Trolls ate it

Our cats are photogenic, but very strange in one regard. They don't like canned cat food. Or more accurately, they don't like it now. They want crunchies.  They in the past have liked this canned food, and happily snarfed it. No matter. We try telling them all the other cats in the world would love to have this wet food. No matter. We try telling them if they eat it they will get crunchies, and there isn't that much and they'll still be hungry. No matter. Some days there's a catly funeral procession from the bowls to the front door, where they look longly at the door opening mechanism.

Generally the cats tell us four things, and three of them are in two part cat harmony:
-Pay attention to me.
-Feed me.
-You are rotten humans.
-Let me out, there's a hot buttered mouse out there and I want to hunt it. (This is Curtis.)

Lately there's a new story. The cats ignore the wet food. We leave. I come back fairly soon after a swim, or a run, or a photo trip or whatever, and the food bowls are empty. The cats deny eating it. They say trolls came and ate it, and feed us crunchies now we are so hungry. Yeah. Trolls.

Celina telling me about the trolls.

And Curtis, wanting out to hunt his mouse, wondering how he managed to be stuck with the stupidest humans ever.

What do your cats tell you?

In other news, iSmoothRun doesn't deal well with the indoor track at Repsol. It tells me all kinds of strange things. Like a 17 m climb on a track that is probably within a cm of being dead level. Or that the track has a dog leg that goes out to visit the nearby river that I take every now and then. Another branch goes around the pools. Today I called bullshit, and timed each lap separately with the stopwatch, while iSmoothRun ran in the back ground.

It thinks I ran 5.05 K in 30:26 for a 6:01 pace. I'd be pretty pleased with that, if in fact I'd done it. This was mostly a relaxed easy run, so I didn't believe it at the time. The stop watch says I did 20 laps in 30:30, and each lap is 224 laps, though Repsol has taken down the sign that says so. That is 4.48 K. That I believe. Each lap was about 90 seconds.

This is the map of what it thinks I ran. If you believe this I slogged through the competition pool and dive tank on each lap. I never left the outer lane, and this is a tight grouping compared to some I've seen. I'd always thought it was pretty accurate outdoors, but now I'm wondering.

As I was doing a cool down walk a whole herd of fire fighters showed up. They had to run 1.5 miles for some kind of test. I don't know what their goal time was. A couple of the guys were obviously runners. Most of them ran like they were thinking about it, aiming to beat the pace time, but not kill themselves doing it. I timed the slowest in that wave (she had a pony tail so it was easy to track) and she was way faster than me. Glad to see our fire fighters are fit!

Swimming and writing

And I'm off to the races!

Before the swim I was hanging out in the bleachers watching the swim kids kick their brains out because it was really busy and I wanted a contemplative swim. Lots of them can flutter kick down the pool faster than I can swim it. Whoosh! Still, I was watching their feet, and started thinking about ways to change up my kick.

Several times during the swim I thought I was swimming faster. I started in a lane with the other people swimming slower than me. Soon two of them left, and I didn't even have to pass them. Two others joined and I later learned they were a Rob and Sara that recently did the Germany Roth Challenge. I swim a little bit faster than she does, he swims a lot faster than me, and looks more relaxed doing it.

1000 m, 19:30 long course, nice and easy.
4x100 on 2, 1:35 to 1:45, then 100 really strong, 95 seconds. All of this was with me concentrating on my kick. For most triathletes our kick is lazy. We know our legs have to power us through a long bike and run, so we let our arms to do the work in the water. I'd read that you should kick from the hip with a straight leg. That doesn't get me anywhere. But it looks like the swim kids are bending their knees a bit and the flutter has a bit of vertical whip in it. So I tried that. Hmmm. So far so good, though I have to think about my roll now. There's always something.

500 easy, 9:30 or so, to top off a really good swim day.

At home after another coffee and second breakfast I buckled down to NaNoWriMo. After a bit of setup, and figuring how to get italic text to show up in my document to indicate what a person is thinking, I got a good start. I think there's going to be a lot of this character's thinking. So far his inside voice is a bit of a potty mouth. See the stats below. I might write more tonight, or I might watch Fargo the TV show.

Lastly, I clicked the camera shutter 2178 times in October. Of those, I liked 182 images enough to process in Lightroom and save to a separate folder. That's 8.3% which is a fairly high percentage of keepers as these things go. Then again, sometimes I develop things just for the practice.

Without further ado, here is the October image of the month. Ta da!

The run map done as it's going to get!

