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: 32% [?]
Related posts
Tags: commute, Garmin, GPS, Nike, Nike+ Sportband, 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: 18% [?]
Related posts
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: 23% [?]
Related posts
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: 14% [?]
Related posts
Tags: Garmin, Stella
August 17, 2007 at 6:43 pm · Filed under Rambling
Oh dear, I’ve been had, EatDrinkWoman tagged me the other day and although I did my best to ignore it, I now notice that Kathy got in on the act and tagged me too. Clearly no escape, I have to answer a list of questions, boring you all senseless in the process and then make folk like JogBlog and NoWetsuit Girl repeat the chore - I’m sure they’ll love it.
Jobs I’ve Held: Newspaper gal, fruit picker, sandwich maker, factory worker, care assistant, packer, merchandiser, van driver, supply chain assistant, SBO analyst, SBO manager, data analyst, web master, personal tutor, management accountant. A little eclectic selection of jobs many of which all of which have been carried out between studies. So in addition I’ve been a medical student, a chemistry undegrad and a postgrad astrochemist.
Movies I Can Watch Over & Over: None, I can’t imagine anything more torturous than watching a film I’ve already seen. I might come back to this though, there is perhaps something I’d be prepared to watch again. I’ve been to see the musical Blood Brothers 3 times if that counts?
My Guilty Pleasures: Gadgets and Stella, and for a very guilty pleasure I might combine gadgets, stella and a box set of the L Word - joy for a week!
Places I have lived (in order): Aldershot, Cyprus - Larnaca & Limassol, Bridlington, Sheffield, Nottingham, London
Shows I enjoy: L Word, Desperate Housewives, The Apprentice
Places I Have Been on Holiday: Good grief, I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in this stuff! Cyprus, N. Spain, S. Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Italy, Germany, Switzerland (I know, I should have just put W. Europe and be done with it), San Francisco, Madeira, Borneo
Favorite Foods: Chilli, Spag Bol, Curry, chilli prawns, listen I’m salivating now and this list could go on for ages, how about we say I like every type of food except Celery!
Websites I Visit Daily: The pages that open automatically on my browser are: admin pages for my blog, iGoogle,Bloglines which then leads me to read as many of your updated blogs as I can manage, Flickr, Facebook, Runnersworld and PhysicsDiet. I couldn’t live without Bloglines and facebook though.
Body Parts I Have Injured: Skin and right side from hip to toe. Nothing to really moan about though.
Awards I’ve Won: got a few judo medals in my prime and the odd consolation academic award
Nicknames You’ve Been Called: Deathwish, warriorwoman and Wolfie - take your pick!
Popularity: 23% [?]
Related posts
Tags: Diet, OGB, runnersworld, Stella
August 12, 2007 at 11:58 pm · Filed under Event, Running
It was a less than an auspicious start to my East London running debut. I took the carb loading to a whole new extreme and I was still bulging at the seams when I was dragged from my bed this morning at 6am.
Knowing that it was a ridiculously early start I had travelled over to OGB’s last night, so we were practically on the race doorstep. Before leaving my house though I polished off the left over pasta for my tea, and then on arriving at his folks house I discovered that I’d been included in the family dinner arrangements and there was a whopping great plate of chicken curry waiting for me. Well it was all jolly nice but I have to say I struggled to get that plate clean! From there it was on to the pub where for probably the first time in my life I was unable to finish a pint of Stella. Absolutely bursting.
As I couldn’t drink, it seemed that the next best thing was to start an argument. I chose East London and the complete absense of wild life as a starter. Firstly, my companiable Bexley Heathian drinking buddies took offence at being called East Londoners, it seems that despite being to the most right of London I’d ever been I was still not in East London! Goodness knows where this strange land is. Secondly, one bloke put up a good fight for the existence of a few cows in a field somewhere to the left of an unlit snicket. On further cross examination it appears that the said cows all had brightly coloured caravans attached to them and it was deemed that these cows fell into the species of “gypsy ponies”. Case closed, no wildlife existed and I got to go home and quietly explode.
Race day dawned and as OGB was still smarting from his unexpected bike ride to Bushy Park yesterday, he attempted to punish me by making me run behind the car as he drove to the shopping precinct - oh how I laughed!
As is usual for the start of race events we were both in a jolly foul mood and wondering who we could blame for the race entry, running and probably even life in general. On arriving at the Bluewater shopping centre I found another grievance, I needed someone to blame for building the mall and therefore the start of the race at the foot of a flipping great chalk pit. We were surrounded by cliffs and it was clear that this flat (as advertised) race was going to involve some serious climbing.
I’m going to struggle to keep expletives out of this post, those XXXXXXX hills were absolute XXXXXXXXX monsters!
