Runscribe update

This isn't an update from me on the Runscribe, which I started using back in October last year, as I haven't been running - let alone running with my Runscribe - but rather an important update from the people who make it.

They have just launched a new website "Running Unraveled" which aims to use the anonymous crowdsourced data collected from all the users of Runscribes around the world. In particular, they have finally published the results of a study of those who ran the New York Marathon last year with one, in which I can count myself (I am the 3:02 data point).

The other interesting development is that they have added a couple of new metrics to the dashboard, as well as a comparison to the Runscribe community of where you stand in terms of "efficiency" and "shock". Shock is a total measure of the 3D G's you have undergone multiplied by the number of steps you have taken. Efficiency (I think) is comprised of some mix of step rate, contact time and flight ratio. This last - flight ratio - is an interesting addition which measures the ratio of the time in the air to the total time to take a step. The results from the New York Marathon appear to show a very strong correlation between (lower) race times and (higher) flight ratios, as one would expect. What is perhaps striking (if you'll forgive the pun), is how much variability there is in flight time between elites (50%), competitive runners (25%) and fun runners (10%-0%).

If I ever get back to running, it will be interesting to see how my "flight time" compares to last year. It will also be interesting to see how this metric differs between a similar paced run on the treadmill, on a track and on a trail.

'Roids

So in spite of taking Valium to get to sleep last night, I woke up at 3 am and have been awake since then. Given the - let's say - unpleasant environment at work, you'd think I would have been up going round and round conversations I had had or worries about what was to come, but it wasn't like that at all. I felt really awake (and still do) - in fact, had the family not been at home I would have gone downstairs to do some nocturnal deejaying. Instead, I watched a film and tried a bit of meditating (which just woke me up even more) and even some yoga for goodness sake. In a way I enjoyed it and knew that I was somehow resting, even if I wasn't sleeping.

I don't know where this energy is coming from. It could be the steroids or it could be the release from annoying but fairly constant pain / discomfort. Another explanation is something I have experienced one or two times in my life when I am faced with a point of inflection in my life: a change of girlfriend, a change of country or a change of job. I don't think I will be doing any of these things but I believe that my organism goes into a kind of hyper-alert "survival mode". In the past I have had up to months of needing very little sleep, feeling very energized and alert, but also aware I am living on borrowed time. It could also be the Mindfulness that I am doing that is somehow waking me up. I've certainly noticed it bleeding over into daily situations like driving, waiting in doctor's to be attended, meetings, etc. It's too early to tell, but just two weeks in to the 8 week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) course my wife got me for me birthday it really seems to be starting to have a positive effect.

The drugs are definitely helping too, and my symptoms have all but disappeared, which means that I can do my rehabilitation exercises that much more effectively and hopefully put this thing back in its box. I suspect I will have to "manage" it, just like I have to manage my Morton's Neuromas - something to be aware of, a warning to be heeded but not necessarily a stopper. My physio pointed out something interesting to me. I have two protruding discs - one between C5 & C6 and one between C6 & C7. The point is that the one between C5 & C6 is on the right hand side and yet I have no symptoms on that side of my body. It is quite possible I have been living symptom-free with these underlying problems for years without realizing it. This paints a much more optimistic picture. It may be that the "crisis" I had which lead to my back and neck locking up concentrated the pressure from the protruding disc on a small area of a nerve, leading to its inflammation and the subsequent numbness and referred pain in my left arm. This would be consistent with the order of events, because I only noticed this once the other problems had gone away and, in spite of not running, before I started medicating it just got worse and worse.

I've continued to make an effort to improve my posture and people have commented that I look taller and sit straighter. In fact I have more or less stopped using my Lumo Lift as I feel that awareness of my posture (and the typical causes for breaking it) has been internalized now (here Mindfulness helps with the awareness too). So I'll probably lend it to my wife for a bit, as she could do with minding her posture a bit more. My Shoulders Back brace did arrive after all (albeit with an unexpected customs bill of about 30 €...) and I really notice that it helps me stand up straighter and taller. It's comfortable to wear during the day under a shirt (and I have found a way of taking it off and putting it on discreetly when I get changed in the gym) but I think that I would have to wear it on the outside of a t-shirt if I were to run with it, because otherwise it would cause too much chaffing. I expect that it will help strengthen some of the muscles that are indirectly implicated in a more upright posture - such as the internal neck muscles I have been exercising recently - but others, like those that help stabilize my scapulas, are probably having too much of an easy time of it and need to be strengthened separately. I'll see what my physio has to say on the matter. Lastly, I bought yet another gadget to help me on the road to recovery: a goose-neck support for my Kindle, so that I can watch movies and series while on the elliptic, without having to crane my neck. I hope that all these measures (plus the new chair I mentioned last time) will help me be in better shape for when I come off the meds and - hopefully - gradually re-introduce myself to running and cycling.

Sermana no tan Santa

It wasn't the best Easter break ever, I have to say, with my back problems and a bout of gastroenteritis (first the eldest, then the youngest, then me), but it was nice to be able to visit my brother and his family in London, my sister-in-law in then my parents in Málaga and, finally, my parents-in-law in Ciudad Real. My brother-in-law, Vicente - a trained osteopath - was able to give me an excellent massage which went a long way to making me feel better, but it wasn't until yesterday that I was able to run again, for the first time in three weeks. That's the longest break I have had from running in about 7 years (and certainly since I started this blog). In that time, my VO2 Max has dropped to 63, my % fat risen to 8.5% and my average resting heart rate gone up to 44, which is about where I was when I started my training back in January. So three weeks of de-training = seven weeks of training. Sounds about right.

I'm still not 100%, but of my three recurring complaints which seemed to collide in a general back seizure - stiff neck (from bad posture at work), sore shoulder (from prior injury) and lower back fatigue (from running with weak hips) - I am just left with slight shoulder pain. I'm going to start seeing a physio regularly to work out what I can do to help prevent these problems. In the meantime, what better therapy than that of the retail kind?

So, I bought myself another gadget, the Lumo Lift, which is a little device that "bugs" you if you slouch while sitting or standing. It's a very simple little thing with a tilt sensor that you calibrate once when you are sitting with what you deem to be good posture and it alerts you by vibrating if you break this posture for more than a configurable amount of time. There is an accompanying app which is not actually necessary, but helps by tracking how many hours you have managed to keep a good posture each day, as well as the number of steps you have taken. It's not really aimed so much at the fitness crowd as it wouldn't work as an activity tracker while running (it is affixed with a small magnet to your clothes) but instead at people with a sedentary job, like myself.