Previously, on Keith's blog:

There was a plan to do lots of running in 2016 in preparation for a marathon. The idea was to do lots of the runs on the many bike paths beside water and mark it on the bike path map. Even though the marathon didn't happen, what with work scheduling me for an additional month, lots of runs did. The map was faithfully marked in highlighter. Unfortunately, highlighter doesn't show up as well in photographs as it might.  I currently lack the Photoshop skills to do it electronically.

There's been lots of pathway construction and rehabilitation this year, and a few runs had some unexpected detour adventures. My run buddy is intrepid and up for whatever it takes. We got muddy shoes a few times, and while never actually lost, there were a few times I wondered just where we were going to end up.

Present day:
After I took much of September and October off (numbers later) we wanted to get out in the brilliant sunshine. Not too far, but we wanted to go someplace we hadn't run where we could see the mountains. Success! Plus it filled in a little hole in the map.

Today we parked at Carburn Park, and ran north along the Bow river to where the path stopped (construction) above Beaver Dam Flats in Lynn Ridge, then back and down to the dog park near Southland. Along the way we enjoyed a great view of downtown and the mountains, (I'll have to go back with the camera) plus the river. It was cool and perfect running weather.

As always we talked about everything under the sun, and stopped a few times to look at things. 9K, 1:07:31 nice and easy, even pace which is good what with the hills. As a digression when I was going through Mount Royal last week I photographed one home because I realized that it was perfect for one of my novel characters. Another scene is set near where we ran today, and I saw a couple houses that could belong to Mitch, one of Ceridwen's coworkers. Always nice when reality helps your novel.

I won't run tomorrow (never two days in a row), and I won't be trying to fill in any more of the map. I've already done more than I thought I would. The only piece that I missed was along the canal from Glenmore to Chestermere. Other than that, since it's hard to see the highlighting on the map, I'll give you a list:

• Fish Creek from end to end, both the north and south sides where the path exists. Plus on top on the north side. 
• Fish Creek down along the Bow river under 22X.
• North along the Bow river both sides up to Southland, then the east side up to Ogden Rd. 
• Both sides of the Bow from Ogden all the way through downtown out to Edworthy Park.
• From Edworthy on the north side through Bowmont Park to Stoney Trail
• Up the Nose Creek path from the Bow river up to Country Hills Blvd
• The Western Irrigation District canal from the Canoe club to Glenmore.
• Elbow river from the Bow down to the reservoir, on both sides where possible.
• Around the reservoir all the possible permutations. (I'm still kind of amazed I can run around the reservoir; in my head I think of it as a long way.)
• Down 37 St path back home.
• All the various pedestrian bridges along the way.
• A secret route out of downtown to home that is not along the river.

Some of these are plain runs, in the sense there isn't much to see, but for many of them there are spectacular views of the mountains, downtown, riverscapes, or scenic parts of the city, and sometimes if you get lucky there are sunrises or sunsets that take your breath away and you just have to stop and admire them. I have absolutely loved exploring the paths! Many of them were new to me (Bowmont Park is awesome!), and even some of the regulars I made a point of running the opposite way than usual.

It works out to:

• 38.7 K January
• 52.1 K February
• 60.1 K March
• 99.6 K April
• 102.5 K May
• 108.8 K June
• 127.7 K July
• 171.4 K August (oops)
• 56.6 K September, almost half of which was in one run, at the end of which I crashed and burned though I didn't realize how badly till a little later.
• 37.3 October, starting slowly again
• 855.2 is the year to date total. Probably my biggest run year ever, in my entire life including Ironman training.

I realize for some of you, these run totals are nothing special, but I'm pretty proud of my year.  I need to say a big thank you to my run buddies Michelle (best run buddy ever! did I say?) and Patricia (even though she nearly killed me on an 18 K run) who ran with me, and to any number of blog buddies and other friends who encouraged me and took a polite interest as I blithered on about running.

I can hear some of you numbers people asking if I'm going to run 144.8 more K over November and December. I don't know. Stay tuned. Ask me again at the end of December. Do you get a special runner's pin for 1000 K in a year?

Here's the maps, looking weird as I tried to bring up the yellow highlighter.  I took a look at marking up the electronic version, which I didn't see an easy way of doing, then figured out that posting an altered version on my blog would probably be a violation of their terms of service. 

And a graph, because I just know some of my readers are numbers geeks, and will pine without a graph (hello Julie!).

She who spanks bison

Tuesday was a short swim, about a K all up, mostly nice and easy, feeling pretty good.

Tonight was the first interval run in the marathon training program. It leads to an interesting graph. 3K warm up, 10 x(1 min FAST, 1 min recovery) 3 K cool down. The fast ones didn't all get faster, but they were quicker than I thought they'd be with my feet feeling heavy and tired.

