Hello constant reader. I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a happy New Year.
2007 was a crazy ride for me. I am not even going to begin to go over all things in my life that aren’t what was this time last year.
But to all of you from me, Happy New Year. I hope you all find what you are looking for in 2008. And I hope what you are looking for is happiness.
Nathan.
Hit the gym this morning for some bike riding and chest and biceps work.
Not much to report. The hip hurt pretty good this morning so I swallowed some advil and went to town.
40 minutes on the bike burned about 350 calories.
Training Log:
Chest:
Bench Press: 65/15, 65/15, 65/15
Incline Press: 55/15, 55/15, 55/15
Decline Press: 55/15, 55/15, 55/15
Biceps:
Concentration Curls: 20/15, 20/12, 20/12
Bent Bar Curls: 35/15, 35/12, 35/12
Standing Cable Curls: 25/15, 25/15, 25/15
Abs: I didn’t do much for abs, I did some hanging knee raises but only a few. My abs are very sore today
Stretching: The usual figure 4 and another one I don’t know the name of. :)
Since I am getting ready with the rest of the western world to wrap up 2007, I figured this would be as good a time as any to think about New Years resolutions.
So here they are:
1. I will run full time again at some point in 2008
2. I will continue to cross train at least 3 times per week, until I can run full time.
3. I will not start smoking again in 2008
4. I will read more (I’ll let this one be ambiguous so I can waffle about it later)
5. I will attempt to train for and run a marathon.
6. I will reduce the stress in my life to a point where it is manageable.
That’s a good start.
Over the last couple of days I have spent some of my vacation playing with EC2 and S3. I have to say, I haven’t been this excited about technology in a long time. The possibilities for using the two separately and together are pretty staggering.
Essentially, EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a service that allows you to create Xen images (which they refer to as AMI’s (Amazon Machine Images)), upload them to S3 (Simple Storage Service) and then via API calls (or as I have been doing via a Firefox extension) start/stop/reboot a virtual Linux server. The server can then be used as would any Linux server.
S3 is simply storage space. And also via API calls, you can access Objects (data) that is stored in S3. However, of interest to me, is Eastic Drive which allows you to mount S3 space. I haven’t tried this yet, but plan to in the near future and will post about it here.
As many of you may already know, there are a few drawbacks and workarounds to drawbacks that need to be considered when deciding on using EC2/S3 for your web project. The first is that it costs money to test it. Yesterday I messed around for about 4 hours and ran up a bill of 44 cents :)
The second is that all virtual machines in the cloud are assigned dynamic IP’s (I will leave this for another time, because I am not convinced this matters as much as some do).
Third is that the AMI’s don’t maintain state, so anything created by a running instance becomes volatile data. Think, logging, MySql records, hand made changes to config files, etc.
There are others, but I will get into the ones above and the others as time goes on. I plan to spend the next few months designing some things to work with EC2 and so I hope that I can share that journey here.
Happy Hacking!
Computer science.
I went running again today. Like so many junkies back to the pipe, I hit the open trail. I breathed deep the intoxicating elixir of damp cold air and self satisfaction.
I was supposed to be testing the Garmin Communicator for OS X, but haven’t because I wasn’t running.
I swear if I knew I was going to go running this morning, it was all sub-conscious. I did put my garmin on to charge last night, but I am not kidding when I say that I didn’t do it because I was planning to run.
However, this morning, home alone (idle hands and all that) I figured what the hell.
Does everyone look that bad in the morning? Those dark circles make me look like I had more fun last night than I actually did.
I strapped on the garmin, swallowed 4 advil, and drove over to the barracks. It was a glorious run. If in some other language glorious means ‘painful in the hip’.
More seriously, my hip felt very tight and somewhat cramped for about 200 yards, then it loosened and only twinged most of the run. Afterward (now for example) it really started to hurt. Perfect! A month off, and absolutely no improvement! Discouraging to say the least.
I don’t know what my plan is now. I know I am going to go to the gym tonight and tomorrow. Other than that, I supposed I am trying to get through till next Friday when I go back to the Orthopedist.
Some Stats:
Distance: 4.01 Miles
Time: 34:41 (8:38 Pace)
Average Heart Rate: 162 bpm
Calories Burned: 584
Man I wish I was back to running fulltime. Oh well, tonight I plan to give this hip a proper soaking in Mad Elf and advil.
More lifting last night. I hit the gym to do Triceps and Back.
After running yesterday over lunch I didn’t feel so bad about not hitting the bike when I got to the gym. In fact this was about one of my shortest trips to the gym since my cardio was out of the way. You can see the training stats below.
I just want to add a status report for the hip. In short. It hurts. Yesterday did it in. I called the doctor this morning. I go see him next Friday and I assume he will schedule me for a MRI. I had to find out though. A month on the sidelines was killing me. It looks like I will be laid up for a bit longer now, but at least I know. Maybe the orthotics with help. Who knows.
