December 16, 2009 at 11:16 am · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets, Swimming
Entries for next years Great Swim series are open already. Christmas is not a great time to start contemplating squeezing into an overly snug wetsuit, the annual quality street box is already half empty and the strawberry creams are not improving my silhouette.
Christmas is a time for trying out new gadgets though so it’s time I reviewed my latest toy.
I was sent a swimming watch from Swimovate to try out for a week. It promised to count all my laps for me, freeing my mind to concentrate on higher level issues such as “what should I cook for tea?” and “did I remember to put any Stella in the fridge?”
It does more than that of course, storing my lap history and providing historical data such as distance, stroke rate, calories and efficiency.
It was the counting bit that appealed most to me though. I am always surprised at how inept I am at counting lengths. I start well enough, reciting 1, 1, 1 in my head til I reach the end and turn. Of course I then move on to 2, 2, 2 cos I’m bright and can count but I’m also easily bored so I start adding variety like 2, 2 and the next lap will be 3, next is 3, next is 3. If course when I get to 3 I think blimey that number is familiar I’ve already counted it. Then I have to go through the odd even calculation and match it to the direction of my travel. Basically I never get as far as 10 laps before I’ve stressed myself out and felt the need to re-enrole in kindergarten.
So it’s a lap counter, but a pretty good one. Beyond the first button press you don’t have to bother again until it’s time to get out of the pool. The motion sensors apparently pick up on the drift portion of the stroke at the change round. It will pick up tumble turns and your more sedate stop and turn technique. Provided you don’t change strokes within a length it will supposedly maintain accuracy.
I did my best to fool it but it was 100% accurate up to 16 lengths, beyond that I’m sure the watch maintained its accuracy but I didn’t and decided to just free my mind of the counting. Swimming with a blank mind is really rather freeing, it feels so much more like running.
It’s given me an efficiency rating of 73 which equates to below average which I suppose will be about right. They measure efficiency in terms of distance covered per stroke and I’ve always felt that I swim on the spot anyway.
It would be quite useful to monitor efficiency gains if you were trying to work on your stroke but I didn’t get to play with it long enough to see how responsive it was to minor improvements.
The battery is supposed to last for 1 year after which you have to send it back to the company to be replaced. I suppose that shouldn’t be a big problem provided they have a quick turnaround.
You can’t currently use it as a distance monitor for outdoor swims because it multiplies pool length by laps but I have picked up on some internet murmurings that suggest that might be about to change.
It could do with an overhaul of the user interface, moving through the history screens required me to pull out the instruction leaflet twice but all in all it’s a pretty good adition to the sporting gadgetry world and costs around £69 from Swimovate.
Popularity: 1% [?]
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Tags: Stella, Swimming, swimovate, watch
September 15, 2009 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Event, Swimming
So the big day arrived, not quite the day that every girl dreams of, but as days go it was big enough to require the same sort of dietary preparations. 6 weeks of off and on Stella abstinence brought me to a point where I was prepared to at least attempt a public shoe-horning of my wobbly bits into the rubber encasement.
Sunday was a hot day and the combined sweat of 2402 lady swimmers had condensed on the marquee roof and was starting to drip onto the dressers below. Other peoples sweat, wet skin and rubber only combine to create more stress and more sweat. I successfully directed my right foot into the wetsuit but then started hopping around and cursing my full English breakfast as I tried to squeeze my left leg through my left arm hole.
There was no time for this sort of faffing, we were late and were already supposed to be sitting in the lake “warming” up. Despite expecting the seams to burst at any moment leaving me pink and vulnerable like a lizard shedding its skin, I did actually manage to yank up the zipper. After patching all my grasping finger nail holes with a puncture repair kit I waddled out in full glory looking like a fat, black, naked lady with a severe nicotine withdrawal problem.
Not exactly my best look but here we go – that’s me next to the tall skinny guy, who I will not be swimming with next year. I’m going to find myself some fat friends.
As per last year I secreted myself towards the back of the pack in a vain attempt to avoid mid-lake battles. This year though I wasn’t swimming in the last wave and had to cope with the chasing hoards of sub 30 minute swimmers.