What was interesting was programing iSmoothrun to talk me through it so I wouldn't have to remember which interval I was on. That made life so much easier, I just did what it said.

Once upon a time I was called the cow whisperer. Read about it here.

Just south of here on the Road to Nepal there have occasionally been bison grazing on the other side of a very flimsy fence. Grazing implies bucolic. Nothing could be further from the bucolic truth than a grazing bison, especially a suspicious mama bison. Did I mention the flimsy fence, and the massive stink eye that had my liver shifting in my chest as I rode past? I would never dream of spanking a bison.

Linda is made of sterner stuff. While I was getting ready to run, she was hard at it, dominating the bison. Molding it to her will. Spanking the recalcitrance.

After the run was over I had no trouble barbecuing the repressed bison. It was tasty.

7:15 or bust

How times change! For a long time I ran at about 7:30 per K. Recently I've been getting faster and it feels great!

But training for a marathon is weird in some ways. Consistency is huge, of course. But so is doing your easy runs slow. The point is to make them easy and relaxing, giving you time on your feet, learning to run more smoothly, getting your mind used to the idea that you're going to keep going. Part of it is to stay aerobic, getting your body to burn fat without building up lactic acid in your muscles faster than they can deal with it.

The problem is that once your legs know how to run faster, it becomes difficult to run slower. So tonight, for example. My legs are still feeling the Saturday run a bit. This was to be a recovery run, slow and easy, 8 K. Things were clunky to start, and stayed clunky the entire run, excepting a few times, for a few seconds, where my legs escaped and picked up the pace. I ended up taking 58:08 which is 7:15 pace, which is about what I was aiming at.

What's funny is that I clearly remember the first time running that distance in that time, and practically turning myself inside out doing it. I was perilously close to the retaste zone. Now I'm hardly breathing for much of it.  The work is to keep my legs turning over in what feels like a plod.

The Saturday run I wore my heart rate monitor for the first time in a while. Normally about 129 bpm is a chatchatchat pace near the top of zone 2. I was told I should be a little slower than that, hence the monitor. Blue is pace. I started about 7 min per K, and gradually slowed down. Heart rate is red, and you can see it gradually rises with a couple little burps for hills, where I really slowed down. So yes, for much of the run I was mid zone 2 which is success in my books. As I slowed I was running less efficiently, plus it had started to rain. That last half hour was brutal. You can see where my heart rate jumped up and stayed up.

Swam this morning and that was a bit of a plod too for much of it. 1K, 19:15, which is slow for me. First 250 m felt ok but was slow, slow, slow, next 500 m struggling to keep it together, and the last 250 m was a bit of a  slow flounder. Plus, (and Talisman I love you but you're killing me) the hot tub is STILL out of service. It's full of bubbly water, just to taunt us. Sigh. I'll be there on Thursday, Talisman! Just saying.

Gradual build triumph!

One of the recurring themes here is that I suck at gradually builds. I don't know how many times that appeared on the training plan, and every time I failed. When difference between doing the activity at all, and doing it at top speed is very small, the idea of a gradual build doesn't work so well.

So for example, my swim cruise speed is about 110 seconds per 100 m and I've done that over 3 k. My all out pace is ~90 seconds for 100 m, and not 25 m further. Not much space for a gradual build. Running and biking was much the same idea.

But running Tuesday! Holy totally by accident doodle! Check out these splits.

I started feeling pretty good after a warm up walk from my office to the downtown Y. My thought was mainly to run smooth and light, and trying to recruit my butt into helping run. It seemed like every time my phone chirped the time and pace info, there was noise around me so I didn't hear it very well. On the way back from the Crowchild bridge I could feel my running really settle into the groove. At times it felt effortless. I was beginning to feel my breathing a bit, but knew I didn't have far to go.

Seeing the splits after was astonishing to me. I hadn't planned to run each K faster than the one before, but that's nearly exactly what happened. And the final 2 K I was working, but it wasn't hurting, and I could have kept going for a little while anyway.

I'm not sure where all this has come from. Partly it's consistency, getting out there 3 days a week. I've shed a little weight, so the existing leg muscle doesn't have to carry around as much. Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of this running thing. I'm planning a bike ride this weekend, and it will be interesting to see if the run fitness carries over.

I ran Thursday, first attempt at hill repeats since forever. 3 x a little hill. I didn't puke. 5 K overall, 32:30, legs feeling kind of clunky and heavy.

I am loving the new camera lenses! I took the 100 mm to the race. If I got the focus right, I could shoot through the fence and it totally disappeared. Neat trick. There was a morning thunderstorm building, and the wide angle let me get it all in.

