Corporate Cup 2008 - Day 1

Today was the first day of the Adelaide Corporate Cup - which means running 7km every Wednesday fortnight for 7 fortnights.

The weather wasn't kind.

Adelaide: Showers. Small hail and possible thunder developing during the afternoon. Cold with fresh southwest winds. Maximum: 13C.

But thanks to the humourous conversation with Trev it all went well. A slow run but understandably so given that it was so cold and we were completely drenched through.

Squish, squish, squish.

| 06 Aug 2008 | #

Le Tour 2008

Well, Le Tour de France 2008 is coming to a close this weekend, and I've really enjoyed following it seriously this year for the first time.

This year's tour has almost convinced me to enter Amy's Ride or the Tour Down Under's Challenge Tour. Running might be enough pain for me for now, but we shall see.

But can Australia's own Cadel Evans overcome the 1:34 deficit and take victory via Stage 20 (aka the 53km time trial) on Saturday night? Hope so - it's been great to watch, although the late nights combined with the early morning starts have been a killer :-)

| 25 Jul 2008 | #

The Barossa Half

Today I was able to tick off another *huge* life goal - completing the Barossa Half Marathon in Tanunda, SA - I wish I knew ahead of time about that hill that I had to run up 3 times! Ouch - they didn't provide an elevation guide online. Despite that it was a perfect day out - cloudy, overcast, not too hot, with friendly country folk running the event. And what was a wonderful surprise was being able to complete the event in 1:59:50 - just shy of the magical 2 hour mark.

The scary thing is the next tick. I'm not sure my knees and ankles will allow what my mind wants to do :)

Update:Thanks Stoyan for the photo :-)

| 27 May 2008 | #

No going back

Well, there's no going back now - I went and registered for the Barossa Half Marathon today. 47 days to go. Can someone tell me why I'm doing this to myself? :-)

| 07 Apr 2008 | #

Back In The Saddle Again

Yay! This morning, after a 2 week hiatus, I ran a slow 10km to dust off the cobwebs. The injury to my Lateral Collateral Ligament (LCL) in my left knee seems to have self-healed - the body feels pretty good after the run.

In the past week I did follow sjh's advice and do a little low impact cross-training, by getting back on the bike. Of course just exercising by itself is not enough - I have to geekify things - so I fitted a GSC-10 to my mtb so I could get cadence data. The mistake I made was to start Googling for target cadence ranges - let's just say I have some work to do in this area :-)

It's good to be back exercising again. A 2 week break was about 3 weeks too long.

| 14 Jan 2008 | #

Day 4 of rest

I was a little silly recently in doing two 16km runs in 6 days - it all felt good at the time, but there were consequences. I ended up with a left-knee ligament strain, meaning that I'm taking a week or so off from running to let things return to normal (hoping that things return to normal by themselves so that I don't have to seek medical treatment :-). I'm finding it _really_ difficult to take a break - today is only day 4 - and I've got another 5 days of rest to go. I need those endorphins I get from running. Aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhh :-(

| 08 Jan 2008 | #

Garmin Forerunner 305

This year for Christmas I received a Garmin Forerunner 305 from my lovely wife. It's a GPS receiver with built-in heart-rate monitor - it does just about everything my existing Polar F11 does, but gives me the added bonus of GPS data as well as Open-Source accessibility. Both GPSBabel and garmintools support my device through a pretty standard usb interface which is fantastic! (as opposed to the Polar which uses an audio interface, and is currently Windows-only :-(

The open-sourceness accessibility is very important to me, and now being able to extract the raw data easily is a huge win that justifies the changeover price by itself. I've already scripted up a nice interface, and am exploring some pre-existing solutions too - stay tuned for a later blog post. While it's early days - I've only been on 2 runs so far - the heart-rate monitor seems less susceptible to spikes which is a bonus - I don't like looking at the watch and seeing that it thinks that I'm working at 190bpm when I _know_ I'm only at 140bpm.

Getting fit is really quite a bit easier when you have gadgets to distract you :-)

| 29 Dec 2007 | #

16km Run Goal - Completed

Yesterday I broke through a distance barrier that's hung over my head for 3 weeks - running 16kms. The barrier wasn't physical so much as mental - getting my head in the right place to run that distance. Just like golf, running is only 25% physical - the rest is keeping up the concentration.

24 hours after the run and the body has held up remarkably well. I'll take a couple of days off now for Christmas, before starting towards the next challenge.

GPS points plotted thanks to Gmaps Pedometer.

| 24 Dec 2007 | #

Fourth Goal Reached

The fourth exercise goal has now been reached. Another 5% body weight reduction, but this time it took a quite a bit longer - 14 weeks. Partially I've been slack, and partially it's a lot harder once you approach goal weight.

But now I leave weight behind as a measuring stick and start setting goals based around my running speed. I have some big improving to do in this area :-)

| 29 Nov 2007 | #

Living in the 70's

Today's song of the day: I'm living in the 70's :-)

| 08 Oct 2007 | #

City-to-Bay: Done.

Today was the City to Bay fun run here in Adelaide. It's been a goal of mine to do this for a while, so it's a big tick in the box to run it out on my first attempt. It's only 12kms - with most of it downhill - and while I've been doing that distance easily in training, it's another thing to actually complete the run with race number on, along with 24,000 other competitors - it's a big (psychological) deal for me.

My time of just under 65 minutes wasn't earth shattering by any means, but today was about competing with myself - proving that I could do it - and moving one step closer to the next set of goals. Only 9 months or so to a local half marathon :-)

| 16 Sep 2007 | #

Third Goal Reached

The third exercise goal has now been reached. Another 5% body weight reduction in 4 weeks. Next goal happens in less than a month's time - complete the City to Bay Run (12km run from the city to Glenelg).

Total loss: 20% in 17 weeks.

| 17 Aug 2007 | #

Second Goal Reached

The second goal has now been reached. Another 5% body weight reduction in 4 weeks - 2 weeks ahead of schedule (the black day final deadline)

Total loss: 15% in 13 weeks.

| 16 Jul 2007 | #

One Goal Reached

So today I achieved something that I never thought possible - my initial fitness goal has been reached. 10% of body weight reduction in 9 weeks.

How?

• Reduction in carbs overall, and a great reduction in carbs after 4pm
• Reducing portion sizes when I do eat
• Always drink 8 glasses of cold water a day
• Consume lots of Extra chewing gum :-)
• But most importantly, I run every weekday morning on an empty stomach - I've worked up to 6kms daily (with a longer run on Fridays)

I didn't actually think I'd be able to achieve this - so I'm pretty pleased with the result. Now onto the next goal!

| 13 Jun 2007 | #

da dada da dada da dada

Personal triumph today. I ran 10km. While the time of 61 minutes certainly isn't going to win me any races, it's a psychological mountain that's now been climbed! Woohoo!

| 19 Feb 2005 | #

Checkpoint

Going well, besides a slight ankle sprain that is. Today was 197/4.5/45. Tomorrow is the big run of 10km - not looking forward to it.

On the positive side, today was my first foray into podcasting, listening to Miguel on LugRadio. Worked well for most of the time, although I had to switch back to some music with a beat in the second half of the run.

| 18 Feb 2005 | #

Progress and Goals

Besides the last 6 days when I've been in Florida on holiday, I've been on track 100% for the last 3 weeks.

Today was 202.5/4.5/45 - goal is 176/7.5/80. I have until September to reach it.

| 28 Jan 2005 | #