Last work trip of the year, this time to Universal Studios in Orlando for the PegaWORLD 2007 conference. Great to be here, but the planned running schedule is taking a battering. Travelling light, so didn’t even pack the trainers for this short sojourn. The mileage needs some serious attention when I get home next week to make up for the general lack of effort over the last fortnight.

As a minor incentive when I get back, have a £50 proposition bet with Mike Wilkinson that he can’t run a 50 minute 10K. It’s a pretty easy time, but I’m struggling at that pace still, and I’m not sure whether he’s got it in him either with the seemingly similar lack of exercise over the last few poker focussed months. Will be donating my winnings to this good cause if he doesn’t make it, so fingers crossed hey.

This evening’s planned long run was rudely interrupted by a neighbour emailing to tell me that I had a gas leak at home!! Dashed out of a team meeting and home to meet a nice man from the gas board. Seems that Kat may have left the hob on a low setting after cooking dinner last night!

Slightly baffled how we managed to (a) wake up at all; (b) not smell anything the following morning - but in the end no harm done and only a slight inconvenience. Lucky don’t have any pets, and the recently monsterously tall aloe vera plant doesn’t seem too bothered by the temporary change in atmosphere.

Will make up for the lack of running in the gym tomorrow, hopefully I’ve snuck to the front of Naomi’s Wednesday yoga waiting list, so can hit that and then charge out a few fast kilometers on the treadmill.

Thought I’d stretch the commute home out through the Greenwich foot tunnel this evening and take a south London route home along the riverside. Nightmare.

Got pretty badly lost in the back streets of South London, the map doesn’t really show the double backs I took. Nor have I bothered to mark the locations of the three gangs of menacing looking hoodies (complete with clouds of marajuana) I had to run through (slightly faster than usual pace!!) enroute home. Can assure you I won’t be taking this route again. Have also scrubbed North Lewisham and Deptford from my list of acceptable house-hunt areas, when I finally sell the City flat and get around to moving.

Fat fingers managed to stop the Nikeplus work-out part way home, so it’s actually logged as two separate runs. Nevermind, total distance was a fairly reasonable 7.65 miles, less than I’d planned, but totally missed the riverside route as I ended-up cutting across Canada Water, past Taiji and Duniya’s house, and then onto the better known route home from Rotherhithe.

Heartrate average 156, max 171 (past the second gang - they had a snarling pit bull!!)

First day back in the office post-Hong Kong. Sundown is annoyingly early here in the UK at this time of year, and it’s only going to get worse. Left the office at 6.50pm and it had already been pitch black out for quite a while. The canal route home gets a bit creepy after dark (!), might have to start cutting around Wapping Wall for very late commutes.

Also got caught out by the new earlier time that the park I ususally cut through closes, so had a little double-back along the Highway.

Interestingly enough it seems my route is a little longer than I’d expected. Nikeplus makes it 4.2 miles, rather than the previously reported 3.7. I guess the crow takes a more pythagorean route compared to my zig-zags home. Anyway, nice to know that I’ve been going marginally further than I thought so far.

Here’s the usual data, now that I’m linking runs to routes on Nikeplus (you should be able to click around the site starting at the graph below) I can start seeing comparisons of individual runs against personal bests over the same route.

And here’s a screen grab of the actual route, just in case you were interested:

Heartrate average 157, max 174 (during the powersong just past Tower Bridge)

Nothing terribly exciting to report this time. Another day another 10K. HK hotel treadmill again, quite fancied hitting the road but half expected to get lost somewhere in the back streets of Central. Had to dash to a goodbye dinner with a colleague straight after shower, so couldn’t risk dragging it out too late.

No heartrate data today, I’m writing this one up the following evening in the Cathay lounge enroute home and my Polar is (hopefully) somewhere in the aircraft hold by now.

Here’s the Nikeplus data anyway, had to actually run a 10.2K to complete the workout as I think my running style changed slightly and that’s thrown-off the sensor. Seems that a more gliding motion is being detected as marginally slower, going to have to recalibrate in the HSBC gym when I get home…

Current Nike powersong is “Gonna Fly Now” (the theme from Rocky), if you click the link above you’ll note that I pumped this out in the final leg. Quite an awesome bit of kit this nikeplus thing, very motivational…

Have set a first Nikeplus training goal to bring my pace up to a 50 minute 10K (seeing as I keep knocking out 51’s and 52’s). I calculate that as an average 8 minute mile, so the goal is to average this speed over at least 5 runs in the next month. Let’s see how I get on!
You can track my progress in the training goal sidebar.

