20 runs, 20 days

I'm in the gym, getting set for another run indoors on that uncompromising device, the Woodway treadmill... thinking of the end product, that beautiful, effortless run outside under sunny skies. Sand separates the sea From me on my desert island Sun obliterates the sky And I, I'm just like anyone No matter how I try I wanna see the sun. And it shines To illuminate the distance Illustrate the difference Between you and me

At the beginning of April, I vowed to run every day at a set minimum pace for at least 40 days in a row. I managed to get a small streak going. 20 days in a row so far. I'm halfway there.

Like any other exercise program, there have been easy days and hard days. The minimal standard is 15 mins at 7.0 mph enforced by the treadmill. The standard is raised to 20 mins at 7.0 mph as the days passed. The treadmills at the gym are made by Woodway, with claimed accuracy to 1/10 mph.

On some days, particularly if I rested well the night before, the standard is easy to meet. The running form is good and the minutes just fly past. For example, day 20 in the charts below, I ran for 45 mins and didn't feel tired. (In fact, I only stopped before 60 mins because my iPod Nano on my waistband flooded with sweat and stopped recording.) However, the point is not to run to exhaustion, but have enough leftover to continue the streak tomorrow.

And so it is the hard days that threaten and define the streak. Some days are difficult because of inadequate rest (sleep). Sometimes the legs are tired right from the start. Then meeting the minimal standard takes a lot of stubbornness and willpower to keep the streak going. I can tell you day 17 where I just managed 18 minutes felt way harder than 45 minutes on day 20.

Here are the statistics. 103 km in 20 days. Total time is 8 hours and 54 minutes. Burned 8429 kcal. Average pace 5:11 mins/km.

With respect to pacing, I leave the treadmill at 7.0 mph (11.2 km/hr). This corresponds to a 5:20 min/km pace. If I feel like testing my legs a bit, I will add on 3 mins at the end at 7.5 mph (12.0 km/hr or 4:58 min/km pace). On the charts below, the bars in green are not on the treadmill. These are outside runs. Interestingly my natural outdoor speed (a bit under 5:00 min/km) is faster than my set treadmill speed (which feels hard enough to me).

On day 1, I ran for just 15 mins at 7.0 mph and it felt quite hard. By day 20, I ran for 45 mins at 7.0 mph and I felt I could do more. Starting on day 21, I will increase the baseline speed to 7.5 mph. This puts additional physiological and psychological pressure on the streak but sooner or later, I've got to man up (HTFU) or stagnate.

Here are the runs. Distances: day 1 through 10.

Distances: day 11 through 20.

Time spent, day 1 through 10. (Note that even a 15 minute run effectively takes an hour out of one's schedule. Walk to the gym. Change. 5 mins warm-up at 3.0 mph. 15 mins run at speed. 5 mins cool down at 3.0 mph. 10 mins stretching. Shower. Walk back to work. It all adds up.)

Time spent, day 11 through 20.

Here is the recorded accuracy of the iPod Nano 6g's internal accelerometer:

Different running surfaces affect the accuracy. On average, it's about 10% optimistic. All distances reported in the charts above have been individually corrected (assuming Woodway's claim of 1/10mph accuracy, and outdoor run distances are verified using Google Earth).

run walk run

My blog entry about a week ago on the subject of running was titled run walk.

Being too out of shape to sustain the volume I needed to get back into shape (I know it's kind of a catch 22 situation), I adopted Jeff Galloway's system of running with short walk breaks.

More precisely I adopted a repeating schedule of running for 1 mile at 7.0 mph and walking for about 90 seconds. The key is to make the workout manageable yet run enough to trigger significant physiological changes. I can safely say it seems to work.

This week I can report I've upgraded to walk run walk. See the following graph:

First five miles were covered with the treadmill set at 7.0 mph with 90 second walk breaks at 3.0 mph between each mile. Then I finished the workout off with a 3 miler at 7.0 mph sans break. That got me a satisfying 1100 kcal or so burned. (I certainly couldn't have completed this workout last week after the long layoff.)

How did I know I could hack the final 3 miles? Well, the running equation is all about legs and lungs. My first mile always feels a bit lumpy. So the first ten minutes is not informative. But by the 3rd mile, I can usually tell if I have the legs fatigue-wise. The rest of the equation is simply about form: running form and breathing form.

