Running for Geeks

ptorrone writes "It's certainly possible to geek out while you run and there are in fact running geeks. I started a new resource for geeks who like to jog, or who like me, are training to run a marathon. This month's features: Getting the right shoes and socks using technology, the Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS watch (also using the XML files for mapping), using the iPod/iTunes, with audiobooks as a training aid and lastly videos and photos of the 'Geek Gym' as well as the portable version for checking email, RSS feeds and IRC on the go as well as at home while exercising." If you're having trouble getting motivated, there are people who can help.

Comments

mapping GPS while running/biking/hiking.

[garcia]

Basically on topic in regards to XML files from GPSs.

You can map (easily) your GPS tracks via GPS Visualizer. Just upload the XML from your GPS and set the maps up the way you want. It's pretty good for small areas (and can be for even large ones if you fool w/it correctly.

I routinely use the site for mapping out geocaches that I am planning on doing. It does require SVG so you might want to nab that if your browser doesn't already support it.

Re:Lo Tech Version

[ackthpt]

Run, during run observe surroundings, smile at people, collect your thoughts for the day, enjoy self

Learn to Run before you do so. To my painful chagrin I learned muscles will develop (from a non-runner) to the needed capacity to run 10K within a couple months, but tendons take years. If you've never run before, start short, keep it to less than 2 miles for the first year.

I tore something called T-bands in both my legs the first time I ran 10K. I had the runners high (endophins) and didn't feel a thing until hours later.

Heartrate Monitor

[kongjie]

I'm surprised that a geek listing info about running doesn't mention the value of a heart rate monitor. One of the reasons I used to have problems sticking to a running/jogging program is that, unbeknowst to me, I was running way too fast!

I tried to exercise at what I thought was a reasonable speed, but I would inevitably get winded, give up and lose initiative. But then my girlfriend got me a monitor for my birthday and after using it I realized that my heart rate was WAY too high. Use of the monitor validated that even at slow speeds I was getting heart-healthy exercise. It also allows me to see my progress as my cardiovascular system improves and I am able to exercise harder and longer and still stay in my ideal zone. It's a great tool.

Re:Heartrate Monitor

[d99-sbr]

I second this. I have my HRM to thank for my aerobic fitness.

Like you say, most beginners exercise at too high a heart rate, burn out rapidly, and lose interest. For an unfit person, even very light exercise will raise your pulse significatly.

This is the primary reason why unfit people who want to lose weightare recommended low intensity training, like long walks. Higher intensity would most likely burn more energy per time unit, but that hardly helps if they last for five minutes.

Using an HRM will allow you to do most kinds of exercise, yet still maintain a good workout pulse. As you become more fit, it will take more work to get your pulse up to that same level. Also, once up, it will drop much faster if you lighten your exercise.

After a while you will learn to know your body, and how it responds to hard work. Watching your pulse vary with the intensity of your exercise is fun, and can become a challenge in itself.

I do a lot of cycling, and now I know that at 140 bpm or below, I will last for hours. At 160 bpm, even one hour will be quite a strain. At 180 bpm endurance is down to maybe 15 minutes, and if I get up in the 190s, we're talking a few very intense minutes before I'm completly spent.

Also, an HRM will help you notice your fitness improving, which is another source of motivation. You will start noticing that reaching that high heart rate becomes more and more difficult. Your resting pulse will drop after a while as well. A few weeks ago I was sitting by my computer with my pulse meter on, and glanced down at it to see it say 46 bpm. That's when I first realized I am now actually quite fit.

So, bottom line is, if you want to improve your aerobic fitness, get a heart rate monitor. They're not very expensive, and I can almost assure you they will improve your workout .

Awesome

[stoolpigeon]

Running was a big part of my life- but a mixture of fatherhood, getting into I.T. and gaining weight got me out of the groove.

In february I went on the Hacker's Diet and got running again. The running has gotten much better as I have lost weight. The biggest help tech has been was replacing my radio with an mp3 player. I picked up a Nomad MuVo NX and it is awesome. No commercials, no sucky songs and it is a quarter of the size of my old radio.

The loneliness of the long distance runner is much nicer with my tunes.

I am currently working on developing a full featured 'running log' for the palm os. Once I get it past the initial design stage I intend to GPL it and put is up on source forge. Any other geek runners interested? Is there something already out there I've missed (that is open)?

The best way to get your running shoes...

[localman]

...is to order them from Zappos.com :) Shameless plug, I know... but how else are you going to buy shoes from geeks?