For once it is a product that works slightly better for women than men, as they can attach it more discreetly to their bra strap; men have to place a small magnet on the outside of their shirt, just below the collar bone. You get two of these magnets in the box - silver and black - but you can buy extra colours if you care that much about discretion; I don't. So far it is too much of a novelty for me to have forgotten about sitting with good posture long enough for it to have buzzed me. Although, at first, sitting with good posture is bound to be more tiring (in the short term) than slouching, I'm finding I am able to sit for quite a while without problems and, the good thing is, that you end up finding more comfortable ways to sit while still sitting with good posture, as well as becoming aware of those situations (like answering the phone) that lead you to break that posture. It may be coincidence, but I have noticed that I am a bit more sweaty than usual - perhaps I am making more of an effort by sitting up straight, akin to standing up. I think the trick is neither to slouch nor to sit bolt upright, but getting the right balance is a bit tricky at first. When I get tired, instead of slumping in my seat as I would normally do, I now get up and go for a little walkabout.

The Android app is supposedly still in beta and is not even officially compatible with my phone (Samsung Grand 2) but here I think they are just being conservative. I have installed it anyway and it works fine (so far). The same company also makes a product called "Lumo Run", which is basically a pair of fancy pants which tell you if your pelvis is correctly aligned while running. It sounds like these would be just the thing to address one of my other regular complaints - that of my lower back problems due to my lumbar region overcompensating for my lack of strength in the hip flexors. i can't really see myself buying these as I am quite particular about running shorts, but I can imagine them being a great tool for running coaches (with a good washing machine). (I've noticed that they are now offering just the sensor, which you can attach to any pair of running shorts. I'm a little skeptical of how well this works because, it's clearly preferable to the integrated version so, unless it is much less accurate, why offer both products?)

In other news, I got accepted to run the Chicago Marathon!! The other good news is that I managed to convince my wife that the family holidays would be somewhere cool again this year, so we are going to Norway and Sweden, where training during the summer should be relatively easy, provided I get up early.

Bouncing back

Just to show that the body fat analysis on bathroom scales has some value, you can clearly see on this graph how I have been steadily burning the fat all year, at a faster rate since I started preparing specifically for the Marathon in September, and after the Marathon (on the 1st of November) has started to come back.

There is a similar trend in my weight, but it is less pronounced (but a bit less volatile from one day to the next). This is where it is handy having the scales syncing the data automatically, because you really only see the trends after a few days of measurements.

Best sweat proof Bluetooth headphones for running

If anyone needs a runner to put headphones through their paces, then I am your guy. I used to get through them at a pace of one pair every month or so, until I happened on some that were more resistant: they were the Senheiser PMX80, which lasted for several years, but when it finally came to the time to replace them, I found the more recent models to have awful sound quality and not be as durable.

I invested in some Jaybird Freedom Sprints, which came with a sweat proof guarantee. Although you can't tell from the photo above, they come with little ear hooks which I found absolutely necessary if I wanted these things to stay in my ear while running. In fact, this requirement whittled down the candidates for a pair of Bluetooth running headphones to a very select few. After 3 months, though, I had to send them back, but they were replaced with no quibbles. They lasted for over two years before I lost them, bought some more, had to send these back a couple of months after and now the replacement buds have conked out as well. So, not counting the ones I lost which lasted for a miraculously long period of time, that's three pairs that have all failed within months. Even with a no questions asked full replacement service, it is annoying to have to send them back. Actually, the last time I had a problem with them, it was enough just to send a photo with the cord cut to prove that I wasn't cheating, but I still had to wait for the new ones to arrive. Now I just can't be bothered to send them back again because I know they will fail, again. Maybe I will sometime, and instead give the replacement ones as a present to a less sweaty friend.

I decided to go back to wired phones and bought some Yurbuds Inspire 100, albeit a little skeptically. They also claimed to be sweat proof and, having no in-built Bluetooth electronics, I thought they were more likely to be so. I was more skeptical about the way they affixed themselves to the ear, using the patented "twist lock" technology. I've noticed that the Ironman brand is fairly selective about which products they put their name to, so I thought I would give them a try. I'm very glad I did, because they are very comfortable, have very good sound quality and have never so much as slipped in my ears, no matter how sweaty they have got. They were also reasonably priced in my opinion. My only gripe is that when I store them they always tend to get into a tangle, if I am not looking, but that is something quite easy to resolve.

I don't mind running with wired phones when I am running outside to music. In fact, my ideal solution is to plug them into my Underwater Audio waterproof iPod Shuffle. Being waterproof doesn't necessarily mean that it is sweat proof, as acidic sweat vapour can be much more pernicious. It is too soon to tell whether this iPod will outlast the one I "killed" over the summer, but you'll be the first to know if it does.

Running on the treadmill is another matter, however. I like to watch films and TV series, and having a wire running from my ears to my tablet makes me nervous because I sometimes catch it inadvertently with my hands and it tends to make me lean forward at the waist, compromising my running technique. What I really want are some truly sweat proof Bluetooth headphones that stay in my ear. While Yurbuds offers a wireless solution that may well be perfect, I am not of the mind to lay out that amount of cash to test it. I think that the best approach is to keep any electronics as far away from my sweaty ears as possible. So the solution I have come up with is to buy a relatively cheap Bluetooth receiver into which I can plug my headphones. The only issue was how to attach said Bluetooth receiver to my clothing without it getting too exposed to sweat. One option is to put it inside an armband, but I don't like running with armbands; another was attaching it to my heart rate monitor but that required running shirtless, which is only an option in the privacy of my own home treadmill. Instead, I have made a kind of makeshift clip out of a rubber band (from a defunct cycling computer) and a safety pin like so:

I then clip this to the outside of my shorts as if it were an iPod Shuffle. It may well die a death in the next few months, but costing a tenth of the price of the supposedly sweat proof Bluetooth headphones, I'm not too worried.

Garmin Vivosmart HR review

You could be forgiven for wondering why someone who takes training as seriously as I do "needs" an activity tracker. Of course I don't need one any more than I need a GPS watch, Heart Rate Monitor, etc. But I don't need one much less, either.

I was so excited to get one - and it appeared to be fate as I happened to be in the States on the day when the exclusive sales period started at Best Buy - that I went to buy one as soon as I had showered after the Marathon. I remember standing around in the store, still feeling quite queasy, until someone finally came to attend to me. I had been worried I wouldn't make it before they sold out but, for being an exclusive, it was hidden out of sight and nobody seemed to know anything about it! It was going to be my Christmas present to me from my wife but, in the end, I only managed to wait an hour before opening it and giving it to myself (all unbeknownst to my wife).

The reasonably sensible reasons for wanting one were to be able to track my sleep quality and resting heart rate to help me to better plan my training, and also to remind me to get up out of my chair and move about. This second reason sounds a bit silly perhaps, because I could just as easily have set an alarm in Outlook, for example, but the daily goal of X steps or Y flights of stairs changes your relationship with moving around. The problems I have been having with my back lately have made me realize that no amount of intense aerobic exercise will help; the real remedy is not to be slouching around in my chair for extended periods of time. After every hour of inactivity it vibrates, telling you to "Move!", until the so-called move bar has been cleared. I also very much like having notifications á la smart watch. Rather counterintuitively, you end up reaching into your pocket to fiddle around with your phone less if you know you are going to receive an alert for anything interesting, which you can vet on the little screen. Lastly, a feature which would be great for my wife is being able to "find your phone" (assuming it is within Bluetooth range).

