Why am I not doing anything at all?

Work, I tells ya. The amusing part is that I am going on vacation in a few days to the home of the Ironman championship, but in order to take the necessary time off I've been working pretty much from when I get up until about 11pm every night.

Once I get there I'll probably be working out every day, just for fun.

Why am I not swimming more often?

It was bathtub hot in the pool today and a mile of laps loosened up some shoulders and upper back that had been getting overly tense lately.

Swimming always makes me hungry though. Trader Joe's frozen naan breads make awesome pizza crusts. You heard it here first.

It's all about the rain at this point

It was supposed to start raining today and not stop for about 5 days. At midafternoon the rain was still far enough out on the radar that it was worth trying to sneak in a ride. Normally ride day is Sunday, but odds are not looking good for a dry day. If it works out, hey, bonus ride.

Empirical evidence

The footpod again messed with the satellite lock and frustrated me to the point where I just ran without the GPS features.

Ran and out and back and at the turnaround point decided to fall back to my old default style of running with longer, lower cadence strides. All the recent practice at running higher cadence actually made this hard. If I started daydreaming my feet would speed back up again.

It was barely detectable on the graphs. Cadence average on the way back was only 3 strides per min slower. Heartrate was up 3bpm. Given the tougher climbs in that direction though I think that is a wash. It may take a longer run, or one with identical difficulty laps or something to get a proper reading.

Kind of interesting that the effort to condition myself to a new style of running seems to be taking hold.

The other weird thing is that it was supposed to rain tonight, with calls for snow on the hilltops, and I was actually disappointed that the system didn't move in while I was on the trail.

A different kind of nice night

1500 ft of elevation was just enough to be above where the rain turns to snow. It was just a flurry at first and I thought it was ash from people burning wood in their fireplaces, because it just doesn't snow in Oakland. But ash flakes don't turn to water when they touch your skin. Kinda cool.

And add me to the list of the legions with Forerunner 305s who have found some quirk in it they just want to have explained to them by someone who already figured it out.
The footpod I just started using seems to trigger a very odd behavior. If you have the unit on and have a satellite lock, but then turn the footpod on and it recognizes it, you get a prompt to tell it if you are indoors or outdoors. If you say outdoors, it starts all over locating satellites. Very annoying. I was at the trailhead ready to go and after five minutes of stretching to kill time while it locked in I finally gave up and ran anyway.

Slacking

Business trip was not very workout friendly, as expected. No fitness room at the hotel. -15 Celsius outside. Packed schedule of structured and unstructured meetings. Jet lag from going 3 hours East. You get it.

Day one back home and some kind of stomach bug manifests itself, about which the less is said the better. Early in the day I was willing to venture out for a bike ride but it rained on and off. Thought about hitting the pool at the Y later but felt pretty grim by then.

Maybe tomorrow, weather permitting, it will be back to the grind after an unplanned week off.

The end of a consistent workout streak.

Next scheduled workout in a couple of days will likely be displaced by some corporate obligations to drink tequila instead.

Had a good stretch going for the last month though (from SportTracks UI):



Not sure if that has anything to do with the good run I had tonight with suprisingly high speed and low max HR, but anyway I'll take it. Running sub 10:00/mi average on hilly trail with a max HR less than 170 is pretty good for me. Now if only I had remembered to turn the blessed footpod on I'd know if being better at keeping cadence up had anything to do with it... Here's the terrain.



And just to recap, I'm into it with Garmin for the following.

Forerunner 305 w/ HR strap
Footpod
Cadence Sensor
Quickmount kit

Managed to avoid half the Super Bowl at least.

February 1, and 65 degrees and sunny. Yeah I'll go for a bike ride and maybe check in on the game later. Recorded the second half and used the 30 second skip to good effect. Not a bad game to come in on late.

Unexpectedly excellent ride too. Didn't really plan it ahead of time but wound up getting in 31 miles and some decent climbs. Plotting it on a map actually makes it look like we actually went somewhere.

Second try with the footpod is better.

Turns out it can be used as a datasource at the same time the GPS is on.

It was a bit of a nuisance when it reacquired satellites after I turned the pod on and the main unit asked if I wanted to use it in or out doors. Not sure why it would reacquire sat signal if it already thought it was outdoors and had signal locked.

So it forced me to stretch for an extra few minutes while it got set again.

I still have a long way to go before I think a cadence of 90 is sustainable, much less sensible.



And don't ask me what that 192 heart rate was about. No way. Not in a lengthy downhill area. Seems awfully similar to the way the bike cadence sensor can sometimes crosstalk with the heart rate signal. Effortwise this run felt very similar to the last one where HR was about 165 in that area.

Footpod first test

Hooked up the Garmin footpod for the first time tonight. Ran a route I've run many times before, where I know the distance at several points along the way and overall. It was pretty accurate. For 4 mile run it came up about .08 miles short where I normally stop. 2% error is within the claimed accuracy.

Kind of a bummer that you can't enable both GPS reception and footpod data at the same time. The manual seems to imply you can't. I'll have to verify. It would be more useful to look at my cadence if I could also plot it against elevation/grade, which you only get if GPS is on.

I've been making a conscious effort to up my cadence from my sort of natural tendency to try and run with longer, slower strides. Even after working on faster turnover for months, and tonight I felt like I did OK at maintaining it, my average cadence was 82. Peak was 91, which is what many say your average should be.