The system runs on FreeBSD, Linux, Apache, MySQL and is written in perl. The warehouse of over half a million shoes is completely computer sorted by unique barcodes on each box and shelf. The whole system for which was designed and implemented inhouse by our small team (thee coders, at the time). We offer free shipping and free return shipping so there's no risk, and we respond faster than any other online retailer.

Okay. I'll shut up now.

Sorry -- it seemed on topic and I love my job :)

I always thought...

[auferstehung]

the Hash House Harriers was the ultimate resource for geeks who like to jog.

Re:Lo Tech Version

[ackthpt]

YMMV

Indeed. However I've been fairly active for years, but not as a runner. Tennis, mountain biking, road biking, swimming and many long hikes (including Yosemite's Half Dome), but running is high impact. My physician , a runner, indicated many beginning runners will encounter the same problems I had, because they try to go too far, too soon. As I mentioned, I had the runners high and felt no pain while slowly tearing up my legs. Hours later I could hardly walk and had to stop everything for 3 months. I started running again, but only short distances, but my knee was too much of a problem to keep doing it and mountain biking during the same period.

A few suggestions

[agslashdot]

From your site - "I try and run/bike/workout for at least 30 to 45 minutes a day"

I began just like you did and made rapid progress, but then plateaued. Here's what works for me now -

a.Skip every other day. The muscles need atleast 24 hours to repair. By working them every day, you are overtaxing them. You will plateau, it is a certainity - ask any fitness specialist or your doctor.

b. When you do run/bike/workout, up the intensity and/or duration. Rather than 30 minutes, shoot for 1 hour, then 2.

c. Best to invest in an elliptical .Since your feet don't touch the ground on an elliptical, you don't bust your knees. At the same time you build rock-hard legs. Plus, you get to vary the intensity on an elliptical by changing the resistance & the incline - very effective.

d. Audio books are a great way to learn something while chugging away on an elliptical. I have loaded up on about 50 hours of philosophy - Locke, Kant, Hume, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Marx, and yes, the usual suspects - Socrates, Plato & Aristotle. As geeks, we are constantly upgrading "tech skills" ( Perl, Java, C++, C# etc. ) while neglecting "life-skills". A sound foundation in philosophy comes in handy like nothing else. Even if you don't care for the subject, you learn things like argumentation, dialectic, persuasion theories, burden of rejoinder...essential skills for making your point when you talk to anybody.

Best elliptical scores so far, at different levels -

3 hours, 19 miles, 2400 calories

1 hour, 7 miles, 950 calories

0.5 hour, 450 calories

Good luck, and watch that caffeine !



They can outsource me, but can they outrun me?:)

strength training

[tuxette]

Strength training is especially important for us geek gals out there.

Women lose bone mass at a greater rate than men, so weight training is especially crucial. Typically, after age 35, women lose 1.2% per year, whereas men lose 0.2% per year. For optimal bone remodeling to occur, significant resistance must be used. Ideally, this means progressing beyond the light weights used in group fitness classes.

Additionally, the increase in lean mass associated with weight training strongly correlates with a faster metabolism. This means that women will burn more calories twenty-four hours a day, not just during or immediately following the exercise sessions. If you consider that a pound of fat contains roughly 3,500 kcals, exercise alone is not the most efficient mechanism to reduce that fat. However, generating significant metabolically active tissue (muscle) will cause an increase in the basal metabolic rate, thus burning off those excess calories more efficiently!

Source: http://www.deepsquatter.com/strength/archives/lady lift3.htm

Re:strength training

[WaterTroll]

For optimal bone remodeling to occur, significant resistance must be used.

Good point. Everyone should go at a pace they are comfortable with, but what is sort of annoying these days is a lot of women (atleast from my experience) have this fear of bulking up, which in our society is somewhat socially "abnormal". The truth is that they do not produce enough testosterone, so they aren't going to see exactly the same results as a male would. So they'll do something like 30 reps at a low weight, and show no signs of fatigue. It's better than nothing, but it's seems to be ineffective.

Also, as you made a point in aging. A lot of the idea of aging involves getting weaker. Muscle tone does decrease for a lot of people in their thirties and just about everyone in their fourties and further on, but effective strength training can completely reverse a big part of the natural process. A person at 50 can be much stronger than they were at 40. It's true. There are even 60 year olds competing in powerlifting competitions.

Re:iPods

[ptorrone]

i run on 27 miles of car free paved trails in seattle, wa (the burke-gilman). it's on my site. cheers, pt.

