Archive for January, 2007
January 30, 2007 at 10:48 am · Filed under Equipment, Software
Its great to read blogs from folks on the other side of the world, but have you ever wondered where exactly, the other side of the world is?
This is a fun google maps gadget that allows you to dig right the way through to the other side. I end up in the ocean, slap bang in the middle of a rift valley just to the SE of New Zealand.
**UPDATE** The above site seems to be down at the moment, sorry for the disappointment that this may cause. It’s back online again!
Popularity: 19% [?]
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January 30, 2007 at 12:43 am · Filed under Diet, Equipment, Software
I’m building up for another assault on my weight.
Over the last 15 months I lost 20lbs! Unfortunately no whooping and a hollering is deserved as the net position sees this 20lbs declining to a mere 7lbs loss. I went through 3 clear weightloss phases and as the chart shows, I don’t have too much of a problem in losing weight but a big problem when it comes to maintaining a constant weight.
(Note that all the graphs can be enlarged by clicking on them)
Fortunately, I have discovered some new tricks for my arsenal. The first is The Hackers Diet, which is a free ebook/webpage designed by John Walker of Autodesk/AutoCAD fame. He reverts back to his engineering roots to develop a nerdy yet satisfying approach to weightloss and weight maintenance. Particulalry appealing is his approach to trend monitoring, to avoid the boom and bust nature that most dieters will be familiar with.
This annotated chart makes me giggle and reminds me why the daily scale ritual tends to leave me so apprehensive. With the hackers diet you continue to monitor your weight daily but you enter the figures into an excel spreadsheet that plots the trend based on an exponential moving average to smooth the noise. Moving averages are explained very well in his section on Signal and Noise. If you haven’t already noticed, I ought to point out that this diet is only going to appeal the real data fiends out there, its not called the hackers diet for nothing. After application of the smoothing, the above chart now looks like this:
The point of this is that the red smoothed line, illustrates the very satisfactory weightloss situation, suggesting that the diet and required monitoring could proceed without need for prozac. I’m convinced that I keep stopping perfectly successful diets because of the misery I feel when the scales tell me the wrong number, regardless of how transient that may prove to be.
Each individual data point (daily weight) will either appear above or below the trend line, below is obviously great as it means that it is having the effect of pulling the trend even lower. The odd appearance above the trend isn’t too worrying either as individually their impact on the trend is insignificant. You can get even more deeply into the system and determine your bodys energy balance, going as far as planning your required intake etc. I’m not going to look at this just yet. It suits me to develop the system for monitoring purposes, possibly using it alongside the BodyForLife program that I’ve had success with previously.
All the excel spreadsheets designed for Hackers Diet are available free on the site mentioned above - they really are worth delving into if like me you go crazy for complex excel constructions and his manual is extensive, explaining the process far better than I have.
My second great discovery is the PhysicsDiet, which is an online fitness log/charting site developed to support the Hackers Diet. So many geeks have been successful with the hackers diet that complementary programs are popping up all over the place. The physics diet uses the same maths as the hackers diet spreadsheets but visually it is far more exciting. I’m going to maintain both the spreadsheet and online version for a while but I think I will use charts like these to post my progress:
This shows the January results and so long as I can keep the chart green, I’m smiling.
Popularity: 36% [?]
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Tags: Diet
January 28, 2007 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Running
I’ve had a cold for a few days so if I were the sensible type I really wouldn’t have run today. Trouble is, my runners world mag turned up yesterday and I’ve just finished Ultramarathon Man so my motivation level is at its monthly peak and I can’t afford to waste this free energy because of some cold bugs.
I relented a little to pathology by sticking to my short route but it still felt fairly wretched. I was roasting and finding it quite hard to breath. It didn’t help that I smacked my forehead on one of the rowing boats that litters the route, as I was battling with my iPod playlist.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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January 27, 2007 at 9:38 pm · Filed under Technical stuff
So my new site has launched and I have to say I am seriously impressed with wordpress. Movable type used to leave me on the verge of a nervous breakdown every time I attempted a significant update or even a minor design tweak. With wordpress I have been able to do a complete server installation, import from the old blog and a template redesign within the space of a few hours and I still have my hair!
One of the major advantages over MT has to be the superb documentation available as well as the plugins for just about everything you could want to do. In contrast, Six Apart seem to have taken it upon themselves to bury the MT documentation in recent years and anyway it is nigh on incomprehensible even when you do find it.
Do please let me know if you notice any problems or if you have any comments on the layout - thats if you can find me.
Technorati Profile
Popularity: 13% [?]
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January 26, 2007 at 7:52 am · Filed under Running, Technical stuff
I am slightly concerned about two new obsessions that seem to be gaining a foothold.
Firstly you may have noticed that a whole load of ultrarunners have suddenly gatecrashed my blogroll and therefore my regular reading list. Yesterday my new book arrived, Ultramarathon Man
by Dean Karnazes, and I stayed up til 3am to finish it.
Why would this be? A long run for me is 10k.
Can’t help feeling such an admiration for this show of endurance and ridiculous stubborness. When Karnazes finished his first 50-miler he described rather too vividly the terrible spasms and projectile vomiting that ruined his lovely new Lexus. It’s trials like this that help define who you actually are and I’m sure most of us hanker to know just how much we could actually deal with.
The second development is rather more impulsive. Last night I suddenly decided that I was going defect from MovableType and head over to wordpress.org. This is clearly going to cause an immense weekend long headache if I go ahead with it. I had to restrain myself from giving it a go last night when the urge first grabbed me.