We had runners dropping to walking on that very first incline, still within ear shot of the rabble rousing, horn tooting, starter man whatever his official name is. Now I don’t have a problem with walkers per se but it still continues to wind me up no end that these same walkers seem to stick with me throughout the race and on many occassions beat me soundly at the finish. There ought to be a law against walking and still beating me! As it happens its not solely a back of the pack predicament, OGB had exactly the same problem 21 minutes up the field as he was trounced by an “elderly” hill walker.
As can be seen by the elevation profile, kindly supplied by Dom, the first half was pure evil interspersed with some joyful, head over heels, crazy downhill sections. As I am now a veteran fell runner (ahem) I made the most of these sprint sections, and there was one particularly vicious switchback downhiller at 3.4k which I careered down at break neck speed overtaking about 15 in the break away group. Its one of those occasions where momentum favours the fat, trouble is the downhill soon turned into an uphill and the moment I turned that corner someone slung my 5 stone coat of lard back on me and I came screeching to a near standstill. Tis a bugger that I have a head craving speed yet a body designed for lethargy.
Second half was fairly flatish, it was along some motorway, possibly the M25 but then maybe not as they’d managed to close it for the occasion. I was afforded a little extra joy at the end as there was another smashing downhiller back into the chalk pit and across the finish line. Managed to pick off another bunch of pesky run/walkers on my best ever sprint finish. Overall time was still a bit pants though, but what do you expect when you have two pre-race dinners?
SheRunsHeRuns Bluewater 10k at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Travel Community
SheRunsHeRuns Bluewater 10k 1:16:04
Great organisation and good marshalls but its only going to appeal to the car owner as there are no baggage drops and its too early for public transport. Bonuses were ashtray sized medals and a dinky little lego brick for the kids. I wish I got a lego brick, but I won’t moan as I did get a pot noodle which made me very happy as I like pot noodles but I never buy them because they are the meals of pikeys just as kebabs are, and I never buy those either.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Related posts
Tags: everytrail, GPS, OGB, Stella
July 24, 2007 at 11:25 pm · Filed under Running
My long run in the Road to GNR program was booked in for tonight, so of course that means one of those grotty running commutes. My requirement was for 8 miles. I’m still unsure why I set my plan in miles when I can only run in kilometres, on either scale it meant I had to run past the accidental bus stop. Quite a struggle.
Three quarters of the way home I ran out of water. Plain ole drinking water is a bit of premium in the UK at the moment, it has reached prices in the region of £15 per litre in some of the flood hit areas. Given my tight budget I thought tonight was the time to try Lucozade Sport.
Yuckee!
It played havoc with my intestines, what a sickly drink. I struggled a bit with the bottle as well. Its clearly a good design in some respects as it doesn’t leak at all even with the cap off and a bit of vigorous shaking but I found imbibing fluid to be a struggle. The first squeeze sent a high powered jet of gloop to the back of my throat. My soft pallete hadn’t been forewarned about the incoming missile and so half made its way into my trachea, by the time my throat swung into action the bottle decided to splutter and give up a bolus of high pressure gas, straight to the oesophagus this time.
No wonder I felt ill. Maybe I could skip running training and just spend the next 9 weeks teaching myself how to drink. Anyway, the upshot is, I discarded the sports drink outside my local Stella shop and opted instead for my favourite recovery tipple. Who needs chocolate milk.
Total kilometrage was 11.55, I believe that is slightly short of 8 miles but you can’t shake Stella so that had to be my limit. Plus, the fumes along the A4 are so intense that I’m almost running on pure carbon monoxide, which in my mind equates to everest style altitude training sessions where 11.55 km = more than 8 miles sea level running. Yes?
Popularity: 18% [?]
Related posts
Tags: commute, GNR, Stella
June 14, 2007 at 10:48 pm · Filed under Running
I’ve been getting seriously bored with my daily cycle into work, it takes so long and the route is ugly, but for some reason I thought running home would add the spice missing from life. So today marks the inaugral boring running commute. I was mistaken in thinking that running the route at a sedate 5mph would be more exciting than cycling at 16mph with homicidal car drivers thrown in.
I’m getting ahead of myself, before I could run home I had to brave plebian transport again. Uugh! Firstly it cost me £8 for my ticket - why would people pay that? Why isn’t everyone cycling to work and living it up in Waitrose with the mammoth saving? Then I had to allow two trains pass me because they were full. They arrived at the platform full but I stood mesmerised as 50 odd people managed to cram themselves into tiny crevices. The driver had to walk up and down the platform pushing bulging arses out of the gaps in the door so he could set off. If I ever do that again I’m gonna take a video of it, its quite amazing.
Eventually a nice quiet train arrived and I was counting my blessings and thinking that I’d only end up being about 2 mins late for work which isn’t bad at all and only half an hour slower than cycling, when I noticed that the train had just whizzed past my stop. Then it whizzed past the next two stops and I began to feel a little less lucky and a lot more pissed off. It finally spewed me out into Slough which I suppose has to be better than Reading. Back I trogged to West Drayton vowing never to leave the bike at home again.