To Each His Own

[stoolpigeon]

but here is my answer to your question:

The advantages of running:

• Running gets you a higher amount of aerobic benefit in a shorter period of time
• You can do it in smaller area
• running shoes are way more affordable than a good bike
• running does not require a helmet
• you can run anywhere
• if you go on vacation- just bring your shoes and you are good to go

Disadvantages:

• you have to be very careful to avoid injury
• the high impact is too much for some people

I think it is good for people to do something- I don't care what it is as long as they like it. I have never found running to be boring. I love it and find biking to be boring.

Re:Why jog when you can bike ?

[warrped]

Well I don't know what the laws are where you live, but around here it's illegal to bike on the sidewalk (plus, you'd have to use a mountain bike - very few sidewalks here are wheelchair accessible [which equals 6-inch dead-drop curbs] and the roads have more holes than SCO's lawsuit). Only a suicidal thrill-seeker would bike on SC streets. Also, it's easier to grab lunch-hour exercise by jogging... and it's cheaper, lets you actually appreciate scenery instead of focusing on where you're going, etc. etc.

Re:Why jog when you can bike ? - OSTEOPOROSIS

[SoftwareJedi]

Because extreme cycling to the exclusion of all impact related excercise can promote early osteoporosis. Bicycling magazine had an article on it earlier this year. It was a fairly informative article. I believe it was in the january or february issue.

GPS isn't the best way to track runs...

[Lazarus_Bitmap]

I think Nike get's it better with their Triax Elite -- it uses an foot pod that measures speed/distance with 99% accuracy (got one, and i've tested it on a track). Includes a heart rate monitor, and wireless PC access -- allowing you to chart progress, load workouts, etc.

Problem with GPS is the bulky unit, and loss of coverage around trees / skyscrapers.

Re:Running? (not a troll)

[anthropomorphized]

The urge "to go #2" is not uncommon. It is known as runner's trots. You can find plenty of discussions on this topic on various runners message boards. Most articles say essentially the same thing re: remedies. here is one

Re:Scientific method to finding running shoes

[gowen]

Do you have any hints regarding how one gets proper running shoes. Is there a scientific method to it?

Well, first and foremost, you need a running shoe. Not a cross trainer or something like that. Running is rhythmic stress loading of the joints, and you need some protection.

Go to a specialist running store, on their quietest day. Find a knowledgeable assistant -- at the specialist stores the assistants are usually runners themselves -- and take 90 minutes of their time trying on a great many pairs. Give them details of what you intend to do with them, and ask their advice. If they've got a machine that gets an imprint of your footstrike and can detect common idiosyncracies like overpronation, so much the better.

Try lots of brands, as they're all subtly different shapes (New Balance and Brooks suit me; my friend swears by Nike.) As a beginner, I'd recommend going for the extra comfort / cushioning models. You won't notice the supposed benefits of the lighter race shoes anyway.

Re:Can't Run, but Can Bike

[JabberWokky]

I'm all for biking, but I really get pissed at the bikers in Davis, CA. The town has as many bikes as people, and there are always loads of bikes on the road. Wonderful... except...

Quite a few of those bikers are college kids who didn't grow up biking and don't realize that you're not supposed to whip through intersections ignoring car traffic. Bikers have rights, yes, but they also have responsibilities. A car driver has to watch for them, but if they cross in the middle of a street, tearing through alleys, they can't be seen.

Heh. This post started off as a point - there are two people (or one person with two recumbant bikes) who ride without a flag. The other recumbant bikes I've seen I think are nifty as heck, and I like them. I almost ran this guy over once, however, as I was turning right and he zipped along my right side underneath my windows. I habitually turn my head (my first vehicle had a blind spot), and I didn't seen him even looking over my shoulder, and I had my turn signal on, sitting at an intersection. All the little kids riding bikes and recumbant riders (anybody other than this guy who are riding with a low profile) have flags, and I've never had a problem.

It shook me up pretty badly, as I really came close to crunching him. At least the bad bikers have not whipped out in front of me yet (although I've seen other people slamming brakes to avoid them).

Bike safe!

--
Evan

Re:debunking the fat burn zone myth

[Anonymous Coward]

It all depends on what you're after. I do triathlons and have competed in (survived?) an Ironman. For those kinds of distances it is crucial that you have a strong aerobic base and don't overtrain. Here are two articles on the subject (the second, by Mark Allen who was arguably the fittest person ever).

http://www.rrca.org/publicat/slowdown.html

http://www.xtri.com/article.asp?id=448&offset= 0