The children of the canola

882 photos later. My eyes are tired.

No, I'm not going to make you scroll through that many photos. Many, perhaps even most are experiments with camera settings; some wildly over or under exposed, some are essentially duplicates with slightly different settings, some are badly composed, or have other problems. Some are successful experiments in trying to produce a particular effect but are otherwise uninteresting. A few seem promising to work on as actual photographs.

No, this one isn't mine, you can see me off to the left. This is a screen shot of a Neil Zeller photo showing all of us hard at it, practicing our craft.

No, we aren't trampling canola, there was some patchy dirt where we were standing.

What an awesome weekend though!  Saturday was classroom theory and practice, then doing some evening city shots. Sunday was road trip day. After the car show in Alderside, we headed down the Cowboy Trail, till Neil got excited and yelling "stop the van, stop the van!" I never knew canola could do that to anyone. Still, we all piled out and started clicking. As we were getting in after, there were some corny jokes about 'children of the corn' and that's where the blog title came from.

So back to the beginning. You knew I'd bought a camera as the first step to exploring photography. I've bumped up against the limitations of the iPhone camera, and wanted to better control what was going on. I have to admit all the settings on a camera with manual controls are just a bit intimidating. A lot intimidating.

I explored for a bit, and though I understood what ISO, aperture, and shutter speed were, and knew they were related, I didn't really get the relationship. Nor how to go about getting some of the neat effects I've seen. My explorations weren't a waste of time, but I didn't get very far.

Neil and I have been buddies for a while, and I still get people that find my blog through his dormant barefoot running blog. When he opened registration to a weekend course to learn how to actually use your camera in manual, I snapped it up. It's the best value I've had in a training course ever. I loved the combination of theory and practice. This is really the only way to learn, by actually using your camera and twiddling with the settings. There is no rush. You have all the time you need.

There were just a few off-hand things (for Neil) that were major aha moments for me. I was afraid I'd get stranded deep in the menu and mess up some settings, and didn't know what most of them were. Or why. Some are still a mystery, but that's ok. Start with the basics and move on.

The class was 10 people, essentially all beginners, and a couple of more advanced people showed up a bit later in the morning. Neil has a ton of his own gear, and brought some loaner gear as well. I had always thought camera gear was delicate and would break at a cross look. It is delicate in some ways, but surprisingly durable. Looking at Neil's gear you can see it's been used hard in the real world. I'm still going to be careful with it, of course. Everybody that borrowed an expensive lens was walking very carefully on the rocky ground near the falls.

The difference between my kit lens and the professional lenses was astonishing to me. I came back after one sessions wanting to buy all the lenses! I spent a bit of time today at lunch shopping and reading lens reviews. What fun!

The evening trip around Calgary was 4 different places. We were a bit disappointed in the sunset over the Weaselhead, but several of us noted the next day that the photos looked way better on a computer, and the sunset had more interest than we thought. Poppy Plaza blew my mind. Here's the first long exposure shot of the night for me, dark skies, straight out of the camera raw, no processing at all. (Did you notice the pun?) Nothing special for a lens, just the kit 18-55 mm.

Now that I look at this a little more, I might fix it up in Lightroom just to be able to show the difference in a later blog.

I'd thought of going there just after buying my camera, but it would have been a waste of time. I see now I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works, and there would have been no results. We all had a blast trying different things, and were astonished at the results we were getting. Of course we walked downstream a bit and shot the Peace bridge.

It was just as well we were done for the evening, because I couldn't shut my left eye and look through the viewfinder with the right anymore.

Sunday we were off again for a road trip. Alderside, through Nanton, over to Chain Lakes, down to Lundbreck Falls, the Burmis tree, Frank Slide, then several sites near the Oldman River dam just because the light was astonishing! Your trip might be somewhere else, based on weather, time of year, or what Neil hasn't seen recently.

Here's two waterfall shots, one a few seconds after the other to show the difference settings can make. Same lens, same spot, completely different look. This is a screen shot straight out of the camera, no processing at all.

I could go on and on about images. But really the weekend was about learning, experimenting, and having fun. Neil had a great way of explaining why the smallest f stop number is the biggest opening.  I always had to think about it. Then you get to experiment. He completely removed the intimidation factor from the camera, and showed how much fun it was to go out and photograph stuff. Even if I do hold the camera wrong, and he winces every time he sees that. Something else to work on.

So if you have a camera that has lots of buttons, or maybe a dial with an M on it, and are afraid to play with, sign up for Neil's course. Now I'm going to go look at those 882 images to see what I can learn from them, and play with some of them in Lightroom. If I'm not back in a while, send a search party.

Fitness catchup amazeballs!

After a couple of big essays, here (50 years of progress), and here  (something only slightly less important than your own breathing), I need to get you caught up on the ongoing fitness stuff. Because it IS ongoing. The rest of my life, I hope. This isn't a "get fit" once and done thing.

Last Wed was a run that felt horrible. I thought the phone was lying to me, and told me 5 K when it felt like much less. The run was 5K 35 min.  I had tried turning on the app internal pedometer.

Tonight I did the same route with the pedometer off. The map looked the same, within a few meters. Well, other than the colours being different. Why? Because I ran a whole lot faster! I ran 6K in 37:14 and that's my fastest 6 K, even though the last K was recovering from A BLISTERING 5K 30:14 time! Thats 6:03 per K which for me is an amazing pace.  The left is the fast one.

This consistency shit is paying off!

Friday, 1:10 water running with Katie then swim 1K 19 minutes feeling tired.

