The astute reader will probably note that I didn’t blog about running on Monday as my schedule suggests I should have. They will probably also note that today is listed as session 1 for the week, rather than session 2. They are right.
After my drive on Sunday, and return, I slpet fairly late Monday morning, and ended up being awake for about 4 hours in the middle of the day, and another few hours after 8 at night. I don’t think that the miss was a total loss, as the idea of the schedule is to run three times a week, rather than a 3 – 4 – 3 – 4 cycle. I’m going to be a day behind this week, but I’m not too worried about it.
I tried a different application for tracking running this week. A couple of weeks back I ordered an arm band for my G1 and that came in yesterday. I’m going to have to mod it yet, as the headphones that came with the phone are not a good match for the headphone jack on the G1. It appears that it would be a good armband for an iPod touch or possibly an iPhone as well if someone is looking for one. Picked up on eBay for something like 5.00 and 4.99 shipping. I ordered 2. The kit comes with both a neoprene armband as well as a plastic waterproof case with it’s own arm band, and a lanyard for wear around your neck. Nice I suppose if you are going snorkling, as it’s rated for up to 5 meters, but I hadn’t really been planing on taking my phone swimming with me, and I suspect it would not work well as an underwater speakerphone.
One of the objectives was to use buddy runner on my cell phone to track my running session. It’s designed to use the built in GPS and such to keep track of speed and position. I’m a bit bothered by the fact that once you hit ‘start’ on applications like this, if it tells you that you need to activate the GPS and cell location system, that it doesn’t recognize that you’ve done that and actually start when you get back to the application. In other words when I got done with my run today I discovered that I did not have a track of my running experience on the phone. Oh well.
Another mod I have to do to the case is punch a hole for the camera. One of the add-in’s on my phone uses the camera to determine the ambient light level, and if it deams the light level as ‘dark’ it dims the backlight on the phone. That kind of makes it hard to read the screen while it’s in the armband. I’m not sure how much tood that will do, as the armband may be holding the camera it self up to my arm, but the neoprene certainly isn’t letting much light in.
The run itself today was a bit worse than last Saturday. I followed the same basic course. The weather was significantly warmer, with relatively high winds. For the most part those winds were cross to my path, and much of my path has tree cover along the sides of the path to act as a wind buffer. The down side is that the wind increased evaporation, and the heat took it’s toll. I didn’t run even as well as I did Saturday, which in my opinion was no great shakes. That said, I think I got further on my way back on my final running attempt than I had on Saturday. Hoping that Friday afternoon’s workout ends up going even better. At the very least, it looks to be cooler.
I’m begining to wonder if it is going to be taking me longer than the 9 weeks the course is designed to get up to the distance and speed I should be going. I certainly don’t think that I’m ‘failing’ the course, as I have seen significant improvements in my endurance and my abilities in other areas. But it certainly doesn’t feel like I’m on ‘track’ for completing in 9 weeks. That said, I should be well on my way, and having registered for a 5k run this summer, I’m going to be working at making it happen by the time of the run.
I’m only 44 (45 a week after the week 9 cutoff) I may not be the 25 year old who takes the c25k experience and turns it into a lifelong career of running marathons, but I’m not quite dead yet either. And I’m working to make this go even better.
Stay safe.
