09.06.06
Triathlon Training, Day Twenty-two
New mile speed record, 13′29″. That is all.
09.04.06
Nike+ Hack
I’ve been meaning to post about how I got my Nike+ kit working with my New Balance shoes. Given that my Marware “Sportsuit Sensor+” arrives tomorrow, it’s about time I finished this post. 
My first attempt was tying the sensor under my shoelaces and holding it in place with some athletic tape. That worked just fine for walking, but as soon as I started running it slipped out. Fortunately I was on a treadmill so I didn’t have to back track to find it by the side of the road.
I ended up buying a Nike shoe pouch. It clips onto the shoelaces. It’s got room for a bunch of stuff, like keys and ID which makes it a little too big for the sensor. Stuffing it full of tissue works reasonably well, but the sensor does shift around a bit.
The solution, of course, was a cheap can cozy. I cut off a chunk, formed it to the shape of the pouch and dug a hole for the sensor. It holds quite well, and still gives me a a convenient place to store the receiver. I think the biggest drawback, I think, is that the pouch doesn’t necessarily stay quite in the same alignment for an entire workout. It’s not officially a problem, but I suspect that’s the source of some of the inaccuracy I’ve seen with the kit.
Tomorrow, a review of the Marware accessory.
08.27.06
Triathlon Training, Day Twelve
So I just realized I haven’t been posting updates. Partly that has to do with not actually working out much, I pulled a glute and couldn’t do a whole lot. But that’s all done and I’m moving along. I did a 4.5 mile walk today and that kinda caught me up for the week of recovery. I feel pretty good, so I think the semi-injury is behind me. Also down 1.6 pounds this week. Full speed ahead.
08.20.06
Triathlon Training, Day Five
I tried to do a 10K today, but no such luck. I’d like to say it was the rain that did me in, which is partly true, but I don’t think I’d have gotten around the likelake three times. Twice, maybe, but then the rain came.
Anyway, quick update so I can get back to figuring my plan for the next year.
Update: I could have put this in yesterday, but I didn’t do the math, yet. I’m down 4.8 pounds in the previous week. That’s partly due to a freakishly low weight on Sunday, but it’s still in the 3.something today.
08.16.06
iPod+Nike Kit, I’m a Fan
Like I said yesterday, I got the Nike+iPod kit to motivate me to get on the triathon training, and I have to say I’m a fan. I have quibbles with the website, but those will get resolved eventually (either as upgrades to the website or my own hacking of the xml files on the iPod). The hardware itself is slick and the only issues I’ve had are user-error (the sensor was asleep when I was trying to use it earlier, I had that realization about 30 seconds after I gave up.
Tomorrow I’ll post my hacks to get it working with my New Balance running shoes. I’d glady pluk down the cash for nike’s shoes, but I have wide feet and Nike has decided they don’t want to sell shoes that will fit me. Even going up a half size or a size doesn’t help like it does for a lot of people.
Anyway, handy dandy Amazon whore link included here for your purchasing goodness. It’s $29, if you have a nano get one. Even if you only use it a few times, it’s worth it.
08.15.06
Triathlon Training, Day Zero
I’ve been mulling over the idea of doing a triathlon for a long time now. I’ve finally decided to pull the trigger. My goal is to be in shape for one by next August. My main reason is that I can’t seem to get myself in shape (and/or lose weight) just for the sake of losing weight. Now I have a reason to not eat the cookie, because, honestly I wanted the cookie more than I wanted to lose the eight hundreths of a pound of fat it would equate to (inaccurate math aside, that’s how my nerdling brain works). Now, since I can’t possibly train enough to compensate for every cookie, I’ll have to keep the food decent to lose the weight to even have a hope of completing.
Plus, about a month ago I bought the Nike+iPod kit and an iPod nano to match giving myself the excuse that I wanted to train for a tri. It seems lame to not actually do it after only a month.
Today is day zero because I don’t have a plan in place, yet. I have the beginnings of one and general thoughts on how to split up the year. No plan doesn’t mean no work, though. I got in a run today (probably my weakest of the three), 1.19 miles in 18 minutes or so. I ran for 1 minute, walked for 3, I petered out 15 seconds short of the fourth interval. I will get faster, stronger and go longer.
What I do know, is that I will be blogging at least twice a week on what I’m up to tri-training-wise. I will have the plan in place by the end of this weekend. I will lose a pound a week, except test race weeks (if there are any) and maybe for a couple weeks before the big race.
