Jacqui headed off to New York for two weeks yesterday so I have the place to myself for a while. I plan on taking it easy and getting some training it.
Wne to the gym yesterday after work for my final gym session of the week. It’s definitely progressing well and I can feel the benefits already. Had a quiet night in front of the TV, then got up relatively early this morning for a run.It was pretty warm by the time I set off. The thermometer on my watch said 31C but I don’t think it was that high! I did 6 laps of the park which works out at 5km, in 27:10. I started off a bit too fast, so while I usually keep my HR around 150 on my runs, this time it finished up around 165, though I’m sure heat and dehydration played a role as well. It had dropped to 130 a minute after the end of the run, which is a decent drop and one measure of fitness. I’m just not sure where a 35bpm drop ranks on the fitness scale and whether it’s the total drop which is important, or the final HR dropped to.So, that’s another week over. I might go for a short run tomorrow morning to make up for the one I missed yesterday, or possibly a short bike ride…Wk3: S: 3100m – R: 10km – W: 3 sessionsHave just watched an excellent Four Corners documentary on global dimming. Turns out that pollution is causing clouds to reflect an increasing amount of sunlight back into space. This results in less sun hitting the ground, leading to a lowering effect on temperatures. So, in our efforts to cut pollution we are actually accelerating the rate of global warming. Talk about a catch-22.
I remember the smog over Dublin before the compulsory switch to smokeless coal and the fact that pollution causes a large increase in the rate of respiratory diseases, as well as acid rain, the bete noire of the 80s Green movement, so just upping pollution to slow global warming is not an option. The only way out of the mire is to make a concerted effort to also reduce greenhouse gas emissions in tandem with pollution.As it turns out, the original programme was an Horizon episode by the BBC. That’s one of the main things I miss about home – quality science documentaries where you actually learn something. The BBC’s science and nature stuff is top notch, and I’d hazard a guess that it’s probably the only English-language broadcaster worldwide regularly making quality documentaries. It’s an excellent example of a public utility outperforming private enterprise, which inevitably caters for the lowest common denominator. I remember when I first got cable TV, thinking that Discovery and National Geographic looked promising, but now both invariably seem to be showing “When Animals Attack”-style sensationalist rubbish. Long live the Beeb!Incidentally, another excellent BBC show is being aired here: Grumpy Old Men ;-)The new Pope’s an ex-Nazi. That’s just the sort of qualifications you’d want in god’s representative on Earth!
I got myself a Polar 720i heart-rate monitor a few months ago which allows you to download exercise files to your computer via an Infra-red (IR) link. Unfortunately the Mac is not supported and while Polar suggest you can get around this by using Virtual PC, in practice it doesn’t bloody work.
The main problem is that Polar’s USB implementation is incorrect and doesn’t conform to the USB 1.1 standard, meaning that I can’t use their USB-IR adaptor. Instead I had to get their Serial-IR adaptor, then buy a separate USB-Serial adaptor so I could give my Mac an antiquated serial port. Plug everything in correctly, follow the software installation instructions and bingo! – nothing works! Bastards.Luckily, there are two groups writing Mac-native versions of the Polar software and doing a reasonably good job. The first is iSMARTTrain, a $40 product written by a UK company, and the second is iTrain Pro, a free program written by a single Aussie.At the moment iSMARTTrain is the more fully-functional product, but iTrain Pro looks very promising and I’ll be keeping an eye on it. They could do with choosing slightly more different names though!Forgot to mention that weigh-in this week was 86.8kg @ 17.2% fat.
I got some good training in yesterday. Did weights in the morning to make up for missing the session on Monday, only to confirm that I really don’t like doing weights in the morning. It just feels wrong. Couple that with the fact that I had to step up from 1 set of 30 reps to 2 × 25 and my enthusiasm levels were even lower. Doesn’t look like I’ll have much of a choice seeing as how swimming and weights have to clash on one day a week otherwise, so might as well make it early in the week and get it over with.
Went for a run last night, and then again this morning. 3 laps of the park (2.5km) each time. Average lap time of 4:40, meaing 10.7kmh at a HR of 145.Wk3: S: 3100m – R: 5km – W: 1 sessionIllegal immigration won John Howard the 2001 Australian election. We had the Tampa Boat Crisis where Australia, in violation of maritime law, refused assistance to people rescued from international waters, we had claims, later proven false, that refugees had thrown their children into the water in a bid to have them picked up by the watching Australian Navy, and plenty of other spurious claims which all turned out to be lies post-election. The Australian public ate it up and duly re-elected Howard.
With the current election cmapaign in the UK, it had been noted that two of the key architects of John Howard’s Australian victory had been hired to help the Conservatives defeat Labour. To no-one’s great surprise immigration was made a hot-topic and the usual crap talking points surfaced. Now it appears that Tory front-benchers are asking that the immigration rhetoric be toned down amid fears that it’s not having the desired effect.At least some people see through the bullshit.Just finished my one and only swim out of the week and it went much better than last week. However, I had intended doing weights this afternoon but that will have to go on hold until tomorrow morning as I’m drained after the swim session. On Friday it was the other way around, so it looks like I won’t be able to swim and lift on the same day without one the quality of one the sessions being sufficiently compromised as to make it largely worthless. Will go for a run instead.
3 * { 50 FS/50 Catch/50 1-Arm/5 0FS 100 K 200 FS }3 * { 100 IM on 2:00 100 IM on 2:00 100 BC on 2:00}8 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:23)4 * 50 FS easy on 1:00Total: 3100mI got the speed sensor set up on my MTB yesterday so I took it up to the park to measure my run lap. Turns out it’s 840m, so my average run speed works out at 11km/h, and I’ll have to revise the distances for last week.