Simon Wolf's Blog

Imagine being so fit...

Simon Wolf — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0100

… that if someone asked you to run a 10k right now, you could do it without a second thought.

That was the caption on a Facebook Reel I saw earlier today.

18 months after I started getting up off the sofa and doing some exercise I can.

I occasionally choose to do it as a race so that I can get a medal and an official time but usually it is just for fun when the mood takes me. And I already forget what an achievement it is.

I don’t say this to brag. I’m slow by comparison to a lot of runners and so, perhaps because it’s too easy to compare yourself to other people, so I don’t consider myself to be particularly fit.

Last week marked my first anniversary of doing CrossFit. In the sessions I attend I tend to be amongst the slowest or lift the lightest weights. I don’t see myself as strong, fit and capable.

But my CrossFit coach (and other class members) tell me that there has been a huge difference between what I used to be able to do and what I can now do.

If I look at my running times then I can see that I’m getting faster and can run further.

I just lack perspective about it all. And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it keeps me motivated. Maybe it keeps me humble. Maybe it keeps me pushing to improve.

But sometimes, like today when I decided to write this, it is good to take a step back, properly look at what you can do, and realise that you are fit enough to do things that other people might find extraordinary, including past you.

Emacs Notes

Simon Wolf — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 +0100

This post is my set of notes about using Emacs and it will evolve over time as I work out how to do new things. The notes will be very personal to me and my use of Emacs but they might be handy for other people so I thought I would make it a public post, albeit one which will evolve over time.

The main things this post will cover are:

General notes about using Emacs, terminology, etc.
Notes about the Emacs equivalents to things I do in Neovim, VS Code, etc.
Reminders to myself about things I want to dig into.

Some Basic Key Sequences

Key Sequence	Action
C-x C-c	Exit Emacs
M-x	Execute extended command
C-g	‘Bail out’
Esc Esc Esc	Quit out of prompts, regions, prefix arguments

Buffers, Windows, Frames, and Tabs

A buffer displays content. Everything you see and type is in a buffer.

A window is a view of the contents of a buffer. A window displays the contents of one buffer (but you can display the same buffer in multiple windows).

Windows are displayed in a frame. A frame can display one or more windows.

The cursor is only ever in one window and that is called the selected window or current window.

At the bottom of each window is the mode line and below that is the echo area.

Buffers

Key Sequence	Action
C-x C-f	Find (open) a file
C-x C-s	Save the buffer
C-x b	Switch buffer
C-x k	Kill (close) a buffer
C-x C-b	Display all open buffers
M-S-x	Execute extended command relevant for buffer

Windows

Key Sequence	Action
C-x 0	Delete the active window
C-x 1	Delete other windows
C-x 2	Split window below
C-x 3	Split window right
C-x o	Switch active window

To make switching windows easier, rebind C-x o to M-o:

(global-set-key (kbd "M-o") 'other-window)

To do something like opening a file in a new window you don’t need to split the current window (which will show the same buffer in both, switch to the other window and then open the file. You can act on other windows instead.

Note that if there is already another window, that will be used. These commands only create a new window if there is currently only one.

Key Sequence	Action
C-x 4 C-f	Find a file in the other window
C-x 4 d	Open Dired in the other window
C-x 4 C-o	Display a buffer in the other window
C-x 4 b	Switch the buffer in the other window and make it the active window

To have the split be horizontally ([]|[]) by default:

(setq split-width-threshold 1)

Frames

Managing frames is very similar to managing windows:

Key Sequence	Action
C-x 5 0	Delete the active frame
C-x 5 1	Delete the other frame
C-x 5 2	Create a new frame (follows the standard split rules)
C-x 5 C-f	Find a file in the other frame
C-x 5 d	Open Dired in the other frame
C-x 5 C-o	Display a buffer in the other frame
C-x 5 b	Switch the buffer in the other frame and make it the active window

Note: Frames all share the same Emacs session so whilst they look like different instances of Emacs they are not. They are good for multi-monitor setups however.

Tab Line Mode

By default tab line mode shows tabs for buffers previously opened in a window.

It can be enabled with M-x global-tab-line-mode.

Key Sequence	Action
C-x	Select previous buffer
C-x	Select next buffer

This is not enormously useful.

Tab Bar Mode

Tab bar mode essentially manages multiple windows in a tabbed layout rather than in a tiled layout.

This is very similar to how VS Code has tabs for files.

It can be invoked via M-x tab-bar-mode or by invoking one of the key bindings below:

Key Sequence	Action
C-x t 0	Close the current tab
C-x t 1	Close all other tabs
C-x t 2	Create a new tab
C-x t RET	Select tab by name
C-x t o, C-<tab>	Next tab
C-S-<tab>	Previous tab
C-x t r	Rename tab
C-x t d	Open Dired in other tab
C-x t C-f	Find file in other tab
C-x t b	Switch to buffer in other tab
M-x tab-list	Shows an interactive tab list
M-x tab-undo	Undoes a closed tab
M-x tab-recent	Switches to the last visited tab

General Editing Notes

Line and Column Numbers

;; Show line numbers in text and programming modes
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'display-line-numbers-mode)
(add-hook 'prog-mode-hook 'display-line-numbers-mode)

;; Show the column number in the mode line (line number is shown by default)
(setq column-number-mode t)

Cut, Copy, and Paste

The Emacs terminology is:

Cutting -> Killing
Copying -> Saving to the kill ring
Pasting -> Yanking

…

Undo and Redo

…

The Mark and The Mark Ring

The mark is a position in the buffer.

The point is another name for the cursor. It is your current position in a buffer.

A region is the block of text between the mark and the point.

A mark can be set by pressing C-<SPC>. When the point moves the region is shown and changed accordingly. The region can be deactivated by pressing C-<SPC> again (or C-g).

The mark is also used to jump around in a buffer and some commands which change your location in the buffer will add a mark to the mark ring so that you can return to your original position later. For example, M-< and M-> jump to the beginning and end of the buffer but they both mark your current position first so that you can return to it via C-u C-<SPC>.

The mark ring contains all of the marks placed in a buffer, either directly using commands like C-<SPC> or indirectly by commands like M-<.

There is also a global mark ring for commands that work across buffer boundaries.

To manually set a mark without starting to set the region you press C-<SPC> C-<SPC>. Therefore is it possible to set a mark and then jump back to it easily using C-u C-<SPC>.

The following set a region and leaves the region active (you can extend it further):

Key Sequence	Action
C-	Set the mark
M-h	Mark the next paragraph
C-x h	Mark the entire buffer
M-@	Mark the next word

To mark two words you would press M-@ M-@ or combine it with a numeric argument: M-2 M-@. You can change the direction using the negative argument modifier: M-- M-2 M-@.

Rectangular Selection

C-x SPC toggles M-x rectangle-mark-mode on and off.

Bookmarks and Registers

Bookmarks are permanent (they are saved to a file) and are most useful for jumping to frequently used files or directories.

Key Sequence	Action
C-x r l	List bookmarks
C-x r m	Set a bookmark
C-x r b	Jump to bookmark

Registers are transient and a single character is used to refer to stored items which can include window configurations and framesets. points, numbers and text.

Numbers and text are useful if you want to repeatedly insert text but storing and jumping to points is useful when editing a codebase.

Key Sequence	Action
C-x r n r	Store a number in register r
C-x r s r	Store a region in register r
C-x r SPC r	Store the point in register r
C-x r i r	Insert the contents of register r
C-x r j r	Jump to point in register r

Neovim `dd`

Emacs has C-k (kill-line) which deletes from the cursor to the end of the line. To delete the whole line use C-a C-k. But that just removed the ‘contents’ and leaves an empty line so maybe use M-x kill-whole-line.

Spell Checking

You need to have a spelling application and dictionary installed. The most common ones seem to be aspell and hunspell. Currently I use aspell and the en_GB-ise-wo_accents dictionary.

The dictionary can be set in the configuration: (setq ispell-dictionary "en_GB-ise-wo_accents").

If you want to use a different program such as hunspell then you can define that too: (setq ispell-program-name "hunspell").

Key Sequence	Action
M-$, M-x ispell-word	Check word at point
M-x ispell	Check spelling in the buffer (or region if one is active)
M-x ispell-buffer	Check spelling in the buffer
M-x ispell-region	Check spelling in the region
C-u M-$, M-x ispell-continue	Continue an interrupted spelling operation

In addition, flyspell-mode (which shows a line under misspelled words) can be enabled automatically for text mode files (and an equivalent for programming mode files which only checks comments and strings):

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode)
(add-hook 'prog-mode-hook 'flyspell-prog-mode)

Quality of Life Improvements

Improving The Completions Buffer

;; Improve *Completions* buffer behaviour
(setq completion-auto-help 'always)
(setq completion-auto-select 'second-tab)

From Robert Enzmann’s blog

Project.el

C-x p d to launch Dired in the root of the project’s folder.

C-x p b to switch buffer but only to ones in the current project.

C-x p f to find files in the project. This is an equivalent of VS Code’s Ctrl+p. To extend the search to files outside of the project use C-x p F.

