• Category Archives Fitness

  • 26.2 take four

    Posted on by beno Comment

    All inspired by my failure to hit my 1000 miles for the year, plus digging into my mental health data shows I am happiest when I am fit and running, I am going to have yet another go at getting a marathon off my bucket list.

    Begin the training does.

    Terry ran the numbers for me last night. To ramp the miles up each Sunday till 20 in 2 months I am going to add 2 miles to each run. Last week I did 8, so in a few days time, Sunday morning, I will knock out a 10 miler.

    Without a goal I feel sort of lost so we have set the goal of doing the marathon in March. Hopefully going back to run the Grand Canyon in April and then if my mate Lloyd gets the camping permit for May, we have 3 days hiking in the Canyon at that time (North Rim!!!!!).

    So, three realistic goals. If you first don’t succeed, try try try try again.


    Fitness 📎and tagged

  • Strava – 2018

    Posted on by beno Comment

    It’s a bit lame, I was hoping for something flashy and data heavy, but eh, you get what you are given….
    Here is my year in review according to Strava (one of three websites that I use to track my running).

    At the start of this year I set myself the goal of running 1000 miles, and fell short (see my post on mental health), but don’t feel too bad about it…. given what I was up against this year, it’s been challenging enough…. Anyway, the highlight was running the Grand Canyon, it was my longest run and the run with the most altitude gained.
    My other running data website confirms that my average distance run is 4 miles… so I have no idea where Strava got the 1.8 from… Unless it’s miles per day for the whole year…. in which case, 1.8 miles a day for 365 days sounds about right.

    What about next year? I will set the same goal. It is realistic, but challenging. 1000 miles in 2019. Lets get on it.


    Fitness

  • Mental Health – 2018

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Its been a big year. Tough in some ways, but in others, its been pretty straight forward. (This is my blog, so it’s my thoughts. For Freddy she claims that this year was the tough one, for me 2016 was THE WORST hands down with 2017 a close second).
    Because of the ’16/17 debacle, we finally admitted we needed some help…. After all, the definition of insanity is just doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result…… Just doing what we had been doing was clearly not helping….. We had two bad years in a row, so that much was clear.
    So, at the start of this year one of the things that I now do is a twice daily assessment of how I am feeling in the mental health space. It has been amazing to see the improvement by this twice a day checkup.
    Of course I use an app to do that (Daylio).

    At 7am and 7pm I get a reminder to check in with my brain and review how I have been going.
    I can also link activities and see what trouble spots there are and what activities make me happy/relaxed.
    So here is my year in mental health pixels…..

    Blue is bad. Only 34 of those days for the whole year. Not bad.
    Purple is meh. 381 of those. (Remember, I check in twice a day).
    Green is good. 301 of those. Some room for improvement.
    Orange is rad. April first is the obvious stand out. The day I ran the Canyon. I was on a runners high. Interesting.

    Anyway, bottom line, I am a lot more aware of how I am doing in the mental health area of my life and as a result, I am doing much much better.
    I intend to keep using the app and so it will be interesting to see what next year is like, having the data will be useful to do the comparison.

    As we say in the industrial automation space, you can’t change what you don’t measure.


    Fitness

  • Running the Grand Canyon

    Posted on by beno Comment

    If you think you are a little bit fit and get it in your head that running the Canyon in a day would be a good idea. Just don’t. Take it from me. Don’t. Do. It.

    Right, with that disclaimer out of the way…..
    Freddy and I headed out there a few days before the run to kick back and spend some time together since I have been away so much due to travel.
    Photos of those few days coming – soon – I hope…..In the meantime, here is one of us at the rim.

    Ok, so we got up at o-dark thirty and got dressed.
    I had looked at the forecast, but still figured it would be cool enough for the leggings. It wasn’t. Ended up pulling them off less than halfway down and carried them the rest of the way… Glad I went with the shorts over the top!

    Considered also taking a flashlight, but eh, it’s just more to carry for the bulk of the trip, so skipped it and just took it easy for the first bit.

    It was soon light enough to see what I was about to step on (or not step on as the cliff edge case might be).

    Turned the major corner and it was blowing a gale. Almost lost my hat and so turned it around for a good while.
    It was still a bit cool at this point, so needed the hat as a bit of a beanie. (The heavy overcast meant that I really didn’t need it and thus ended up carrying it for way too long)

    Things settled down and we are making good progress. Not as fast as I want, but I am keeping an eye on the watch and know that its too easy to go too fast and tap out, so we are watching the heart rate and steps per minute pretty close as I know my numbers I need to keep things even.
    This is my first view of the Colorado River. Im pretty excited.

    Half way and we meet the Tonto trail. I badly want to run this one at some stage as well.

    Also at half way is a long drop dunny and temperature gauge.

    It really was perfect weather for the run.
    The overcast and breaze was perfect.

    Check out the switchbacks we are running!

    You know you are there when you hit the tunnel.

    So, here we are at the bottom.
    1 hour 20 min.

    Bright Angel Creek runs into the Colorado and is always worth a look.

    I even took a moment to enjoy some of the local plant life.

    For the most part I am enjoying going uphill……

    Once I hit mile 14 things took a turn.
    I just ran out of everything. Cold, clammy skin, vomiting and cramps.
    Totally unfun with 3 solid uphill miles to go and tons of tourists to battle my way through…. yuck.

    But we made it.

    Beat up my feet. Again.

    Wanted to do it in 4 hours. Took me 5.
    Disappointed? No. I gave it all I had and left nothing out there.
    I got to know my limits.

    Totally worth it.


    Fitness Life in the USA 📎and tagged

  • Busy 3 weeks ahead

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    The feet are healing well. Going for a 6-7 mile run tomorrow morning to test them out a bit more. Did the usual few miles during the week.

    Monday at around 4am we head off to Chicago, from there we head straight to Dallas.
    We get back lateish Thursday. Back into the office Friday.
    2 days latter, we fly out Sunday morning for Portland for a few days.
    Back in the office Friday.
    The following week we are off to Las Vegas for a few days.
    The EPIC Roadshow is in full swing.

    In other news. Tinkering around with MotionEyesOS. Zoneminder is a getting a bit heavy. Not spent a lot of time on it thus far beyond getting it installed on an old mini PC. Having trouble getting the motion detection working (same problem I had with Zoneminder).
    Seriously considering just putting the cameras on continuous record. But don’t want to invest the time to review the footage frequently.
    Why?
    Glad you asked…. Freddy wants videos of the critters visiting the fishpond, digging up the back yard and fishing around the sprinklers.

    In other other news. Terry’s car needed its 2 year smog testing, and the check engine light was on. Cost a pretty penny to get repaired.
    Freddy will (hopefully) get it smogged while I am gone.

    Also, latter this month, we kick over our 10th year of being here.
    Should I do a 10 year mega blog or let it slide?


    Fitness Life in the USA