The less sensible reason for getting one is to have more graphs and metrics to geek out on. For example, I can plot a graph of how my resting heart rate has recovered in the days after the Marathon. It may be a coincidence (time will tell) but it looks as though my resting heart rate is a good indication of how rested I am (duh!). Another reason I am interested in my resting heart rate is because a recent heart study found another anomaly whose name initially worried me - sinusoidal bradycardia - but turns out just to mean very low resting heart rate, and can be common in trained athletes.

There has been a lot of speculation over how accurate the optical Heart Rate sensor is. I have chosen to wear the band so that the face is on the inside of my right wrist. That way it looks a little more discreet, which it can do with being (also, I'm not sure I want other people being able to see how fast my heart is beating!). My pulse rate seems pretty consistent but there are times when I notice it up in the 90s and yet don't feel as though I am making any particular effort. I think that this is because it monitors your heart rate more frequently when it detects activity, so that the higher reading is from the last time I moved around; if I am just sitting still (like I am while writing this), it hovers around a fairly constant number. One thing that I have tried to figure out is what the "average resting rate" on the screen refers to. It is different to the one recorded on the website and seems to be very constant, as if it were being averaged since the beginning of time (as far as it is concerned).

You can use the Vivosmart in the same way as you would use a Garmin sports watch by pressing the little button and putting it into running mode. It then records an activity with graphs for pace and heart rate. Here's one I prepared earlier:

12 kph run on the treadmill

As you can see, the heart rate graph looks fairly convincing (although I had to tighten the strap one notch to get a reliable reading while running). The step counter was bang on when walking for 30 minutes at a brisk pace on the treadmill the other day, but slightly generous when running at 12 kph. Both of these activities were enough to merit counting as "intense minutes" which are tracked separately (weekly goal: 150 minutes of moderate intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity). If my Fenix 2 watch tends to underestimate my pace by about 20 seconds (slower), the Vivosmart seems to overestimate it by about the same amount in the opposite direction. I have yet to see what happens if I simultaneously record my activity on my GPS watch, but I expect the calories will be double counted by default. I'm not too bothered about this because I am not really worrying about counting them, but some people will be. I imagine that Garmin will address this at some point, if they haven't already. When I get a chance I will compare the same activity with the two, in particular to see how well the heart rate measurement holds up. One nice feature is that it can rebroadcast the heart rate to another (Garmin / ANT+ compatible) watch which can potentially save the need for a chest strap. I would say that anyone training to heart rate will probably require the greater accuracy of the strap but, for those times when you forget it or can't be bothered with it, it's much better than nothing. The only issue would be the extra battery drain.

The display is pretty clear, especially when the backlight comes on any time you touch it. Normally it is inverted (i.e., white text on black background) which, like the Fenix 2, looks cooler but is slightly harder to read. The guys at Garmin appear to have found the perfect compromise by switching to a clearer black on white display whenever you put it into running mode.

So far it has been a little hit and miss in detecting my sleep times because I like to lie in bed for a while either reading or watching a film. I'm not sure how it could tell the difference between me lying still while watching a movie or lying still while sleeping. You have to indicate a range of hours when you are normally asleep and it does the rest; you can always edit it afterwards. I've also tried to correlate the times when I have woken up in the night with the periods it classifies as light sleep and it more or less makes sense.

Movemennt during sleep

Sleep quality

Compared to its little brother, the Vivosmart, apart from its relatively bulky size, the only extra features it offers are the heart rate monitoring (putting it head to head with the Fitbit Charge HR) and the ability to count floors climbed, using an inbuilt barometric altimeter. Again, it sounds stupid, but you'll find you end up taking the stairs more often as a result. Being properly waterproof gives it the edge over the Fitbit in my opinion. On the downside, the already limited battery life is further reduced to a claimed 5 days (which is even less if you are more active). Still, it doesn't take very long to charge (about an hour) and it's not a bad idea to let your wrist breathe now and again.

It syncs much more smoothly via Bluetooth to my (Android) phone than the Fenix 2, which often needs a bit of coaxing to spill the beans on the latest workout. But I have noticed an occasional glitch when the Vivosmart seems to fall out with the phone and stops talking to it. When this happens, the easiest solution I have found (on the Garmin website - so they are aware of it) is to disable and re-enable Bluetooth on the phone. To be fair, this might be an issue with my phone (Samsung Grand 2) rather than with the Vivosmart. One day we will look back at these kind of issues with the same fondness we have for spooling cassette tapes with a pencil that have been ingested by tape recorders.

I think that the device has several target audiences. First, those who want to get fit and need some extra motivation. Possibly for them the heart rate feature is a bit overkill, but it bridges the gap between an activity monitor / smart phone and a sports watch. I expect that Garmin's idea is to hook people into their ecosystem (Garmin Connect) via the Vivosmart and hope that people upgrade to the more fancy sports watches and heart rate monitors as they become fitter and more motivated. Another type of customer is the more serious athlete who already has a GPS watch to accurately monitor their training, but wants more information on their general state of wellness in order to be able to optimize that training. Lastly, for those of us that don't yet have a smart watch, it is nice to have those complementary features on a less than watch sized device.

UPDATE: Heart rate comparison between Vivosmart HR and Run HRM

I just did a 40 minute run at 14 kph (4:17 kilometre pace) on the treadmill and recorded the activity on both the Fenix 2 with Garmin HRM Run and the Vivosmart HR. This time the Fenix got the pace bang on the nail (and was very consistent - the first time I have seen this and I have been using it for months now, so perhaps it was because I made sure to tighten the strap - but the Vivosmart estimated a pace of 4:42. This was the opposite from what I expected as the Vivosmart tended to overstate my speed when I was running at 12 kph - maybe my running mechanics change as 14 kph is much closer to running than 12 kph, which is almost jogging. Not a big deal, in my opinion, the point about an activity tracker is to get a ballpark figure for the number of kilometres you walk or run in a day, and not to be a substitute for a GPS watch. I was more impressed by the heart rate comparison:

Vivosmart HR

Fenix 2 with HRM Run

Both get the heart rate right but the Vivosmart graph is much more noisy, as you might expect. Still, it is accurate enough to pick up heart rate drift over time and, as long as you ignore the odd anomaly (like the one towards the end of the run), then it looks to be adequate for training purposes. However, a few beats per minute up or down can make a big difference (as I learned not for the first time in the New York Marathon last week) so, personally, I would still only use a chest strap for anything serious. Having said that, the dropout with the HRM Run towards the beginning of the run is something that I have seen happen from time to time, but it is so clearly an anomaly that there is no chance of being confused by it if you happen to look at your watch at the precise instant it is telling you that you are flat-lining. Bear in mind that when you run "in real life" with hills and uneven terrain, your heart rate is never as smooth as on the treadmill. If you want to try to draw any conclusions about training when hills are involved, then it is important not to have any extra noise in the signal.