C-x p g to to find in files in the project. This is an equivalent of VS Code’s Ctrl+Shift+f. To extend the search to files outside of the project use C-x p G.

Magit

C-x g to launch Magit.

Tab to open and close sections.

F to pull changes.

s stages a file.

c c initiates a commit. C-c C-c creates the commit.

P u pushes upstream.

k (magit-discard-item) discards changes in a file.

q closes the Magic buffer.

g refreshes the buffer.

The Taunton Trail 10K

Simon Wolf — Sun, 24 May 2026 12:00:00 +0100

I have a goal to run four 10K races in 2026 and this morning I ran the first. It was the Taunton Trail 10K which takes place, unsurprisingly, in Taunton in Somerset. The race is run along the banks of the canal and river and so is very flat which appealed enormously since most of my runs usually involve some hills.

My experience of races is limited and, apart from parkruns, I have only ever done one other race, The Christmas Cracker which I did back in December, and this was a smaller event with maybe 132 runners taking part in the 10K (and about the same for the half marathon) vs. maybe 2,000 for the race in Weston-super-Mare.

Car parking was provided at the race HQ, Taunton Rugby Club, and registration was really quick and simple. There was then a bit of nervous hanging around before the race briefing (which was mainly telling us that there would be loads of marshals, about the food and drinks stations and to be careful on the tow paths) and then we were off.

And this was my biggest mistake and also possibly my biggest success. During the race briefing I’d been close to the front to make sure I could hear but that left me very close to the start line and much closer than I felt comfortable with considering how many faster runners would be behind me waiting to get past. So when we started I made an extra effort to get going and maintain a reasonable pace which felt a bit faster than I would have liked but not too arduous. The net result was that a few minutes later my Garmin watch told me that I’d run the first kilometre in 5:30. To put this into context, my parkrun PB is 31 minutes which is a pace of just over 6 minutes per kilometre and my goal was to run the 10K in 70 minutes, a pace of 7 minutes per kilometre. I decided to slow down a bit.

The second kilometre was done in 5:48. Kilometre three was 5:53. I was slowing down to a more sensible pace but I also realised that I was heading towards a sub-30 minute 5K which was one of my big goals for 2026. Kilometre four was 5:55 and kilometre five was 5:51. I know I’d achieved it but didn’t get a final figure until the end of the race which turned out to be 28:57!

But by now the heat and effort was getting to me and the next five kilometres passed a bit more sedately and I slowed and walked for brief parts of each one to help lower my heart rate and cool down a bit. But even with the reduced pace (and stopping for water at a 6km food station) I ran 10k in another new best of 1:02:50, a pace of 6:17 per kilometre.

The race itself is a little over 10K and my final, official race time is 1:06:49:

My official race result

I’m really pleased with my result and the results my watch recorded and the Strava summary makes me very proud of how far I’ve come. A year ago I wrote about how I was now a runner and said, “And today I finished my 25 minute run at a pace below seven minutes per kilometre for the first time which gives me hope of maybe achieving a sub-35 minute 5K.” I’ve come a long way, literally and metaphorically.

The Strava summary of my achievements during the race

And the end of the race was great too. After the Race Director high-fived us as we crossed the line we were given a beautiful medal and there was also an incredibly well-stocked refreshment station at the end where we could all grab a drink and some sweets, fruit, cake and other refreshments.

Very happy after the race with a beautiful medal

It was a great local event and really well organised and I’ll be doing it again, and maybe the half marathon version too. And I will also be looking at other Prosper Events races too on the basis of how great this event was.

VO2 Max And Lactate Threshold Results

Simon Wolf — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0100

At the end of January I underwent a VO₂ max and lactate threshold test. You can read about it in a previous post. Less than a week later I received the results and I was very pleased to discover that, in addition to the facts and figures, it included training suggestions too.

This blog post will provide some details about the information I got in the report and also compare it to the figures my Garmin Fenix 7 calculated for me.

The Garmin Estimates

Unfortunately it has taken me a couple of months to write this up so the figures and estimates from my watch may not be exactly what they were at the end of January.

My Garmin Fenix 7 calculates what it calls my lactate threshold (what the report calls my Individual Anaerobic Threshold or IAT) as being at 173 bpm and the zones are based on percentages of that:

Zone	Percentage of LTHR	Heart Rate
Zone 1	69-76%	119-132 bpm
Zone 2	77-84%	133-145 bpm
Zone 3	85-93%	146-161 bpm
Zone 4	94-101%	162-176 bpm
Zone 5	103-110%	177-190 bpm

The Test Results

The actual test results give me the following heart rates for each zone:

Zone	Heart Rate
Zone 1	< 109 bpm
Zone 2	109-142 bpm
Zone 3	142-166 bpm
Zone 4	166-184 bpm
Zone 5	> 184 bpm

I was surprised at how close my Garmin is to the actual test results for my heart rate zones. I probably shouldn’t be since it collects so much data from me but it does give me some confidence that the other analysis that it does will also be fairly accurate too.

However, the Zone 2 band on my Garmin is too narrow and since I need to do more Zone 2 training it is very useful to have more accurate figures to work from.

But the report includes an awful lot more data and information for me too.

The Report Itself

From here on, my lactate threshold (LT) and my Individual Anaerobic Threshold (IAT) are the values quoted in the test results. I reach the former around a heart rate of 142 bpm and the latter around a heart rate of 166 bpm.

My research had already told me this but the report explains that by doing more aerobic training in Zone 2 (below my LT) I will increase my endurance and also my speed. By increasing my aerobic fitness my body can run for longer periods at a faster rate without building up lactate, the thing that ties your muscles.

Similarly, training below the IAT will allow me to work at higher intensities for longer which will benefit things like my 5k time. By training in zone 3 and edging into zone 4 I can increase the pace I can run at before hitting this threshold.

Additionally, training in zones 2 and 3 will help flatten the curve of lactate build-up so that it doesn’t occur so quickly which will give me a larger heart rate range before I get exhausted.

With regard to VO₂ max, because the test is not very good at representing longer endurance events, the result you get is called the VO₂ Peak. That value can be reported as an absolute score (in litres of oxygen consumed per minute) or as a score relative to bodyweight. My absolute score is 3.462 L/min and my relative score is 42.50 ml/kg/min. Those put me into a “good” category for my age and sex.

Interestingly the report cautions me not to focus too much on my VO₂ Max because my lactate profile is probably more important for the sort of fitness levels I want to achieve and the sort of exercise I enjoy. However if I do want to improve it then I need to work in zones 4 and 5.

The report also gives me a Velocity at VO₂ Max figure (10.23 kph). This is the speed at which I would elicit my peak oxygen uptake if it was sustained. A well-trained runner should be able to complete 10km at around 92% of this rate or 5km at around 98%. That would translate into me being able to complete a 10km race in around 1:03:50 and a 5km race in 29:10. Both feel a little optimistic right now but the term “well-trained” plays a fairly important part here I think.

Running Economy is the VO₂ required to run at sub-maximal speeds and is a vital aspect of endurance running. My figure is 249 ml/kg/km which is moderately good and something I can improve by training in zones 2 and 3. It is definitely something I need to work on if I want to achieve my longer-term goal of running a marathon in a couple of years. For context, when running a 5K, around 10% of the effort is running economy, 15% is IAT and pretty much all of the remaining 75% is VO₂ max. By contrast, for a marathon, those figures are around 45%, 50% and 5% respectively.

Blood Lactate levels at the end of a test help indicate anaerobic capacity. Mine reached a peak of 10.1 mmol/L which shows that I have a good level of anaerobic capacity and can produce some high-intensity energy at a fast rate when needed. Endurance-based athletes tend to have lower lactate levels and lowering my peak lactate through more aerobic training would benefit me and my goals but for shorter runs like a 5k or for Zwift cycling a higher peak lactate level would help. Essentially it is difficult to fully develop you aerobic and anaerobic systems simultaneously so I need to match my training to the events I want to do. The initial recommendation is to focus on work in zones 1-3 with some in zone 4 to achieve my running goals.

The report also covers fuel usage during the test. As is to be expected, initially, at lower intensities, more fat is burnt but as the intensity increases less is and more carbohydrates are. The respiratory exchange ratio (RER) is the ratio between the carbon dioxide produced and the oxygen used by the body. An RER of 0.7 indicates pure fat usage and 1 suggests pure carbohydrate usage with 0.85 being a 50/50 split. Whilst it is not a perfect guide due to the short time periods per testing stage, it appears that I burn the most fat up to a speed of 6kph and fat burning is still elevated until around 8kph but after that I am largely burning carbohydrates. Zone 1 and 2 runs would help me burn more fat.

The end of the report also contains what is essentially a training guide in terms of suggesting what zones I should focus on for burning fat, improving my endurance and also how to improve my top-end speed, VO₂ max and running economy whilst also keeping a balance between aerobic and anaerobic training.

Was It Worth It?

Was it worth spending £180 on the testing and the report? Yes. Was it necessary? No.

