Paul Arden | Monday, 6 April 2026
It’s Sunday at the time of writing this. Yesterday night I had my weekly in-boat endurance bike ride. Indoor riding I find harder than outdoors. But indoor-riding, when it’s 32->28C and 80->98% humidity, is an absolute kiler. I have two small fans that blow warm hunid air at me as I ride. 5hrs and 150 virtual KM. There is absolutely no way I could run a marathon after this. It’s far harder than 180KM outdoors. Still that’s why I do it! It makes the outdoor 180KM Ironman ride seem like a pleasant training ride in the park.
I have been looking for an outdoor treadmill. There isn’t enough room inside the boat for an indoor treadmill because the boat roof is too low. And so I would have to run like a miner. But an outdoor treadmill, on the roof of the Battleship, would work and wouldn’t look strange at all. It would be wonderful for Brick Sessions. But unfortunately these are not cheap. Not as expensive perhaps as travelling to Italy for the World Fly Casting Championships, but I could buy a very nice Tri bike with that money instead.
The other option I’ve considered is skipping. But I can’t skip. And if I could then I’d probably skip right off the roof and into the lake. So instead I do some weird exotic dancing around the boat to simulate a Brick Session. Maybe I’ll do this at Ironman Langkawi this year and dance my way through transitions. Hopefully someone doesn’t think I’m having a fit.
I bought a Wahoo Kickr last week to replace my old Suito trainer that had died (well actually two weeks ago but the courier took two weeks to deliver from Kuala Lumpur to Gerik, which was annoying because I’ve been down and back from KL myself in the meantime). The interesting thing is that the Kickr shows that I am putting out greater watts than my pedal power meters. I’m not sure what to make of this but I’m sure that my FTP will be over 300 Watts on the Kickr. But which is real? In fact is any of it real?
The only thing that is real for certain, is that I feel completely shagged today.
We have some fairly intense evening thunderstorms these days and I’m going to need to be a bit smarter with where I moor the boat. Yesterday a storm rolled through on dusk and the waves were impressive. I’ve been caught out a few times and it can be quite alarming when there is a long open draw of water upwind of the boat.
In the past I’ve had the stunps that I’ve been moored to break under the force of these storms. The other issue is that the tenders can end up smashing into the rear of the Battleship and with all the inevitable yawing going on it’s also possible one could capsize. Which would lead to a great deal of unnecessary evening excitement. So I’ll begin mooriing in sheltered bays again.
I’ve always loved thunderstorms. I’m just a big kid really. The Battleship hasn’t been hit by lightning yet. Which does surprise me. A story I always tell is that when I was around 16 and working in the fishing lodge at Ardleigh Reservoir, there used to be a teams’ fly fishing competition sponsored by Benson and Hedges in the UK. During one such competition on another lake there was a thunderstorm and one of the competitors got struck by lightning and died. The rest of his team carried on fishing. When asked why they carried on fishing they said “because that’s what he would have wanted!”
Current updates
We are working hard on the new website format. It should be ready by next week.
Andy is building rods in Texas. Yay!! First rods shipping this week.
Sungai Tiang is clear. If you fancy a Mahseer trip then please email me.
Ok I have a Malay lesson coming up and I have 20 minutes to learn last lesson’s vocabulary. Have a great day!!
Cheers, Paul