I've been so excited about actually being able to run lately that I'm already starting to think about the next step. The last time on the treadmill I bumped up my speed halfway through by another .2 mph, so now I'm up to 6.6. Crazy. I hear that treadmills are notorious for being inaccurate, so I picked up a footpod for my Forerunner. Not only will I be able to track my heart rate, but speed too. Along with that come calories and a whole swack of new data to pick apart and analyze. I can't wait.

After a little over a month of running I'm really starting to feel confident that I will be able to continue at this rate. It still hurts and my lower back is still unhappy, but it's been getting better and easier. I just hope it doesn't swing the other way again. So now I'm thinking about taking on swimming.

I assume swimming should be easier on my body than running or even cycling, but it's still going to be harder. Big water kinda scares me. Pools I'm mostly cool with, but I haven't been near one in years. I don't even know where to go to start. At least I ran a lot when I was a kid, and I've cycled a lot in the past few years. I tried swimming across a pool in Poland 25 pounds ago, and that was a serious struggle. With less buoyancy from less geo it's going to be even harder. And I hear that the gains are a lot slower to realize. 400 metres doesn't sound like much, but I don't want to get my hopes up for no reason.

I suppose I could wetsuit it and backstroke my way through the swimming portion of a triathlon. I'm way more comfortable on my back since I can at least breathe freely and keep relatively unstressed. But...

On facebook I'm tagging my triathlon friends, Caius, Robert, Sandy and I think Marko too (unless you're just into running/cycling), as well as anyone who's got swimming listed as an activity. Does anyone have any tips, suggestions, or comments on how to get started, or even where I should be going to do this? I know there's a pool at the Goodlife at Yonge and Bloor which isn't far from home, as well as one at Yonge and Finch which... well I guess I could go there on the way to work in Scarborough.

Awesome, excited.

I don't know if any of you have been following zibri and the iPhone hacking scene the past while. Basically this guy named zibri used an exploit a someone found and created an application that cracks iPhones and iPod Touches and unlocks the phone for use on any network. Super awesome. It's so much more reliable than the old methods and bloody easy too.

Today zibri got pissed off because google decided to suspend his adsense account. He amassed $4000 worth of clicks by persuading visitors to his page to click on his adsense ads. Something to the effect "once I get a third of all visitors to click on an ad, I'll be able to continue development."

In plain English it is spelled out in the adsense ToS:

... publishers may not request that users click the ads ... publishers participating in the AdSense program ... may not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language

In other words he was trying to scam advertisers out of $4000, and now he's crying like a baby because they won't give it to him.

I suck with money. But this really helped me understand what's going on in steamertown and the rest of the US. The Credit Crisis, Illustrated.

building up mileage... but
I tried to follow the schedule to build up to 5k, but it just kept feeling so easy. Two weeks ago I just did it and I haven't looked back since... at least until today. Every session my average heart rate has been consistently dropping 2-5 bpm. It's crazy how much progress I've been making. On Sunday I went for 35 minutes of straight running. It's insane. I was actually starting to increase my mileage!

...was increasing my mileage. Every day I run something else is sore. I managed to calm my back down by actually using my upper body instead of keeping it absolutely straight. I had no idea that would help. My IT band has been doing great since I started taking shorter strides and stretching it whenever I felt tightness. But now my calf is pulled or strained or something. My hip isn't too happy either. If it's not one thing it's another.

It's time to take a few days off to recover. I might try some light spinning for the rest of the week and see how I feel after. Further reenforcement of how much harder running is on your body than cycling. I'll start doing some proper warm-ups and stretching, then some post-run stretching from now on. At least I've learned why it's so important.

returning to form
As a result of getting back into training mode I've managed to drop six pounds of my winter blubber. Four more and I'm back where I was after the ride to Montreal. It looks like the time I go on the ride this year I might actually get close to my body fat percentage goal. Awesome.

in need of a new goal
I'm starting to think (or at least I was before today), that I need a running goal. A 10k is definitely extremely doable, and I'm sure I'll be able to hit one of those early in the season. Hell, I did one when I was 12, and this time I think I can do it running the whole time. So I thought a half-marathon should be a doable challenge. Then I looked up marathon training, and I'm intrigued.