I am at best an enthusiastic amateur athlete so a detailed report like this is not at all necessary for me to go and run further and faster which will largely happen as a result of just running more. I had a good idea about the training zones and which I should be focusing on and my Garmin watch was pretty accurate in terms of telling me my heart rate for each one.

But the report did allow me to learn more about what my body is capable of and it confirmed some theory and has given me some concrete steps to take. I enjoy learning about the science behind fitness and so a geeky itch was definitely scratched too.

It has also given me a good yardstick so that next January, when I go and repeat the process, I will hopefully see tangible differences between the two sets of results. Hopefully I won’t just be feeling fitter, I’ll actually know in which areas I am fitter. And for someone who still feels that exercise is a new, exciting part of their life this sort of thing is a reward to myself for all of the hard work and well worth it.

VO2 Max And Lactate Threshold Testing

Simon Wolf — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

One year ago today I took delivery of, set up and then climbed onto my brand new Zwift Ride and had a brief ride to try it out. This was the second step of me turning my lifestyle around (the first being to change what I ate) and it kicked off a year of huge change for me.

My First Zwift Activity

Over the last 12 months, as well as continuing to ride on Zwift (2,078 km ridden, 21 km climbed and 83 hours and 48 minutes spent doing it), I became a runner thanks to Couch To 5K and I now also do CrossFit twice a week.

I am now a lot fitter but, as I wrote back in November, one specific area I want to work on is my aerobic fitness and a VO₂ max test will give me a good baseline to work from.

I also want to hit certain fitness goals in 2026 and they include running 5k in under 30 minutes and running 10k in under 60 minutes. Based on what my Garmin watch tells me (see below), I need to improve my lactate threshold to achieve that.

VO₂ max

According to Wikipedia, “VO₂ max is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption attainable during physical exertion.”

Essentially it is a measure of the maximum amount of oxygen your body can absorb and use during exercise. Oxygen is used to create energy called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and the more oxygen you can absorb then the more ATP energy you can generate.

As well as being important for athletic performance, VO₂ max is a way of determining cardiorespiratory fitness which is used to determine you heart and lung health. A higher VO₂ max is associated with improved life expectancy.

Aerobic & Lactate Thresholds

As well as VO₂ max, lactate levels are another useful metric to track. Lactate (or lactic acid) is produced and used by your body to break down carbohydrates for energy.

Below your Aerobic Threshold, called LT1, lactate production is balanced in terms of production and usage and your body is primarily oxidising fat as an energy source.

As activity intensity increases more lactate is produced and when it first starts to exceed the amount used you have reached the aerobic threshold. This is the upper limit of Zone 2.

The Lactate Threshold (LT2 and also called the anaerobic threshold) is when lactate levels start to increase significantly, leading to a noticeable net accumulation. This is the upper limit of Zone 4 and is what is also called Functional Threshold Power (FTP).

At this point, as well as lactate levels rapidly increasing in your blood, you are producing a high level of hydrogen ions which lower your blood’s pH level, making it more acidic. This is why lactate is also called lactic acid. And it is this increase in acidity reduces your muscles’ ability to contract, slowing you down.

Just to make things confusing, LT1 and LT2 are sometimes called the lactate threshold and the lactate turnpoint.

Training Theory

VO₂ max can be improved by high-intensity interval training (HIIT). This is where you reach or temporarily surpass LT2 your anaerobic threshold before dropping below it again. This causes your heart and lungs to adapt and increasing their capacity and efficiency. It seems like CrossFit is a good activity for this.

To increase my lactate threshold there seem to be two main views. One is to train at a level where I am between LT1 and just beyond LT2. The other is to do up to 80% of training at a low intensity and around 20% at or above LT2. This is going to be best achieved by doing things like threshold runs, split threshold runs and progression runs.

And that 80% of low intensity running is where I can target zone 2 slow running. This is to help me increase my aerobic fitness and also to build my endurance so that I can more comfortably run 10k and beyond. Zone 2 training also increases the number and size of mitochondria in your cells which are the sites in the cells that create the ATP energy mentioned earlier.

Measuring VO₂ max & Lactate Threshold

With the theory out of the way, having some actual values for my VO₂ and lactate threshold will be useful.

My Garmin watch (a Fenix 7) gives me an idea of what it thinks my VO₂ max is, both for cycling and running. It currently tells me that they are 44 and 41 respectively which just puts me into the “excellent” category for cycling and has me in the “good” category for running.

It would be more usual for someone to have a lower cycling VO₂ max because you are largely using just your legs whereas in running you are using more muscles and generally putting your body under more strain. I think my readings are like this because I have tracked a lot more indoor cycling sessions than I have outdoor runs so my Garmin has more data to work with for cycling.

My watch also gives me an idea of what it simply calls my lactate threshold. It says I reach it at a heart rate of 168 bpm and a pace of 6:04 per km. That implies I can run a 5k in around 30m 20s so I am assuming that Garmin’s lactate threshold is LT2.

The lactate threshold estimate might be accurate since my 5k times are based on parkruns which tend to have slow, crowded starts or on the somewhat hilly lanes round my village. I need to find a nice flat, quiet course to see what my time is then).

But the most accurate approach is to go for a proper VO₂ max test with lactate threshold testing being done at the same time. I am fortunate that the University of Bath is about half an hour away and offers this as a service. They can do testing with you on a bike or on a treadmill and since I want to focus on running more this year I opted to go for the treadmill test and that is what I did today at the cost of £180.

The Test Experience

My test was performed by Jonathan Robinson who, if you watch any of the Bath-based sports and fitness channels on YouTube such as Global Cycling Network, you might already have seen doing tests for them.

Jonathan talked me through the process and we did the obligatory paperwork and then it was time to have a face mask fitted which allows him to measure my oxygen intake and carbon dioxide production. After a warm up jog on the treadmill, we were ready to begin.

The testing process consists of completing three minute sessions of running where the pace increases by 1km/hour each time. I imagine that more advanced athletes might have larger jumps or, at the very least, start at a faster pace than I did.

Between each session a blood sample is taken via a finger prick (the same site is used for each test… you don’t come away with hands like pin cushions) and this is used to monitor your lactate levels.

And it all went very smoothly. Wearing a face mask is a bit odd but it is not overly restrictive (although I couldn’t wear my glasses comfortably). Jumping on and off the treadmill onto the side rails was a bit strange, particularly “rejoining” a moving treadmill, but nothing too difficult. And when I finally had to stop I just jumped onto the side rails and we were done.

Jonathan checking I was okay!

The Results

You can read about the results of the testing in the follow-up post.

Downtime

Simon Wolf — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Over the last year in particular I have started to use my blog to track things like my fitness goals and projects. Last week, towards the end of 2025, I saw lots of people posting lists of books, video games, TV shows, films, etc. that they had enjoyed during the year and I thought it would be good to at least keep a list of things I do in my downtime for my own reference if nothing else.

I am pretty bad at remembering what I have done and when and whilst I can generally refer to Amazon to see which books I have on my Kindle I have no real way of casually tracking other things so I’ve decided to add a Downtime page to my blog.

I’m not sure how much detail I will add to it over time (scores, reviews, or anything else) but I can at least start with some basic lists of things I am playing/reading/watching to start with and evolve things from there.

2025 Half-Remembered

This feels like a good place to note down a few of the things I really enjoyed during 2025 too.

Video Games

Tunic (Nintendo Switch) A fantastic action adventure game with scalable difficulty so older games like me don’t get stuck on early bosses.
Dungeons of Dreadrock (Nintendo Switch) A great story-based puzzle game split over 100 levels.
Dungeons of Dreadrock 2 - The Dead King’s Secret (Nintendo Switch) A sequel to Dungeons of Dreadrock which is more of the same.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Nintendo Switch) A fantastic Metroidvania game which has scalable difficultly so you can play it as a challenging fighting game or focus more on exploring and the puzzles.
A Plague Tale: Innocence (Playstation 4 & 5) A mix of stealth, puzzles, basic fighting but overall a beautiful game with an intriguing story. I loved this right to the end when there are two boss battles which feel really out of place compared to the rest of the game.
A Plague Tale: Requiem (Playstation 4 & 5) A sequel to Innocence which expands on the gameplay and is as great as the first game. Again there are boss battles at the end which feel out of place but overall it is a great game, even if it was a bit jarring that the main characters lost their French accents between the two titles.

Reading

My favourite book of the year was volume two of Michael Palin’s diaries, Halfway to Hollywood , which I enjoyed enormously. I started volume three towards the end of the year but will not finish it until early 2026.

Film and TV Shows

My guilty pleasure TV show discovery was New Tricks (BBC TV Series) which I enjoyed enormously through the autumn. The show was broadcast between 2003 and 2015 and it follows a team of retired police detectives investigating old crimes and achieving an astonishingly high success rate. Most of the original cast had left by the end of the 10th series but it still remained pretty good although it then ended after 12 series in total.

The Fear Of Change

Simon Wolf — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This time last year I was spending a lot of time thinking about my own mortality and about how I wanted to change my lifestyle. I needed to do something about my weight and fitness and had done for a long time. I had friends and relatives who had lost weight and started exercising more and I was inspired by them. But actually starting the process was ridiculously difficult.

