Gaz

I reckon the equipment has a lot to do with it as well. The treadmill at the school gym isn't the best and takes time to get up to top speed. The rowing machine is excellent though. If I had a proper spinning bike and a better treadmill I think I could get low-21s with a few week's practice on the cycling. Even on that dodgy treadmill I've hit below 8 minutes for 2km before (admittedly not after 5km on a bike right enough).

I start the treadmill at 8.5mph and go up 0.1mph for every minute.

Gave the gym triathlon another try earlier. Total was 23:18, 40s better than last time. Splits were 4:18 for the row, 10:25 for the bike, 8:35 for the treadmill. Pretty sure there's another 30 seconds or so to come off the run and my row was 16 seconds slower than last time. I reckon 22:30 is well reachable.

I have a sharp pain behind my right shoulder blade when I breathe deeply. I thought it was just a muscle strain but a couple of my colleagues are saying this is a potential sign of pleurisy?

I don't feel England are particularly better than they were 10 / 20 years ago, to take last year's World Cup as an example it was a complete perfect storm for them in terms of progression with regards to which teams failed to qualify / were knocked out early.

Well, that's just wrong (the second point anyway).

The Cheeky Song sold 400,000 copies in the UK.

I haven't read all of this thread but the sheer irony of Kris "Fat" Boyd complaining about the standard of the Scottish national team when he was content to stay fat at his boyhood club banging in thirty goals a season against St Johnstone and Kilmarnock hasn't been lost on me.

No-one cares because rugby is shite

I have also said before that the Old Firm Effect is in play up here much more than other countries. In effect, players up here view moving to Rangers or Celtic as the pinnacle of their careers because they're Rangers or Celtic fans, rather than treat them like a stepping stone onto bigger and better clubs. This doesn't seem to happen in other smaller countries as much. de Bruyne didn't grow up wishing to play at RSC Anderlecht.

I'm not a fan of anecdotal evidence, but here's mine: Twenty years ago, when I was at High School, each year group had two teams. The firsts and the seconds. I wasn't good enough to play for the firsts, but played a few games for the seconds. I'm a teacher now, and a few years ago I was approached by a group of pupils at the school I used to teach in to take the combined 3rd / 4th year team. So right there, there's two year groups that would have had four teams between them 20 years ago down to one team between them. There wasn't much to it, just organising buses and referees and suchlike, but it was an absolute chore trying to get 11 players who wanted to play. It wasn't just at my school, though - at the start of the season we went top of the league with three 3-0 wins. We hadn't actually played a game, but were awarded 3-0 wins by default as the other schools in the area cancelled at short notice. I ended up sacking it as I organised a training session one Friday afternoon (we had a game the following Monday) and seven or eight of my players pulled out because the new FIFA had come out.

Bubbles Guthrie as new first-team manager? Is he still involved with BtB?

I've been going to games for 33 years now. I've followed them home and away, although I don't make as many away games now, and my wife and I started taking our daughters last year and hopefully they get the bug. I can't remember a time when I was just so indifferent to it all. I used to spend most of the week getting excited about the upcoming game. That just doesn't happen any more.

Hartley is the only example I can think of of the board acting decisively. They dithered for far too long with Houston, and I would argue that the main reason we're in this situation is because they gave the hapless May far, far too much time when it was obvious from about three games in to that season that he was hopelessly out of his depth. ETA I agree completely with your second point though. He should have been binned in May.

I don't think anyone was predicting that, any chance of providing an example?