In terms of running form, I can feel my leg mechanics getting more efficient as the workout progressed. Look at the graph above again: from mile 3 onwards, the jaggies in the plot are at a lower point. It looks as though I'm running slower. However, the treadmill speed is exactly the same as in the earlier miles. I believe the accelerometer in my iPod Nano is reporting that I'm bouncing less and running smoother. And every bit of running economy helps.

The final factor is breathing form. If I'm running into slight oxygen debt, eventually I will not be able to maintain the set pace no matter how motivated I am. So it's important to breathe well. I started paying attention to my breathing technique around mile 3, and suddenly the miles came subjectively much quicker: I'm not glancing at the time and distance display on the treadmill as often.

By mile 5, I felt much better than in miles 1 and 2. I know it seems counterintuitive, but 7.0 mph felt much easier despite being more than half-an-hour into the run. (I don't believe this can be attributed to an endorphin response.) With legs moving more efficiently (perhaps confirmed by the graph) and a good breathing rhythm established, I felt I had the formula nailed. Thus I decided to insert that 25 min block at 7.0 mph to complete the workout.

In fact, I now believe the run walk method is superior to a pure run workout for me. It seems the run walk pattern allows me to converge on running form. Once established, I can then run (without breaks) with maximum efficiency. And as the miles pile on, I do begin to feel the well-being associated with an endorphin rush. (Actually, I felt like continuing onto mile 10, but I ran out of time.)

Unfortunately, this convergence doesn't always happen. See the graph below (taken a couple of days later):

At no point did I feel I was settling down to a nicely efficient stride or breathing pattern. There is no improvement as the miles progress. So I cut my losses and abandoned the run after just 4 miles.

Back to the 8 miler, unfortunately, my workout is now well over the 1 hour mark. I have my iPod Nano 6g set up to power the bluetooth dongle that sends music wirelessly to my Sony XBA-BT75 wireless earphones. And after maybe a total of 90 minutes, the Nano was reporting battery was in the red zone. The earphones are rated by Sony for 3.5 hours battery life. It seems the Nano is the limiting factor here. This is a little disappointing. I'm not sure the combo will last for a half marathon.

I forgot to include last time a picture of the USB-powered charging station for the XBA-BT75. Here it is:

run walk

I've been neglecting my running recently.

For a variety of reasons, I've come up with excuses not to run. Lack of sleep, tiredness, work etc. In fact, I haven't run for a whole month. Shame on me. I put on so much weight, I just had to hit the treadmill today.

It's not that I don't have reasons to run. In fact, I've had a new run toy since Christmas. See below.

This is Sony's brand-new XBA-BT75 wireless earphones. They weigh almost nothing, 20g on my scale, that's less than 1 ounce. And these were not available in most countries when I got them over Christmas. So I was pretty chuffed about that. Plus the matching black Sony TMR-BT8iP bluetooth adaptor since Apple's iPod Nano 6g does't have built-in bluetooth.

The reason why I wanted this was of course to have a purely wireless connection between my earphones and the Nano. See:

My Nano is attached to my waistband (as recommended by Apple to get maximum accelerometer accuracy). And as you can see, wireless. Nothing between the earphones and my Nano to get tangled up. (The left and right earphones are wired together though.)

The earphones are rechargeable despite being so small (3.7V built-in Lithium ion battery). Battery life is rated by Sony at 3.5 hours. The bluetooth adapter is a considerable power drain on the Nano though. After an hour, my Nano reports a bit less than half the battery life remaining. So it won't do for a full marathon (not that I'm in any shape to run one right now.) So I guess the Nano will be the limiting factor.

Okay, enough about gadgets and back to running. I needed to lose weight. That means run volume. Unfortunately, since I'm out of shape, I can't survive a long continuous workout. So what to do?

The solution is to adopt run coach Jeff Galloway's run-walk training system. (See his website here.)

He says the run-walk-run ratio should correspond to the training pace used. And he recommends 4 min/walk 35 seconds for 8 min mile pace, and 4 min run-1 min walk at 9 min mile pace. I decided to run one complete mile at 8.5 min mile pace and walk for 90 seconds. While walking, I can rehydrate and towel off. Then do another mile. Repeat a total of 7 times to get comfortably over the 10K distance for the entire workout. (Total completed was actually 11.2 km.)

Here's the graph as reported by my iPod Nano:

Although my run was pathetic, I burned a total of 950 kcal. And to lose weight and regain my running legs, that's the kind of volume I need to do. I'm going to run every other day now until I'm back in decent shape.