I eventually did however and you can read about that here but before I started I needed to work through some issues I had. I’ll touch on some and then focus on one in particular.

The Fears

Time

I co-own a business and felt that I had no free time where I could go to the gym or exercise classes. I spent time in the evening and at weekends working and couldn’t possibly imagine how I would fit anything more in.

I started my exercise regime with indoor cycling which I could do at home and I did it during the hour or so when I used to finish work and go and slump on the sofa to unwind. In the spring I started running which was also something home-based and then, during the summer, I started doing CrossFit classes in the evenings which, from leaving home to getting back, took up almost two hours twice a week. But by then I had realised two things.

The physical and mental benefits of exercise were an awful lot better at helping me unwind after work than sitting on the sofa watching TV was.
I was choosing to spend out-of-hours time working because it helped fill empty time I had available.

It turns out that exercise has been incredible for allowing me to create some separation between work and non-work time (I work from home which doesn’t help) and it has been an excellent way to help me unwind at the end of the day and reflect on things when things are stressful. The mental health benefits have been as important to me as the physical ones which is not something I was expecting.

Loose Skin

If you’ve ever seen videos about very overweight people dieting you’ll know that loose skin can be a side-effect. I was worried that when I lost weight I might have folds of loose skin too.

So far, having lost 20 of the 30 or so kilograms that I need to, this has not been a problem and even if it had been, or becomes one, compression clothing can help, particularly when you are exercising.

And perhaps this should be treated like a badge of honour rather than something to be ashamed of. It is, after all, a reminder of success, not failure.

Fear Of Failure

A couple of time before I have lost weight only to slowly regain it again. Did I want to go through it again? Did I want to start something which might have fizzled out and failed before I even lost a reasonable amount of weight?

Making lifestyle changes is hard and so is sticking with them. It is definitely not guaranteed that long-term the changes can or will be sustained. But, like almost everything in life, nothing is guaranteed and unless you try something you’ll never know if it would have worked or not.

The Cost

Losing weight and changing my lifestyle has not been cheap. I wrote about this previously but you can also add things like needing to buy new clothes, paying for gym memberships, healthy food choices being more expensive than ultra-processed ones, etc.

However the bottom line is that after any initial outlays, subsequent ones are probably spread out and more regular and manageable. My only significant expense which I resent was buying a new suit for a wedding and it already being too big for me. I should have rented one because I so rarely need a suit that it was not a good purchase.

The Long Term Commitment

Changing your lifestyle is a long-term commitment and this is the area I want to expand on because the idea of planning ahead a year or more before I started was probably my biggest mental barrier.

The Long Road Ahead

When I started reading stories about weight loss and people changing their lifestyles it was always from the point of view of them having started their changes a year or more in the past. Being impatient for change, the thought of needing so much time to experience the sort of changes other have gone through feels like an eternity. Rather than being an impetus to start as soon as possible, for me it acted as a deterrent and I felt that it was overwhelming and almost impossible to tackle. “I need to do something urgently but I know it will take a long time so maybe it is too late to start. Maybe the status quo is okay.”

In retrospect it feels and sounds ridiculous but I’ll bet that most people have had chores which need to be done but because they are hard or will take a long time they end up being ignored for as long as possible. But, as with those cases, getting started is the hardest step and then it (usually) ends up being easier than expected.

Fortunately I had moments of clarity and I decided that the status quo really wasn’t okay and even if nothing else happened I could change what I ate fairly easily and see how things went. I was worried, almost scared, of being hungry or missing treats but I decided that I needed to try and so I stopped buying crisps, sweets, unhealthy snacks, ready meals and as many ultra-processed foods as I could and focused on just eating better. I didn’t have a plan and didn’t count calories; I just thought I would see how it all went for a few weeks.

The First Fortnight

I decided to weight myself weekly and I told myself not to panic if I didn’t see immediate results. The trend is the important bit.

I started on 19 January and in the first week I lost 1.5 kg and then I lost another kilogram in the second week. I’d gone from 101.5 kg to 100.1 kg to 99.05 kg. I was below 100 kg. And then silly things started to occur to me… my stepladder has a recommended maximum weight of 100 kg so I was within range (if I ignored clothes and didn’t carry anything on it).

But the main thing was seeing some results and that encouraged me. If I could lose a kilogram each week, at least initially, then I would be at 90 kg around mid-April. Suddenly I had a target weight and a timescale.

I did in fact reach 89.95 kg on 13 April.

Adding Exercise

At the end of January I invested in a Zwift Ride which was a big financial gamble for me. I had no idea if I would enjoy it and stick with it but I rationalised that if HMRC allow a £0.45 mileage rate for business travel then I would “pay off” the Zwift Ride after 2,400 miles or 3,862 km (it cost me £1,080 and ignored the subscription fee, delivery cost, cost of accessories, etc.).

As of today I have ridden 2,057 km so I am over half-way there.

The key thing for me was finding and signing up for a “Back to Fitness” training plan which runs for 12 weeks and involves two training sessions per week. I suddenly had a structured plan to last me through to the end of April. Rather than thinking that I should be fitter in three months, a whole quarter of a year away, I could focus on two activities a week and just work through them until the plan was complete. I wasn’t looking at a distant goal, I had something immediate to do.

And then at the start of April I started the Couch to 5K running plan which was a nine week plan. Again, rather than thinking about June and mid-summer I could focus on three runs each week and let the time take care of itself.

I completed both plans and still enjoy both indoor cycling and running.

Six Months And Beyond

By the time I had finished both the Zwift training plan and the Couch to 5K plan it was June and I was almost six months into my lifestyle changes. I’d started noticing the difference and those first few months had gone very quickly. My weight was down to 85kg and I was feeling fitter in general.

In late June I started doing CrossFit and was settling into a routine of it, running and indoor cycling. The dieting was still going well and although the weight loss was slowing down I knew to just stick with things and see what happened.

I started looking forward to the future rather than worrying about it and how long or difficult it would be to reach future milestones. I was now enjoying the process rather than fearing it and because I had experienced a few months of seeing progress I knew that it was working.

Almost A Year On

And so, almost a year on from when I started, I can look back at the achievements and the milestones and plan, with some degree of confidence, the year ahead and set some goals for it. Rather than feeling that a year is a long time before I see changes I now look on a year as a chunk of time where I can plan what I want to achieve next. Time is now my friend.

You can see the goals I set for 2025 here and the goals I have for 2026 here.

10K

Simon Wolf — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000

On 14 December I did my first 10K. Both in terms of distance and event.

Back in July I had just finished a parkrun with a friend, Clare, and she mentioned that for the previous couple of years she and some friends had taken part in a Christmas 10k fun run. I agreed to join them this year.

The event was the Weston AC Christmas Cracker, an annual race which takes place in Weston-super-Mare where participants are encouraged to wear festive fancy dress. The race course is a combination of running on the beach and on tarmac along the promenade.

Preparation

In the lead-up to the race, the furthest I had run was 6.25 km back in August. By race day the furthest I had run was 6.25 km. Not ideal preparation.

My plans had largely gone unfulfilled. The weather in November and early December was grim and it rained almost every day. My outdoor running efforts were non-existent. However I had been doing some slow running on a treadmill at my CrossFit gym and those sessions tended to be almost an hour so I was at least used to running for a reasonable time.

Mentally I had decided that I was taking part in a fun run, in a costume, on sand, so I had no expectations about my performance and was fully expecting to mix running with walking. I wasn’t going to focus on a time, rather I would try to enjoy a social run with friends.

Race Day

Fortune smiled on us and the weather finally changed and the rain was replaced by sunshine, albeit with a cold breeze.

The race started at 11 and so I decided that if I was up by 7:30 I would have time for some breakfast (my usual overnight oats) without it feeling heavy when I was actually running. I had a coffee with it and the some water but I really had no idea what fuel or fluids I needed in advance. I knew I could do a parkrun on an empty stomach and with relatively little hydration and I hoped that a 10k wouldn’t be massively different.

I was pleased that I was with friends because whilst the whole process of collecting my bib (the race number) and timing chip and working out what to do with them turned out to be simple, it was also daunting for a first-timer. If you are going to your first race then it might be worth learning about affixing your race bib to your vest and the timing chip to your shoe.

The start of the race was like a giant parkrun and it took a little while for us to cross the line and find some clear space to settle into a comfortable pace. The marshals were great and cheered everyone on and it was my first experience of spectators supporting runners and it definitely adds to the atmosphere which was relaxed and fun and exactly as I had hoped.

The first five kilometers were pretty straightforward and whilst I wasn’t tracking our pace I knew it was reasonable; slightly slower than a parkrun but definitely not completely relaxed. The sand was fairly wet and solid which was definitely preferable to running on dry, loose sand and the Santa outfit I was wearing was doing a good job of keeping me warm.

By kilometer seven however I was getting hot and tired. I was running with Clare (her daughter was ahead of us somewhere and her two friends somewhere behind) and we fell into a pattern of saying that we might walk for a bit when we got to the next kilometer marker. We never did and we ran the entire distance.