I had a few new strategies for this year’s attempt at the Great North Swim. Firstly I was going to remember my nose clip and then stick my head in the water, I wasn’t going to bother much with my legs as they’d proved useless in unscientific pool timing tests, I was going to wear shoes (?) and finally I wasn’t going to get asthma.
The nose clip really helped as you’d expect and I’m still sure that legs are overrated in swimming; I tried to observe every swimmer that passed me and a good deal of the sub 30 minute swimmers did not appear to be kicking with their legs. Of course they may have been kicking like crazy up til that point but its good enough evidence for me.
Probably the most significant decision in my overall performance was to give the asthma a wide berth. No idea how I did that, I took on heavy quantities of caffeine in the run up to the event, stuck my head in cold water a few times but there also seemed to be less motor fuel hanging around on the surface of lake this year and that may have had something to do with it.
So all in all, I had another pootle round a stunning lake, positively enjoyed myself for a few hundred metres and came home with a new pb, knocking 10 minutes off last years time and dragging myself out of the bottom 1% and well into the top 96% of all competitors. Result!
The only disappointment was that I managed to look decidedly camp in my sprint finish photo, not that I need to share that with anybody.
Actual stats:
Time – 1:01:57
Overall – 4392/4579
Age/gender – 366/385
As Dan can’t be arsed to keep a record of his times, I will jot them down here for prosperity:
Time – 0:44:14
Overall – 3148/4579
Oh and I got a new t-shirt.
Popularity: 1% [?]
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Tags: "Great North Swim", Diet, Stella, Swimming
August 19, 2009 at 9:59 pm · Filed under Swimming
The Great North Swim is now only a matter of weeks away. I’ve been swimming regularly but to be honest, the distance is the least of my worries.
I pulled the wetsuit out of the cupboard last month, dusted out the moth balls and then attempted the big squeeze……
Not good.
I forced the zip up but couldn’t straighten my arms and panic ensued within 30 secs. With no body glide I was falling all over the bedroom trying to trap the rubber under something solid so I could fight my way free.
I immediately pulled out my spreadsheet and started the calorie controlled route to a not so snug wetsuit but four weeks later I’m scouring the spreadsheet for dodgy formulas. Something must have gone wrong somewhere because I’m only about 2 ounces down.
I’m running almost daily and have now stepped into the serious measures zone. Stella has been eradicated (apart from Blog writing evenings) but if the scales don’t start playing fair I’ll have to join the bald penguin preservation society.
If I slice off both arms (rubber ones obviously), I’ll be able to move my shoulders and I’ll provide a new skin for at least two bald penguins, maybe even four, if they’re short.
As that seems an increasingly likely option at this late stage I thought I better get used to some cold weather swimming. So today I finally managed a trip to Tooting Bec Lido.
At 93 metres a length its practically open water swimming and the temperature was shocking enough to remind me that freezing mountain lakes will be unbearable without full body rubber protection.
I better make sure I don’t write too many blogs between now and September 13th.
Popularity: 3% [?]
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Tags: "Great North Swim", Stella, Swimming
March 11, 2009 at 8:52 pm · Filed under Commuting, Running
The new accessible job arrived and sucked away all my handy exercise avoidance excuses…..time to resurrect the running commute.
My first attempt was an unwelcome struggle, my head was in a seriously moany place and my feet were doing that teenage scuffing thing. I made it past two commons lurching in a stop go fashion and finally quit at Somerfield in order to replenish the Stella supplies.
Today’s run was a bit more exciting, I’d heard a rumour that the non runner may be catching the 5:18 train. Thereby giving me approximately 25 minutes to hot foot it down the high street and nonchalently drape my sweating being across the bonnet of her car to ensure a lift half the way home.
Needless to say I made it. Amazing what you can pull out of the bag for an easy ride.
I got an iPhone recently which has proved mighty useful for navigating me through some commutimg crises but will unfortunately result in a decline in photo quality for my blog.
I’ve been checking out the promisingly named “50 Awesome iPhone Apps for Runners” blog post, they don’t all have very good reviews on iTunes but I may check a few out. High on my list will be True Weight – 3 months of idleness has not done me any sartorial favours and I need to get back in control.
In the spirit of
1. getting back into the swing of things
2. jumping in at the deep end, and
3. acquiring more t-shirts
I’ve signed myself up for an assortment of events.
First on the list is the London to Brighton bike ride which has been on my wishlist for some time.
