Tag Archives: running

Janathon, Personal

Janathon, day 8. A day out in North Wales.

I work at home, mostly at the kitchen table. Consequently my hair is getting long and straggly, my beard is starting to make a reappearance and interactions with other humans usually involves a nod and a grunt.

I am losing all my social skills, I’m sure.

Today I crawled out of the kitchen, blinked at the bright grey sky and drove to Broughton, to go visit some prospective clients. Lovely it was too. There is a roundabout in Broughton that is sponsored by AirBus, it’s rather surreal. I’d include a photograph of it, but of course, I was driving.

The meeting went well, I think. Part two is tomorrow, and then hopefully there is more exciting work to come out of it. There isn’t really much to the day beyond that. It seemed to overshadow everything else. The children have a new place to learn their Tai Kwon Do, and I’ve got to prepare a presentation for tomorrow.

Oh and dinner was some tasty soup.

It was full, though, and the idea of doing a run was very very low on my radar today. Managed to squeeze one in on the treadmill after Jude got home. Three miles with a sprint every half mile or so. Well, I went to 7mph every half a mile or so. That said, I’d then collapse, go as slow as humanly possible and then slowly build up to going speedily again. In one “ohmygodwhatamidoing” moment, I pulled out the safety line and everything went dead. That was at about 22/23 minutes and I was two miles in. I think I did the three miles in about 35 minutes.

Although running on the treadmill feels like a Proper Chore, the choriness is offset by the ability to watch netflix things on the ipad. Today it was three episodes of Adventure Time. How much more fun can one take? Four and I might have exploded.

Here’s “Trouble in Lumpy Space”. Lumpy Space Princess is AWESOME!

Episode 2 – Trouble in Lumpy Space from Gvtertje on Vimeo.

Janathon, Personal

Day 7 – my #janathon training schedule

CalendarImageI said on Facebook that I’d post my training schedule for January. Mostly for the amusement of those who are following my attempts at fitness, but also because there are some who really know what they’re talking about, and I appreciate the feedback that I get.

The background to all this is that this time last year I couldn’t be classed as someone who exercised. It wasn’t in any New Year resolutions (I don’t think I had any last year) and I had other, better things to do. However, Jude had agreed to run the Manchester 10k in May ’13 and this was niggling me as something that I might want to do.

Following a fun weekend at Prestatyn Pontins at the end of January (oh yes) and some conversations with my gigging buddy, Lorna, about the merits of running and the various sites and apps that could help, I thought I’d give it a go.

I basically spent the rest of the year training up to the Manchester 10k, then the Birmingham half marathon. Things took a bit of a lull after last years Juneathon and I had to really force myself to get out for the half marathon training.

janathon-participant-logoWith the start of Janathon I thought that I should get back into the swing of regular training, especially as I’m supposed to be running the Milton Keynes half marathon in March. I started a bit of training in December, but nothing much of note.

So to my Janathon training plan. It’s based around running four days a week and doing weights, lifting or resistance training on the other three.

I had 10 weeks to get ready for the half marathon and so I did a search for 10 week training schedules. The one that I plumped for is the 10 week 1:50 plus half marathon schedule at Runners World.

Now there’s no chance of me getting close to two hours, so 1:50 is crazy talk. I would have scraped in at just under three hours had I not had a certain urgent requirement with about two miles to go. However, I’m sure that I can improve on my time and so a schedule that includes some intervals to build pace can only be a good thing.

In addition I’m doing some lifting based on the “break in” workouts in the New Rules Of Lifting (recommended to me by Matthias Feist – I trust his judgement on these things, *a lot*). The break in workouts are for beginners and run for four weeks. Ideal for gently easing into the world of lifting for a noob like me. There are two sessions a week – the “A” and “B” workout.

The “A” workout consists of squats, static lunges, two point dumbbell rows with elbows out, push ups and swiss ball squats. The “B” workout has deadlifts, step-ups, dumbbell one-arm shoulder presses, close-grip lat pulldowns and reverse crunches. Two weeks ago that would have meant nothing to me, now I’ve got a reasonable idea what to do. The book is excellent. Well written and plain spoken. And it’s great for people like me who are petrified of gyms.

