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The Curio

Running & Other Odd Stuff

Garmin Noob Runs 23 Miles at 56 mph #fail

So I get myself a nice shiny new Garmin Forerunner 405, succumbing finally to Twitter peer pressure (you know who you are, people). It arrived at the office yesterday, so I resisted the urge to play around with it until I got home later that evening.

I read the quick start guide, charged it all up, installed the ANT drivers for the USB stick. So far, everything looking good. I planned an early start this morning for a 10k test run using my new toy.

Picture the scene. I get up this morning. It's dark, cold with slushy ice and snow covering the whole area. I opt for screw-shoes and a cross country route. I stand outside in the bleak, wet darkness. I select "training" and await GPS signal acquisition. Done. Now, press the "start" button. Perfect. And I'm off!

It's all going well, apart from the ground which is very muddy and waterlogged. A few inches deep in freezing cold water in places. But I don't care - I have my new GPS tracking my every move!  I glance down to check my progress. Bad idea, as I've run out of contact lenses and it's still dark anyway. I know!  the backlight!  Problem solved. Well, actually, problem worsened as I manage to press the bezel incorrectly, activating a different menu. Gloves aren't helping either. I'll back up. No, I won't. Wrong button. What bloody menu is this now?

All of this is happening as I'm blundering along in the dark, splashing through mud and slush. Finally, I resolve to stop trying to get the right screen to display and concentrate on finishing the course.

Finally, I arrive back home where I hit the "stop" button. I seem to recall that's what the instructions said. No time to worry about it now. Quick shower, in the car and off to Costco to pick up new contact lenses before arriving at the office, fresh for the day. I can't wait to see my progress when the 405 links up with my laptop.

I arrive at Costco for 9:00am, forgetting that they don't open until 12:00. Right, off to work then.

I settle down at my desk, eager to see the results of this morning's run. It's not auto syncing though. It's supposed to, I thought. What the hell?

Then, I notice the problem. The timer is still running. In my earlier confusion, I think I'd locked the bezel so the "stop" didn't work. I stop the timer. It automatically uploads as designed. The picture tells the harrowing story of my utter incompetence. You can see my run around the Flash, then my car journey to Costco at Haydock and then my journey South, eventually reaching the office.

At one point on my "run", I got up to 56mph.

The lessons my friends.
  1. Learn to use new equipment before you need it, not at the point you need it.
  2. Lock the bezel before you set off as wet clothing activates menus at random. Really. Lock the bezel.

Other than that, everything went pretty smoothly.

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Filed under  //   equipment   fail   kit   running  
Posted February 4, 2010
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Running shoe obsession and lifecycle

Shoe obsession is a complex thing, covering many areas of the human condition that I don't dare to cover on this blog. I must admit however, to having a vague obsession with running shoes. If you're a runner I think you'll empathise with me here. There is no piece of kit more important to a runner than shoes - the right ones enable  you to participate in your sport to your absolute maximum, and the wrong ones can leave you nursing injuries that will keep you off the road for weeks.

My shoes have a lifecycle, which goes something like this:

  1. Buy new shoes, use them exclusively for running
  2. When worn out (say around three hundred miles, depending on course conditions) use as casual wear
  3. Once appearance has degraded further, use as gardening or other work shoes
  4. Throw them away
Wait. I lied about the last point. I don't throw them away. They just go in to the garage, to my own personal running shoe graveyard. Furthermore, once a pair has found its way to the graveyard, I buy another pair to feed in to the new cycle.

The result is that I tend to have at least six pairs of running shoes floating round the house, when really, I only need two at the absolute maximum. One road, one off-road. Well, I say absolute. Those and a spare pair of road shoes too, just in case. And an extra pair of old off-roaders for screw shoe conversion in the winter. Maybe three off-road pairs as I do the odd bit of running on rocky trails too. Actually, make that four. Some of those trails are pretty wet and grassy, and that's a whole different tread pattern.

You know what? It looks like I don't have enough shoes. Damn. I knew it.

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Filed under  //   equipment   kit   running   shoes  
Posted January 19, 2010
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Running with Sennheiser PMX80SPORT Headphones

As previously mentioned, I've now had a chance to road and off-road test the above headphones. I have to say that they are a big improvement over both the iPod and Sony alternatives.