Then it’s time for a re-run of the British London 5k which promises to be particularly exciting – at least in terms of the location of it’s post race champagne reception. Stay tuned.
Finally (at least for now), I’ve gone and signed myself up the scary Great North Swim. I’m hoping to be able to finish it without the asthma attack this time, which probably means a little more training…
Popularity: 27% [?]
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Tags: commute, Running, Stella
September 30, 2008 at 2:28 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event, Road
I am such a social cretin before an event and watching the city boys arrive at the coach station in their pin striped suits and titanium s-bar bikes didn’t go anyway towards making me feel at home.
I cheered up a bit on arrival at Blenheim when friendly faces appeared out of the crowd and I was reassured that Emma’s Dave hadn’t abandoned me to do the race on my own. Shame Trinny and Susannah weren’t there though; they would have been able to advise me that the short and dumpy tie style wasn’t going to do much for my physique. They might also have mentioned that a thick woollen jacket wasn’t the best sporting wear for the hottest day of the year.
I had received tie training lessons some months ago, in a pub and even through the Stella haze I could remember some of the specifics of the double Nelson knot. Or maybe it wasn’t a Nelson, that sounds like a wrestling move and that was another night and a completely different sort of pub. Anyway, my tie, it ended up in some form of quadruple knotting affair which may even have been stylish if only I were tall and lanky.
So with the race about to start we’d had to lay out our bikes in the folded position, on numbered markers. I was going in the first wave, with Dave two waves and 4 minutes behind me. With the horn sounded we ran to the Bromptons, unfolded, pushed to the track and then set off.
I can’t believe that I’ve gone to so much trouble, practically having my gps surgically embedded in my wrist, and yet “forgot” to set the flippin thing off for the race. Now you are just going to have to take my word for it when I say it was HILLY. Big, long hills!
I may have mentioned before that I don’t do hills, not uphills anyway, but with Dave a mere 4 minutes behind me I didn’t have a lot of choice and had to keep pushing. When I finished the first 6.5km loop I came really close to throwing up on the corner, I thought it would be a slip hazard though and with Dave still behind me it could be seen as unsporting.
One of the guys in my wave had a video camera on his helmet and captured some of the beauty of the course. I was breathing so hard, sweating gallons and concentrating too much on the waves of nausea that I didn’t notice my surroundings.
It’s a bit noisy so I suggest you turn the volume right down, but before you get bored, pull the slider across to 4 minutes and wait for me to appear like a bat out of hell. He managed to capture almost a full minute of my backside flying down the hill with my coat tails flapping in an aerodynamic fashion.
I crossed the line in front of Dave but the gap could be measured by Brompton lengths rather than minutes but we both looked rather worse for wear.
The results are just in:
Lap 1 15:48
Lap 2 16:57
Total for the 13km 32:45 (Dave’s time was 30:26)
In terms of positions I’m 268/364 overall or 21/44 for the women. So I’m actually in the top 50% for a sport! It beats swimming.
Popularity: 28% [?]
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Tags: Brompton, Brompton World Championships, folding bike, GPS, Stella, Swimming, tie
July 10, 2008 at 10:23 pm · Filed under Commuting, Running
The race packs seem to be dropping thick and fast through the letter box this week, after the painfully slow 5k at the weekend I came home and opened an envelope to discover I was entered in the Great Capital 10k in just 2 weeks time. Goodness knows when I signed up for that, I hadn’t bothered to note it in my diary anyway.
I’m thinking that’s its probably impossible to turn around the worst ever 5k race time within the space of 2 weeks given a backdrop of 5 months of lacklustre training, but I’ve got to do something to ensure I don’t collapse before the finish line. I’ve therefore embarked on a 2 week anti-Stella campaign to be combined with regularish running commutes.
JogBlog is not the only one completing an old new running commute, I’ve shifted jobs yet again and am right back where I started with the very first running commute of 18 months ago. Happily I’ve picked up a bit of local knowledge over the months and can now get from asylum to home with barely any need to run on the grotty streets, it also seems to save me 500 metres which is no good as it ruins my perfect 10 k route.
Running along the edge of assorted waterways provides plenty of opportunity for water related incidents and playing around with the forerunner 405 touch bezel does not reduce the likelihood. I stumbled over some barge docking related paraphenalia but managed to steady myself in a rather sturdy clump of stinging nettles. I’m still itching but I did discover a rather cool new screen on the forerunner.
