but a separate issue from the condensing pipe. Topped the pressure up yesterday as it seemed rather low, heating came on this morning and once it had turned off I rechecked the pressure and it was right down again to 0.5bar (any lower than 0.5bar and the heating won't come on) No signs of any leaks from the boiler or the CH system and given how quickly the pressure had dropped, signs of a leak would be pretty evident so suspicions quickly turned to the expansion vessel and or the prv (pressure relief valve) On old school open vented systems with a hot water cylinder and f&e (feed and expansion) tank, expansion in the system when heated is taken up in the f&e tank, on a combi boiler sealed system there's an expansion vessel with an inflated rubber bladder inside, when the bladder is flat or pierced there's no room in the system to take up the expansion so when the heating comes on and the system pressure rises and goes over 2.5bar the prv opens and dumps CH water out the discharge pipe, then with the combination of the system cooling and the loss of pressure/water via the discharge pipe, the system pressure will be low, often too low for the boiler to operate (sub 0.5bar on this boiler) Went to check the expansion vessel pressure which should be about 11psi and water came out the schrader valve not air 😏 Problem found. On Ebay there are listings for the expansion vessel and a new prv, there might not be a problem with my prv but under normal circumstances they never open, when they do (pressure goes over 2.5bar) they open up as CH water is discharged and then close again but CH water often contains bits of crud and debris even when the system has been ran with inhibitor, so when the valve snaps shut again it doesn't always make a pressure tight seal which is no good for a sealed system. Parts ordered.

When you've got a combi boiler and no hot water cylinder and the boiler breaks you've got no hot water, you can't just flick the immersion heater on, worse still is if you don't have an electric shower to fall back on. Boiler was leaking and upon investigation it was the condensing siphon pipe that had perished, the issue isn't pressure related (sealed system) but just a liquid drain from the flue gas secondary heat exchanger, the liquid is a byproduct from this process. It's doubtful you could just go and pick this part up at the weekend unless there's somewhere local that keeps in stock every Gloworm boiler spare part of every model. Jerry-rigged it myself with a piece of 22mm copper, a 3/4" flexible tap connector cut in half and some insulation tape, might be one of temporary fixes that end up being permanent 😂 although the part isn't expensive.

This didn't feel smooth but manged the half marathon distance under 2hr (just 🤏⏰) Best laid plans went out the window, if I'm only doing 2 runs a week the idea was to put in some easy miles at the start of the week and some shorter but faster stuff later on but for one reason or another haven't done any running for a week. Went off too quick, felt knackered the first few miles and didn't feel right until about mile 6. With some sensible training and staying more active I feel I should be able to smoke this time. #exercise #runstr

Pretty humbling starting your sats stacking journey again when BTC is $90k a coin. My first BTC buy was 0.08 BTC for £494.40 using Bittylicious in Feb 2018. Back then I wasn't buying BTC to own BTC but to on-ramp to crypto and buy altcoins because I thought everyone was getting rich, I'd buy crap like Ark to stake but not knowing what I was doing or even having basic charting skills - this was basically throwing money and Bitcoin away, by early 2018 Ark had had its run and everything was experiencing a blow off top. Ark being a typical DPoS shitcoin, all the emissions were flowing to validators, team members and whales who were no doubt already massively up and could keep selling their rewards as long as there were buyers, the same playbook we've seen over and over again with shitcoins like Atom & Tia. Fast forward to 2026 and I find myself once again buying BTC but this time to hodl, there's been times over the years where I've been up (usually briefly) on Alts but ended up either giving the gains away or riding them back down, then there's been money wasted on NFTs, Airdrops that could've been sold straight away and used to buy BTC but I fell for the old "Stake your airdrop for further loyalty airdrops" BS as the price tanks over time. Long story short I've got some alts left but nowhere near the dollar amount I would have had just keeping all the BTC purchased from 2018 - 2021. 😂 Ark.io + Dragonchain = Maximum Shit.

Watched some videos on YouTube to get some ideas on the best approach to running. Although it's been exercise, what I've been doing could be considered Greyzone running - going out and running the same pace each time and probably faster than I'm conditioned for. Only did 8 miles today but had a go at Fartlek training, set the lap alert on the watch to 0.5 miles, tried to aim for slower laps of 10mi+ and faster laps of 7-8mi. Had to work a bit on the fast laps but not hard enough I couldn't recover when on the slower laps. Next time I go for a longer run I'm going to try for 10mi average and maybe work towards going over 20 mile. #exercise #runstr

Nevermind Roy Shaw & Lennie McLean, this is what a hard b**tard looks like 🤯 Sumie Inagaki 稲垣寿美恵

Any bike #bikestr enthusiasts on Nostr? Been looking at new bikes, originally thought about a gravel bike (best of both worlds) but if I want to increase mileage would be better off on the road and get an endurance bike (less aggressive stance than race/road bikes) All the ones I've looked at come with carbon fibre rims, tubeless and hookless tyres. I've never even ran tubeless nevermind hookless and the hate for hookless seems quite strong on YouTube - some saying it's just a scam (manufacturers saving money on tooling) and some saying they're fine for mtb and gravel bikes (wider, less pressure) but there's no good reason for road bikes with narrower tyres to be running them and even dangerous if over inflated or ran at high pressures. People will highlight the increased weight but I put Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tour Smartguard tyres with inner tubes on my old mtb a few years ago and honestly never get punctures or have to worry about slime. What do other people run on road bikes? Tubeless? And take a repair kit and 16g Co2 can? Or prefer oldskool innertubes? #bikestr #bike

Tried to pace myself around 9:50 min per mile so I didn't bonk and because I don't take anything with me - drinks or gels etc. Ate a banana, crumpet with Maple syrup, a cup of coffee and a mug of water with an electrolyte sachet half an hour before leaving though and the weather is milder today, both of these things seemed to help. Don't wanna look like an Instagram runner but was thinking of getting one of those hydration vests to wear for anything over half marathon especially as the weather gets better and headed into summer. #exercise #runstr

#runstr #exercise

Tried setting up #runstr but ran into a problem, my phone is an older Huawei model running on EMUI, Garmin Connect to Health Connect requires Android 14 or higher to work, there is supposedly a work around using Health Sync (3rd party App) but that requires subscription. Long story short, need a new phone anyway 🤦

Totalitarian tiptoe much?