Training Log:
Triceps:
Triceps Extension: 15/15, 15/15, 15/15
Dumbbell Kickback: 10/12, 10/15, 10/15
Assisted Dip: 135/10, 150/12, 150/10 (Higher number is easier)
Back:
Bent Dumbbell Rows: 20/15, 25/15, 25/15
Lat Pull Down: 70/15, 70/10, 70/10
Seated Cable Row: 60/15, 60/15, 60/15
Seated Row Machine: 70/15, 55/15, 55/15
Abs:
Crunches: 50 * 2
Alternating side heel touch: 50 * 1
Various stretches, mostly my hamstrings.
I went for a 4 mile run over lunch today. I know it was too much. My hip doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t feel great either. I really don’t care, I needed to go for a run today.
My initial plan today was to go for a 10 minute jog around the streets close to the office just to loosen the legs up. I decided to tag along with Eric for the first 10 minutes of his 4 miler. I was about 30 seconds into the run and I knew I wasn’t going to stop at 10 minutes. Eric said to me “you know you are going to pay for this right?”, and I replied “This is a mistake, I am doing it anyway”. So off we strode working off Christmas calories and feeling great for being on my feet.
The run was hard. My cardio fitness has fallen off over the last month off and so it made the 9:25ish pace difficult to sustain over the distance. My legs feel fine however and I think the bike work and lifting have left me fit.
I am not back, not by a long shot. I need to wait a day or two and see what the fall out is for my hip, then assess it from there.
In other running related news, I got my orthotics today. I have to wear them for gradually longer periods of time over the next few days. The physical therapist told me that if I did go for a run, I should not wear them for the first two weeks while running so my body can get used to them.
I have had them in for a couple of hours today and I can already tell they are shifting my hips and knees around. Should be interesting to see how this works out.
Of interest to me is how our bodies burn the calories we consume. This isn’t so much an interest in the science, but an interest in being thin. I know that probably sounds vein and shallow, but I don’t mean it to. I just don’t like carrying around excess weight, and I feel better and I think I look better without it. To that end, I was reading up on Basal Metabolic Rate.
Essentially BMR is what our bodies burn just keeping our organs functioning. It does not take into account energy needed for assimilating food or any other activity, and should not be confused with Resting Metabolic Rate. Resting Metabolic Rate is a little more useful when trying to lose weight since it will give you more of a drop dead number for dieting, or maintaining weight.
I found a BMR calculator online. Oh, and because it declines with age, it helps if you are young. And not by a terribly small sum
My height (6′ 2″) and current weight (175) and age (35) give me a BMR of 1858.05. Using my same stats at 25, and then 45 are 1926.05 and 1790.05 respectively. By the time you are 45 (if you are me) you will be burning 136 calories less than you did at 25 even if every thing else stays the same (food intake, exercise). Lame.
So the older you are, the harder you’ll have to work. This world has it in for us! :)
Despite saying I was going to totally rest today, I went to the gym. A whole day off from work spent alone in my house is a recipe for me to go bonkers, so I went to the gym.
I rode the bike for about 5 minutes, but it was hurting my hip so I stopped. I went down and stretched it out really good. My hip feels pretty good now, though it was sore this morning. I figured I would skip cardio today, as I did Legs on Friday, then lifted and ran yesterday, and then was back in the gym today.
I lifted for my chest and biceps today. I will say that I am getting over the intimidation part of lifting. I feel like I know how to do the lifts I do, so I am not as self conscious about doing them. I really don’t care that I was doing curls with 20’s while the guy beside me was doing dumbbell presses with 100’s (I am not kidding). What I do care about is not looking like someone who doesn’t know what they are doing and doesn’t care.
Training Log:
Biceps:
Dumbbell Curls: 15/15, 20/12, 20/12
Bent Bar Curls: 30/15, 30/15, 30/15
Preacher Curls: 25/15, 25/15, 25/15
Chest:
Bench Press: 65/15, 65/15, 65/12
Incline Press: 65/10, 65/8, 55/10 (I am going to start these at 55 next time)
Decline Press: 45/15, 45/15, 55/15 (I am going to start these at 55 next time)
Abs:
Ab machine: 30/15, 30/15, 30/15
Hanging Knee Raises: 15, 15
Hmm, I see I didn’t really do anything for the Obliques this time out. Have to fix that tomorrow.
Happy lifting!
I ran yesterday. I went to the gym to do some cardio and some lifting yesterday morning. I got on the bike and set it for 40 minutes. About 7 minutes in and I was sick of the bike already. I kept looking back over my shoulder at the treadmills.
I decided that I would ride the bike for 30 minutes and then test out the hip with a 10 minute jog on the treadmill. I hopped on the treadmill, set the pace for 10 minute/mile and started jogging. It felt great to be running again. The hip felt pretty good too. I think I did feel a few twinges but nothing I would call pain. Over the 10 minutes I upped it to 9 minute/mile and finally 8 minute/mile. All of the speeds were doable. The 8 minute mile pace left me a little winded. I am sure if I can ever get back to running regularly that will come back in a few weeks.
Today my hip is a little sore. It’s not the bone on bone pain I have had, but it is sore. I plan to totally rest today, and then hit the bike tomorrow. If my hip feels good, I will run for 10 minutes again then.