It the HR graph option and shows your heart rate displayed on a backdrop of HR zones. Quite neat but probably only useful if you are doing intervals, for most of my run it appeared as a flat line between zones 4 and 5. The photo was taken after I stopped.
Distance: 9.58km
Time: 1:22:00
Popularity: 23% [?]
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Tags: commute, Forerunner, Forerunner 405, Garmin, Stella
April 26, 2008 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets
I’ve taken my time to write this post because I’m not sure whether to come clean about my sins or to attempt a bluff.
I was sent the Nike+ Sportband to try out at the beginning of the week but as I don’t have holes in my running shoes I couldn’t possibly go running before I had some hi-tech means of carrying my speed sensor – you wouldn’t catch me putting gaffer tape on my Kayanos unlike Joggerblogger and Jogblog.
The little thingammy pouch that I ordered from ebay arrived just before I left for work on Wednesday though, so I pretty much had no choice but to pack my bags and prepare for an enforced running commute.
My first impressions of the strap weren’t great, I wondered why Nike would design the watch to have a ridiculous piece of plastic wedged underneath the usb face. It angled the watch and meant I kept catching it on my sleeve. Thankfully I spotted the photo of joggerbloggers sleak sportband before I went out in public, the plastic bit is meant to be thrown away! Moron. Now I’m wearing it as a watch although I have to ask the person sitting next to me to read it as I haven’t got used to deciphering the vertical numbers and the screen is too dark but I still think it looks cool.
Anyway, back to the running.
When I left the house it was chucking it down so I packed the long sleeve top again, of course when I left work it was flippin scorching and just to ensure that I got heat stroke at the edge of a deserted canal I left the building with my empty water bottle in hand. With no means of re-entering the building I had to set off sans hydration system – bollox!
3 seconds later the Sportband is telling me to start walking but the garmin is persistently ignoring my request to locate my position. I can’t start walking now or the garmin will have a paddy fit. By the time the gps picks up the Nike system has gotten bored and gone back into clock mode, who can blame it?
I was feeling hot, sweaty and lethargic so I pretty much ignored both gadgets for the first 4k as thoughts vacillated between diving in the canal and diving in the canal. When I entered Brentford I headed straight for the nearest shop where I knocked back a bottle of water before I reached the till and handed over 90p for an empty bottle of plastic.
I set off again but now thoughts were of cool beers, enjoyed by the rivers edge. As I’ve never been known to resist the lure of beer and I was just about to reach the Thames river bank, I rather shockingly dived into the next shop and came out with a can of Stella. Now beer can’t be shaken so I paused both gadgets while I wandered down to the river. I thought I’d just enjoy my can and then carry on with the run.
Oh baaaaad runner! I thought it would be rather pleasant sitting with my legs dangling in the river enjoying a refreshing brew but the reality was rather seedy. I’m clearly a runner – running clobber and shoes, beetroot face and sweat, not one but two running watches and headphones in ear, only I’m walking and not just walking, this is no-good can swigging bum walking. About 300 hundred proper runners came past me in and in the end I realised I wasn’t enjoying this whole cool beer thing and tipped it all away.
Running was pretty tricky from here on in, 300m run, huge gasp, hands to temples and then walk for 1km – repeat. Nice treat at the end as there was a new piece of graffiti on my steps. Not quite Banksy but it isn’t bad.
Painful but the Sportband faired pretty well.
Total garmin distance (running only): 5.78km
Nike Sportband distance (running only): 5.65km
No way of telling which was the most accurate but they were close enough to ensure that I’ll never bother calibrating the Nike Sportband.
Post run, the usb face automatically uploads (after inserting into the usb port of course) to the Nike+ website and displays whizzy graphs.
The Nike+ website is pretty good if you like online motivation. You can join no end of challenges to push you out of the door and it looks like the next Nike organised run will be a worldwide Nike+ only event. The sportband is a great way of a gaining entry to the event, its also got to be one of the cheapest available speed and distance monitors on the market.
Popularity: 52% [?]