Weekend meet blur

If this is what retired life is like, I'm not sure I can take it. I'd better go into training.

Ran Thursday, kind of a clunky run, still feeling the half-marathon. I'm not sure what else happened all last week that kept me from blogging.

Friday:
Up and tackled the lawn-jungle. That goes into the books as a workout! Long wet grass is no fun.
Then off to the 70.3 expo. My race shirt from last year is a L, but is a small L. I tried to trade it in, but the guy said just buy another the right size for $5. I guess he's heard it a lot. No, I'm not doing the race this year.
Coffee with my buddy Neil to talk lenses. I did a round of research ending up with expensive lenses, then more budget priced. Then Neil asked what I was taking pictures of and what I wanted to do. That got me recommendations for two different lenses (see below).
I rode up to Monogram, and back the scenic route around the reservoir, with only a bit of rain.
Cleaning wine bottles. They've built up lately. Can't imagine where all the empties come from.
Slept like crap.

Saturday:
Up to help Linda prepare for a rampage and trample expedition with a buddy to the Millarville Market. The buddy showed up and we had a lovely coffee and visit on the patio.  (Look out world!)
After they left, I went and picked out these bad boys.

Home and some quickie photos of the garden. It was like the first time I got on Estela. I'd been riding a bike all my life, but getting on a carbon race bike is a new world. These lenses are a new world! Focus and depth of field is critical!

15 K run 1:40. The weather channel said 20 but it was hotter, maybe 22 or 23, and direct sun. I was trying to run easy, keep my heart rate low, stay hydrated, and keep my cadence and pace even. Mostly it was good, falling off a bit towards the end. I never got to the place where it felt like the heat would overwhelm me and make me stop. For all that I was trying to take it easy, this turned out to be the fastest 15 K of the 6 I've done recently. Yay me!

After some putter around I scouted out a great place to watch them install the pedestrian bridge over Anderson Road. I was up till midnight watching. Here's an iPhone shot, and a T6 shot. I think I've picked out the two shots from the same time. The T6 is only slightly edited.

Sunday:
Up early and off to the Calgary 70.3 race to cheer on Michelle, and play with my new lenses. She had an awesome swim, and her team, 95 Yarn Bombers had a super day! Here they are, about to get started.

Then out to Bragg Creek for a garden viewing though the Horticultural Society. Very nice. The idea was to go into Bragg for lunch, but that took much longer than it should have. Traffic was terrible, but the rest of it was nice.
Home, short nap. BBQ bison burgers. Edit photos. Write blog, drink wine, out on the patio. So lovely.

Bang! Weekend over. I need a weekend to recover.

MEC half marathon

It struck me I hadn't done a race report in a while, which I suppose is the inevitable result of not racing in some time. In some senses today was a very cerebral race for me, so I thought I'd talk about the whole experience.

I'm what you call an adult onset runner. I ran in high school, then nothing to speak of till about 9 years ago. It's been a long slog, trying to build milage. I'd get to about 10 K, then it seems I'd push too hard and have to rest.

I was a swimmer, but as the triathlon saying goes, you can't win a triathlon in the swim, but you can lose it. You can win it with a strong run, which I don't have. Again and again I'd get out of the water in a reasonable time, and then everyone would pass me on the bike. The only reason people didn't pass me on the run is they had already finished.

For whatever reason I've wanted to do a stand alone marathon for a while. This year I got serious about running consistently. As I got to a long run of 10 K, I stayed there for a while, till it felt comfortable, then started adding distance again. It really helps to have a run buddy who is amiable about distance, doesn't care about route, and naturally runs about the same pace I do. (Hi MC!)

Gradually the distance grew, and the times got a little faster. One of them she snuck in a faster pace on me because I hadn't been paying attention, which sort of got me off the plateau I'd been on. All good. Then the 10 K earlier this year was essentially an hour, which was a surprise to me. My weight had been slowly creeping up a bit since Ironman, but this year it's been sliding back down. That helps the running too.

This race was a big step for me, to see what my time was, see how I felt. I've no need for another medal or shirt, so the MEC race was the right venue and the perfect time. This is the first one of their's I've done, and I'm impressed. The race experience was flawless! It started on time, there appeared to be enough volunteers, the aid stations were where expected, and a good time appeared to be had by all. There was the faintest rain shower during the race, and shortly after I finished it started coming down cats and dogs.

I didn't have specific goals, though my recent training had me thinking I wasn't likely to be faster than 2:15 (a 6:24 per K pace or so) and I wanted to be faster than 2:30 (just over a 7 per K pace). I pretty well nailed it, so I'm quite pleased. I deliberately hadn't looked up previous half marathon times, and it turns out this is only a few minutes slower than my fastest one. Yay me again!

