We finally made it back to Blanket’s Creek.  Amy has been practicing a lot since her “incident”.  (She was on a steep downhill last time we were here, and used her front brake to try to slow down.  She chipped and killed a permanent tooth, requiring a root canal, and some cosmetic fixes  . . . owie!  But, she’s back on the horse!)

We first played around a bit at the obstacle course.  Amy and Quinn were having a lot of fun on the jumps, and the log with the ramps beat Tammy.  I didn’t face the log traversal (15′ down the narrow side of a log — it’s my nemesis).  And, for some reason, the see-saw is gone — that was fun (and scary).  Then we hit the trail.  I wore my shoes again — I have my click in’s back on my mountain bike.  I bust a lot with them on, but, I just have to get used to them.  I do enjoy the power I have, when I’m not stalling (and falling).

We rode the “Mosquito Flats” trail from the start, up to the road that leads back.  We then doubled back, and paused at the trail up to the Dweling trail (an intermediate trail that Quinn and I have ridden before).  We decided to go up to that trail head, since Amy and Tammy had never seen it, and it’s a nice ride.  (That’s the westward down and back on the trail below).  There is about 1/4 mile of a 3′ elevated plank bridge over the marsh.  Things like that used to be hard for Quinn and Amy, but they both rode over it without problems (they didn’t even notice that it could be considered “hard”).  Then, we rode back, and hit the obstacle course again, where we all conquered our obstacles!  Yes, I did the log traversal — several times.  I learned that I just needed to approach it with more speed.  That way, if I start to fall off, I can just jump off, and stay on my bike.  Quinn did the log traversal with the ramps, and, Quinn and Amy got a little bit of front tire air off of a dirt ramp!  It was tough to go home after such a short run — but — we have a game to prepare for!  Go Tech!

I wore my new Garmin for the ride, so you can follow along.  You’ll notice that my heart rate only gets high when we’re on the obstacle course!  Be sure and click the link to go to the site — you can even hit play on the map, and watch the altitude, speed, and heart rate vary over the duration.  Enjoy!

Family Fun at Blanket's Creek

Original post available here: Family Mountain Biking at Blanket’s Creek

I’ve been using a Polar RS200 for a year or two now. I have really enjoyed being able to keep my heart rate where I want it during exercises. And, since it downloaded to the computer, I have enjoyed being able to log my heart rate with my workouts. (And, there are even ways to download it to my Mac! — Though, those are third party applications, Polar does not support Mac’s)  It is also nice to be able to step onto any machine at the gym, and have it automatically read my heart rate.

I was looking at my friend Hal’s facebook page and I noticed that he had a running log complete with a map, and detailed HR information for the duration of his run.  I had tried making maps with Trail Guru, but they were never very good.  And, I only had heartrate summaries.  I chatted with him, and discovered that he used a heart rate monitor with a built in GPS, a Garmin Forerunner 305.  After surfing on e-bay, I discovered that the Garmin was only about $40 more than my Polar.  So, assuming I could sell the polar, I could upgrade for $40 ish.  So, I bought one, and pitted it head to head with my Polar.

My son and I ran about 2.25 miles Thanksgiving morning.  He wore the polar, and I wore my garmin.  I used MotionX on my iPhone to provide the GPS.

First up: MotionX and Polar RS200

MotionX generates a KMZ and GPX file that can be used in google maps, or other mapping software to view the route:

As you can see, two separate programs, but, they work acceptably.  My son’s heartrate goes much higher than mine does!

The challenger:  Garmin Forerunner 305

The above picture (and link when you click on it) are from Garmin’s free “Garmin Connect” web based service.  I’ve also used TrailRunner on Mac, and I know there is a really good application called SportTracks for windows.  The drop in heartrate and in speed was when we went off trail to look for a geocache site.

Concusion

As a running device, the Polar can not touch the Garmin.  The built in GPS works really well, and, since it stores samples of my heart rate every second, I get a much better view of the entire work out, not just averages from the end.  Working out indoors, though, it lags a bit.  While it still records detailed heartrate information, it is almost impossible to read your heart rate from the device.  The font is VERY small.

So, while I prefer the Garmin, the Polar still wins in two places:  Better view of heart rate from the device, and, it’s monitor works on the machines at my gym.