That covers six days a week. The seventh day I’ll do some gentle upper body exercises with the resistance bands. I didn’t have to do it last week because there were only five January days – so I’m not 100% certain what I’ll do yet.

So this morning I did the “A” break in workout. I found that the lunges and the squats felt much harder than last week. I’m using resistance bands for these and I had to move down a level for the squats. Conversely, the push ups felt a little easier, but still very hard!

The plan for the rest of the month is below. Of course this will change, but it’ll be interesting to compare this with what I actually did at the end of the month.

I suspect that I’ll be knackered come February.

Wed 8 3M with a few 50m bursts
Thu 9 Break in workout “B”
Fri 10 3M easy
Sat 11 Upper body
Sun 12 5-6M slow – this will probably be 5M on the treadmill, as I’m away at the weekend
Mon 13 4M easy
Tue 14 Break in workout “A”
Wed 15 4M with a few 100M bursts
Thu 16 Break in workout “B”
Fri 17 4M
Sat 18 Upper body – I’m away this weekend, so resistance bands at hotel. Grrr!
Sun 19 7-8M slow – Probably will be a shorter run before breakfast. Might swap with Monday
Mon 20 4M easy
Tue 21 Break in workout “A”
Wed 22 4M, inc several 30-sec bursts
Thu 23 Break in workout “B”
Fri 24 4M
Sat 25 Upper Body
Sun 26 8M – God knows if this will happen. It’s a big birthday do on Saturday night. I might be suffering!
Mon 27 4M off road (probably along canal)
Tue 28 Break in workout “A”
Wed 29 3M, inc a few short bursts
Thu 30 Break in workout “B”
Fri 31 3M … it says “on grass” but I’ll be in Llandudno, so probably roads.
Sat 1/2 DAY OFF (!!!)
Sun 2/2 9M slow – this will be in Llandudno again, the day after the Gathering (The Alarm gig). It could be late afternoon by the time we get to do this.
Janathon, Personal

Janathon day six, morning run

I woke up quite early this morning, an unfortunate side effect of going to bed early. So by 5 I’d had more sleep than on a normal night. Rather than spend the time pottering, I had some breakfast and got out for an early run.

janathon-participant-logoI went along an approximation of Jude’s zig zag tour of Ormskirk. It seemed to work out fine as my phone told me I’d done three miles just as I turned in to our drive.

It wasn’t terribly quick. 36 minutes for thee miles is quite slow even for me, but my previous runs since Christmas had all been over 12 minutes, so I was pleased. Also my legs didn’t ache at all (when running) so I was doubly pleased. As I’m trying to follow. Training schedule for a half marathon in March, I’ve moved from measuring in km to miles. So I’m only just getting used to what the different paces mean. Basically 12 minutes per mile is slow.

A full day ahead, the children go back to school and there’s cubs and brownies tonight. Realistically if I didn’t get the run in early then it would be 9pm tonight, which would be crazy. No doubt I’ll resort to a late run at some point in the month, but not today.

If I get a chance this evening I’ll post the training plan that I’m notionally following.

Janathon, Personal

Janathon Day 4 – Stairs are a problem

The lifting exercises yesterday have left me in quite a state. Sure they were interesting and a good challenge, but today my legs and glutes are giving me some proper jip.

I went into Southport to buy some presents and ended up getting myself a lovely new pair of shorts, a foam roller to try and massage my aching muscles and an exciting set of dumbbells. The latter was a bit of an impulse purchase, but I’m very pleased with the shiny new bits of kit. Not that I’ve used them yet.

janathon-participant-logoMy training plan says that today is a four mile slow run. They’re all slow, to be honest, and today more than most given the lack of any strength in my legs. It was late and dark, so I meandered around the lit parts of the streets near me and had to skip my planned route.