UPDATE 2: Heart rate while swimming

It's taken me a while to get around to this as I find swimming boring at the best of times and, given that I haven't been in the pool for ages, just swimming 20 minutes as I did today seems like an eternity. But the good news is that the Vivosmart HR tracked my heart rate as well underwater as it does on land, which makes it a rather attractive alternative to the Garmin HRM Swim.

The only small niggle with using the Vivosmart HR as a Heart Rate Monitor while swimming was that the contact with the water was enough to "swipe" the screen from the heart rate readout to another screen. One solution would be to configure it to only have one screen showing the heart rate, and another would be to pair it with another watch - in my case the Fenix 2 - and to read the heart rate on that screen. I haven't tried pairing them yet but, for this to work well in the swimming pool, the two devices would have to be worn on the same wrist as ANT doesn't travel underwater and, at any one time, one of the devices would be underwater.

UPDATE 3: Heart rate while running outdoors

Lately, the heart rate data while running has been very poor. As my treadmill broke on pretty much the same day as Garmin released a new firmware I don't know whether this is due to running outside where there is more light (obviously) than in my basement or because Garmin screwed something up. DC Rainmaker seems to think that cold weather effects optical heart rate measurements - I'm not quite sure why - so this might also be a factor. As a result, I've not been getting anything like as many "intensity minutes" as I deserve although I should say that I haven't bothered to use the activity mode, instead trusting that the device will notice my vigorous arm movements.

I've also noticed more inaccuracies in the step counting as time goes on. I usually get about 250 metres - enough to clear the message telling me to "Move!" first thing in the morning - by cleaning my teeth. The floors climbed reading is usually fairly accurate but today I reached my goal without climbing any stairs or indeed going up more than one floor in the lift: I think it must have been fooled by a combination of my movement and a simultaneous drop in atmospheric pressure (which would have been interpreted as a gain in altitude). I think all activity trackers suffer from these kind of anomalies and, as long as you are consistent (in how many times you clean your teeth, for example), they are pretty good at telling the difference between a busy day and a lazy one. When I see people complaining about their accuracy I think that they are expecting too much and should buy a GPS watch instead.

DC Rainmaker has now published his in depth review in which he is quite scathing about its ability to track resting heart rate, which is really the only thing I use it for. My experience has been that it has been quite consistent and correlated well with my general state of fitness. Hopefully, if there are wrinkles here, Garmin will iron them out in the inevitable firmware updates to come.

New York City Marathon 2015 Week 11/11

Woohoo! I'm on a carbohydrate fueled high! I feel the whisky-like warmth of those carbs being burned. And I'm so happy that the shop at work has started to stock CLIF Bars which are my favourite cereal bars that have, up until now, been very difficult to find in Spain (I've already eaten two of them this morning!).

I weighed in at 76.9 kilos this morning - some 3 kilos less than I was at this point before the last NYC Marathon I ran in 2013. But I'll quickly put those 3 kilos (and some) on, as stored glycogen from the carbo loading and the water that gets stored alongside it. I'm used to feeling a bit "bloated" on the day, but I sweat it off quickly and it saves me from having to drink much along the course (only about 400 ml in isotonic gels).

On Monday evening we celebrated my youngest son's 11th birthday with cake, crisps, ceviche and sushi (surprisingly, the kids love sushi and Adrian even likes ceviche). Not the best diet for the week before a Marathon, especially on my day off from training. My uncle-in-law kept digging me in the ribs (figuratively) about how thin I was and how running Marathons couldn't be healthy - "The first person to ever run a Marathon died from it" (yawn). Even people at work have been commenting a lot on how thin I have got and my wife complains that I am all sharp bony edges. I was quite slim at the beginning of the year and I've lost about 8 kilos since then, so it's not really surprising that people make comments. Next week I am going to try to muscle up a bit, especially in my back which has been giving me problems lately (I have a stiff neck again as I write this). Talking of diets, I just discovered (late - don't know how I missed this) an extraordinary new wearable device: the Healbe GoBe.

It purports to calculate not only calories burned but also calorie intake. It does this by measuring pressure differences due to glucose being released into the bloodstream after eating. Sounds at best like science fiction or, at worst, like it will be disastrously inaccurate but the tests out in the field are very positive on its calorie counting ability. It even (semi-)automatically tracks how much water you imbibe (I'd be interested to know if it could measure sweat rates and take this into account in the calculation of how much you need to drink to keep hydrated). Then it has a lot of the more standard features of activity trackers, such as step counting, heart rate measurement, sleep quality measurement but it does claim to be able to measure your blood pressure and - perhaps more dubiously - your stress levels. The downside is that it is bulky, buggy and the battery lasts for only one day. I think I will let the early adopters finance this one until they are bought up by FitBit / Withings / Polar / Garmin and the device is a bit more polished. Even so, I am tempted by pure scientific curiosity to take the plunge. However, knowing how much "gadget-rage" I can suffer when my devices break, fail to synchronize or lose my data, I can do without that grief adding to the stress gauge. Anyway, one to watch (no pun intended)!

As usual, I am a bit nervous and excited. I'm worried about:

My weight. Will I balloon in these last few days now that I am relaxing?
Fitness. Am I running too hard during my taper?
Sleep. I am not sleeping as well because I am nervous about not sleeping well (amongst other things). Will I suffer from jet lag and not be able to manage my sleep well the nights before?
Energy. Will I still be tired on Sunday from the training and travelling?
Injury. Should I get yet another massage for my back? Will I get an even stiffer neck on the plane?
Health. Half of my colleagues are coughing and some have had 'flu. My kids are ambulatory incubators for germs. How long can I hold my breath?
Weather. Will it rain? Will it be too hot? Too windy?
Logistics. Will I miss the planes, trains and automobiles (and boats) I have to take to get to the start?

There, writing it all down helps because I can go through the worries one by one and dismiss them, either because they are easy to dismiss or because I can't do anything about them, so worrying is not going to do achieve anything other than wearing myself out mentally...

...and BREATHE...

The trick that I learned before the Ironman is to just rise up above all these worries and let them slide off me, like water off a duck's back. The worries still come into my head but I don't let myself react to them, as if I were listening to someone else recounting me their worries. I suppose this is a form of Mindfulness.

Checking back over my training log from two years ago, I saw that I did my tempo run of 3 km easy + 30 minutes at 3:45 (16 kph) + 3 km easy outside. That was the day that my treadmill broke. I must have been pretty furious about that, or maybe I managed to rise above it. This time my treadmill did not break, so I was able to do it inside. I agonized over whether I should run outside because it is undoubtedly more effective (as I will be running the Marathon outside) but, given the twinge in my left calf (excuses, excuses), I decided to run indoors while finishing off watching a film (The Harvest). To compensate, I decided I would at least do all the other runs outside, as I have been this time around.