Apple iPod Nano 6g v1.2 (Part 2)

Back in early October, I gave a favorable report on using the internal accelerometer on the Apple iPod Nano 6g (when updated to v1.2), see here. I decided to test it again on the treadmill.

This morning, I was too fatigued to do the Al Corniche run I did two days ago (see here). (I was suffering perhaps too much from a skin allergy condition that has recently flared up again.)

As a result, I decided to simply run with the iPod Nano on the treadmill in cool air-conditioned comfort at the Mövenpick Towers hotel (see left) for about 30 minutes. The gym there does have a spectacular view of the Gulf from the 25th floor. Better than feeling sorry for myself and doing absolutely nothing I suppose.

But instead of setting a steady, fixed pace (like last time), I varied the treadmill speed up and down. In fact, I ran for the first 10 minutes at 12.5 km/hr (7.8 mph). Then bumped up the speed to 13.5 km/hr (8.4 mph) for 5 minutes, and dropped it to 10.0 km/hr (6.2 mph) for 5 minutes to recover. Finally, back to 12.5 km/hr for the reminder of the run.

So what would one expect the device to report? Well, one would expect something like the red line shown below (possibly shifted slightly vertically, modulo speed calibration of the treadmill).

I can report that the blue data points seem to track the red line fairly well. Though it's not clear there is much difference in the data recorded between the 12.5 km/hr and 13.5 km/hr sections...

(Note: I downloaded the raw data points and directly plotted it in Excel myself. For those interested, you can find them in the directory /Volumes/iPod Nano Name/iPod_Control/Device/Trainer/Workouts/Empeds/nikeinternal/synched when mounted on a Mac. )

This ridiculously heavy-handed smoothing is potentially a huge problem that renders the device useless under non steady state conditions.

(Ignore what I said above. In a previous edition of this post, I said the iPod Nano smoothed away the speed changes. Mea culpa. I screwed up. There was a mistake in my Excel formula.)

From my treadmill speed settings, I should get an average pace of 7'54" min/mile, assuming the treadmill was calibrated perfectly. The internal accelerometer gave me a 7'25" min/mile average or about 6.5% off the treadmill settings.

Doha Al Corniche Run

It has been a very rough last few days indeed. Unable to sleep much at all, I worked through most of the night tired and irritated until dawn.

At 6am, still unable to sleep I ventured outside in frustration to run the Corniche in Doha. Might as well run myself into the ground.

I went in to work bleary-eyed after that as well.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

As the lyrics so passionately articulate, it's the despair and desperation of time wasted and having nothing to show for it at all.

I have to also remark at this point that I can't believe the last time I posted about Doha was about two years ago (see England-Brazil Soccer Match).

So this morning at 6am, I did the Al Corniche run weary-eyed and not expecting much at all. I know my body will crash and collapse sooner or later. Sometimes I feel the sooner I get this to happen the better.

My route went from the Four Seasons Hotel (opposite the Mövenpick Towers, a Swiss chain, where I am staying) to the Pearl and back. Checking my records, I had originally filed the run with MapMyRun exactly 2 years and 10 days ago.

(I normally run all the way up to the edge of I.M. Pei's achingly beautiful Islamic Museum of Art, see here, but the side entrance was blocked by Doha's omnipresent and endless construction.)

See the route below:

I split the run into two halves. On the outbound leg I ran to the Pearl. Then took a short break to drink my water bottle and glance at the high-rise area where I had started my run and ran back along the curve of the Corniche.

Into the elevator, I went up to the jacuzzi at the hotel fitness center.

But being so tired, I wasn't in the mood to enjoy the brightness of the scenery from the 26th floor.

I downloaded my run statistics from my iPod Nano to the Nike+ website:

The run data wasn't that bad. At least I burned about 875 kcal in a bit over 7 miles (or nearly 12km). Still, I was incredibly tired and irritable. And decided not to review the details.

After breakfast, I relented and plotted both legs of the run in Excel. Here you go:

As the red line clearly reveals, yes, I was a wuss on that return leg.

My mind wanders randomly when I'm exhausted. But because I run with music on my iPod Nano, another set of lyrics came to mind:

They say a restless body can hide a peaceful soul
A voyager and a settler, they both have a distant goal
If I explore the heavens, or if I search inside
Well, it really doesn't matter as long as I can tell myself
I've always tried

10 miles

I needed a long run. So Saturday morning, I ran along the Rillito River for 82 mins and a total of 10.34 miles, as indicated by my iPod Nano.