After much umming and aahing over the various benefits of GPS vs. accelerometers I bought a shiny black iPod nano on Friday, and a matching Nikeplus sports kit.

Friday night was a bit of a monsterous affair in Lang Kwai Fong with the boys, so much so that I managed to sleep through two phone calls and a very loud alarm clock to miss a planned day of hiking with an old buddy from the UK who’s now HSBC’s Head of IT Finance for Asia. Didn’t actually make it out of the room all day, instead lazing around feeling sorry for myself and catching up on Heroes online. Around 10pm (!!) I finally felt I had the energy to leave the safety of the duvet, so took the iPod down to the gym to calibrate it on the treadmill.

The interesting new data below is provided courtesy of Nikeplus. It was actually a 10K run, but I spent the first twenty minutes calibrating the sensor over a couple of kilometers. I don’t normally run like such a mentalist, but wanted to test it out over a few different running paces, hence the big wavy line.



6.2 miles in 55:10 at average 6.74 mph; 849 calories, heartrate 160 (peak 181)

Motivated by a fairly heavy drinking weekend in Hong Kong to hit the hotel gym this evening. Caught the rather good City Hall (Pacino and Cusask) on the treadmill tv, so ran it out for a moderate paced 10 miler.

Seem to have been abandoned for dinner by my colleagues fresh in from the US and mighty jet-lagged, so post-shower I’m planning to pop up to Sai Yeung Choi St South in Mong Kok to pick-up the latest generation iPod nano and a Nikeplus sports kit. Look out for some excellent new running data soon to appear on future posts!
10.0 miles in 1:40:00 at average 6.0 mph; 1,514 calories, heartrate 154 (peak 179)

Had planned to leave early today, and set my long run for the week as a loop of Greenwich Park and then home along the southern Thames path, however the capital was looking particularly soggy as I left work, so in slightly low spirits I wimped out and hooked-up the usual 6K route home.

Am off to Hong Kong on business this weekend, so I guess the running schedule’s due for another interruption. Will pack the trainers, but doubt they’ll get much use in the furnace heat of this time of year. Maybe just a gym session or two, if our accomodation is well appointed.

3.80 miles in 38:23 at average 5.9 mph; 602 calories, heartrate 161 (peak 171)

Hit the road immediately after Fran’s yoga class this evening for a regular short run home. Legs felt quite stretched and sprightly after the hour of torture, so thought I’d throw some Fartlek into the mix.

A fartlek session can be either the easiest or hardest thing you do all week. It’s a Swedish term meaning ‘speed play’, and it basically consists of fast, medium and slow running over a variety of distances.

Here’s how a typical fartlek session would work. After a steady warm-up, simply pick a landmark – for example a tree, lamp-post, or phone box – and run to it hard, then jog until you’ve recovered. Then pick another landmark, run hard to that, recover and so on.

My meandering route along the riverside and canals tends to be reasonably well-trod, so I tried using other runners as my distance targets, e.g. run hard until catch the two girls in front (or at least close the distance sufficiently without terrifying them into thinking they’re about to get mugged), then jog at their pace until the next bridge, then sprint to the next runner, etc. An interesting approach, as it was difficult to judge their pace for afar which meant I was probably pushing myself over longer distances than might normally plan just based on knowledge of the route. Also interesting as at one point it took me off my usual Shadwell Basin track, as I tried to catch a fairly quick lad who turned down Wapping Wall instead.

The evening’s are noticably getting darker faster these days. I only left the office at 6.30pm, but was already pretty pitch black by the time I arrived home. Will have to start taking my long runs at lunchtime as the evening draws in further over the next few months.

3.80 miles in 36:11 at average 6.3 mph; 547 calories, heartrate 156 (peak 178)
[interesting that the speed play didn't do anything material for my average pace, maybe I'm not trying hard enough...]