The pace right from the start was surprisingly fast. Within the first K I was running nearly alone, a few behind me, most out in front. It took a few K to settle into the groove, and I chugged along averaging about a 6:10 pace. I was happy and comfortable, and would have been able to chat, if there was anyone to chat too. For most the race I was leapfrogging a woman doing a walk run, but we didn't talk.

About 9 K I was getting some chatter from my legs and I slowed down a little, then about 12 K my pace fell again to about 6:30. K's 14 to 18 were tough sledding, with my pace falling to 7 per K. I was focussed on keeping my legs moving, thinking about my posture, trying to keep my hands and arms relaxed. I was determined to run the whole thing, no walk breaks. The cadence stayed about where it was, but I could feel my stride shortening and becoming stiffer. I got passed by a couple people that had been staying behind till then. I still wasn't breathing any harder, but my legs were starting to protest. I kept moving. There was a funny niggle up the outside of my left thigh to behind the hip bone. Never had that before, but kept my feet going. It got a bit easier as I got closer.

I tried staying with the people that passed me, but they ever so slowly pulled away. Sometime during the last mile I got another wind and my legs picked up, so the last K was a 6:20 pace.  Photos and buddies and bananas at the finish line!

Overall, my phone thinks I ran 21.56 K in 2:19:56.  The big surprise of the race is that the 5 K best pace was 30:36 and the 10K best pace was 1:02 which is essentially the pace I ran the 10 K in. Maybe that means I started too hard, but it didn't feel that way. My legs liked the pace and my lungs were happy.

The phone thinks the half marathon pace was 2:16:57, which is nearly exactly what I ran the 2010 Hypothermic half in.

I think it's clear I need to work on leg endurance, to be able to keep running at a desired pace. Core. Hill work. Hope it doesn't snow for Oct 22, MEC race 7.

Here I am finishing, photo credit Patricia.

And a couple more, credit Ken. This qualifies as a focussed look, I think.

My buddy Patricia, happy after a great race.

So RtN says to me HTFU

The Calgary cyclists of you already know exactly what happened today, and where.

For the others of you, contemplate this elevation chart.

The gray line is elevation, the orange line is speed. It was an out and back so the first half is a mirror image of the second half. Here's the route. It goes straight south of 22x on 37 St, only the name is changed. It stops at highway 549, the road that connects Millarville to Okotoks.

Cyclists here call it the Road to Nepal. Good pavement, not many cars, and all hills all the time. The level spots are measured in a small number of feet. Train on this and no course that's not actually in the mountains will phase you.

My riding buddy today was Leana, looking strong in her matching outfit. Our bikes are ready to go!

For all the weather predicted 27 C, it was actually pretty cool, maybe about 7 C when we started. There's a reason we both wore arm warmers till part way back. Good thing it wasn't 27, that and a still day runs my core temperature way up as I slowly churn my way up the hills. Leana is training for Ironman Boulder in a few weeks so the plan was to let her do her thing and I'd try to keep up.

Yeah. She pulled away on the uphills enough that I couldn't catch her on the downhills. This is where you learn how well your time on the spin trainer over the winter worked out. The road will tell you. It told me:
HTFU (the first word is harden.)
You are a weenie.
You haven't been training.
I'm being kind to you on your first ride here because there is no wind. You're welcome.
All the weight on your tires is hurting me, lose more weight.
No, the hills aren't steeper, or longer.
You are getting older and slower, while I am the same.

We stopped at the far end for a snack and headed back. Total ride was 51.84 in 2:23. This actually isn't far off early season rides for me, or when it's windy. My best time for this ride is 2 hours even. Everything felt pretty good for this ride.

Leana was fresh as a daisy when we got back, and I joined her for a 30 minute run, 4.11 K with a short walk break in there. My heart rate was steadily climbing. I think she could have run it somewhat faster.  Not me. This ride and run tells me I'm in no shape to be thinking of a half iron this year.

It's always nice doing a bike ride with buddies. This is the first time I've ridden with Leana, other than being in the same race together. I think I pushed a little harder than I might have otherwise, and I certainly would not have run afterward. We did get to chat along the way a bit. This was her first time, and I think she wants to do it again. Another convert!

We had a lovely snack in the back patio, and talked of many things.

Then a bit of yard work for me. Raking the tiny bit of back yard we have knackered me. It's still not 27 C and just as well. We have some flowers blooming! Such a pretty yellow.

The front yard is looking cleaner, lots of green things in the boxes.