Thinking back to when I started to prepare for this race, I was not very confident about my performance. People would ask me what time I was aiming for and I would cagily answer that it would depend on how my training went as to whether I went for a Personal Best (PB) or ran more for "fun" with a GoPro camera strapped to my head. I had had a couple of abortive attempts at racing earlier in the year, had been suffering on and off from Morton's Neuromas (Neuromae?) and had not obtained any PBs in over a year and a half. With hindsight, I think my experiment to do less but much more intense training and - crucially - almost entirely on the treadmill, was my undoing. Not the fact that I am 43 and a half years old. Especially armed now with all these fancy metrics such as stride length, cadence and vertical oscillation, it is blatantly obvious that I run quite differently on the treadmill to outside. Having said that, I think it is still an excellent surrogate workout and very highly correlated to my performance outside but if it forms the majority of the training, I think I start to run outside as if I were running on a treadmill. I definitely feel as though my running has improved significantly over the last 3 months and I believe it is down to this. I think that I have kept myself cardiovascularly fit which has meant that it has not been to much of a struggle, but my technique and muscles have had to adapt.

Looking back, I can say that the training has gone much better than I could have expected. The long runs (with a few minor exceptions) were very fast and consistent as have been the "junk miles" from a relative point of view. The interval sessions have been demanding but doable and the races - well, I was 20 seconds faster in the 10K compared to this time two years ago but 30 seconds slower in the Half Marathon. The aerobic tests I did were a little bit inconclusive but OK nonetheless. Injury-wise (touch wood), just the usual niggles that have not crystalized into anything more serious: left Achilles, left calf, lower back and neck.

As with any Marathon, anything can happen on the day, but I think I have every reason to go for a PB or at least to equal it. This is what I will call my "ambitious goal". My realistic goal would be to run sub 2:50. My minimum goal to be happy would be to get a qualifying time for next year: sub 2:58. So if I have a tough time out there but see that I can still scrape under 2:58 then I will pull out all the stops. Also, I am running this Marathon in honour and memory of my friend Nat, who suffered more than I can imagine and more than I hope I will every have to experience. So a bit of suffering out there on the course will be going to a good cause.

The advice my friend Andy gave me is probably the best: "Enjoy it!... but not too much...". This reminded me of how my coach - when I had a coach - used to say to enjoy the training runs in the weeks of the taper because, for once, you have enough energy to be able to run fast and effortlessly, as fruits of your hard work. That's exactly what I did on Wednesday night when I went for a 40 minute run after work along my usual trails. It was quite dark by the time I got to the turnaround point so I had to be careful not to step badly and twist my ankle (can you imagine?!) but exhilarating none the less. Today (Thursday) I did a shorter, 30 minute, version of the same run and set off thinking I should probably run it a little more calmly than the 4:06 pace from the night before. I ended up running it at a pace of 3:55, probably as a result of the two CLIF bars, the banana and the packet of M&Ms I had consumed beforehand!

If you are going to be out there on the course supporting (or indeed running), my bib number is 2634 and I will look something like this (but with more "normal" shoes):

I'm aiming as I say for a time of 2:47:42 ( :-) ) which, if I am on track, means that I will pass the following points along the course at approximately these times:

If you can't actually be there in New York but still are curious to see how I am doing, you can track me in the TCS NYC Marathon app on your iPhone / Android device or, indeed, on the web. I'm starting at 2:50 UK time (GMT) or 3:50 pm Spanish time (CET). Wish me luck and see you on the other side!

Monday: -
Tuesday: 3 km @ 4:27 + 30' @ 3:45 + 3 km @ 4;27
Wednesday: 40' @ 4:06
Thursday: 30' @ 3:55
Friday: -
Saturday: 20'
Sunday: THE RACE!

Total kilometres: 36 + 42.1

New York City Marathon 2015 Week 9/11

Monday was a bank holiday so we spent a leisurely day in Asturias, had a great lunch (as usual), a siesta and then the 5 hour car journey back home. Zero exercise.

Tuesday's intervals were easier than I had expected, especially as I found 2 sets challenging a couple of weeks ago and, this time, I had to do 3. I probably say this every time I do a "ladder" type workout but I think they are excellent from a psychological point of view: you can trick yourself into thinking that each interval is going to be easier than the one before it because it will either be slower (less incline) or shorter.

I was on the treadmill again on Wednesday evening because I didn't get an opportunity to do my run at lunchtime (I had to take my son for a checkup at the doctors). I'm pleased I've managed to largely kick the habit of running too much on the treadmill (and not enough outside) but it was nice, for a change, to do an easy treadmill run with a good TV series (Longmire) to keep me company.

I got up early the next morning to do my final 7 km aerobic test at a controlled heart rate of 172 bpm. It was nice and cold and it felt relatively easy to keep up a pace of around 3:45 per kilometre. But my watch let me down by (a) giving me a wacky HR readout which kinda made it hard to control and (b) giving me a wacky GPS readout. In the end, my average HR turned out to be quite a bit lower than the 172 level, so I could have run it a bit faster. Now, I'm not sure what that really means - whether I am fitter than the test would seem to indicate (26:13 versus 26:02 two years ago)  or that it was just quite cold, so my heart rate was lower than it would otherwise have been. I think I will go back to my Garmin 310 XT for the next aerobic test I do, as it has the useful feature of automatically detecting the laps based on the GPS position. This is subject to the same GPS error, of course, but it doesn't end up summing up quite so much as having the lap counter set to one kilometre by its reckoning, for example. I'm not sure whether the GPS of the Fenix 2 is less accurate or reliable than the 310 XT, or whether I am just more obsessed with comparing my performance to that of two years ago, and so I am much more attentive to those occasions when it loses accuracy.

I've been getting these "spiky" readouts from my heart rate monitor on a regular basis for thhe last few weeks now. I've tried replacing the batteries but I think that it is coming to the end of its useful life. The last thing I want to happen in NY is to be thrown off in the first few kilometres. At least, this is the excuse for me to buy myself what I had intended to ask Santa for: the new Garmin Run HRM. This not only measures your heart rate, but also your vertical oscillation, cadence and (supposedly) your ground contact time. More stats to geek out on.

Talking of which, my RunScribe finally arrived last week - the little gadget I help kickstart last year - just in time to use during my 7k test. I'll post a more comprehensive review once I have had time to play around with it some more and digest the vast amount of running metrics it generates, but I'll leave you with a taster below in the meantime.

My wife had wanted to do another Zombie Survival event, like the one we did last year, but I was worried about how it would effect my 32 km run the next day. I employed the tactic of not mentioning the subject and making non-committal noises such as "OK, if you want to... I don't mind" as well as reminding her that she wasn't currently able to run much due to an injury "so perhaps it would be better some other time?". Whatever the case, it worked and we ended up staying in Madrid for the first weekend in a while. Nevertheless, I was nervous about the run - as I have been approaching every long run - particularly because I suffered a lot in the last 7 kilometres of the long run the previous weekend. And this one entailed running a significant proportion - 24 km - at close to Marathon Pace. Furthermore, the same run two years ago turned into my own version of a personal hell and I remember being grouchy the rest of the day. I was also nervous that it would rain as it had done on Saturday evening and make the whole thing a miserable experience. I don't normally mind running in the rain, but 32 kilometres with sodden shoes could lead to serious blisters.

