New On-line Running Log

I started using an on-line log called Breaking the Tape. It has the advantage of being able to generate scripts to show various kinds of summaries of your accumulated data. An example of which is shown over there in the side bar. Does multi-sport workouts too, so might interest the triathletes.

My one point of discontent is that I emailed the owners to find out if there was a way of importing all my old data from Excel, after appropriate layout formatting of course, and so far haven't heard anything.

Edit: I wasn't sure if it would work, but I dropped some of the script (a script for generating a summary of the last three workouts) directly into the body of a post. It didn't work in preview mode, but did work after publishing ... as you can see below. Nice.

Edit: But having trouble customising the script ... caveat emptor

Struggling

Wow, this is one lazy, unmotivated runner's blog you are looking at right now. I ran a whopping 17 km the week after Arakawa. Somehow I racked up 60 km last week. But none of it had much quality or enthusiasm about it. Just a couple of commutes to and from work, bit of this, bit of that. No long run. And quite a bit of beer drinking in between. Generally I am happy as long as my weight is under 74 kg. This morning I jumped on the scales and it was ...76!! So I am definitely having a bit of a down period. I probably need it. Or that's what I keep telling myself anyway.

Today is Tuesday. I was quite prepared to do my regular early Tuesday run this morning, but a damn deadline got in the way, keeping up until 1:30 in the morning and then had to get up at 7:30 and get straight back on the job to get it done by 10:00. Grrr...

So tonight I went to the gym. My company bought some tickets and I use one every now and then. Having both swim-wear and gym-wear on board I decided as I was walking over there that I would do a "triathlon". So I swam a kilometer in 19 minutes (first time I've swum proper laps in several years, so I was reasonably pleased with that) and then had a slow transition to the "bike" upstairs in the studio. I did 15 km on the spinnie thingie in about 25 minutes. Does that sound right? I think there might have been a bit of extra time and distance cooling down a bit. Then I jumped on a treadmill and did 6 km. Man, those treadmills are weird things. Five minutes per km (12 km/h) feels like some kind of crazy, dangerous speed freak thing ... gunna get thrown off any minute ... but then you realize that the breathing is very comfortable, so, oh yeah, I guess it isn't so fast after all. I ended up getting the thing up to 14 km/h for five or ten minutes and finally 14.5 km/h for the last half a k and then a bit of a cool down. I definitely need to learn how to use the dang things properly.

So, that's my first, and maybe last, triathlon.

I have also been getting a bit behind with blog reading. Generally I am reading, but not finding much time to comment. So apologies me hearties. Bloody Pharyngula keeps backing up ... I can't believe he can churn out 6 to 10 blog posts a day as well as be a high-powered uni professor fighting the good fight. The Chimpanzee Refuge gets the better of me at times too. Bloody Kevin Beck .. should stop haranguing fundies and get out running more ;-) ... plus I've added to me burden by subscribing to half a dozen beer blogs (as well as starting my own, which is stuttering like this one just now). But certainly life is not what I would call empty...

A group running blog

For the information of my non-Namban readers, my friend Gareth started a group blog for the use of all the Namban Rengo runners (all 52 of them) to use as we approach Tokyo. He publicized the login and p/word to our mailing list. Though if that's how people post they have to be sure to sign their name to posts. Those with blogger accounts (like moi) could, however, set themselves up as contributers, so our posts (and of course comments) show up with our blogger identity. It hasn't quite taken off like wildfire, but is an interesting experiment and has certainly had a reasonable amount of activity. If you have time to kill or enjoy distractions, you may wish to have a browse of...Tokyo and Beyond.

Maybe some time you too will feel the need for a group blog.

What doesn't kill me...

Got out for a "recovery" run today lunchtime. I headed from my office over to Gosho (the Imperial Guesthouse). I just ran at a relaxed pace, which began at around 5:00/km and peaked at around 4:40/km. Oh, there was that one little downhill where I let fly for 100 m or so and smiled as I saw the pace readout on my watch say 3:09/km. Ha ha ... it was fun. It would have truly been a nice recovery run if I'd stopped at two laps (around 8 km total). But no, I had to go and run another lap didn't I. No damage or anything, but with 11.4 km all up I am feeling a little more fatigued now than I should be (but think of the adddition to the weekly mileage!)

I also spent a bit of time wrassling with Bloglines and learned how to add a Blogroll, which you should now see over at the right. It lists all the Namban Rengo bloggers. Please let me know if you notice any omissions.

beta.blogger.buggered

I'm not happy with this new beta blogger. Google, are you listening? I'm not happy. It is obvious that the site feed is dodgy. After the initial changeover it seemed to cough and splutter a bit but then did care of the site feed and my posts were appearing in Bloglines. Sweet. Then it stopped. So I re-subscribed, and the only feed available was Feedburner. That's OK, it should only take one feed, as long as the bastard works. For the last couple of days, though, it seems to take forever for a new post to show up on Bloglines. And some people reported, for example, that they didn't receive my marathon reports on Bloglines until days later, and when they did, a swag of posts all came through at the same time. Bah...what a pain in the butt. At least I seem to be able to comment on (some) other people's blogs now, but it is still a little patchy. Be warned. And Google, if you are looking in, please fix this!!