The race headed off the beach and onto roads before we joined the promenade to run back towards the pier. Around kilometer eight some marshals had tubs of sweets to help give people an energy boost but all I could think about were the long queues for the loos before the race and whether people had washed their hands and resisted temptation.

The last kilometer was probably the worst and my legs felt heavy and my neck and shoulders were getting really stiff but the end was in sight. We rejoined the beach and ran for the finish line which was under the pier and Clare and I crossed the line side-by-side with Annabel, her daughter, who had finished ahead of us, cheering us on. And a couple of minutes later Clare’s friends also finished.

My Result

In 2024 Clare finished the race in one hour and 15 minutes and before the race I’d decided that matching the time would be good but probably not achievable. Both Clare and I felt unprepared and with her parkrun time being around 35 minutes (and mine only slightly faster at 32 minutes) we were not expecting anything faster. As it turned out we finished the 10k in 1:11:46, beating Clare’s previous time and both of our expectations.

My race results

We went and got a coffee, perhaps the worst one in the whole of the UK, and took the obligatory post-race photos.

First 10k Done!

After The Race

I was lucky that a 10k is not too physically demanding if you have been doing some running and are have some degree of fitness. This allowed me, with little proper preparation, to complete the race with no great drama and at a reasonable pace (particularly considering the fancy dress and running on sand). I didn’t need to eat or drink during the run but this would definitely not be the case for a longer distance.

In the evening I was tired and my legs, and particularly knees, were sore. It took 48 hours for that to sort itself out which was not entirely unexpected but initially I was slightly worried that I’d injured myself in some way. I’m sure that some proper warm-up and cool-down would have helped with this.

Running with someone definitely helped and it got me through the tougher parts of the race but there were periods where neither of us wanted to talk (or were too busy concentrating on breathing to actually talk) and some music would have been great during those parts.

There is always an element of mental toughness with running and knowing that I can now run a 10k is a great mental boost and gives me enough confidence to sign up for some more 10k races.

Looking back on where I was a year ago, knowing that I needed to lose weight and get fitter, I am incredibly proud of myself for completing the race and the medal we got at the end of it is something which will always be very special to me.

My first race medal

Slow Running

Simon Wolf — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Back in August I said that I needed to get better at slow running. It was a bit of a throw-away comment back then, but I am now actually focusing on slower running to improve my aerobic base so it feels like a good time to write up some thoughts about it.

Aerobic and Anaerobic Exercise

Exercise can be split into two types, aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic exercise, something like running, is a continuous activity done at a lower, but still elevated, heart rate. It is fuelled by oxygen. Anaerobic exercise, something like weight lifting or high-intensity interval training, is a high intensity exercise which is meant to be short and fast. It is fuelled by energy stored in muscles. Aerobic exercise is good for cardiovascular health whereas anaerobic exercise is generally used to build muscle mass, help strengthen bones, and improve blood glucose control.

Heart Rate Zones

So what defines how hard your heart is working and therefore whether an activity is aerobic or anaerobic? The answer is heart rate zones and there are generally considered to be five of them:

Zone 1 is a low intensity zone (50% to 60% of your maximum heart rate) and it is good for warm-ups, cool-downs and easy workouts.

Zone 2 is a moderate intensity zone (60% to 70% of your maximum heart rate). It is good for building endurance and burning fat.

Zone 3 is a moderate to high intensity zone (70% to 80% of your maximum heart rate). It is good for increasing your aerobic fitness and strength.

Zone 4 is a high intensity zone (80% to 90% of your maximum heart rate). It is good for working towards speed and power gains. This is a glycogen (carbohydrates) and protein reserve burning zone.

Zone 5 is a very high intensity zone (90% to 100% of your maximum heart rate). It is used when you are really pushing hard and trying to do things like beat a personal best. It is not sustainable for very long.

Actual Values

Saying “60% to 70% of your maximum heart rate” is a bit meaningless and there are several ways to get actual heart rates to work with. Below are three common ones.

Rough Guide

A simple way to get a rough idea of your maximum heart rate and therefore the heart rates in each zone is to subtract your age from 220. For me this is 220 - 52 = 168.

You can then calculate the beats per minute in each zone by dividing your maximum heart rate by 100 and multiplying that by the percentages:

Zone 1: 84 to 101 BPM (50% to 60% of 168)

Zone 2: 101 to 118 BPM (60% to 70% of 168)

Zone 3: 118 to 134 BPM (70% to 80% of 168)

Zone 4: 134 to 151 BPM (80% to 90% of 168)

Zone 5: 151 to 168 BPM (90% to 100% of 168)

This is the most inaccurate method but it provides a reasonable guideline if you have no other data to work with.

A VO2 Max Test

This is a test you undertake in a controlled environment with a doctor or sports specialists. You undertake some form of cardiovascular exercise (usually running on a treadmill or riding an exercise bike) and you do this at maximum effort whilst your oxygen levels are monitored. This is the most accurate method to use.

I took a VO2 max test at the end of January 2026, a year to the day since my Zwift Ride was delivered and I started exercising regularly. You can read about it here.

Smartwatches/Heart Rate Monitors

Not as good as a VO2 Max test but better than the rough guide is to use the data from a smartwatch and/or a heart rate monitor. A heart rate monitor is more accurate than a smartwatch for finding your maximum heart rate but a smartwatch will do. Smartwatches are also good for gathering information about your resting heart rate which is also needed for this calculation (although you can measure your pulse over a few days when you first wake up).

My Garmin Fenix tells me that my maximum heart rate is 187 and my resting heart rate is 48. By subtracting the resting rate from the maximum you get a heart rate reserve value which, for me, is 139.

Using a similar calculation to the one in the rough guide, you calculate the zones via the percentage of your heart rate reserve (rather than the result of subtracting your age from 220) and then you add your resting heart rate on to those figures.

Doing that I get:

Zone 1: 118 to 131 BPM (50% to 60% of 129 plus 48)

Zone 2: 131 to 145 BPM (60% to 70% of 129 plus 48)

Zone 3: 145 to 159 BPM (70% to 80% of 129 plus 48)

Zone 4: 159 to 173 BPM (80% to 90% of 129 plus 48)

Zone 5: 173 to 187 BPM (90% to 100% of 129 plus 48)

This shows that my zone 2 heart rate range is higher than the rough guide suggested.

Running In Zone 2

Having shown all of that, my Garmin Fenix does allow me to create a workout where I specify that I want to run in Zone 2 and it will do the maths for me and it alerts me when my heart rate is too high or too low. So running in Zone 2 should be easy, right?

Well for me, when I am running outside, I’m really bad at it. I always seem to end up running too fast and the hills (even fairly gentle slopes) where I live make it all a fairly stressful mental exercise as much as a physical one.

Fortunately the miserably cold, wet weather we have had recently got me to try the treadmill at my CrossFit gym and I’m getting the hang of it and am getting better about adjusting the speed to match my desired heart rate range. It’s not as engaging as running outside but, because I am running at the right sort of pace, my breathing is much more controlled.

After just a few slower runs I can feel the huge difference between the kind of running I usually do (breathing heavily, focusing on the physical act of running) and slower, zone 2, running where I can breath much more freely, feel like I could talk to someone and I can listen to and concentrate on podcasts and audiobooks. This is the kind of running I imagined before I started Couch to 5K, where every run does not feel like a race.

I am going into this phase of “exploring exercise” knowing that increasing my aerobic condition is a slow process but I am hoping that the next four wintry months will give me plenty of opportunity to get more used to running at a suitable pace on a treadmill and get a better idea of what that pace actually is so that by the time spring comes I will be able to do zone 2 runs outside much more easily.

A Good Week

Simon Wolf — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000

At the moment my social media feeds seem to be full of fairly negative news and so, largely for my own mental health, I’ve been tending not to read it too much. For the last few weeks I’ve been really busy at work and so, when I step away from that, I want to wrap myself in more positive things and, because the last few days have been good for me, I thought I’d write up some of the positives I’ve experienced too.

Work

Things at work have been busy and, at times stressful. Over the last three weeks my sister and brother-in-law have been on holiday and I’ve been covering a lot of their work. However they are back on Monday and this week I ended things on a high after finally finding the time to play with a Raspberry Pi Pico. I needed to create a device which could broadcast information over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to test how third-party devices can detect and react to that information. After weeks of not getting around to it, I finally did and it worked better than I had expected. This unblocks some great steps forward we can now make over the next few weeks.

Weight

2025 has been a year of change for me after I decided to change my lifestyle. A big part of that was to improve my diet and, as a consequence, reduce my weight. I do a weekly weigh-in and today I hit a mini-milestone in that I have now lost 20 kg (just over 3 stones) since I started. I’m about two-thirds of the way to where I think I want to be but I’m really basing that on body shape rather than just weight. And as my informal measure, I’m now on the smallest hole of my belt and getting ready to replace it with a smaller one.