I needn't have worried. Not only did it not rain but the run went very well (apart from a false start where I got a bit lost and ended up running an extra kilometre which I decided would not count towards the 32). After the 5 "warm up" kilometres at an easy pace, I hit the sub-Marathon pace and started to count down the kilometres to the 29 km mark, where I promised myself a short rest to get my breath back before running the final "cool down" kilometres. I started to  suspect the GPS was again being generous but it was surprisingly consistent, so I decided to believe it. As I was running along Madrid Río, I was able to check it against the markers laid down every 50m and it seemed to be true. I got to the end very satisfied and lay down on the wall for a minute, being careful not to roll into the river. It was then that I realized that I had short changed myself out of a kilometre with all my mental maths to pass the time, and I still had one more at sub-MP to go. Not a problem. What was a problem, oddly enough, was the final stretch of 3 supposedly easy kilometres. I don't know whether it was because, mentally, I had switched off or whether I had used up all my glycogen stores, but these last 3 kilometres were horrible and I ran them with my eyes half closed, feeling nauseous and nearly fainting at one point. My wife always asks me how my runs have gone and I realized that I only have two answers: "good" or "hard". In other words, a run can't go "badly", it is just one of those hard runs that doesn't kill you but makes you stronger. The overall verdict was "good" but those last three kilometres were hard. I'm curious to know whether I would have been able to keep up the pace for longer had I not stopped or if I had planned to.

During the long run I did notice a very slight twinge in my left Achilles. My Achilles is my Achilles, if you see what I mean. It went away after a while but I remembered to "palpate" the area and it was a little tender, so I have decided to do the preventative exercises I did last time, over the final two weeks.

So now starts the taper!!! Yippee! I'm going to be a bit monkish and ingest no caffeine or alcohol for the next two weeks: on race day I'll stuff myself with caffeine before and alcohol after. I've been following a fairly strict diet of just drinking one glass of red wine a day. I think it is a much more reasonable (and possibly healthy) approach than total teetotal. My weight is better than ever (although this morning's reading is not really representative after the "paliza" yesterday).

So I promised to say something about my RunScribe. So far, I have been very impressed by it: it just works. I'm so used to having to faff about with Garmin watches to make sure that they sync properly and that the data doesn't get corrupted, I've become paranoid. I think the folks over at Garmin could learn a thing or two from RunScribe about Bluetooth synchronization as well as about how to display graphs. It always drives me nuts that you can't change the vertical scale on the pace graph on Garmin Connect, for example, so all you ever see is a practically straight line (when compared to a 16:00 /km pace). The only issue it might have is of battery life, but it is too early to say and I'm sure that they can find a way around this. The device turns on whenever it detects movement but allegedly has very low power consumption until it recognizes that the user has broken into a run (i.e., that the cadence is above 70). It turns off automatically after 250 seconds of inactivity. So it recorded my long run perfectly but it also included my false start and some of the walk back to the car.

Below you can see a segment taken from the sub-Marathon Pace section of the run. It agrees very closely with the GPS reading (and, by the way, it was in very good agreement with the treadmill - but more on that in a subsequent post). More than tracking pace, it is the other metrics that are interesting. You can see that, as I started to get tired, my contact time increased (from about 250 ms to about 275 ms). Also, my "braking Gs" - or the horizontal component of the ground reaction force - tends to increase over time, presumably because I am running more sloppily. Then there are the "advanced metrics" which are to do with things like pronation angle and pronation velocity, etc.

There are so many things to compare that the mind boggles. How does the terrain or my shoes affect my contact time, or the foot strike (forefoot or midfoot)? How does running on a treadmill compare with running outside? What differences are there between my left and right foot? When I get my Garmin Run HRM I will have so many metrics I won't know what to do with them!

Monday: -
Tuesday: 3 x 1'-2'-3'-2'-1'-2'-3' @ 3:25 w/ 4.5%-2.5%-1% gradient
Wednesday: 60' @ 4:17
Thursday: 7k aerobic test in 26:13 (average HR 167)
Friday: 60' @ 4:10
Saturday: 50' @ 4:00
Sunday: 32 km @ 4:14 (5k easy + 24 @ 4:04 + 3k easy)

Total kilometres: 92

On Course Swimming Goggles

You know that I love gadgets, especially ones that help me improve my performance (or, at least, make me think that they help me improve my performance). If only these had been invented in 2011 when I did the Ironman in Florianopolis, Brazil. This is the swim I actually did compared to the course I should have taken:

I put my Garmin 310XT GPS watch in my swim cap to get a fairly accurate track and I set it to beep every kilometer, so that I would have some idea of how much longer the torture was going to last. According to my watch, I swam 4.52 kilometers (instead of the 3.8 of the Ironman distance) thanks to taking a slightly roundabout route - at one point I even crashed into someone coming in the opposite direction (no prizes for spotting where). In the middle of the "M" we were allowed back on land, briefly, only to submerge ourselves once more. To put this in perspective, had I taken the perfect route, I would have saved 12 minutes!

Someone (disclosure: a friend of a friend) has invented a pair of swimming goggles that warn you if you veer off course. You simply look at the buoy you are heading for, press a button on the goggles (apparently they are planning for the goggles to recognize a signature head movement instead of a button press) and then the goggles indicate using a simple system of blinking LED lights whether you should go off slightly more to the left or to the right. It doesn't use cumbersome GPS technology, just the good old fashioned magnetic field of the Earth to guide you. I expect that all the clever bits are in the algorithm that works out your general heading while (at least in my case) you are writhing and thrashing your way through the water.

The designers clearly have triathlons and open water swimming competitions in mind and have already obtained confirmation from official bodies such as USA Triathlon that they will be permitted and not considered "cheating". They have also already filed patents so, if a giant like Garmin decides to snap them up (Sight 'n' Go Goggles?), it will be done the right way.

The Kickstarter campaign is underway RIGHT NOW, so if you have similar navigational skills as myself and are thinking of taking part in a triathlon - or even if you just want to support a great idea - head on over to their Kickstarter page. Remember, you saw it here first!

Retail therapy

There's nothing quite like buying a new sporting gadget to inject a bit of enthusiasm back into your training. The other day I was hovering on the Amazon website when I spotted an offer for the Fenix 2 GPS watch that was about to expire as soon as they had enough takers. I couldn't see any harm in just putting it in my shopping basket before someone else snatched the offer away from me: I could still decide not to buy it. I now had 15 minutes to decide whether I "needed" it, in which time I broke out into a guilty sweat and rang my wife, hoping she would absolve me by saying something like "you deserve it" or simply just talk me out of it. She just said she didn't know whether I needed it or not - neither did I but I soon came up with a convoluted set of reasons why I couldn't live without one.

