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Lnk cr b82rez 2g4

Posted by Malc on February 10, 2019
Posted in: 2019, Car Care, Detailing.

I guess you have to be a certain age to get what that title is all about, but anyways…

The Celica was looking a bit unloved, so with the MINI at the workshop, I had some garage space (turns out I didn’t but I’m done getting annoyed about the amount of stuff in there) and some weekend time.

Dead as a dodo. It got a new battery in February last year, before being used to conquer the Beast from the East’s snow, but not a hint of power. Tried sticking it on charge, my fancy digital charger just said “error” it was that flat. Gave it a jump off the BMW, soon as I disconnected the jump leads it died. Tried again and left both running for ten minutes this time, still died as soon as the lead was taken off. New battery added to the shopping list.

Now the lack of garage space didn’t matter as I couldn’t reverse it in. So I got out the claybar kit.

The paint on the car is dire. The mist of overspray means the paint feels like sandpaper and there’s also crazy markings that look almost like Damascus steel, where I used G101 to dissolve some bird muck and didn’t rinse it off properly.

These run off lines don’t come off with normal washing.

The outline of a box that was sitting on the sunroof when the overspray mist landed.

That’s a close up of just how bad the rear wing looks with all the overspray and bonded surface contaminants from the storage in the underground car park.

Turns out I already had a claybar kit, despite buying one on Saturday to use on the car. So now with more clay than an average pottery, I set about a section of the rear wing.

The results were extremely underwhelming. Despite 4 separate sessions with the clay, the paint is still awful. This was just 1 session and on an area less than a square foot.

There is a difference in feel, but it’s like 1200 grit vs 800 grit, visually there’s no real difference.

You can just about see where I haven’t clayed in the top of this photo

After a sulk, I decided to try something else. Cracked out a bottle of Meguiars Ultimate Compound and had a go at a section of the bootlid (the upwards facing surfaces are by far the worst). Now this was a different story, but bloody hard work!

So now I know the solution, just need to mentally come to terms with just how much elbow grease it’s going to take to do the whole car!

Cardi-Uh-Oh

Posted by Malc on February 2, 2019
Posted in: 2019, Fitness, Weightloss. Tagged: , , .

Yes indeed, the first snow of the year seemed like the perfect time to dig out my bike for a spot of cardio.

Basically, I wanted to go to Lidl and decided to ride rather than walk. Naturally I ignored the well worn rear tyre, this only produced mild traction issues putting the power down. The bigger issue was the usual one, it’s a 14in jump frame with the world’s most ridiculously long seat post, it’s not really made for destination cycling! It doesn’t look that daft in the pic below, but that’s it at only half height!

Anyways, mission accomplished. Only 4km but 340 calories burned due to intensity, it’s a big climb straight away out of my estate and then a long gradual climb on the way home. Both directions giving you a nice downhill coast to get your lungs back down inside your ribcage.

Feeling a bit more motivated after managing to cross the 1-stone-down mark. Once again, I’ll save the horror of the topless pics for my private consumption…

Red, Amber, Green… But what do they mean?

Posted by Malc on February 1, 2019
Posted in: 2019, Fitness. Tagged: , .

Something I strongly believe in is the saying, “you can’t out train a bad diet.”

Now to be clear, when I say diet, I don’t mean the latest weight loss strategy that’s all over social media (I’m being nice since its Friday and not calling it a fad). By diet I mean, the food and drink we consume everyday, our normal eating habits. This is one of the areas I’m working on to change, balancing it out better and making healthier choices. This brings up an interesting point though, what is actually in my food?

Food labelling is actually a very interesting field, possibly less so if you aren’t somewhat of a geek like me. Anyway, there is a massive list of guidance and requirements published by the Food Standard Agency to govern this, one of the most noticeable changes in recent years has been the introduction of the traffic light system on food labels to give you a simple label with red / amber / green to tell you about the fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in the food you are thinking about eating.

  • Sadly, there’s a couple of catches;
      • Its not mandatory, its optional, which is a real shame as it can be such a useful tool in enabling people to make better choices
      The information often relates to “per portion,” and not everyone’s notion of a portion matches the manufacturer’s

    So if you are trying to make better choices, these will help, but always pay attention to the portion size and if they don’t have traffic lights, you can still work it out for yourself. Here’s the red/amber/green thresholds for food and drinks:

    For foods

    For drinks

    Month 1: Done

    Posted by Malc on January 31, 2019
    Posted in: 2019, Fitness. Tagged: , , .

    That’s month 1 of the fitness mission complete.

    Strength: Improved

    Despite not doing that many body area specific workouts, the weights I’m using feel easier. Clearly the fat burn workout using only body weights is helping with this as it targets pretty much all muscle groups.

    Stamina: Improved

    Now running my warm up and cool down (not really a good down, more of a cardio bookend) at speed 12 on the tread mill rather than 9-9.5 as I was at the start of the month.

    Weight: Decreased

    Not quite a stone since the start of the month but only 0.1kg away from it.