Since I cut and paste this HTML multiple places: Link to Original

Pain of the Day

Today I was supposed to workout with a trainer, but, he blew me off. So, I’m at the gym with no plan. Oh well — you tell me how well I did!

Full Body Workout

Superset

• Dumbbell Press 12@65#, 6@65#, 4@65#
• Dumbbell Flys 12@25#, 10@25#, 8@25# (Not sure it was 25# — could have been 45#

Superset

• Wide Grip Assisted Pullup 12@-40#, 8@-40#, 8@-70#
• Barbell Biceps Curls 12@45#, 8@45#, 6@45#

Superset

• Romanian Deadlift 8@135#, 10@135#
• Triceps Pushups (narrow grip, not military) 12, 12, 12

Superset

• In Place Lunges (reps done on each leg, R/L) 12/10@25#/arm, 12/8@25#/arm, 10/8@25#/arm
• Dumbbell Military Press 12@25#, 12@30#, 12@30#

Superset

• Weird Trainer Abs Exercises To Failure — usually about 8-10
• Weird Trainer Plank-ish pushups To failuer — usually about 4-6

Notes

Took me an hour, but, that was probably due to me not having a set routine. Still did my 60 secs of cardio between sets. I sometimes blow off the cardio if I spend a lot of time racking weights — I just do the next set, instead. (Since I’m rested, muscle wise, and strength training gets my HR higher than cardio).

I wore my polar HR monitor today. I like two things about it: Big HR display, and it works with the machines, so when I’m on a treadmill, I don’t have to look at my “watch”. But, the Garmin pwns it, by taking 1 second snapshots, and allowing me to see them on a graph. I’m not 100% sure, but I’ll likely be selling this puppy. Workout HR info:

Today’s Pain of the Day was my run in Leita Thompson.
(click picture for a full breakdown of the run, including altitude, heartrate, and all kinds of timing stats.)

I decided to run the Red trail, which is 2.25 miles. Then, at 1.2 miles in, I added on the loop around the lake, which is another .5 miles. After I finished, I rested for a minute, hit the lap button on my Forerunner, and ran the yellow trail which is 1.1 miles. For a grand total of 3.39 miles (I know it doesn’t add up).

And, I don’t feel too bad. Pretty good actually. I’m sure I’ll be sore later!

Today, I was finally able to get back to my full body workout.  I chose that instead of split days, since it will be easier to get to the gym 3 days, during Thanksgiving, than 4

Today, a personal trainer wanted me to do abs with him when it was abs time.  He killed my abs.  And, he wants me to work with him on Wednesday too.  I made it pretty clear that I couldn’t afford training, but, he said that they were there to help, not just to make sales.  So . . I’ll likely be very hurt on Wednesday too!

I also wore my new Garmin HR monitor.  It took me forever to figure out how to get the data out of it, when I didn’t have the gps part on, but, I finally figured it out, and here is the graph.  The peaks in the middle are squats, and, at the end, are dips.  Don’t know why dips hit me so hard.  Maybe that was abs?

And, the workout (5 mins of cardio before, 60 seconds between each set, 5 mins after):

• Seated Wide-Grip Row 12@80#, 12@80# 8@60#, 10@80#
• Decline Pushups 12, 12 BD 10 Regular, 12
• Lateral Raise 12@15#, 12@15 8@10, 12@15#
• Squats 12@135#, 12@135#, 12@135#
• Weird Trainer Abs Exercises All to failure
• Triceps Bar Dips 8, 6, wimped out

I remember when I first learned perl.  I was lucky enough to be traveling internationally with a big-wig (VP of Engineering) of my company, so I got to hang out in the First Class airline club at the airport.  He was going somewhere else, but, once I was in, I was in.  I didn’t want to leave and risk not being able to get back in, so, I pulled out Larry Wall’s Perl Programming book.  (The first edition O’Rielly’s Nutshell book)

I was instantly in love.  I don’t know if it was the very geeky jokes, or just how simple the language, but, from that day on, I was a perl head.  I did many things with perl that many people would use a compiled language for.  If I couldn’t do it in a shell script, I did it in a perl script.  If my shell script needed awk or sed, it was time for perl.  It was probably the biggest, most useful tool on my toolbelt.