I'm not sure what these are.

Some lilies pocking their heads out in the back garden. If I remember them from last year, they were huge.

I think this is a pansy.

BBQ chicken on a bun tonight. Soon. Just saying.

First outdoor bike 2016

During the ride at one point I had that POSH song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang going through my mind, and I was trying filk it into windy out, uphill home, but it wasn't working very well.

Yes, you remember the song, don't lie to me. It's the traveling life for me, Port Out, Starboard Home, POSH with a capital P O S H. Now that I've got that going around in your brain we will get onto the ride.

It's so nice here today! I've had rides at the height of "summer" that were not as nice as this. But we didn't just ride. I'm to star in a movie Michelle directed, filmed, and produced, and will edit. The subject matter is torrid and riveting for a certain audience. It's about taking the trainer tire off, and putting a road tire on.

Once I showed her how it worked, I made her do part of it for herself. That way, when (not if) she gets a flat out in the boonies, while it's raining or snowing, with a bear padding along to see if she would be good eating, she will have the confidence to get it done and be on her way. Which might explain why she wants to ride with me. Unless we're going downhill or she wants to draft, she can go faster than me. The cats knew she had arrived before I did!

This time I didn't have one, I didn't have 2, I had 3, count'em THREE means of keeping track of time distance stuff. Of course they all disagreed. That will be later for the many numbers fiends that make up my devoted readership.

The short and simple result is 55.5 K, 2:40, not trying to work too hard.We stopped for a few minutes in the middle to figure out where we were, and had to go south some more.

The first half, from home to 22x, and out to 22 was into a moderate wind. Going south wasn't bad, and along the diagonal was pretty good, if uphill the whole way. Then north on 37 St, or whatever it's called south of 22x, and all the rest of the way home was a cross or head wind. Not that I'm complaining. It makes for a better training ride.  Lovely warm, shorts and bike shirt for me, and most of the people we saw.

We saw a ton of other people out on bikes, and got a chuckle out of a cop speed trap on 22x just before city limits. They had one car pulled over as we got there, and pulled over 2 more as we went past. Not too many motorbikes, which is good.

After the ride was some yard work. It's April 2, so it seems just a little perverted to be working on the lawn.

After the yard work came why we do the yard work. That's BBQ duck breast. First outdoor meal this year! I don't even have the sunshade up yet, or pressure washed anything back there. Maybe tomorrow.

And the numbers and graphs I know you've all been waiting for.

		Bike	Garmin	iPhone (Ismoothrun)
	Distance Km	55.76	55.49	55.52
	Time	2:39:29	2:38:00	2:39:13
	Avg Speed	21	21.1	20.92
	Max Speed	76.2	74.8	76.1
	Elevation Gain		642	619
	Elevation Loss		641	601
	Avg Heartrate		114
	Max Heartrate		145

And the elevation pace stuff, can't forget that! This is from iSmoothrun. From that peak elevation you get an awesome view of the city, and if you ride it the other way the mountains are spectacular.

From the Garmin. I believe the heart rate. The blue line is pace. I was all over the place.

I don't have any idea what the cadence is measuring. The Garmin is on my wrist. It isn't hooked up to anything but the heart rate monitor.

All in all an excellent weekend so far!

If I had 3, they would be cookies

Not as much novel stuff as I had hoped for happened this week, but it's been BBQ rack of lamb. I mean, very relaxing. I mean, how can one NOT be relaxed with you have this?

 The Saturday morning run was lovely. This is one of the first times that a long slow run has actually been relaxing. I felt better at the end than I did at the beginning. My legs were feeling a little tight, then later that afternoon they wanted to go for another run.l

So, speaking of legs, me and my running buddy. It should be easy to tell which of us is which. Yes I ran in shorts. No she didn't run in painted jeans.

Part of our view.

 It's been interesting getting my heart rate monitor settled in at the start of a run. For a while it was reading 170 bpm which is flat out not right, considering my max is supposed to be 163. It got settled in and stayed nice and steady.

We started at the dog park at the end of Southland Drive, ran south to the pedestrian bridge at the north end of Fish Creek, back to Carburn park and around the little pond. That ticked over 11 K, 1:21 or so. A nice walk back to the car finished things off.
 

Then some treats! These are energy or recovery balls. They are not cookies! This has been decided. Though three of them would be cookies. I had two. They are very yummy!

Sunday was a very nice spin session pushing the heart rate up a bit. One the bike an hour.

 Oh! If you are a Joan Hickson Miss Marple fan, you can now get a Blueray of her BBC series. I got one from the library just to see, and the image difference is AMAZING! If I get organized I'll try to take some photos.