Fitness and Exercise

Part of my lifestyle change has been to start exercising and, in addition to my new parkrun PB last weekend, this week I had two good CrossFit sessions where I noticed that I was able to work with heavier weights than I have before and I also took part in a Zwift race where I did better than I expected and also increased my FTP (a measure of your cycling power).

Down-Time

I’m not always very good at stepping away from work and making sure that I have good quality down-time. This week however I managed to engage in three things which helped me to decompress.

I started reading the third volume of Michael Palin’s diaries. I read the first two volumes late last year and at the start of this year and then I read his book about his Around The World In 80 Days journey. After that, despite having enjoyed all three books enormously, I couldn’t get into the third volume and needed a change and to read other things. Recently however I decided to try it it again and am pleased to say that this time it was no struggle at all to get into it.

As an aside, apart from being a big fan of Michael, his diaries cover the years of my childhood and, in the volume I am currently reading, the period when I went to university and then staying in London for a decade so there is quite a bit of nostalgia wrapped up in it all too.

This week I also started watching the TV series Blue Lights which has been great to binge watch at the rate of a couple of episodes a night. I’ve also been drawn into The Traitors which I’ve never watched before but a celebrity version was tempting enough for me to try. I have a feeling I might be catching up on some previous, non-celebrity, series soon.

Finally, this weekend I started playing Tunic which is a delightful game. It involves a lot of exploration and a bit of puzzle solving so it ticks a lot of my boxes. It feels like I’ll be consulting guides for it at some point but so far it has been great to discover hidden areas, shortcuts and general game-play mechanics.

The Run-Up To Christmas

It feels late enough in the year to mention Christmas, particularly in the context of time off work. During 2025 I have been really bad about taking any time off and I think I have been lucky not to hit any periods of burn-out. But I am now ready for a break and know from previous experience that if I just take a solid block of time off I will end up working since I will be at home. Therefore I’m going to enjoy long weekends instead. After next weekend I intend to work three-day weeks and have four-day weekends and this will last right up to the Christmas break.

Amongst other things, I am planning on using this time to try some Pilates classes to help improve my core strength and flexibility without having to do so during evening sessions and I will also be using the daytime to go for some runs (assuming that the weather isn’t too grim!).

10k Looming

Simon Wolf — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0100

In two months, on 14 December, I’m signed up to run in the Christmas Cracker 2025, a 10 km race where runners are encouraged to wear fancy dress. Earlier this week, when I was wishing the son of the friends who I am running it with a happy birthday, it dawned on me that I might need to do some training for it.

My last run was on 28 September where I managed 2.8 km before I had terrible pain in my heel which might have been plantar fasciitis. The last time I ran 5 km was on 17 August and my last parkrun was on 26 July. That all sounds fairly bleak but I have been doing a couple of CrossFit sessions each week and I’ve been doing some regular Zwift rides so my fitness level hasn’t slipped, just the volume of running.

This morning I was awake by 8am and, after some brief thoughts about what might be valid reasons to stay in bed a bit longer, I got up and decided to go and join my local parkrun. I was slightly nervous about doing 5 km again after such a large gap and after the last run ending in pain but it felt better than just setting off around the local lanes to see what would happen.

Much to my surprise, apart from a flawed “tactic” it went well. My last parkrun time was 35:28 and I hoped to maybe get below 35 minutes today. The start was a bit of a scramble as usual and but as each kilometre ended my watch would tell me my pace and they were around 6:30 rather than my usual seven minutes. But then, during the last kilometre, I got carried away… On a final uphill slope I decided that it would be a good idea to pass the person in front of me and managed to push too hard. When I got to the top I was completely blown up and needed to walk for around 30 seconds to recover. Inevitably my unwitting nemesis jogged past me, probably wondering what on earth I was doing. However I got going again and finished in a surprisingly good (for me) 32:13.

So the good news is that my fitness and pace has improved thanks to CrossFit and Zwift and running performance is not entirely dependent on running. I had heard that Zwift complimented running and now I’ve experienced it for myself.

My next plan is to take myself off for a run in the next few weeks and see if I can run around 7.5 km. Then I’ll be much happier about the idea of running 10 km at a more relaxed pace with friends. And yes, I’ll also be aiming to do another parkrun and get under 32 minutes. I wonder if I can get under 30 minutes during the rest of 2025…

Emacs?

Simon Wolf — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 12:00:00 +0100

I’ve decided to take a look at Emacs. This is despite my on-going project to learn how to use Neovim. But I’ve realised that the two are not necessarily synonymous with Neovim being a text editor whilst Emacs is more of a ‘computing environment’ which contains an editor.

Whilst I enjoy writing in Neovim, whenever I try to use it as a replacement for Visual Studio Code it feels like I am trying to pile external functionality on top of a great core and whilst it can definitely be done it all feels a bit, well, clumsy. Maybe Emacs will suit me better.

As an aside, I had to visit the VS Code home page to fine the link in the previous paragraph and was met by the following in the hero section: “The open source AI code editor”. The alone makes me want to move on from using VS Code but that’s a different rant for a different blog post.

Learning The Basics

I tend to learn best from books (ideally physical) and whilst I know that the official Emacs guide can be downloaded and printed out I wanted something a bit less dry.

Emacs books tend not to be published terribly often so I picked a book from 2015, Harley Hahn’s Emacs Field Guide. However it is only after the first 70 pages that Emacs gets installed and you are ready to start using it. This is a book with some very obvious padding and it all feels like the author has recycled content from other books they have written about Linux. I was increasingly unsure that this was the book for me.

I decided to return the book to Amazon who refunded me and told me to just keep the physical copy.

Fortunately a colleague told me about Mastering Emacs which is much more recently written and also much better at getting to the point. It is only available as an ebook so at the moment I am reading it on my iPad whilst I tinker on my laptop but I may get a physical copy printed. So far it has been very good but the structure and flow of the information feels a bit disjointed.

Therefore I also picked up a physical copy of the 3rd edition of Learning GNU Emacs. Like Harley Hahn’s book, this is not particularly up-to-date (it was published in 2014) but the fundamentals will not have changed too much and I am really enjoying the style and structure of it.

There are also a plethora of video on YouTube and the ones which seem to have clicked the best with me are ones by System Crafters.

My Planned Approach

As I learnt from dipping my toe into Neovim, the best way to learn something new and complex is to use it as much as possible. I’m starting to write things like this blog post in Emacs and will try some coding in it soon too but I have a feeling that the initial learning curve will be even higher than Neovim’s was for me.

I’m probably going to write some blog posts which will be designed to help me remember some fundamental concepts and key combinations rather than being compelling reading for anyone else. Largely due to its age and pre-dating a lot of more modern, accepted terms, Emacs uses some terminology which is very different to what most of us are used to. For example, syntax highlighting is called Font Locking. Cutting, copying and pasting are killing, saving to the kill ring and yanking (apparently the kill ring encapsulates a clever approach to clipboard management and I’m looking forward to learning about it).

I will be writing some more compelling posts about how things are done. For example, I recently had to update the internal links in my blog after changing the theme and configuration. I did that in VS Code because I am familiar with searching a ‘project’ (a folder hierarchy of files) and replacing text but I want to work out how I would do it efficiently in Emacs, and maybe also work out how I would do it in Neovim.

And really this is just me having a play with something new to see if it works better for me than Neovim or VS Code does. It might not in which case this might be a very short series of posts.

Very First Impressions

There is something splendidly eccentric about Emacs which I like enormously. It’s very alien and I feel terribly clumsy using it but there is an underlying feeling that a system which has been around for decades must have something going for it and so digging into it should be a lot of fun.

And just editing this post made me smile… I started the first draft two months ago and so the file was called 2025-07-29-emacs.md. Today, after reviewing the draft and updating a few bits, including the metadata, I needed to rename the file to use today’s date. It was as simple as…

Pressing C-x d to open Dired, Emacs’s directory editor.
Pressing Return to select the current file’s directory.
Pressing C-x C-j to jump to the current file (you could also just move the cursor to it).
Pressing R to rename the file.
Pressing q to leave Dired and go back to the file.

(As an aside, yes, I know this happens in buffers but for a first Emacs post I want to keep things simple.)

We’ll see if I’m still smiling in a few weeks or months!

My First Bad Run?

Simon Wolf — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0100

Just over a week ago I did something to my foot and ankle whilst I was out for a run. It’s taken me until today to feel confident enough that it had healed to go running again. And I had was what I would consider to be my first bad run.

I felt really tired and defeated when I got home and had walked for some short segments. Apart from during my first Parkrun when I was running with friends and started off too fast, this was the first time it had happened on a solo run since walking was part of the planned routine during the Couch to 5K plan. I was hot, tired and for some reason really disappointed in myself.

Two hours later, after a long bath and some food, I’m feeling better about it all and this blog post is largely a reminder to me about a few key things…

Gut Feelings Can Be Wrong

My goal had been to do a fairly gentle run (around the 7:30/7:45 per kilometre pace) and to cover six or seven kilometres. Looking at the stats my watch recorded, by the time I’d finished I’d covered 5.3 km in 39:19, a pace of around 7:23. So the distance was a bit short but the average pace was about right. I thought I’d had a horrible run but the stats don’t back that up.