I started from Craycroft Rd on an out-and-back route along the northern Rillito River Park route. It's a fairly flat paved route with foot bridges and underpasses being the only elevation changes. On reaching the Campbell Rd bridge, I turned around.

Although I took one water bottle along in a fanny pack, I had to stop another two times for water. Fortunately, the route has several possible water stops at the various parks along the way.

I started out at around 7'47" (min/mile) pace - not truly sustainable at my current fitness level - and gradually lost speed, running the last segment at a sedentary 8'04" pace. Overall, I averaged just over 12 km/hr (7.5 mph) or for a 7'57" (min/mile) pace.

I'm fairly satisfied with my first long run of the season but I know I need more long runs to acclimatize my legs to the pounding. Pace-wise, I have to let my body pick it's comfort zone. If I push too hard, I won't be able to recover quickly and that'd be counterproductive training-wise.

I felt slight twinges in my shins. To be on the safe side, I'll pick up a new pair of running shoes tomorrow.

Apple iPod Nano 6g v1.2

The other day Apple introduced an update to the iPod Nano 6g that I use for running with the Nike+ receiver and shoe transmitter.

The update included the opportunity to dispense with the white Nike+ dongle that hangs off the 30-pin port (shown here on the left). In fact, it permits for the first time the use of its internal accelerometer to record run pace and mileage instead of relying on the separate shoe sensor.

This is quite exciting because...

• There is only one 30-pin port, and the iPod Nano lacks integrated bluetooth. So if that port was freed up, one could use a small bluetooth dongle and pair the Nano with bluetooth earphones. Yes, in other words, ditch that pesky cord that is always bouncing around and interfering with arm motion while running.
• Also, I wondered whether the Nano accelerometer would be less accurate than the accelerometer built into the shoe sensor: reasoning being that footfalls should be more accurate than torso movement: the Nano being clipped to one's clothing.

So I eagerly downloaded v1.2 of the system software for the Nano and installed it via iTunes. Things went smoothly and one good piece of news is that stored data was preserved: in other words, it didn't wipe out my pre-existing records of workouts on the Nano. So far, so good. Let's see if the internal accelerometer does as good a job as the Nike+ foot sensor.

To do the experiment, I ran on a treadmill for exactly 12 minutes at 7.5 mph (8:00 min/mile pace), once with the internal sensor and once with the dongle inserted.

The new version of the iPod Nano user guide recommends "Clip iPod nano to your waistband for better accuracy." So I obeyed and did the experiment so configured.

(Note: I began the timer when the treadmill was at 3.0 mph (walking pace), and held the increase-speed button until it hit 7.5 mph. Total time spent including the ramp up in speed was 12 minutes. Assuming the treadmill is accurate, the total distance should be just under 1.5 miles.)

Here are the results:

Neither sensor was calibrated beforehand. I was pleasantly surprised how close they were to each other. (The one on the left is the run recorded by the internal sensor.)

(Seems within the margin for error I've experienced with repeats using the Nike+ foot sensor. Also both sensors were slightly optimistic. Even without calibration, assuming the treadmill is correct, it is within single digit percentage points of reality.)

I was disappointed though that when I synced the iPod Nano using iTunes, it only uploaded the Nike+ foot sensor session to the Nike+ website. So it could only display one of the graphs.

I went into the Nano while it was mounted as a drive on my Mac. And extracted the raw data.

(See how to do that in my 2007 blog post here.)

It is mildly interesting that using the internal sensor records only distance (in km) every 10 seconds. But using the Nike+ foot sensor it recorded both speed and distance data every 10 seconds.

I plotted and overlaid the distance data (converted to speed) on top of one another in Excel:

As you can see the data are pretty comparable.

Hmm, now the dongle has been deemed unnecessary, I guess I could go wireless. I see the preferred set-up is to pair that tiny i10s bluetooth dongle for the iPod port with a pair of those Sony Ericsson HBH-IS800 earphones. My birthday is coming up. So I think I will reward myself...

Update: December 1st 2011: I have new and serious doubts about the usefulness of the built-in accelerometer based on a treadmill run. See Apple iPod Nano 6g v1.2 (Part 2).