06.25.06
Consistency
Four weeks in the last eight months. That’s how many weeks I haven’t exercised at least 3 times since I’ve been tracking it on my workout calendar. Most of those weeks, I was sick. Not too shabby.
04.20.06
D*I*Y Planner-like Workout Logs
Since a number of people have come here having searched for workout logs, I figure I’d share what I have… rather than subject them to my nearly year old workouts that are of no use to anyone.
I should note, this is what I use to track weight lifting workouts. I track similar information for my cardio workouts, but I just put it in the notes of the calendar entry on my workout calendar.
These logs are based on the D*I*Y Planner OpenOffice.org templates. The OpenOffice.org 2.0 ones, to be exact. OOo Draw is a pretty darn slick program, by the way. They’re the “classic” size, basically a half sheet of 8.5″x11″ paper. I got the office supply store to cut a ream of paper in half for $2 and bought a 3 ring binder to store them in. All very slick, if you’re into office supply pr0n.
I’ve made blank versions of these, but I actually “hard-code” my workout into a new template when I mix things up. I do that about every five weeks so it’s not that much work. I’d love to figure out how to programmatically make OOo Draw make that happen. I imagine it’s not too terribly difficult to munge the base XML, but I haven’t taken the time to do it.
Now to the details…
The top section has all the information that I record about a workout, plus the warmup I plan on doing beforehand. I wear a heart rate monitor so I have lots of numbers my nerdy mind can play with.
- Elapsed Time
- Total time I was working out. Duh.
- Calories
- The number of calories the heart rate monitor says I’ve burned. I use this more of a scale of how much I worked out, not as a “what I’m allowed to eat” measurement. It’s also a handy number to use to push just that little bit extra to get a nice round (neurotic) number.
- HR (Avg/Max/Min)
- Heart rate, average, maximum and minimum. The heart rate monitor I’m using right now actually only tracks average, but that’s good enough for me.
- Warmup
- As I mentioned above, this is the warmup I have planned. Usually something like 3 minutes on the elliptical, or 5 minutes on the rower.
- Overall Exertion
- A 1-10 scale of how hard I thought the workout was, a totally subjective number but still useful for deciding whether I need to change things up again.
- Energy Level
- How I feel before the workout. I also record aches and pains here.
And then there’s the bulk of the form. There’s a column for the exercise name, of course. This particular version has room for 3 sets of each exercise. I haven’t had a need to make a 4 set version, but I probably will eventually. Above the diagonal line goes the number of reps, below the line is the weight I used. I usually scribble in the weight I plan to use (based on the previous workout) next to the exercise name.
The strange plus sign is to signify a superset. I fill in the box with a 20% grey (or just a pen) to show that the adjacent exercises should be done in a superset. Naturally you could continue down and group more than two if you were doing trisets or giantsets, or whatever they’re called.
Oh, and of course the standard checkbox to show I’m done with the exercise. It’s not strictly needed, but it was in the template and it’s handy for seeing at a distance how far along I am.
And finally, there’s a section for notes at the bottom.
04.16.06
One more goal down
I benched 225 today.
I didn’t feel like doing my usual workout today, so I decided to do a one rep max test on bench. It’s a milestone of sorts. It wasn’t too long ago that I had trouble getting over 200.
Also, it happens to be more weight than my final goal weight, so I can bench more than I will weigh. Not quite as significant as benching your own weight for reps, but at 280 that would be really, really impressive.
12.20.05
I’m back in the green.
I have this spreadsheet that I use to track how well I’m eating. I have it broken down into columns for each meal, plus a treat. Green is good, red is bad. At the bottom I tally up the percentage of green days and that is green or red based on a threshold I set.
As of today I’ve gotten back over that threshold, despite a few days of holiday drinkin’ and eatin’.
FWIW, the two numbers on the left is the percentage of days I’ve been under the trend line for my weight and waist measurements. Those don’t get a threshold, since they’re basically out of my control. The one on the far right is workouts. I busted my ass enough earlier in the month to compensate for the days off resting my busted up knee.
I’m finally catching up on my RSS feeds and I came across, “The Printable CEO” (via 43 Folders), which is basically the same thing. I like his weighted point total. I plan on applying that idea to my spreadsheet, so I can get away from the black and white good/bad distinction of what I’ve been doing. The idea being that at some later date I’ll be able to improve even on perfect eating every day.