The problem with jogging in Miami in the summer: 78 degrees and 91% humidity at 6am.
I’ve been jogging on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays with Ben, and we have yet to run through an entire 5k without walking some. Within two miles, the sweat is just pouring off me and I’m completely hot. (Not in the Paris Hilton hot sort of way, obviously.)
I wear technical clothing (meaning the synthetic stuff so the water wicks away quickly) but it’s still soaked in 20 minutes. The water won’t evaporate because of the humidity.
Check out those wind stats, too: the mornings here are completely calm. Not a breath of wind for miles. No cooling breezes to help out.
I can see why people sign up for gym memberships: I bet I could run a 10k right now, all the way through, if I was inside an air conditioned room. Treadmills don’t do it for me, or else I’d sign up too. I like jogging because the start and finish line is kinda hard-coded. You can step off a treadmill at any time, but if you get halfway through a 5k run, you can’t quit, because you’re nowhere near home.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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Ben and I ran the Ocean Drive 5k here on South Beach, my first run at all in weeks. I ran my worst time yet so far for a 5k, and Erika got chuckles out of the fact that my times had been getting worse.
Thankfully we turned around and ran the Fort Lauderdale Mercedes Corporate 5k a couple of weeks later with over a dozen other folks from Southern Wine, and that was my best time yet. I don’t dwell on the time thing, but I’d at least like to think I’m getting faster, not slower.
A few of the things I’ve found interesting lately:
Crazy pigeon attacks human
Steng Lighting
Seven questions that will change your life
Intrepid Travel
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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Ben and I finishing the Run for Miracles
I ran a 5k this morning in Delray Beach with Ben, the guy from work who got me started on the whole running thing.
At our post-race breakfast at Cracker Barrel (helllooo, calories), I said that I don’t enjoy running at all, but I’m doing it for the long run. When I’m 50, and I’m not having a heart attack, I’m going to thank myself. Fingers crossed.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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Motivation on the fridge
Having my 5k run number on the fridge was Erika’s idea, and I’m surprised how much I like seeing it. It’s a great motivator.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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I finished my first 5k race last night, and I look forward to more of ‘em.
My official time was 37 minutes 46 seconds. I placed 40th out of 42 in my division (30-34 year old males), 415th out of 496 males, and 866th overall out of 1163 runners. The average male ran 30 minutes 17 seconds, so I’m above average. (ahem) The overall winner did it in 14 minutes 41 seconds, and all but 2 guys did it under an hour. I would like to meet the two guys who took over an hour just to shake their hands for finishing.
You can also slice and dice the results online.
Here’s how the run looked in NikePlus:
I screwed up my iPod settings where you see the first couple of red blips. I was running with a new iPod armband with plastic over the jog wheel, and I couldn’t get my jogging-training podcast back on track. After that, I had a tough time keeping my pace up. Lesson learned for next time – cut out the clear plastic, touch the jog wheel directly, and have a full 45 minute playlist set up so I don’t have to screw around with it.
The statistics don’t mean much to me. I hadn’t expected to do as well as I did, and I’d expected to be much more exhausted and pained. I feel good, I’m not sore, and I know I could have pushed myself a lot harder. But why? I’m not doing this to win anything, just to get up off my lazy ass.
I totally understand how these things get addictive. I feel great, and I enjoyed myself. I can see myself running several of these a year just to get the t-shirts.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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Today, I signed up for my first 5k race – well, my first race period – the 12th Annual Fantasy of Lights 5k.
While this will technically be a race, I will in no way be judging my results by the time it takes me to finish, or where I finish in the pack. I feel like a winner just registering for the thing, because if I finish, I’ll be “ahead” of everybody else in the city who didn’t run that day. That’s the way I like to think of it, anyway.
I have to thank my coworker, Ben, for even mentioning the race. I wouldn’t have thought to look up upcoming 5k’s, but when he mentioned it, I said to myself, why the hell not? 5k is only 3 miles. I’ve been running/walking about a mile and a half, and it’s not like 5k is some huge insurmountable obstacle. Why not? I could do that. And hey, it comes with a t-shirt, and I’m all about t-shirts.
The description says: “The 5K course is flat, fast, and ideal for setting a personal record.” I burst out laughing when I read that one. I will definitely be setting a personal record, that record being a race completion.
I’ve been loosely following the Cool Running Couch to 5k Plan for the last couple of weeks, but I didn’t think I’d actually be doing a 5k run. The plan is supposed to take nine weeks. The race is in a week and a half, but I’m not worried because I’m sure I’ll be walking some of it anyway.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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Okay, maybe the word “run” is a little ambitious. Here’s the screenshot from my first jog with the Nike+iPod:
That’s what I saw on the computer after I reconnected my iPod. The iPod automatically transmits your running – okay, okay, jogging – data up to the NikePlus.com site. I’m using the Podcasts for Running series by Robert Ullreys, which walks runners through a several-week program of ascending difficulties. This week is basically baby steps, let’s not kid anybody. I didn’t actually run the entire program this morning. I could have (I swear) but I wanted to have enough time to futz with the Nike+iPod toys before showering up for work.
The yellow line was my run. It goes up when I’m going faster, goes down when I’m slowing down. The humps are due to the podcast – it alternates between 60 second runs and 90 second cooldowns.
The dots on the line are when I pressed the center button on my iPod. The Nike+iPod will announce the runner’s speed, distance, pace, etc. The more dots you see, the less patient I was. Mostly I was just mesmerized by the woman’s voice saying how far I’d gone. Or how short I’d gone, depending on one’s point of view.
I love it. I was grinning the whole time. This thing kicks ass.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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I picked up a Nike Plus iPod kit from the Apple store for $29 today. It consists of a little transmitter that goes in a running shoe, and a receiver that plugs into an iPod Nano (which I already had). It tracks how far I’ve run, and how fast.
One of our recently hired Windows engineers sold me on it when he walked me through the Nike Plus web site. It showed his progress, showed challenges he’d entered with other runners, and showed various Nike challenges, showed Lance Armstrong’s running pace, yadda yadda yadda. The graphs made my eyes pop – I could envision myself looking at a graph of my progress, seeing a metric of my improvement. That was it. I was sold.
I’m all over measurable stuff. I kept trying to start jogging, but I quickly tired of it each time because it didn’t feel like I was accomplishing anything. If I skipped a session, it didn’t matter. Down in South Beach, it’s just as easy to go jog over to a cafe and have a Cuban coffee, and skip the rest of the run. With this, the numbers won’t lie.
I haven’t dug deep enough yet, but I’m hoping they have an API that will allow me to expose my stats here on my site. That way, it’ll give me even more encouragement to keep going. When I know the numbers are public, I’ll be less likely to give up. Humiliation is a wonderful motivator.
By the way – if you’re already on NikePlus.com, my username is BrentO.
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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