Just as well I only had 15 minutes to decide because, after committing to buy (yes, I did buy it in the end, surprise, surprise), I read a whole load of complaints about it crashing, resetting during workouts and suffering from "GPS drift". I hope that these have been ironed out in the year since its launch as there is now a Fenix 3 available.

The reasons I came up with were that my trusty 310 XT was not so trusty any more, it often corrupted the workout data and was very touch and go when it came to downloading courses or uploading workouts; also having Bluetooth connectivity would make all this so much easier. The discount price was 240€ (without Heart Rate Monitor) which put it in close contention with the 910 XT (also recently superseded by a newer model: the 920 XT) but this does not have Bluetooth, nor does it have some of the fancy new analytics that are probably a load of nonsense but are irresistibly attractive to us running geeks. Like VO2Max which tells you how fast it reckons you would run a 5K, 10K, Half Marathon or Marathon: in just three days I have reduced my predicted Marathon time from 3:03 to 2:49! All without having run further than 10K or faster than 13.5 kph! If I later decide to buy a new HRM, then I can have it also calculate vertical oscillation and ground contact time - whoohoo! For those kind of geek-stats, I'm still waiting on the runScribe device I backed on Kickstarter last year. Another thing I like about the new watch is that it has a built in accelerometer which means that (a) it incorporates all the functionality of the Garmin Swim watch and (b) it makes a reasonable attempt to guess how fast I am running on the treadmill based on a surprisingly accurate cadence measurement, which helps me keep track of all the kilometerage I am doing both on and off-road. Lastly, I appreciate the temperature sensor that it has built in which works quite well considering that it is biased by my skin temperature. It seems to start of way too high, come down to a realistic temperature as it is cooled by the wind and then starts to creep back up again as I get hotter and sweatier.

The downside of the Fenix series compared to the triathlon watches is that there is no quick release kit to allow you to transfer it to your bike easily. However, I've come up with a rubber band solution to attach it to my aero water bottle which appears to work well. The upside is that it is not fugly, and can be worn as a normal watch. The inverted screen looks cool but is difficult to read; Garmin appears to have realized that this was too much of a case of form over functionality and has incorporated a colour screen into the Fenix 3. I don't plan to wear it as a daytime watch as I already have my Casio Rangeman G-Shock which makes even the Fenix 2 look diminutive. This is what I call my "Zombie Apocalypse" watch in that it will probably still keep on working long after mankind has destroyed itself (although the automatic timesetting by radio will stop working I guess). I noticed that the large buttons with the little spikes are the same on both watches so I'm guessing that Garmin took some design cues from Casio here.

The only other features a triathlete or serious runner might miss from the 310 XT that I have noticed are that there is no ability to set heart rate zones per sport - the zones are very different between cycling and running, but not everybody cares about that. The other slight niggle is a bit specific and it comes about due to how the menus are organized: if you want to follow a prerecorded track you choose the "navigate" activity which, as it doesn't know whether you are running or cycling, does not record your running cadence if you have previously linked a bike cadence sensor. What I do miss when following a track, is that it doesn't alert you when you go off course; the 310 XT was a bit of a mixed blessing in this regard because the alert used to mean that the map would stop updating just when you needed it most (I think they fixed this in a firmware update eventually). Anyway, so far I'm happy in spite of it already locking up once on me. You kinda get used to the odd glitch with Garmin watches (I think they must have pretty poor programmers working there) but you sort of grow to forgive them as the watches are so cool when they actually work. On the other end of the spectrum, when an Apple product fails you tend to have zero tolerance because you get accustomed to such a high standard. Like when we tried to get an old iPhone working this weekend, we were greeted with this message

iPhone is blocked, try again in 23,758,096 minutes

My guess is that on the 4th of March 2015 at around 4:11 PM, we typed in the wrong PIN too many times and blocked the phone until 5 minutes later at 4:16 PM. We then took so long to get around to buying a new SIM card (the phone was given too us so we had to buy another line) that it ran out of batteries and went into such a profound sleep that it forgot the date and thought it was the 1st of January 1970 again: 23,758,096 minutes before 4:16 PM on the 4th of March 2015...

Walking on, walking on the moon...

I once read a book called "Blue Ocean Strategy" (which I unfortunately keep misremembering as "Blue Sky Strategy") which puts forward the idea that you should look for wide open oceans to compete in rather than densely populated jungles. The much cited Cirque de Soleil is an example of this - by combining aspects of theater and circus they created a show which appealed to a different audience and for which they could sell tickets at a premium.

So what would happen if the inventor of the bouncy castle were to join forces with the inventor of the treadmill? They would probably come up with something like the AlterG:

The AlterG is an "anti-gravity treadmill" which allows you to specify not only how fast you'd like to run but also how much you'd like to weigh (although it can't change how much you appear to weigh). You wear a pair of neoprene shorts which zip onto the machine, forming a sort of bubble in which you run: by increasing the pressure of the air in the bubble you can achieve weightlessness. There are several reasons why you might want to do this. The most obvious is if you are injured. Alistair Brownlee, the current Olympic Triathlon Champion, used one of these devices to run back to health after tearing his Achilles Tendon, by reducing the associated impact forces. Even for non-injured athletes, it is useful to be able to run at higher speeds without the corresponding muscle damage. In this way, you can train and ingrain the biomechanics of race pace and above.

There are only 12 of these machines in Spain of which only four can be found in Madrid. One of them happens to be owned by a friend and ex-colleague of mine, Antonio Ciardo. Antonio recently left the bank to concentrate on his osteopathy clinic which, judging by his clientele and his swanky new premises in the posh part of town, looks like it was a very good decision. He invited me to try out last night and warned me to bring a towel as I was likely to work up a sweat.

Love the decoration

At first it feels a little strange to be so constrained but I soon got used to it. Once you step on to the belt and get zipped in, the treadmill calibrates itself based on your weight. The first thing we tried was reducing my weight to just 20% - just a tad more than what it would be on the Moon - and, of course, my feet hardly touched the ground. It reminded me of a recurring dream I have where I can't quite fly but I can run really fast effortlessly by just occasionally tapping the ground with my foot. Then we started piling on the pounds until I weighed only 80% of my normal weight - about 17 kilos lighter. After Moonwalking, even a 20% discount seemed depressingly unnoticeable, although I was able to run at my Marathon pace of 15 km/h (4:00 min/km) while still keeping my pulse very low (less than 140). It did start to get quite hot in there after a while - Antonio explained to me that he still has to set up the ventilation - so my pulse gradually crept up. This model designed for rehabilitation has a maximum speed of 19.2 km/h which I tested out at 80% body weight. It was still hard to run at that speed - after all, you still have to move your legs quite fast - but the impact was noticeably lower and I was able to concentrate more on form. After the problems I have been having with my feet (Hallux Limitus, Morton's Neuroma) I was interested to see whether the pain was more likely to be provoked by a different running gait at high speed, or by higher impact forces - the AlterG allowed me to decouple these two effects and seemed to confirm my suspicion that the latter was more to blame.