Whilst I did walk at times, looking at a chart of my run, I also exceeded my target pace when I was running. I definitely need to get better at slow running.

And I also think that probably the heat and the poor sleep I’ve had over the last few nights because of it meant that I was just tired anyway and this was never going to be a great run.

Remember Where I Started

I need to keep some perspective about all of this. It was only four and a half months ago that I started running and before February this year I’d not taken any regular exercise for over 20 years. At the start of 2025 I had just turned 52 and was 25 to 30 kg overweight. So far I’ve lost 18 kg and can now run 5k fairly comfortably and am going to be doing a 10k event in December.

Old me would have just slumped on the sofa this evening whereas I went out for a run. I need to remember that every run is a good run.

Embrace The Technology

I’m a data nerd and love gadgets so one of my purchases which I didn’t really need was my Garmin Fenix 7. Today is one of those rare cases where I can say that it was worth the expense because the data from my run has helped show me that what I felt was a bad run actually wasn’t. That definitely helped lift my mood.

Actually it’s not fair of me to say that this is a rare case. My Garmin is great for tracking runs and for telling me my pace at regular intervals and telling me if I am on track with whatever goals I have set for a run. I could have gone with a cheaper model but I have zero regrets about getting a Fenix.

I Sometimes Need A ‘Bad’ Run

I suppose that I need days like today to help me put things back into perspective. To make me realise how far I have come in just a few months. To make me realise that every run in a good run compared to being sedentary. To remind me that I am not competing with anyone else and that sometimes walking or taking things easy is just normal and actually something which can be a good thing.

Nobody is judging me and I need to be less hard on myself, particularly when this is for fun and for mental health as much as it is for my physical wellbeing.

Six Months In And Out Of The Saddle

Simon Wolf — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0100

Six months after I first wrote about Zwift I thought it would be good to write about my longer-term thoughts. I’ve had a bit of an on-off relationship with Zwift, some caused by it and some caused by me and other external factors.

Likes and Dislikes

It’s fairly easy for me to write down the things I like and the things I am less keen on with Zwift:

Likes

The gamification of Zwift (and I’m including all of the stats, goals and performance tracking here) is a big plus for someone like me. I love the data Zwift generates and that I can see my best segments, race against my ‘ghost’ to try to beat them, can track routes I’ve ridden, etc. It all helps motivate me and gives me mini-goals to achieve.
Going for a Zwift ride is incredibly easy. I have my Zwift Ride set up in a permanent location and so I can jump on and go for a ride with very little friction. The helps remove any excuses and also means that I can fit in a ride when time is limited. Being indoors it also means that the weather is never a consideration… well unless it is ferociously hot when even my fan struggles, particularly since my setup is in a south-facing room.
The workout plans are great for both improving fitness and performance and also for providing a structure and plan for when you need to ride (more on this below).
The community is great and that covers the general Zwift riding community where a stranger will give you a “Ride On” shout of encouragement, the clubs where group rides and races are arranged, or the Discord servers where like-minded people swap advice, are encouraging and supportive, and become friends.
The variety of activities is excellent. I can go for a casual ride, do a workout, join a race, ride a flat route, ride up a mountain, follow a pacer, etc. There is an awful lot you can do and I’ve never been bored.

Dislikes

I had a pretty good bike setup until I got a more professional bike fit which never really clicked with me. My physical form might have looked better but it was not as comfortable and I’m now tweaking it again to try to find a good compromise. My main issue has been knee pain but sore wrist and hands indicate that I’m putting too much weight on my arms too.
After six months I still tend to struggle with longer rides on the standard saddle and I separate this from the overall bike fit. I need to try some other saddles but I know that this is a bit of pot luck so I’m procrastinating about it before I spend money on it.

Not Riding Regularly

As of right now I’ve not done much Zwift riding for a few weeks. I rode regularly (two or three times a week) until the end of May and then things fell away.

During February and March I was tending to do two Zwift training plan rides each week and then two or three other rides which tended to be a bit of a mix of sociable group rides and me just riding and exploring Watopia.

In April I started the Couch to 5K plan which required three runs each week. The two Zwift training plan rides filled out most of the rest of the week so I would usually do one group ride at the weekend and have a rest day.

I June I finished both the Zwift training plan and the Couch to 5K plan and the subsequent loss of the routines resulted in me loosing focus and direction. I rebuilt a new routine by starting two CrossFit sessions each week (which I badly needed to help introduce some strength training and improve my flexibility) and by running more, particularly after deciding to do a 10K run in December. Between the two of them I didn’t have much time for Zwift.

A Side Note About Mental Health

As I have mentioned before in my blog posts, I am finding one of the biggest benefits of regular exercise to be with my mental health. Whilst CrossFit and Zwift give me a huge sense of achievement and a great endorphin hit it is running that has the most benefit. A 30 minute run is better for clearing my head than Zwift or CrossFit, perhaps because I am slowly thinking less about the act of running and that gives my head more time to process “life” whereas with Zwift and CrossFit I still tend to concentrate on what I am doing a lot more. It’s very hard not to prioritise running because of this.

The Next Six Months

I can’t predict what the next six months will hold but I’m anticipating that I’ll carry on with CrossFit and, for the next couple of months at least, focus more on running than Zwift whilst the weather (hopefully) remains good and the evenings are still light enough to run without worrying about lights and high-vis. But I expect that as soon as the weather turns I’m going to get back into Zwift.

For me, like it is for a lot of people I imagine, it looks like Zwift may be a seasonal thing.

Belated Annual Goals

Simon Wolf — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0100

I usually dislike the idea of setting goals around the start of the year because they are very rarely kept and then it just becomes miserable looking back on how many you failed to achieve.

However early in 2025 I changed my lifestyle and started eating better (cooking from scratch more, eating more fruit and vegetables, stopped eating sweets and crisps and other snacks) and doing some exercise (indoor cycling, running and CrossFit). I want a way to track my progress and to allow me to track goals and achievements and that seems to fit into the idea of maintaining annual pages about it all.

Unlike more usual goals lists, I intend for mine to be focused on health and fitness. I will update then during each year and really they will be a mix of things to aspire to and a log of what I have achieved.

And so, despite being over half way through 2025, I have added a new Fitness Goals section with a page for 2025 and I intend to keep it updated as and when I add or complete goals (or if things go horribly wrong!) and will probably link to it in related posts to make it easier to track changes.

Updating My Blog

Simon Wolf — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0100

A few days ago I wrote a post about blogging services where I summarised suggestions for simple blogging services after a friend asked me for recommendations. Whilst I was doing that I decided that my blog needed a bit of a refresh and general tidy-up.

I am now using a theme called Beautiful Jekyll by Dean Attali. I will shortly (maybe by the time you read this) subscribe to thank Dean.

I also decided to clean up the categories I’d created for my posts and now have fewer of them. However, so that there is still some granularity I have added tags. I’m still feeling both out a bit so there may be some changes and if you think I have miscategorised or badly tagged something then please let me know.

The RSS feed has also been tweaked so apologies if your feed reader shows posts you have already seen.

Finally, I have edited the Projects page to try to make it a bit clearer.

If you have any problems or spot anything weird please shout!

Simple Blogging

Simon Wolf — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0100

I was recently asked how I host my blog. The answer is that I use a static website generator called Jekyll and the site it generates is hosted on GitHub Pages (GitHub is a repository where developers can store and share their code). This is a bit of a geeky solution however and setting it all up is not something I would recommend to someone who is not pretty tech-savvy.

The person who asked wanted a quick and simple solution so I turned to Mastodon for some suggestions.

The Suggestions

Presented in no particular order, the suggestions I got were:

My Thoughts

I’ve not looked at any of them in detail but a few jump out immediately as good suggestions and a few as needing too much technical knowledge. I’ve given each one a few words in summary but these are all my uninformed initial reactions.

Oddly, the list above was built in pretty much the exact order that the suggestions came in and it allows me to lump the first few together because they seem to be very similar in that they are lovely, focused blogging services which offer hosting so you can just get on with writing. This covers WriteFreely, Micro.blog, Pika, Bear and Matarona.

Ghost is where things start to feel a bit more corporate and the idea of mailing lists and engagement and brands start to creep in. However, if you want more than just a simple blog then Ghost looks like a nice step up without it all getting too complicated.

Blogger has a long history and is widely used and I’d be more enthusiastic about it if it weren’t part of Google’s portfolio. And this isn’t even about privacy but rather Google’s track-record of just pulling the rug out from under well-used, well-loved services. I’d not trust them to close Blogger down at some point too.

Beehiiv is maybe a bit too “engage!” than I’d personally like in a simple blogging service. If you have or want to build a brand then it would be worth looking at.

Wordpress is perhaps the best known of the suggestions but it feels a bit heavy for a simple blog. There is a great ecosystem of plugins and a huge amount of flexibility on offer but that can just lead to decision paralysis.

Hugo, like Jekyll, is a static site generator and therefore needs some technical knowledge.

Prose looks interesting but is again perhaps a bit too far up the geek scale (although if you are at the more tech-savvy end of it, pico have quite a few cool services as well as Prose).