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Tags: commute, Garmin, GPS, Nike, Nike+ Sportband, review, Stella, thames
January 31, 2008 at 12:20 am · Filed under Running
There seems to be a new and somewhat concerning military theme developing on this blog, not content to just run along with the US Marine Corps choir, yesterday I decided to head out and run with the SAS. That’s SAS as in Sweet as Swans rather than Special Air Service but it’s almost the same thing.
Jogblog introduced me to the concept of running with a friendly drinking group and if you’ve seen her post on last weeks SAS run, you may notice a tiny little difference between her route map and mine.
What can I say? They run too fast and I was tired.
Actually they ran very slowly but I was still tired and holding people back is such a pressure and they weren’t running through the park and so they missed the great swan photo opportunity and my way was quicker and the pub was waiting.
I’ll be back next week and attempt a slightly longer short cut, and I’ll bring my own milk – £4 a pint in that pub! Worked out considerably cheaper to stick to the Stella, so I did. It’s going to make my one day a week drink fest pretty tricky now that the week starts on Tuesday.
Popularity: 13% [?]
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Tags: SAS, Stella
January 2, 2008 at 11:30 pm · Filed under Equipment, Gadgets
It’s true, my Garmin is trying to kill me. While the BBC are issuing warnings for the UK softies to stay indoors for fear of catching a chill in the forecast cold spell, my Garmin thinks it would be fun to give me hypothermia. It has me standing outside, scantily clad in running gear, hopping from foot to foot while it lethargically glances from one satellite to another. I wouldn’t mind so much but the N82 locked onto a signal from indoors, and I don’t mean indoors but dangling from out of a window either – I was in the basement changing room of the gym. How does it do that?
I’m sneezing now.
New Years Eve turned into a productive, if quite expensive, evening, I was stone cold sober as I’ve gone tee total-ish (6 out of 7 days) and I spent the evening scouring the net for interesting races. I’ve signed myself up for the next 6 months. The next biggy is the Wilmslow half marathon at the end of March, so just as I was feeling smug that Jogblog had to stick to a punishing 1/2 mara schedule, I find myself needing to get up close and personal to the weekly long slow run myself. Aargh!
I signed up first and did my research later, which explains how I managed to enter a half marathon with a cut off time of 2:35:00. Flip! That also explains my rash decision to ditch the Stella, I don’t think I will knock 20 mins off my time through training alone, but surely life will be easier if I ditch a couple of stone by the wayside. I’m leaving 1 day of Stella in the mix to celebrate my weekly lsr, lets call it motivation.
Popularity: 24% [?]
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Tags: Garmin, n82, OGB, Stella
August 21, 2007 at 10:05 pm · Filed under Running
Today was a day for making amends for last weeks limp lettuce training efforts.
I had a fairly heroic route in mind but given that it took me over an hour after the garmin had locked on to my window ledge accessible satellites, to actually push myself out of the door, I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t cop out at an early stage. The plan was to make an additional bridge extension (Kew Bridge) to last weeks 10-miler but the trouble with that, is it would end up looping back past my house within the first 6k – pretty dangerous. Luckily I had transferred the omnibus edition of the Archers to my iPod and the everyday tales of country folk kept me busy up to the psychological safety of Hammersmith Bridge.
I was struggling at Putney Bridge and audibly huffing and puffing as I passed the crowds at the bus stops. I’m normally fairly happy when I’m out on a run and manage to save the grumbling til I make it home but today I was seriously arsey. By 17k I was suffering, and the groans increased in intensity as my calf seized up. I had to stop for a bit to massage the knot away and then I tried to walk a bit to stretch it out, but I was in that zone where walking is about 20 times more painful than continuing with the run so I had to start shuffling again.
I’d just starting running and grumbling again when I spotted John running towards to me. He was off on a reccy of the 10 mile loop I blogged about last week and that gave me a boost for about 30 secs.
I didn’t know quite how far this run was going to be but I reckoned on close to 13 miles. I wanted the boost of having completed the half marathon distance before I trek up to Newcastle but I also wanted it to be over right NOW! Finally approached home with the garmin reading 20.3 km, I needed 700 metres more to make it a half marathon. Strangely my local Stella shop is precisely 700 metres away. However, I am strong – teetotal strong and I resisted the lure, choosing instead to head upstairs to roll around groaning on the floor. This teetotal malarky is going to be tough.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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Tags: Garmin, Stella
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