One aspect that I found interesting was that the machine obliged you to run upright and to minimize hip movements laterally, transversely as well as vertically, especially when the skirt was inflated (that's to say, when running with less than 100% body weight). This strikes me as a good thing as far as running technique goes. For the second half of the workout I ran at 17 kph (3:30 min/km) or just over 10K pace and then gradually put the weight back on. It was so depressing!! I felt so much heavier and more sluggish than I had before I started and, as the cushion deflated, my hips started to move around much more - left, right, backwards, forwards, not to mention bouncing up and down more. Antonio had stressed that it was important to return to weightfulness before stepping off, otherwise the shock might make me lose balance. However, I wish I had left with the memory of lightness as it was so much more pleasant.

Luckily I don't have too much of a need for one of these things (my wife asked me if I would be buying one!) - apart from being extraordinarily expensive, I'm just glad that I am not injured at the moment (touch wood). But it would have come in very handy as a way to get back to weight bearing when I got a stress fracture in my foot.

Kickstarter

As you may know, I kickstarted my first project in 2012 - the Altum dress shoes - basically zero drop shoes that I could wear to work (and in fact still do). Although they kickstarted well, it seems like they ran out of steam (or maybe fell out with each other) because there is no news on that front and meanwhile several other credible options have come to market.

I was very tempted by the Fly6 Kickstarter project but decided to wait until they went to market. I was reminded of it when in Singapore, where every taxi driver has a camera recording everything that happens on a loop, just in case there is an accident. Ever wondered why there are so many accidents on Youtube in Russia? Well, its because everybody has one of these little cameras - it might even be a legal requirement. The Fly6 is an equivalent for bikes which faces backwards, naturally, as this is the most likely source of any problems you might have. It masquerades as a red light but don't be fooled - it has a decent quality camera with a very wide angle. It also has a sensor which detects whether your bike has been lying down for more than a few seconds, after which it waits a further hour before automatically shutting down, thereby conserving any important footage just in case you are not in a position to stop the camera yourself. Hopefully it will never come in handy but it could be interesting to catch cars driving dangerously close or, for that matter, fellow triathletes drafting in non-drafting races (they have even thought of including mounts for aero seat posts in the package). On the website there are a number of quite amusing as well as shocking videos of people driving badly, people falling of bikes spectacularly as well as - in one particular case - a woman being groped by a passing motorcyclist!

As a result of buying the production model Fly6, I was just browsing Kickstarter when I came across a fascinating product. It sounded a little too good to be true until I read the review by Steve Magness on his blog. The runScribe is a tiny little device that you hook on to the back of your running shoe which is able to measure such things as contact time, stride length as well as how much you pronate. The applications are pretty much endless: you can compare shoes, analyse differences between your feet, see what happens to your stride length as you tire, try out different running styles etc. As well as this, they are planning to harvest all the data into a Big Database which they can use to analyse trends and try to reach unbiased conclusions on which shoes are best for preventing injuries and other such questions. Of course, it is also good business sense that they set up a subscription model rather than a one off payment for the device itself, but they claim that this will be low-cost or no-cost and, if the data proves to be useful to shoe companies, this may well be the case. Anyway, the Kickstarter still has a few days to go so, if you are interested, you can grab one for yourself and have a share in the excitement of what I think could be a groundbreaking project. If you'd rather wait for the early adopters like myself to get through all the teething problems then keep an eye out for when this product hits the shelves.

UPDATE: In spite of the Kickstarter campaign being over, you can still get hold of a pre-sale runScribe from their website.

Headphone killer

I used to get through headphones more quickly than I got through running shoes until I bought the Senheiser PMX80

which, for some reason, have lasted for about 4 years and still appear to be going strong.What kills the headphones is the sweat and I sweat much more than the average person when I am working out. Perhaps Senheiser inadvertently created the equivalent of the everlasting light bulb and have withdrawn this model from the market as a consequence; I don't know whether the more recent models are as resilient. Being waterproof is not necessarily enough to protect against the evils of sweat: sweat can transform into vapour and is also corrosive. One of my iPods has been visibly eaten away around the headphone socket: the sweat must have condensed on the headphone cable and run down to the socket.

I also used to kill iPods and have got through several of them - especially the early iPod Shuffles - but it seems as though Apple has managed to solve the problem as - touch wood - I haven't had to replace any for years. The reason I wanted to change headphones is because I like to be able to change the song I am listening to while I am running. I usually have a playlist of songs that are all between 175 and 185 bpm to synchronize with my cadence but not all of those songs are good for running to.

So I bought myself the Jaybird Freedom Wireless Bluetooth headphones when I was in New York back in November last year.

These guys are so bullish on being sweat-proof that they offer a lifetime replacement guarantee for sweat damage. They may come to regret this now that I have a pair. I would say that I have worn them running around 10 times since I bought them and they have already conked out. Luckily, I bought them in Best Buy who I was able to call and get to send me an email copy of the receipt (which, of course, I had thrown away or lost). The headphones are very cool but if I am going to have to send them back every few months they will lose some of their appeal. With the next pair I will restrict myself to only using them outdoors where I sweat much less (due to the cooling effect of the air).

If any companies are looking for a beta tester to test their supposedly sweat-proof gadgets, then look no further, I'm your man...

Fantastic

Thanks to a recommendation from Jaime Menendez de Luarca, I have just bought this industrial fan, the Euritesca DF 20P. The idea is to use it whenever I have to train indoors, either on the treadmill or the turbo trainer. The fan I have currently has only 50 Watts; this beast has 170 Watts. It can churn out 4,080 cubic meters of air per hour. Being a bit of a nerd, I have worked out how this compares to running outside.

Firstly, we need to know what surface area we present to the wind. Using a formula I nicked off the internet - 0.0204*height in meters^0.725*weight in kilos^0.425 - and dividing by two, I came up with a surface area of 1.07 square meters. (Obviously this is a good example of false accuracy - the real number will be less because the skin between your toes has no bearing on the amount of air you displace while running, for example.) So that means that 4,080 cubic meters per hour is equivalent to running in still air at 4,080 / 1.07 / 1,000 = 3.8 kph. Is that all?? There is another model which is much more powerful and generates a "breeze" equivalent to running at about 16 kph but I think this would be going too far. Just imagine it - if you were to turn this thing on, you would go from running upright on the treadmill, to having to lean into the wind as you do when you run outside (see my previous post on this topic). And that is supposing you can set things up in such a way that the air current hits your body uniformly. According to Jack Daniels' formula, running outside is equivalent to running on a treadmill with a gradient of 1% because there is no need to overcome air resistance. In fact I have always set the gradient to 1% on the treadmill for this reason but with my new mega-fan maybe I will have to take air resistance into account!

Here it is installed...