Set off running home, again for some reason carrying my umbrella and this time a couple of grapefruit. Starting flagging and looked at the garmin to see if I’d gone far enough to quit, decided 1.14 km was probably not sufficient. By 8 km I had cheered up considerably and thought I could probably run for ever. At 9 km I spotted a bus heading to Hammersmith and chased it down to the next stop where I hopped on. Here I had a 10 min breather while it shunted me along the A40 - a heck of a lot of people vacated after I climbed on board. Got off near Brentford and picked up the latter half of my old familiar running commute and managed a little stretch along the river.
No gels, gu’s or even a solero ice-cream, I was running on the promise of a cool Stella. Today I am trialling out Joggerbloggers drinkabitathon rules and as the weather brightens I may try out Jogblogs version.
In total I ran 15 km in 1:58:00. Admittedly I had a breather in the middle but I’m really chuffed with that, and it looks like my target of 2 hrs for the Cabbage Patch 10 is feasible.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Related posts
Tags: commute, Garmin, OGB, Stella
June 8, 2007 at 11:30 pm · Filed under Running
My regular running commute has been on the back burner for a while. I started at my new placement a few weeks ago which has pushed the required running distance to 13 miles, part of which covers a portion of the West’s very own murder mile, or in fact murder 12 miles. Needless to say I haven’t been rushing to try it out. Today I was based at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Aldgate and it just so happens to make a far more scenic 13 mile commute.
When I left the house this morning, the forecast was still for horrendous thunder storms over London, so I packed my running clobber and a little umbrella. I was impressed that my asics running pack has a special slot for an umbrella, but really, did I actually intend to run with one? Seems I did. Crappy forecast though - it was a scorcher.
I started running from Tower Bridge and then proceeded to weave myself in and out of all the hot and sticky tourists on the south bank.
I’d drained my water bottle by Westminster Bridge and was wondering if I should have considered Gu’s or gels for my impromptu half marathon attempt. I didn’t have any so I compromised with a Solero Exotic ice cream and a bottle of water - shocking £2.50 down the drain but I bet those sachets of slime aren’t cheap either.
Resisted meeting the OGB slacker for a pint at St Thomas’ and picked up a few partner yoga tips instead.
Now then, given my previous max mileage was something like 10.67 km, it would have been foolish to jump straight up to a 13 mile (20 km) run and I have to say that I didn’t really intend to run the whole way home. Trouble is I didn’t have that many alternatives sorted out - there aren’t that many tubes near the river and I never look or smell my best after a 10k run in the heat so I’d probably be blocked from entering by the sniffer dogs.
I got up to my 10k barrier and started walking a bit and then started running a bit and then I started to notice that my toenails were peeling away from the nail bed and my shins were hurting and my hip was hurting and….
You get the picture, I was in moaning minnie phase and it continued until I got to Hammersmith and decided to fish out the oyster card and hop on the bus that takes me to my local chippy. I managed a final little hobble trying to get my feast home before it got too steamy in the bag. Finished the day jolly satisfied with my can of cold stella and a whopping plate of fish and chips.
Total non bus assisted distance (dotted line) was 16 km or 10 miles. Quite a long bloody way but I have some work to do before the Cabbage Patch 10 in October.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Related posts
Tags: asics, backpack, commute, OGB, Stella
January 13, 2007 at 8:13 pm · Filed under Equipment, Running, Software
As I mentioned earlier, my Saturday has been pretty much ruined due to a wasted day waiting for a delivery from M&S. The delivery was to be expected anytime between 7.30 am and 6 pm. Its gone 8 now and I’m still sitting here, pee’d off, no parcel and no run. I’ve given up now and turned to the bottle, or at least a couple of cans of stella.
I’ve spent most of the day messing around with my iTunes library. I’ve been frustrated by the bpm column that remains empty against all my songs. This info could be super useful. As I determined earlier, my running pace is about 158 strides per minute when it ought to be 180 for maximum efficiency. Surely if I create my playlists around the target beat, I might be able to train my little ole legs to pump a bit faster.
So I’ve been researching bpm determining software. There are a number that require you to tap the beat out on your mouse or trackpad (absolutely useless for rhythmless me) and others that work it out automatically. Its not foolproof though, apparently it is common for the automatic system to either dbl or halve the true bpm, which might explain why my Norah Jones collection appears to the most upbeat music in my library.
I’m trialling beaTunes which is a standalone program that integrates well with iTunes. It populates my library with the bpm info that I’m after but also categorises my music in other ways too. It asigns a colour to each track which looks fairly pretty and again is designed to make intelligent playlist choices that reduce the opportunity for inappropriate or clashing tunes. I like the idea but I haven’t had a chance to try this out as its taking about 20 hrs to analyse my library. The program itself is shareware - I get it free for 8 days, not ideal I suppose but at least I get to update my entire library before the free period runs out.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Related posts
Tags: Stella