As you can see from the picture, they fit around the back of the head, using a light clamping action that holds the earbuds in place. And they do stay in place, even when jumping over off-road obstacles like cycle barriers and stiles. Sound quality is good too - better than the iPod standard headphones in my opinion. I find I need less volume too, which is good as for safety I like to retain some ambient sound rather than blocking out all of the traffic noise.

They're also very light with a rubberised cable that is long enough to accommodate most iPod or media player location preferences (although I prefer to clip my Shuffle to my collar area), but not so long that it flails around and hits you in the face or catches your clothing.

I've also used them in some pretty heavy rain for over an hour on two occasions, which I know from experience would have rendered my iPod headphones temporarily inoperable until they dried out. No problem here for the PMX80's.

Two tiny annoyances. Firstly, that in-ear security comes at a price. Which means that they are a slightly tight fit, clamping on to the side of your head. You get used to this after a while, but initially they are slightly uncomfortable. Secondly, the bit that goes around the back of your head/neck does tend to catch occasionally on the collar of my running jacket. This won't be a problem in the warmer months, but the sound this contact makes is conducted right in to your ears. Not a big deal, but a little strange at first as it sounded like some kind of electrical problem!

Clearly, I'm not a hi-fi expert, so I'm not going to provide detailed feedback on the merits of the sound reproduction that this bit of kit can provide. However, if you need a set of rugged, water resistant headphones that sound good and won't fall out of your ears when you're running, give the PMX80's a go.

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Posted January 6, 2010
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Shoe Hacking: Running in Ice & Snow

I've been whining about the poor running conditions here in the UK for some time now, to the point that even I'm sick of hearing it. Actually, it turns out that I'm not the only one in the World who finds it difficult to run in snow and ice conditions. Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, armed with a few well-aimed Googles, I found this article about customising old running shoes for slippery conditions by screwing in hex-headed screws in to the soles. Brilliant!  Why didn't I think of this?  I immediately set about finding similar hardware to make my own "screw shoes".

My first problem was that I couldn't find similar hex headed screws as the ones recommended in the article. So I've made do with the pan-headed ones in the first picture below. I reckoned that 1/2 inch No. 8 screws would be best overall. The pack cost me about £2.50.

Next I needed a pair on donor shoes. For me, this was an easy choice. My old Inov-8 Flyroc 310's were perfect (pictures 2 & 3) Trail shoes, with many miles on them. If you're in the market for off-road shoes, you could do worse than check out Inov-8 products. Serious kit.

Then the task of screwing in the screws. My initial choices for locations you can see in picture 4, but a quick test run once the other shoe was complete led me to discover that placing the screws in the middle of the heel or ball of the foot areas is not a good idea. You can feel the screw quite a bit, and I felt that after an hour or so this would actually become quite painful.

I finally settled upon the layout as shown in the final picture.  But would they work?

It turns out that I would get my chance to find out this very morning, when my part of NW England was covered with 4-6 inches of fresh snow over ice. Perfect. 10k trail run around my beloved Pennington Flash.

The results were quite encouraging. On deep fresh snow, it wasn't really possible to notice any effect, but on compacted snow and ice, the difference was considerable. Maybe not as good as the hex-headed screws which probably bite in to the ice more effectively than the pan-headed ones, but they certainly made the difference between being able to run, or having to mope around the house, swearing at the weather and annoying the rest of the family. 

I also learned that running through deep snow is actually pretty tough. The foot never quite manages to flatten the snow, meaning that you're effectively running with your foot pointing slightly upwards after each foot strike, placing a strain on the back on the lower leg. But that's another story.


         
Click here to download:
Shoe_Hacking_Running_in_Ice_Sn.zip (2031 KB)

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Posted January 5, 2010
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Cheap ways to avoid nipple abrasion

Simple. Do 100 push-ups a day and have a torso like a Greek sculpture, like myself. Until then though, I offer you the following humble advice.

I've been running regularly for the last couple of years now, and one of the things you learn quite quickly is that the fitter you get, the longer you can run for. The longer you run for, the more chafing and abrasion you suffer - sometimes in places that you'd rather not discuss in polite company. Two of those places are your nipples.

I think this is a problem suffered largely by men, as women already tend to have underwear and support solutions that prevent this kind of thing happening. At least that's my perception (like I say, it's not really a subject you tend to bring up in polite company).