Everything seemed to ease up a bit within about 10 minutes of running and I was able to get around the streets at a pace slightly better than a potter. Four miles in 53 minutes, any slower and I’d be walking (some would argue that it’s almost walking pace anyway).

Now I’m back home and I can hardly use my legs. I had a good roll on the foam – what’s not to love about that? Except that I actually yelped when I first tried to roll on it, the soreness was quite acute. I’m reassured that this is all Good, and that without the pain there will be no gain. I bow to the better judgement of my friends on this one.

600We just put the children to bed and it was a struggle getting down the stairs, even backwards. Goodness knows what it’ll be like tomorrow. I might skip the 3 mile run and do some upper body training if I’m in a real state. That said, if I’m writing about a three miler tomorrow, then you know I’ve been encouraged (read nagged or emotionally blackmailed) into doing the run.

I hope you appreciate the Dalek image, by the way. That’s meant to be an amusing reference to stairs. Oh, you probably got it already…

Tonight we will mostly be watching The Bridge. I’m very happy that this is on again, but it’s on just at a time when I’m going to be busy through most weekends in January. Thank goodness for iPlayer.

Janathon, Personal

Back to work with a bump!

It’s been lovely over the Christmas and New Year period. I’ve tried to avoid work as much as possible. Obviously when working for yourself it’s difficult to avoid it 100%, but it’s the first Christmas in a long time when I haven’t been overwhelmed with work, and I haven’t come down with a big old man-flu. This is good.

However, I was able to turn off when Christmas approached because I knew that there wasn’t anything urgent that needed doing. With the passing of 10 days all those non-urgent things have become great-big-super-urgenty-urgent things. This is bad.

All my “ideal working day” plans dreamt up over the Christmas period have gone out the window on the first day of work. Instead I have a plan for January that could be summarised as “forget anything lovely for a month”.

What isn’t on that list is Janathon. In my ideal working day I have a 90 minute slot between 11 and 12:30 which is for exercise. It’s there because of the other commitments – taking the children to school, catching up with programmers, catching up with clients, picking up the children, trying to have a life and so on. The ideal time that I can find is after programmer time and before lunch time.

I took the children to my parent’s house this morning for a sleepover. The intention being to get some time for work, but by the time I was back home it was already 12:30. So half the day gone with only a little work done and bugger all exercise. All that considered, I went out for a 5k run, around the block. If I didn’t do it at that moment, then it would never get done.

The weather was beautiful, perfect. It was sunny and probably freezing cold, but I didn’t feel it. I’m still feeling a bit lardy and slow after Christmas so I kept at a pace that I felt happy with. I got around the block in 35:41 which Runkeeper told me was the 14th fastest that I’ve done it in. Very happy with that.

Given that time is tight, I’ve taken to listening to audio books when I’m running rather than motivational music. The effect is that I feel like I’m getting two things done rather than just one. My next step is to see if I can go out with a voice recorder again and dictate stuff. I’m pretty certain that’s not ideal, but it would feel super-productive.

Still, now it’s back to work. It looks like I’ll be at it until late tonight putting together a presentation (yay!) and then full-on tomorrow just working down a list of things that I need to do. I have my “new rules for lifting” inspired workout to do, so chances are tomorrow will be a resistance training day. That counts, I think, so onwards and upwards.

Keeping up with the spirit of putting music videos in these posts, here’s Hero by Neu! from 1974. Another one of the gems that we listened to on New Years Eve.

Janathon

Happy New Year

Saint Lord Pork of Ormskirk
Saint Lord Pork of Ormskirk – a fine specimen of porky loveliness
Some fun was had last night, seeing in the New Year. Jude and I were at Gareth and Christine’s part of a select group there to enjoy the magnificence of the biggest and tastiest shoulder of pork that I’ve seen in a long time. Perhaps the whole of my life (thanks Christine!)

The pork, fancy beers, cocktails and an eclectic choice of music meant that there was a bit of a lie in this morning. My plan for the first day of Janathon had been to do something in the morning before we headed to my in-laws for a New Year get together. However, that turned out to be wishful thinking.