Sat run 13K run 1:37 at 7:22 pace along the north rim of Fish Creek over in the SE. I hadn't seen much of it before since the path I usually take is way off to the south side of the park. We were both struggling a little, and we had a couple monster hills up out of Fish Creek, but it was all good. Afterward I dropped in a Strides and got another pair of shoes identical to the ones I have now.  Along the way there was this. It looks threatening but we didn't get rained on.

Sunday swim 1K 18:30 feeling in the groove. 50 m in 40 seconds, 100 m in 92 seconds.

Holiday Monday was a gong show in the pool. A pregnant lady barged into the lane I was sharing with a fast girl, and tried to run me over. I hadn't known she was there, and talking to the fast girl after, she hadn't known either. The pregnant lady just plopped down the ladder in front of her. Even with that, and 5 other people joining us, I pounded out 1 K 18:30. I hadn't intended to try to be fast, but with someone swimming just a bit faster in the other half of the lane, my inner shark came out. She was swimming 400's with a pull buoy and I couldn't quite keep up in the middle of my one K.

Afterward we went up to the track. iSmoothrun says I ran 4.95 K in 30:09 and I don't believe it. Sure there were some fast laps as I pushed hard, but there were lots of slow laps, dodging the tourists. That was brutal.  I suppose I should be counting laps, then I'd know how far for sure. Take this one with a grain of salt.

Then today. Swam 1.5 K, 27:40 nice and relaxed, evenly splitting the 500's, 9:10, 9:15, 9:15. Then an 88 second 100 m. All of it felt really good. My inner shark was feeling mellow since I had a lane to myself and I was comfortably faster than all the other swimmers in a nearly empty pool. It was nice cruising back and forth, trying to maintain form. I was imagining a secret watcher (there's a joke there) with a clipboard, counting strokes per 50 and writing down intervals, and I didn't want to disappoint her. I mean the watcher. The secret one.

Then the fast run tonight I talked about earlier. This has been good. Looking forward to the 10 K race this weekend, but I'm looking forward even more to seeing my buddy Janice from the east coast.

I've got a bunch of other blog stuff to catch up on. The great mapping project. The novel. Garden news. Did I tell you we bought a new car? So much stuff to talk about, but there's a cat demanding my attention. He's been giving me such sad looks.

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!

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.

Forerunner 25 first spin

It turns out that my first workout with the Garmin Forerunner 25 that I won the other day is an easy spin session. Basically just long enough to wake up my legs, and then do some stretching and a bit of core after.

I am impressed so far. Other than needing to be outside to get the GPS to set the time (it was snowing), it's all been good. One of my tests for devices is to see if I can get going on it without needing the manual. Garmin passed that one with flying colours!

It took a few minutes of fiddling to get it set up as I started easy. I just wanted to get the heart rate monitor going, and that happened pretty quick. I turned on the auto pause, and the zone monitor. Next time I'll turn them off. I had it fastened to the handlebars so I could see it all the time, and it spent much too long telling me it was paused, or resuming. Since I wasn't trying to stay in any particular zone, I got a bit annoyed at it beeping at me telling me something I already knew.

What I really liked was the decimal zone readout. Zones themselves are pretty coarse, but with the decimal you know exactly where you are. I can see where this is going to be useful.

The numbers are big and easy to read. The buttons are responsive, and not too hard to press. I wasn't on the bike long enough to really dial into an effort level, but I think I've been slacking off. Next is a run, probably Saturday. It's going to be interesting to compare the Garmin to the iphone.

For this workout I didn't have Garmin Connect on my phone, but I got that going after. That wasn't quite so painless, but then, I had a cat "helping" me. It took 3 tries to pair the phone and Garmin, but that was just me being slow. And the cat. There's a zillion options there that I don't have time to explore tonight. There's a sleep thing, so I'll try wearing it to bed tonight and see what happens. I figure the worst that will happen is that I don't have it set up right and I'll run the battery down a bit.

More news as it happens.

Excited!

So, remember back in December I was told I'd won a Garmin? Three months later to the day it arrived. Thank you to the famous Richelle for organizing and following up with them. To save you doing the embiggen thing or squinting, it's a Forerunner 25. It looks like it's going to be perfect for what I need.

Here's what's in the box. Don't get me started on rotated photos.

 It's charging up now, but I'm looking forward to seeing heart rate data again. For a while I was very strict on heart rate training, and it seemed to do good things. I don't think I'm way out to lunch on it, but it will be good to be sure. Maybe a spin later tonight, if I can escape the cats occupying my lap. More info after my first use.

In relation to nothing in particular, this is what a 5 ounce glass of wine looks like. No, I didn't add it to the same glass, there's another glass.

And another thing! My buddy Janice is coming to run the Calgary Marathon at the end of May. Yay! I'm planning to do the 10K so we can hang out in the start area together. I last saw her when we went for a run on Crescent beach in Nova Scotia. I am already making a list of the various places to take her.

Monday swim was ok for the day after the race. 500 m 9:20 3x 100, then some water running, 2 x 100, more water running and stretching. Chatting with Katie.

Tuesday 5K, 32:35 feeling pretty good for tired legs. I had to wear long pants again as the weather had cooled off to be merely seasonal, which feels really cold right now.

Daylight savings time just pisses me off! Seems like every year the spring forward one kicks my ass worse and worse. I've been wandering around this week half awake, feeling far worse than what you'd think being down an hour of sleep. Then again, I got a couple nights of really crappy sleep over the weekend. I've seen some really scary traffic stuff happening. Maybe it's distracted drivers, maybe the time change. I wish they'd pick one time zone, I don't care which, and leave it that way.