Decap is again more complex than is reasonable for someone who just wants to put together a simple blog.

Publii is another static site generator but it is at least an installable application. However I think that this is also more than a simple blogging tool/service.

A Recommendation?

I will be pointing the person who asked me to this blog post so that they can browse the full list of options suggested but if I had to pick one right now to replace my Jekyll system then I think I would need to do more digging into it all.

Different people have different priorities and requirements and my top three are probably not the same as a lot of other people:

The ability to “own” my own posts and not have to worry about importers or exporters. I like having my blog consist of text files I can have on multiple computers as well as being stored in GitHub. I don’t want a database back-end or a proprietary file format to untangle at some point in the future.
An RSS feed. I’m a big fan of RSS for following updates across multiple sites, whether they be blogs or news web sites, so I definitely want my own blog to have an RSS feed so that others can see when I have published something new without me having to post all over social media about it (which I still sometimes do anyway).
I don’t have any analytics on my blog. I’m not trying to build a brand or sell anything, I just like writing for pleasure and also as a way to remind myself about things. If I had analytics I’d probably find it all soul-destroying to realise that only a couple of people read things or, if my some miracle things went the other way, I’d hate the pressure of knowing that I am writing for a huge audience. I write for me and if other people enjoy what I write then that is a bonus, not a goal.

Parkrunner

Simon Wolf — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0100

Five week ago I started drafting a blog post but never progressed beyond the opening paragraph. Part of that was due to my own progress with exercise stalling but with things getting back on track it’s time to finish that post and tick off one of my fitness goals.

After getting over my knee injury, back at the star of June I finally started running again. By mid-June I finished the Couch to 5K program, albeit with the three runs from the final week being done over two weeks. Perhaps like a lot of people I finished by being able to run non-stop for 30 minutes rather than managing to run a full 5K distance in that time.

I then discovered that there are some extra sessions added on to the plan, the first of which is a 35 minute run. With my running pace hovering around seven minutes per kilometre I completed that first 35 minute run and managed to hit 5K during it. Since then I’ve done a couple more 35 minute runs where I achieve 5K but I had slipped out of the habit of running three times a week.

I’ve also been meaning to go and do my first Parkrun which is something I said was a goal in my first post about running but I procrastinated and completely failed to actually get up early enough and go and do one. Well today I changed that.

A few days ago a friend messaged me to say that her family were going to do the Shepton Mallet Parkrun today. A friend of theirs has breast cancer and today’s run was focused on supporting her, her fundraising efforts, and raising awareness about breast cancer. It was an obvious opportunity to finally go and take part and also to help support Sarah.

And what an amazing experience it was. Apart from the great camaraderie at the Parkrun and the fun of running with a large group of people, it was fantastic to see so many people dressed in pink and there to support Sarah and her family. She has been a long-time participant of the Parkrun and is obviously very much loved. Her daughter gave a fantastic introduction at the start of the briefing and Sarah was there to walk the 5K too. Parkrun really is like a big family of like-minded people.

And the run itself was fun. The Shepton route is really narrow in places and the start in particular was slow. But over the course, which is three laps, everyone made space for people wanting to pass them and that included a narrow contraflow footpath. The volunteers were great at cheering everyone on and the runners were all really supportive and encouraging too. It was a great experience and definitely won’t be a one-off for me.

And my result was 35:35 which I’m pleased with. Sub-35 minutes would have been ideal but my lack of recent running and the rookie error of starting off too quickly and then having to walk a bit during the last lap meant that I had been expecting to be closer to 40 minutes. I was running with a friend and his daughter and before we started he told me that his usual 5K time is around 27 minutes and, whilst he has a bad hip at the moment, they were both faster, fitter runners than me and I should have definitely paced myself better early on. But it is not a race and next time I’ll probably run solo and see how it goes.

But forget the times and forget the plans for the next runs, the main thing is that I have ticked off one of my fitness goals and it is one that six months ago, when I started all of this by eating more healthily, I’d not have imagined I could or would do.

Getting Back On Track

Simon Wolf — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0100

At the start of June I wrote about a knee injury and ended on a semi-positive note:

It is possible that my sore knee during cycling is not (just) a bike fit issue and it could be a muscular imbalance or just a general weakness. I know that this needs attention (my squat attempts are pitiful) and I now need to find a gym or, perhaps better for a recluse like me, a personal trainer to give me an initial plan and then regularly review and evolve it.

But in the meantime I’m running again, will be doing Zwift rides again, and will be finishing Couch to 5K very, very soon.

In the intervening six weeks there have been ups and downs and I have been focusing on the downs too much so it’s time to reflect on that and address it.

Since writing that last post I did finish the Couch to 5K program and I have done a few 35 minute runs and managed to hit 5K in them. But, as I had feared, not having a structured plan, particularly when combined with a still slightly fragile knee, allowed me to let things slip and it’s stupid because I miss running. But tomorrow I am finally going to doing my first Parkrun. It’s a bit bitter-sweet because, whilst I’m doing it with friends which will make it fun and sociable, it is being done to help support a long-term member of the Shepton Mallet Parkrun family who is currently battling breast cancer.

I’ve not done any Zwift riding since I hurt my knee and this is purely psychological. I see my knee issue as being tied to Zwift and so I’ve been avoiding riding to avoid injury. But I know I’m being irrational and I managed to ride for months without injury so it’s time to, literally, get back on the bike. That’s another goal for this weekend. I really enjoyed Zwift and felt the benefits so I’m being silly not to do it. Besides, I’ll never finish my re-watch of Star Trek: The Next Generation if I don’t start riding again since it was my viewing companion whilst I rode.

I have started doing CrossFit which has been an odd mix of humiliation, exhilaration, pain and pride. I’m only three weeks in but I am enjoying the variety of activities as well as the comradery and support from both my classmates and the instructor. The debilitating muscle pain that spread itself over multiple days after each of the first few sessions has largely passed and I’m slowly starting to feel more flexible, a bit stronger and generally more physically confident. CrossFit is the sort of exercise I should have added to the mix much sooner but better late than never.

And my healthy eating has remained constant too which is good. My weight is still creeping down and I’m now over half way from where I started to where I think I want to be. But I do need to go and buy some new clothes soon.

Nothing about the last few weeks has been disastrous but it is also not a direction I want to keep going in. I need to draw up a plan to make running and cycling regular exercise again. I’m aiming for two CrossFit sessions, two Zwift sessions and two or three runs a week. The Zwift rides and the runs will not always be full-on but, as much as the physical benefits of exercise help me, the mental boost I get from it is something I am acutely aware that I have been missing.

A Project About Projects

Simon Wolf — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0100

A recent post on Mastodon by Matt Gemmell suggested the people might want to have a projects section on their blogs and he also said:

I think the best kind of projects page is the kind that also lists the stuff that has nothing to share yet, or is paused for a while. It’s like that bit at the end of the CV where everyone enjoys swimming even though they haven’t been in three years.

I really like the idea of this and decided to put something together and you can find a link to it at the top of every page on this blog.

The first version of that page contained too much detail and wasn’t really a list that can be skimmed over which feels more useful. It also contained information about things which were more of a passion than projects so I have now re-worked it but I didn’t want to loose all of the background to my projects either which gives me an instant new post… this one.

My Projects

Like a lot of people I have a number of non-work projects. This page outlines some of the current ones and will provide some idea about the sorts of things I might write about on my blog.

Learning How To Use Text

I have a preference to use text files whenever I can. The contents of this blog is made up of Markdown files which I write on my computers and store in a GitHub repository. My notes are no longer in Evernote or Apple Notes, they are instead just Markdown files, images and PDFs which are managed on my computers but synchronised using GitHub. I write work policies and contracts in LaTeX. I track my personal budget using a list written in a plain text file and parsed using AWK. As well as spending some of my time learning LaTeX and AWK I am also learning how to use Vim.

Learning With Technology

I recently bought myself a Trimui Brick so that I could play some retro games on something small and portable. And that lead to me learning about the Pico-8, a fantasy console designed for making, playing and sharing tiny games and other programs. Whilst I grew up in the 8-bit home computing era I tended to play games rather than trying to write them. I’m hoping that the Pico-8 will allow me to scratch a 40-year old itch.

I’m also thinking about buying a TRMNL which is an e-ink display. As soon as I have convinced myself that an idea I have yet to have needs to be displayed on it I’ll be buying one and having a play with creating plugins for it. I really like these sorts of simple, very focused uses of technology.

Health & Wellbeing

I changed my lifestyle at the start of 2025 and started eating better and exercising more. My initial goals were to loose weight and to get fitter. Blog posts about this are already in the Health category.

Eco Homes

I have an itch to buy some land and have an eco home built to my specification. This may be one of those things that always remains an aspiration but I would like, by 2028, when I turn 55, to have at least properly explored the possibilities of if, ranging from finding the land to the costs involved and maybe even sketching out some ideas for the house itself.

The ideal of designing and commissioning and then living in “my house” for the rest of my life is hugely appealing to someone like me who prefers stability over change.