This is my explanation in advance for any prolonged outage of the blog, and any pattern baldness that I may concurrently develop.
Popularity: 22% [?]
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January 24, 2007 at 10:17 pm · Filed under Running
Did I mention it was cold?
snowpond
Originally uploaded by warriorwomen.
To be fair this was an early morning snap and by the time I hit the road this evening, all the snow had long since thawed out.
I needn’t have worried about developing hypothermia either, true to form I puffed along like an overly stoked steam train and had to roll up my sleeves and remove the hat by mile 2.
I suffered a bit with a stitch early on but it cleared and the run turned out to be quite successful. I knocked 2 minutes off my previous time. Something I attribute to the skinny lady that stormed past me on the final stretch. I was beginning ache and it ocurred to me how much sooner this could all be over if only I put my foot down.
I so wish I could run faster - mental note to introduce fartlek to the routine.
Popularity: 9% [?]
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January 23, 2007 at 10:06 pm · Filed under Running
Good grief, has anyone noticed how flippin cold it is? I’m supposed to be running home tomorrow but I know I will lose certain extremities if I expose them to the chilling wind for 1hr 20 mins. I can feel the pain already. Last week I was worried about overheating in my long sleeved t-shirt, I think tomorrow I will have to run in my fleece and scarve. I’d run with gloves too if anyone had seen fit to give me any.
I am going to hide under the duvet now and see if I can build up any more gumption.
Popularity: 7% [?]
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Tags: t-shirt
January 21, 2007 at 5:23 pm · Filed under Running
Why is it, when you run a circular route in a gale, the wind just never seems to be in your favour? I was running on the spot for at least half of my route this morning. The rowers looked to be suffering too, I witnessed a few near collisions as they got buffeted around in the spin cycle.
I included this photo in an attempt to get something out of my system. Everytime I do this route I repeat the same thing at the same point. I see the little red floats and the mantra kicks in “Where’s Wally? Where’s Wally?”. It drives me absolutely nuts - its not even funny. Sometimes I avoid the route just to escape my OCD behaviour. Maybe sharing it with you, will release me.
Where’s Wally?
Originally uploaded by warriorwomen.
Inspired by all the marathon training blogs out there, I keep trying to up my mileage to a respectable level. Even now I’ve added a long run into my schedule (the commute), it seems I have to really fight to get in any extra runs. Good job I didn’t push for an entry this April. It seems that once I get a good run under my belt, I kind of ease right off and I struggle even to find the time for running on the weekend. I’m tempted to go for two commutes a week and get it over and done with.
I’d like to alert all you marathon hopefuls to the best race report I’ve come across. Junebug recently completed the Chevron Houston marathon and her blog entries on the outcome were both riveting and moving. I’ve linked to the first entry but be sure to read on to the finish line.
I was happy to manage 20k this week but it wasn’t without a certain amount of pain. Two toenails have gone black and my quads are playing up again. Really glad I made it out for a run this morning though, I was invited out for a Lebanese family meal and I’ve just staggered home about twice the size. If I hadn’t gone for a pre-dinner run I think I would have probably exploded. The meal started with hummous and bread, then we moved on to an amazing 3 cheese lasagne with salad. This would have been fine but then out came two roast meats, roast spuds, veg etc and a huge pile of basmati rice cooked with minced lamb and roasted pine nuts. We seemed to get the best sunday dishes from at least 3 cultures and I am suffering for my sins now.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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Tags: commute
January 17, 2007 at 9:23 pm · Filed under Equipment, Running, Software
I’m still intent on running home once a week, so today I repeated the exact same running route as last week. I again finished the 10k distance in 1hr 20mins, and was strangely within 15 seconds of my previous time.
Given that it was direct replay of last weeks route, there isn’t much point me repeating the sporttracks image. Instead I’ve used it as an excuse to introduce my new discovery - everytrail.com. I first came across this on The Trail Runners blog which is certainly worth a read.
Everytrail allows you to upload your running tracks directly from your GPS unit, add waymarks and photos and provides a really simple way to share the route as an iframe on your blog. Non of this is all that new really but I’m particularly happy that I can also directly upload the gpx file. This means I can plot out a route on memory map and upload it without actually having to cover the course with my garmin. I used this feature when I needed to plot my friends planned commute. I was able to stick it on the web for him to peruse at work and determine whether it was a manageable distance.
If you use another mapping package that saves the routes in an alternative format (eg tracklogs), you might want to try out GPSBabel which is a free tool for converting routes into the gpx format.
Popularity: 29% [?]
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Tags: commute, everytrail, Garmin, GPS, motionbased, Sporttracks
January 14, 2007 at 8:23 pm · Filed under Running
What a lovely morning, it felt like a real treat to be out running and it seems like the rest of running London felt the same way and chose to join me in Richmond Park.
I chose a new track in the park but as there must be about a thousand to choose from there’s really no excuse for avoiding variety. Turned out to be just about 5k. I was only supposed to run for 30 mins as I was meeting a friend at the gate but I got a bit waylaid by a herd of deer. Must have been at least 100 sitting in my path and they are quite intimidating in numbers. Ended up zigzagging my way around the woods. My once new shoes are flippin filthy - note that I am building up ammunition for yet another purchase - all this trail running is surely going to require made for the job trail running shoes, isn’t it?
After all the faffing around with my colour coded and bpm matched playlists yesterday, I actually ended up running to some Radio 4 podcasts. I was giggling away to the highlights of Wake up with Wogan and barely noticed the agony of hill climbing.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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