The AMA will be published tomorrow. Some of the answers are still being tuned.

Forerunner 25 zones revisited

First thing is to understand where the story left off. If you don't know what happened during my first run with the Forerunner 25, you'll be kind of lost here.

I tweaked the zones, and think I over did it. Last time they were reading too high, or so I thought. Today I got on the bike with a pencil and paper handy. After getting warmed up, I set up to produce a specific amount of watts, and recorded some info. The goal watt numbers are derived from a Functional Threshold Test done over the winter.

The idea here is to put out the maximum power you can maintain for 20 minutes. At first it's easy, then gets harder. My number was 225 watts, and using Training and Racing with a Power Meter 2nd edition by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan I had previously determined my watt ranges. That's the top list in the photo. They've lined up pretty well with what I feel during spin sessions.

The bottom list was based on max heart rate percentages by Karvonen method. If I'd thought about it at the time, I'd have know right off that something was wonky. 50% of 163 is not 105. It's 81.5. Except there's something else in the calculation too, the heart rate reserve. Here's the screen shot.

So today this is what I got pedaling for 10 minutes in each zone, with a break in between:
158 watts (nearly top of Endurance pace) 108/109 BPM, zone 1.2 per watch, or 66% of max heart rate by calculation. Breathing was deep and easy.
190 watts (top of Tempo pace) 118/119 BPM or zone 1.9/2.0 by watch, or 71% of max heart rate by calculation. Breathing was harder, but still regular and deep. Beginning to get a bit of a sweat on.
225 watts (Lactate Threshold) 129/130 BPM or zone 3.0 by watch, or 80% of max heart rate by calculation. Breathing really hard and deep, but not panting. The fan is on high. I think I could have gone another 10 minutes to repeat the threshold test, but I wasn't in the mood for that.

Running at the average of 125 BPM yesterday was chat pace. I'm not sure why the same heart rate has me breathing so much harder on the bike. Something isn't adding up. Then I found this chart here to compare % of Max heart rate, to the Karvonen which is Max heart rate minus resting.

If I look at the left most column, it lines up really well with my spin numbers today. But at least so far, the Karvonen numbers seem to work for running. I'll have to track this a bit more. Fortunately, the Garmin app offers 3 screens, a default, cycling, and running. Looks like I'll have to go through and set each. I know it knows when I'm running, I hope it's smart enough to figure out when I'm biking. I don't remember a way to select the activity on the watch. Maybe I missed it.

Overall it worked out to 1.25 hr on the bike. One last little factoid. My heart rate dropped by 15 beats per minute in one minute from a 130 beats per minute effort level.

The big amusement here this morning was giving the cats a hit of catnip. Linda loves doing this. It's quite the show, but this is the first time I've caught it on video.

Forerunner 25 first run

Here we go! The story to date. Back in December I attended a Garmin try out part at Tri it. Shortly after, I learned I'd won something, but I didn't know what. Three months to the day after, the famous Richelle got in touch and said it had come in. I was all excited and picked it up the same day.

The other day I tried it on a spin session just to get a feel for it, and try out the heart rate monitor. Today I tried it on a 10 K run with my buddy Michelle. My overall impression so far is that for what is billed as a "basic or entry level" runner's watch, it's pretty darn comprehensive! For all that people talk about waiting forever for their watch to find the GPS signal, this seems fairly quick. Still slower than my phone, or so it seems, but then the phone keeps track and already knows where it is, so it's got a head start.

Mainly I'm looking for heart rate monitor information. A bit of a digression here for the several readers that asked for it. Feel free to skip ahead a couple paragraphs, look for the line to know where the digression ends. The theory behind heart rate training is simple. The heart is a muscle, and we want to teach it to be stronger. One does not build other bodily muscles by trying to bench press 500 pounds right from the start. You have to start gradually.

Lots of things are tied together here because our body is a complex system that must be considered together. Generally speaking, the more fit you are, the lower your resting heart rate. Why? Because a strong heart can beat slower and still push blood around the body. The best way to get your resting heart rate is first thing in the morning, just before your alarm goes off. You don't even need to put your fingers on your throat if you're aware of your body. You should be able to feel it, just lying there. Look at the clock, count for a minute.

The resting heart rate, like so many things, is just a number that isn't good or bad in and of itself. Some people naturally have a faster heart rate. You want to find out where your normal is. If you haven't completely recovered from previous training it might be a bit higher than normal. Same if you are stressed about something, or you had a crappy night's sleep. This can be an indication that it's time for a rest day.

