Garrick's early Christmas

Garrick's christmas present came early. All prelim' applications to ADF have been passed, he's received written unofficial confirmation he'll be accepted, and has received information on what to bring to training. Notably the information is very specific about bringing no electronics, and that they'd be locking up phones on day 1 to be distributed at brief intervals for phone calls home. I'm sure there are a variety of security issues and social-media-habits they're trying to kick.

In any case...this laptop was purchased two months ago on a ludicrous sale and was waiting for end of Yr12 as an early christmas present, but given the electronics restriction I've decided he might as well get some premium-new-tech use out of it now before he has to abandon it early next year; at least for the twelve week initial training. After that we're pretty sure restrictions ease substantially. (they get their own rooms at that point etc)

He's pretty pleased with it. I won't bore you with specs, but it's a very high end laptop.

Beep Test pre-training completed

Further to our previous achievement of jogging 5km in 30mins in prep' for Garrick's ADF training, we completed a score of 7.5 or higher on the Beep Test today. You can go find information about it yourself, but it's a standardised jog and sprinting fatigue exercise which starts slow and increments to murder speeds while the participant runs back and forth between a 20 meter span. It's been used as a baseline indicator for a variety of sports and industry fields in Australia for decades.

Prior to doing the 5km jog training, Garrick and I made two beep test attempts. Garrick scored 7.1 then 6.8 a week later. I got 6.8, then 6.5...neither of us were up to snuff.

So today we made another attempt and voluntarily stopped at 8.0. We both definitely could have gone further, but the goal was met. We'll go to absolute fatigue another day. It's difficult to continue at max-effort when you're excited about reaching a previously unobtainable level.

Next step is to get Garrick up to par on the PushUps and SitUps. IMO they're waaaayyy too easy compared to the jogging and running requirements, but Garrick has done no weight training in his life, so I guess we'll have to get him there. I've done sets of 50 strict form pushups while doing my 300/day routine, and could rip out 100 situps if pushed, so I know we can achieve the same for Garrick in no time.

Garrick's ADF fitness training progress

This evening Garrick and I completed our first C25K (Couch to 5km fitness progress tracker) run together achieving the final goal of an unbroken 5km jog within 30 minutes. (I've done it in the past, this is Garrick's first time. Keep in mind I'm eying off my 50th birthday in 18 months.)

https://www.sports-tracker.com/workout/mashee/628639a76bc79d24908aa3da

Click on the "show graph" in the bottom left and mouse-over the graph to indicate the realtime location at any given moment. Notice we nailed the pace and barely wavered during the entire run. Right on the money.

The ADF fitness criteria stipulate 2.4km in 14minutes; 10.3km/hour, which is close enough to 10km/hr. We doubled the requirements by meeting the C25k goal. By sheer coincidence we nailed the 2.4km in exactly 14 minutes anyhow as it was the start of the jog and our pace was marginally faster. Win Win.

So now that we've smashed that we'll just revise it once a month to stay on track while we move onto other goals like hitting 7.5 on the beep test, and then tying in the pushups and situps during the same session.

Sprinter camper sunroof install summary

There's a sunroof to install above the shower and bed. Both have reversible fans for extraction or fresh air, and LED lighting built into the inner shroud. This van quite surprisingly doesn't have a selection of locations to install such things, unlike the cruddy old Ford van.

Buffings pads 'n angle grinders.

So I made a discovery today that makes me look like a genius or a pretty casual dummy. Take your pick.

Misc unsorted images below.

Barely moving on the van. Non optimal weather, motivation, and dollars are slowing things down. I'm still plodding through some basic plumbing stuff. I do have two pretty nice sunroof kits ready to install though (not shown). They have full size shrouded reversible fans, built in LED lighting, and a low profile knobby for rolling up the roof instead of a protruding crank. One is for the shower, the other for above the bed. Should be nice.

I found a really old electronics test board on hard rubbish. I've given it to Laurie to harvest parts for his SteamPunk creations. Premium parts! I'm hoping he looks up the manufacturers info and fills me in on some history, it's an awesome looking board.

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Camper water tank heat shield install

Just a quick run down of the goings-on installing a basic heat shield between the exhaust and the plastic water tanks under the van.

Watch in 1.25 or 1.5 speed to prevent terminal boredom.

Knot grafting into the shower base

One of the layers in the ply shower base had a wood filler cavity where a knot once existed. Ply is full of these filled cavities (or cheap stuff is unfilled) if you go look at a manufacturing video. I decided to graft in an actual knot rather than use a sawdust-glue filler. I think it turned out pretty nicely.

Shower base rough-in.

Scratchin' ma' noggin trying to work out what I'm doing with the shower base.

View in youtube and crank up the speed to 1.25 or 1.5 to maintain sanity while I vocalise my old man thought process...