My fitness levels have fallen off a cliff

Yesterday, I was able to bunk off work early, which was helpful, because I needed to go and do some auditing of parts of the National Cycle Network for Sustrans. I’d allocated the task to myself at the start of the month, but then July of the never-ending rain began.

I’m a shadow of my former self

I thought I’d be able to get this all done in one big ride, but after loading the route in my cycling computer, I was informed that it was 80km. Which, with current functional equipment and levels of fitness (plus stopping to do the actual auditing) I figured would have taken me about 6 hours.

So I did 40km of the planned route and it was still a slog, a very humbling ride, that took over 4 hours. I was consciously taking it easy and I was riding an inappropriate bike, but even so, I could feel that it was more difficult than I was used to.

Moreover, in order to cut the loop short, I had to ride across a valley. I knew the climb that was in my path, and already knew it would be beyond me before I got there, and so it was. When I arrived at Clockburn Lonnen I gave what I had, but inevitably… “Sometimes hiking, always biking”.

I felt ok in the aftermath aside from having very sore arms and hands. That is, until I had to do a few hours work in the garden, and now I am actually deceased.

Tinkering with Zotero

Today, aside from killing myself in the garden, I’ve been playing around with my “knowledge base”. Specifically, having a look at Zotero, which I had an inkling that I’d seen before and ignored because of it’s intended use case - researchers tracking references.

However, given I’ve been reading How to Take Smart Notes and thinking about how I can apply a subset of what it talks about to just hobbyist nonsense, I took a longer look at Zotero than I otherwise would have.

I quickly figured it would be a good place to record the books I’ve read, if nothing else, and it can link well into obsidian. I then realised that you can add web pages to its database as well as books and journal articles.

This got me to thinking, I could maybe use it as a tool for tracking blogs / online articles that I’ve found interesting or think I might find interesting. I’ve tried and failed doing this before, of course, from del.icio.us to pocket and everything in between. Perhaps now that I’m making a conscious effort to read more and write about what I’ve read, this could be a great tool… Folly? Almost certainly.

I had a little look on the internet to see if any other non-academics were abusing Zotero in this way, and pretty much the first link I find is this blog by @jbaty. It’s always funny to see a familiar face in a search result but it made me realise… it’s likely that I had seen Zotero before, and that this post is likely the reason why.