Now, I could show you some pictures of my own injuries, but I don't really think you'll want to see them. They're really not pretty. Also, I find that if I mention the problem to friends, they think it's hilarious. That's the funny thing; bleeding nipples are absolutely, positively, not funny. Not to the sufferer, anyway. And yet, to the onlooker, it's rather like those home-video football-in-the-groin scenes where everybody but the guy lying on the floor in agony is laughing their heads off.

But I digress.

Let's get straight to the point. The best product that I've used to avoid abrasion is NipGuards. They're little circular sticky pads with a hollow centre that completely covers the nipple without touching it. They're backed with surgical tape, so they stay in place too. Problem is, they're expensive. I thought therefore that I'd try and find an alternative and cheap solution to an annoying and painful problem. Here's what I've found.

4th place

Petroleum jelly, a.k.a Vaseline. Pros: cheap, you can blodge it on the area and it's sweat resistant. Cons: can stain your clothing, and you really need to pile it on for it to be effective.

3rd place

Close call for 2nd place this one. Bodyglide anti-chafe. Pros: can use in multiple areas, apply like a deodorant stick, no stain, long lasting pack. Cons: tends to erode during longer runs (say about 60 mins+), a bit pricey initially

2nd place

Kids waterproof plasters, larger sizes. Pros: super cheap, pennies per box of 10 or 20. Cons: don't always stay on (but you can always use more than one at a time)

1st place

The overall winner for me are supermarket own-brand blister plasters. See picture below. These beauties are easy to apply, they stay on for the duration of the run, and although they're more expensive than standard sticking plasters, they're more reliable. The only con is that when removing them after your run, you'll also end up doing a little localised chest waxing too. I suggest soaking in the shower for a while before ripping them off. Unless you enjoy pain.

If anyone else has any product tips, I'd love to hear about them.

     
Click here to download:
Cheap_ways_to_avoid_nipple_abr.zip (1067 KB)

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Posted December 23, 2009
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Fed up with earphone slippage whilst running?

Me too. There's nothing really wrong with the standard iPod headphones, apart from the fact that the little rubberised liner around the outside of each earpiece seems to wear away within a couple of months. The result is a less than comfortable fit and continual slip-out-of-the-earage. Which really annoys me, especially during longer runs.

So I tried some SonyMDREx35Lpb Closed In-Ear Headphones instead. These work well initially, but then they suffer from slippage after about a month of use as the earpiece loses it's in-ear friction, possibly due to rain and/or sweat. They come with a really long cord too, which is supposedly a feature. For me, it's actually a pain because you then have to use the supplied cable-tidy to shorten it. The cable-tidy then tends to bounce around during the run, resulting in even more ear slippage.

I've also noticed that because they're the in-ear design, you can jam them down your ear canal and they tend to stay in place (at least until the ear cup goes smooth), but they really do block out a lot of ambient noise. This is good when sitting on the train, not as good if you're running on busy streets where it's useful to be able to hear whats going on around you.

Now, the answer may simply be not to run with my trusty Shuffle at all. I do this occasionally, usually when I've forgotten to charge it up. In reality though, my iPod is second only to my shoes in terms of importance, so resolving this issue is kind of a big deal. (In a very small, selfish and actually not very important sense.)

So I've decided to try another product altogether.

After a bit of shopping around, I've settled on a different design in the shape of the Sennheiser PMX80SPORT headphones. They're the over-ear-round-the-back-of-the-head kind of design that I've never actually used before. They look promising, but I'll have to wait until Christmas to try them out. 

Failing that, I'll just have to wear a hat pulled down over my ears, all year round.

 

 

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Posted December 16, 2009
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Gel Kinsei 2's finally arrive

I'm a shoe geek, it seems. Now, shall I use them now, or wait until after Christmas?  They are supposedly a present from Mrs C.

     
Click here to download:
Gel_Kinsei_2s_finally_arrive.zip (1195 KB)

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Posted December 5, 2009
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Top tip to save money on new running shoes

Well, less of a top tip than basic common sense. 

I always buy the previous version of a shoe, soon after the latest version becomes available. Tight fisted? Possibly. However, most of the time, upgrades to shoe models are cosmetic. And, if a shoe got a good review a year ago, it should still be a good shoe now, right?

Speaking of which, I've just ordered a pair of Asics Gel Kinsei 2's now that the 3's are out.


Definitely saved a few quid, especially as these are not the cheapest shoes on the market.

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Posted December 2, 2009
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