Instead we went to Lymm and had a very pleasant afternoon.

JanathonOn our return I tried very hard to get some running in on the treadmill (it was raining, and grim outside). Two miles in I was knackered. My legs hurt and I had no energy, party nibbles and diet coke are probably not the best preparation for exercise. After the traumas of last year’s Juneathon I decided to take it easy on the first day. I stopped and instead did a few Swiss-ball crunches. At least it’s something, had there not been the Janathon commitment I guess I could have easily left it.

So a snooze later, some Sherlock and now revisiting The Bridge before it starts again at the weekend. It’s been a very pleasant and relatively quiet day.

Oh, and a server stopped working – had to find a way to get back on it (broken sshd), fix it and repair the database. But that’s all dull stuff.

The song that kicked off last night’s musical fun was Half Man Half Biscuit’s “You’re Hard”. How can you not love a song with these lyrics:

Henry Rollins! Henry Rollins!
You’re hard. You’re hard.
Big Jimmy Nail! Big Jimmy Nail!
You’re hard as well.
Sainsbury’s security!
Like I’m dead scared
Oh what a frightening world it can be

Lenny Henry! Lenny Henry!
You’re funny. You’re funny.
Jenny Eclair! Jenny Eclair!
You’re dead funny too.
Skinner, Baddiel, Anderson, Brand!
Oh, nurse, soothe my sides
Oh, what a funny old world it can be
Ok, let’s pedestrianise the high street

Janathon

Here we go again

It’s the last day of 2013, quite a remarkable year for me in many ways – but the one that I’m interested in today is the running. About 11 months ago I started out running after talking to a friend about it when away at a gig. I’d started the year without really considering any exercise, in fact I didn’t really have any New Year resolutions. So finishing the year having completed four 10k runs and a half marathon seems quite an accomplishment – even if I did so very slowly.

In June I had a stab at trying the Juneathon, after being encouraged into it by the very same friend who had extolled the virtues of running in the first place. I was trying to kick start some training ahead of the Birmingham half marathon, but hurt my foot by the second day. It was all a bit of a disaster.

JanathonSo I’m trying again. Janathon starts again tomorrow, and I intend to give it as good a stab as I can. Day one is likely to be difficult due to hangovers in the morning and more get togethers in the afternoon. However, I’m sure that it can be done.

I doubt that I’ll run every day, I don’t want to break myself this time and I want to get to some level of fitness to do the MK half in March.

I’ve been reading the New Rules of Lifting after it was recommended at the weekend. I’m hopeless near any gym and one of my principle resolutions for 2014 is to get over irrational anxieties – gyms and Nandos are high on that list. So I’m going to learn how the muscles work get used to the resistance bands that I bought a few weeks ago and venture into the gym from time to time as well. The plan is to get faster, build endurance and lose weight – I’m sure that Nandos fits into that somewhere as well.

There are three races slotted into the calendar so far: the MK Half Marathon on the 9th March, Manchester 10k on the 18th May and the Wigan 10k in September. By the end of the year I want to have completed two half marathons, a couple more 10ks and be on the way to being able to do a marathon. Oh, and I want to have stuck through a Janathon and a Juneathon.

Android

Headphone controls on Android – disabling the pickup button

Tomorrow I’m running in the Birmingham Great Run and am hoping to listen to a few motivational tunes along the way.

Recently I got some fancy new headphones that don’t drop out and are supposed to be sweat proof. However, I sweat. A lot. Consequently I manage to break the sweat-proof-barrier at around 45 minutes when the music will randomly pause and restart. Worse still after about an hour it will start randomly launching Android’s equivalent to Siri.

This is not good.

To stop it I have to fumble around, check the settings and then try concentrating on the running again.

I realised that this was a headphone problem when running on the treadmill and watching something on Netflix on the ipad. Just as I hit 45 minutes up popped Siri, delightfully prompting me for some instructions.