According to this plan, I only need 16 weeks to go from 14 miles total mileage per week to being able to finish a marathon. I'm already doing 9 miles. The Toronto Marathon is about 28ish weeks away. That gives me three months to go from 9 to 14 miles per week.

Maybe I'm crazy, but that looks totally doable. Wow.

[a couple hours later...] After doing some reading, maybe I should build a bit of a base first. Most things I've read suggest spending six months before really ramping up distance or speed to avoid injury. Since my body seems to be em-oldening [you know, like embiggen] its self lately maybe I'll see if I can run without injuring myself before trying anything like that. Haha.

Today has been quite eventful on the fitness side of things. Unfortunately it's not all been good.

The good
I ran like a mo' fo today. I don't mean to blog every time I do it, but this run was super easy. I don't know what kind of water I've been drinking, but I felt like I would never have to stop. After a two minute warm-up I ran straight for 15 minutes. I didn't want to overdo it, so I voluntarily walked for another three before running another ten straight. I know it's a big jump in distance, but it just felt right. I'll see how my joints hold up in the next couple days to consider if I'm going to keep this up. And the major plus is despite all the extra running vs. walking, my average heart rate is identical to the last time. Crazy progress!

The bad
I did some serious number crunching (for me), trying to determine how accurate fitday was for me when I was losing weight. I wanted to see how honest I was reporting calorie intake, and also to verify whether the calories burned for an activity were accurate. It's all really rough, but I managed to identify a few trends.

1) I use about 200 calories less per day than what fitday estimated. I was pretty anal about my intake reporting, so I think that's fair.

2) I used on average 75% less calories per activity listed on top of that. So every 800 calorie spin class was probably more like 600.

3) When my rate of loss was slower, I was exaggerating my calorie intake to fit the numbers. Not so good with being honest.

I'm using that info right now to properly refine my estimates, charts and all that other spreadsheet stuff, along with gyminee to properly plan for this year's training.

The ugly
I screwed up my shoulder big time. I don't know what it is, or exactly when I did it, but sometime in the past I landed on my shoulder skiing or something. Maybe it was because I always keep it out the car window. I don't know. But it makes weird cracking noises when I pull things down or rotate it in the wrong way. I thought maybe I did one exercise wrong at the gym and that killed it, but nope. It seems like it makes it worse doing all kinds of stuff.

So it's busted. Somehow. I'm going to actually make an appointment with the doc. This sucks. I was totally getting into a groove with lifting weights. I've been getting stronger, and even if it's in my head, I've started to like what I'm seeing too. Stupid getting old. Stupid being a couch potato for so many years. Stupid shoulder.

It's been a long time, but I had a really good run today and I have to post about it. I've been running for the past two weeks, trying to catch up to where I was before. I thought I was there, until I read my old blog where I just tracked runs. I totally forgot that at one point in time I was able to run 20 minutes straight. Crazy.

Before last week I was struggling to get 15 minutes done over a half hour period. This time I was so chilled out I was even trying to read my RSS feeds. Maybe it's not the easiest thing to do when your head banging around like that. Awesome. I really felt like I was capable of doing so much more, so I compared the run to how my heart rate was doing last year when I was running.

Last year:
Average heart rate: 152
run: 7 min - 160ish bpm
walk: 4 min - 142 bpm
run: 7 min - 163 bpm
walk: 5 min - 139 bpm
run: 7 min - 168 bpm
cool: 4 min -142 bpm

Today:
Average heart rate: 159 (7 higher)
walk: 2 min - 122 bpm
run: 6 min - 162 bpm (2 higher)
walk: 3 min - 153 bpm (11 higher)
run: 6 min - 169 bpm (6 higher)
walk: 3 min - 152 bpm (13 higher)
run: 7 min - 168 bpm (no change)
walk: 3 min -146 bpm (4 higher)

Numbers, geek, blah blah, numbers, percentile, run blah blah... but what does it all mean? I think this means that at least cardio-wise I'm not as far out of shape as I thought. If I can take good enough care of my back and knee I should totally be able to run 5k by April. Just in time to start training for the ride to Montreal again...

I can't wait for Thursday.