Lots of my long runs have been at what I call chatchatchat pace. This is a good indication you are in zone 2, where you are teaching your body to burn fat, and building a network of blood vessels to get oxygenated blood to the muscles. As you go faster you need to put more and more effort into the activity, and talking goes by the wayside. At the top end one of a few things can happen and you will stop. Your lungs can't supply enough air, or your heart can't move it around, or so much lactic acid has built up in your muscles they aren't going to move anymore. Or maybe you'll puke from exertion. Or, worst of all, you'll injure yourself. Don't want to do that.

So why zone 2? Why not the sexy high intensity training? I found this article that summarizes it fairly well. The vast majority of us are not going to race even an Oly distance. Maybe a 10 K run, but not a half marathon. The trick is to find the top of your aerobic output, and stay there. Learning to run in zone two, with a spicing of intensity helps train you to do that. At first it seems slow, but gradually you'll run faster and faster.

As a digression within a digression, one of the disadvantages of only using your heart rate is that there is a bit of a lag. It's an indicator of how hard you are working, but it isn't consistent over time. As you become more fit, you'll be able to run or bike faster on a given heart rate. You may have other issues affecting your heart rate. This is why many athletes have gone to measuring their bike performance with a watt meter. It measures how much effort you produce. If you set your bike trainer up consistently, you'll know week to week what you're putting out and if you're improving.

_______ Digressions end.

So, heart rate information. Normally when we run, Michelle is a champ at finding a 7:30/Km pace for us. Today was a little slower, 7:45 or so, but both of us were feeling a little tired. The watch connected with GPS quickly, and we set off from Glenmore Landing.

First thing I realized is that somehow in my fiddling around I got the pace info in miles, but that's ok. My phone was reading it out in kilometers so we knew when to turn around, and what we were running. The average heart rate over the whole run was 125 and it was often in the low 120's. Going up some hills boosted that.

The problem was that the zone number was making no sense. Much of the time the watch was telling me I was in mid zone 3, and I didn't believe it. The heart rate number was good, but I was suspecting that the max heart rate was set incorrectly, driving the zones to be calculated incorrectly. Once home I delved into the screens and figured out how to tweak it.

The numbers are still big and easy to read, and paging through the displays is quick and easy. I'm not sure how much the display information can be customized, in the sense of putting specific things in specific places. Just now I think I'd like to see heart rate on the top, and current pace on the bottom, since those are the two numbers I'm most interested in on a run. Maybe I'll have to dive into the manual and see if that is possible. As it is, I found the page with heart rate and zone, and left it there.

We chugged along doing a very nice out and back along the reservoir, on a cooler morning than we've had for a while. Lots of other runners out. Once home again I got the watch synched with the app on my phone and it displayed all sorts of data. A beginning runner should have nothing to complain about! There is all sorts of information to help a runner plan and improve their workouts. Being honest I probably won't use all the functions available, like the activity tracker stuff. It's there, but at the moment I don't want to use it.

Here's a bunch of images from todays run. There was a bit of Grrr along the way here, since I could see the photos on the laptop, but blogger wasn't letting me select them. In the end I had to go with screen shots, so the image quality isn't quite the same. The only thing I can see that's missing is the ability to float your mouse over one of the graphs, and get a readout from that instant, with a corresponding dot on the other graphs. But who knows? Maybe that's there and I haven't been smart enough to figure it out. These are all different screens within the iphone app.

There is cadence and elevation. The pace and heart rate screen scrolls. You can turn the phone sideways and the images embiggen.

This is iSmoothrun, screen shots from the phone itself. The three log photos are in fact one scrolling screen, which I like.

Turn that screen sideways and you get this graph, purple is cadence, yellow is pace, and the gray is elevation. This elevation looks comparable to the Garmin, but sometimes I don't believe it, being too flat, or too much of a change.

And lastly on another screen, the map.

The iSmoothrun map embeds some pace info via the colour, but I never know what it means. Both are fine for figuring out where you've gone. The Garmin red really stands out. I drilled into both, and I think the GPS was a bit off. Garmin had me running through the hospital, and some homes in Lakeview. iSmooth run had me on Glenmore trail itself.

The only substantive difference is that iSmoothrun puts the 3 graphs together so it's easy to see how they interrelate. There's times having the 3 together is a pain though, like when it shows cadence all over the place and it hides the other data. Certainly between the two of them I've no fears about running out of data to consider.

The 30 day cookie challenge is still going well.

Lastly, since I know some of you only come here to see the cats. This morning Curtis nearly timed the recreational vomiting perfectly, from a cat point of view. I just barely didn't step in it, as I was scurrying around getting ready to run. Sigh.