It turns out that the headphone controls in Android changed with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich. Apps that used to control the behaviour of the headset “hook” button stopped working (such as the apparently very useful Headset Blocker)

Instead I found this thread over at XDA Develpers. You need to be root to disable the keys, but the instructions boil down to finding the keylayout file for the headset, changing the value for HEADSETHOOK and then rebooting.

On my Nexus 4 running Android 4.3 I did the following:

Launch ADB:

macbookpro:platform-tools steve$ ./adb shell
shell@mako:/ $ su -

Go into the keylayout folder: 

root@mako:/ # cd /system/usr/keylayout/

Look for files that include “226” – the keycode sent from the hook button.

root@mako:/system/usr/keylayout # grep 226 *
Generic.kl:key 226   MEDIA_NEXT
Vendor_22b8_Product_093d.kl:# key 226  tbd reserved key
droidmote.kl:key 226   HEADSETHOOK
hs_detect.kl:key 226   HEADSETHOOK       WAKE

I edited the hs_detect.kl file to change the 226 to 163 – apparently key code 163 will make applications that control the headset buttons work, such as Headset Button Controller.

Why the hs_detect.kl file? The instructions in the specific post says that you should edit the Generic.kl and sec_jack.kl files. The sec_jack.kl file didn’t exist on my phone, so first use “grep 226 *” to find the files that might be needed, then look for the one most likely. For me I knew that droidmote was an app that I’d installed, I had no idea what Vendor_22b8… was so I chose hs_detect.kl.

Before editing the file make the filesystem read-writable and take a backup. I just copied it: 

root@mako:/system/usr/keylayout # mount -o rw,remount /system
root@mako:/system/usr/keylayout # cp hs_detect.kl hs_detect.kl.safe

and edited the file so it looked like this: 

root@mako:/system/usr/keylayout # cat hs_detect.kl                             
key 163   HEADSETHOOK       WAKE
key 116   POWER             WAKE
key 107   ENDCALL           WAKE_DROPPED

After the phone is rebooted, the middle button stops working and can be managed using something else.

Now, hopefully, I won’t hit a technical brick wall at around 45 minutes. Sadly there’s nothing I can do about the rain.

Personal

Juneathon day 17 – epic gym fail

A couple of months ago I joined the gym at Edge Hill University with the intention of going in the daytime. This was easy when I work at home because I can arrange meetings and other bits of work around the gym. However, it is trickier when I’m working most of the daytime at a client site – currently the Wigan Youth Zone.

So it was a little before 9pm when I could try and squeeze in some exercise and I wanted to go to the gym to try out some of my new exciting training programme.

However, when I signed up a while back, it turns out I’d thought that off-peak would be most sensible, what with being able to go in the daytime. Stood helpless without the requisite £1.20 to get into the gym with an off-peak card, I had to turn tail and head home. Tomorrow, I upgrade to full membership.

By the time I was home it was feeling very late. So I tried to squeeze in half an hour on the treadmill and the rowing machine: 1 mile (in 11:33 minutes) and then 17 minutes on the rowing machine.

Personal

Juneathon day 16 – sore legs

My legs have been creasing me today. They haven’t really settled down since visiting the gym on Thursday, perhaps it’s because I’ve not given them a chance to rest before doing something else.

Today was no exception. We went for a trip to Quarry Bank Mill today with Aunty Kaggs, John and Gill. All very lovely but included quite a bit of walking uphill and downhill. My legs were definitely still aching, but I couldn’t justify going up down the steps backwards (a trick I learned from my accomplished running friend, Bern)



Happily fed and watered after picnic at Quarry Bank Mill

I think that I’m also still a little tired after Friday night’s shenanigans. Lorna has posted a little background on her Juneathon blog here. I can’t really add any more to it, except to say that I didn’t indulge in the vodka. Maybe I’m getting a little old for the late nights.

The best I could do this evening was two miles in 25 minutes on the treadmill. My legs didn’t feel quite so sore when running but I was tired, and there was the last episode of Battlestar Galactica Season Three to watch.