But, that was about 12 years ago.  And, since then, perl hasn’t changed much.  All of the OO stuff that was added just confused me.  It made perl harder to use, not easier.  I am a huge fan of OO (when it is called for), and, perl just wasn’t making the grade.

About two years ago, I picked up a book on Ruby.  Ruby was (is?) the best implementation of a clean OO language that I’ve ever seen.  I love the itterators.  I love the fact that even a literal is an object.  5.method works just fine, using a method of the literal 5.  Plus, the syntax was very far from normal c-style languages.  It would have easily replaced perl, except that — being so far from C syntax, I never hit that grok stage.  Also, there are a lot of libraries for ruby out there, but nothing like CPAN.

Then came along python.  Obviously, not in the literal time-oriented sense.  I had played with python before, and one thing annoyed the @*#&*% out of me.  Python was sensitive to white space.  I have not met a whitespace sensitive language since COBOL.  It immediately pulled python out of my toolbelt, and I labeled it as a useless language.  I mean, if it couldn’t handle white space, how could I trust it to do what I wanted.  But, meanwhile, all of my colleagues were ranting off an on about how nice python was.

Then, I needed a new script.  I needed to parse out .cab, .zip, and .tgz files, and pull information out of files contained within.  I was replacing a shell script, and, I was hoping to do something in ruby that would natively walk around the tgz file.  I came up empty.  I decided to give python a try, and, it had libraries for everything but cab.  (And, a quick cab2zip or cab2tgz script is trivial to call before we work with cabs).  The python libraries for zip and tar files were easy to use, and, I’ve noticed that my normal indenting is up to python’s standards, so, my code just works as I intend, even if I “forget” the braces.  Pretty cool.

Python’s OO implementation isn’t bad.  It’s not just one big ugly hash like perl’s, but, it’s not nearly as nice as Ruby’s.  But, the world will go where the world will go, and, python has the libraries (the .zip and .tgz thing is installed in the core — you dont’ even need to download anything), the support, and, is plenty fast for what I’m doing.  It looks like perl is now dead to me, and, unless the world decides to all jump in ruby’s camp, ruby is dead too . . .

Oh well, guess I just need to hop onto the bandwagon!

“Long Live Python!”

It took me a while to realize that I was getting so fatigued today because I’m fighting off something. When I did figure it out, then I started to take it easy, and I finished early (skipped some sets)

Lower Body Day #1 + Abs #2

Warmup: 5 mins on treadmill. Got to about 5.5 Mph

Legs & Butt

Superset, 3 times

• Lunges 12/leg @ 25#/arm
• Hamstring Curls (ball) 12
• Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

Strained something in my left leg on lunges.

Breakdown, 3 times
Squats w/Ball Overhead – 20# Medicine ball to fatigue, then drop ball, then to fatigue again

Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

Back

Superset, 3 times

• Deadlift (Dumbbell) 12 @ 55#/arm
• Front Pullups (assisted) 12@ -100#
• Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

Breakdown, 3 times
Seated Wide-Grip Row – 90# to fatigue, then 40#

Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

Biceps & Forearms

Superset, 3 times

• Bicep Curl sitting on ball (Dumbbell) 12 @ 25#/arm
• Reverse Curls (Barbell) 12@ 25# (The bar — no weights)
• Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

Breakdown, 3 times
Bicep Curls (barbell) – 55# to fatigue, then 30#

Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

I blew off last two sets of biceps curls

Ab Workout 2

Superset, 3 times

• Ball Knee Crunches) To fatigue (not many — owie)
• Ab Pelvic Thrusts To fatigue
• Reverse Crunch (Ball) 20
• Rest 60 seconds of cardio (Treadmill @6.0MPH)

I blew off last set of Abs

First things first, owie!  I like this!  My biceps are already sore, tomorrow they’re probably gonna kill

I then chugged my Surge Recovery, and went to yoga. I only got in 30 mins of yoga. I was so exhausted, I had no balance, and no abs. I may need to take a yoga break till I get better. We’ll see next week.

The workout took 56 minutes, and, during it my HR got up to 185 (during deadlifts), and averaged 153bpm. I burned 616 calories.