You want to monitor heart rate and pace, but can not afford (or do not want) a GPS enabled watch. The Garmin FR60 HRM and foot pod bundle is the answer.

Let’s face it, I know where I am running so do not need a GPS, but it is much more difficult to calculate distance and pace on the fly, so in my opinion, the FR60 bundle is ideal. I picked up my Garmin FR60 bundle from InTraining yesterday and went for my first run this morning. These are my initial impressions.

The FR60 was easy to set up from the quick start manual. But if you want to explore some of the more advanced settings, you will need to view the full owner’s manual online, or be a techno geek willing to explore the settings to see what they do.

I originally thought that foot pods were like pedometers – you measure your stride length, it works out the number of steps you have taken and multiplies it by your stride length to produce a wild guesstimate of distance travelled. How wrong could I be.

Foot pods contain accelerometers that measure the motion of your foot, and from that do a series of complicated calculations to work out distance (kilometres or miles)  travelled in real time. They can adjust to changes in cadence and pace on the fly. Very smart.

Straight out of the box on my initial (slow) run I achieved 96.8% accuracy over the first 2.5 kilometres as measured against mapmyrun.com and my car odometer. According to Garmin, uncalibrated the foot pod should be 95% accurate, but if I calibrate it – which I probably won’t bother to do – I should get within 98% accuracy.

Interestingly, when I ran backwards (I had to try!), the foot pod continued to calculate my speed regardless of the direction I was facing – much as a GPS watch would. Smart stuff.

The FR60 foot pod is small by comparison with Suunto and Polar foot pods, but slightly bigger than the Nike Sportsband pod. The FR60 foot pod weighs 10 grams and was not noticeable when clipped to my shoe laces. In fact, while I could detect a slight bulge on the top of my shoe when I really concentrated on it, the reality was that the heart rate monitor and watch were more intrusive – and how long have people been wearing watches for!?!

I also like the Garmin watch form factor. There are men’s and ladies’ styles in two different colours and they look like a normal sports digital watch. Just make sure you pick up the right one – the men’s and ladies’ boxes are almost identical and I originally walked out of the shop with the ladies version!

I know that if I can go easy at the beginning of a race, I can pick up the pace in the second half and run a negative split and a good time. But it is all too easy to get caught up in the race start enthusiasm and blow up by the second half; alternatively, it is easy to run too slow at the beginning and leave too much in the tank. I am sure the FR60 will help me keep the ideal pace.

I love being able to see in real time my heart rate and pace. I can see whether I am running too fast or too slow, and even run against a virtual partner. (I wish I could slip stream behind them as well, but that is expecting a bit too much!) The watch can keep me at the right pace for both my training and race efforts.

After setting up and syncing the watch with my computer, all I need do is bring the watch within range and my latest training runs are automatically uploaded to Garmin Connect where I can keep track of my running progress. It is a shame though that the web site has gaping holes where the map data would be for the Garmin GPS enabled products.

Having all this techno wizardry at my disposal, I just had to try for a PB resting heart rate. When I woke up this morning I put on the heart rate monitor. After dozing back off to sleep I managed a PB of 45 beats per minute – not too bad for an overweight, middle-age guy, but not as good as my high school days of around 35 bpm.

At $299, the Garmin FR60 bundle is about the price of a top shelf pair of running shoes, but it should last a lot longer and, in my opinion, is money well spent.

In the last eight or so months, I have got into running. This is a pretty good effort given that at the beginning of the year I could barely walk because of a back injury cause by trying to shift a marble-topped table in a restaurant!

20 years ago I used to do some running, but only as part of triathlons. My preferred sport was cycling. I could just struggle around a 1 km ocean swim without drowning. And running was only a little better. I seem to remember running a hilly 10 km in 50 minutes. Not hugely fast, but okay. In those days I weighed 60 kg, and I could not put on weight.

Spin forwards 20 years and I am now 20+ kg heavier. I started running as a way to lose some of the extra kegs while still exercising my dogs (multi-tasking is important!). But now I am loving it!

I have only lost about 4 kg, which is a bit disappointing. My objective is to get back down to about 75 kg. My fitness level has increased dramatically though. When I started running I could only run two light poles, and then had to walk for one. I have now run up to 15 km, even if it was very slow. I have also run a few races:

Greater Springfield Run for Life 5 km – 29 mins
Mousdash 10.5 km (around Mt Coot-tha) – 75 mins
Lung Foundation Corporate River Run 10.44 km – 61 mins.

Climbing away from the Mousdash start -- 2.5 km later we were at the top of Mt Coot-tha

I had planned to run the 10 km run as part of the Brisbane Running Festival, but got sick the week before so ended up doing the 8 km walk with my wife. It was rather humbling to be skylarking along and have guys slog past you who had been running for four hours and had another 10 km to go!

I have also recently joined a running club – the Intraining Running and Triathlon Club. The club is obviously connected to the Intraining store in Milton. I have been along to the Monday and Wednesday beginners’ groups a few times. There is a real diversity of runners’ shapes, sizes and abilities, which is great – I am not the fattest or slowest! These groups cater to the beginning runner who can not yet run 10 km. While I can run 10+ km, I am still finding the training useful. My main objective is to increase my speed. My endurance is okay at this stage.

The Intraining group is very relaxed and friendly. People come and go as suits them. There is no guilt factor to missing training some weeks – which is good given my family and work commitments. I have been told that there is usually an influx of people in January – everyone trying to fulfil those New Year resolutions. I am told that sometimes the beginners’ groups can be as large as 40+ people!

The group also seems to suit people (like me) who are event orientated, such as the Brisbane Running Festival or many of the numerous fun runs throughout the year. Brisbane Road Runners Club runs races every fortnight – I simply could not commit to that level of involvement. The big events suit me – and they are fun.

My goal races are currently:

Clem 7 Tunnel Run 10 km – date to be confirmed, but likely to be in February/March 2010
Twilight Running Festival half marathon – 21 March 2010

My ultimate objective is to run a full marathon the year I turn 40 (or before). The following two races are therefore on my goal list too:

Brisbane Marathon – 15-16 May 2010
Gold Coast Airport Marathon – 3-4 July 2010

If I do not make the full marathons this year, I can always do one of the shorter races in the program and aim for the full marathon next year.

What this leads me to is looking seriously at more running gear. Things like running gels, running shorts with pockets (more than just a fob pocket, and shorts with these are really specialist gear), a better pair of shoes and perhaps even a heart rate monitor/GPS watch. But that is a whole other blog post …

Run on dudes!

• When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not.
• Wars not make one great.
• Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things.
• You must unlearn what you have learned.
• Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.
• Luminous begins are we … not this crude matter.
• That is the way of things … the way of the Force.
• A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.
• Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will …
• Beware of the dark side. Anger … fear … aggression.
• You must feel the force around you.
• Through the force things you will see. Other places. The future … the past. Old friends long gone.
• Size matters not.
• If you choose the quick and easy path … you will become an agent of evil.
• Control, control. You must learn control.
• Mind what you have learned. Save it you can.

The only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys.

So how many expensive toys should a man have?

Expressed as an equation, men should — and in fact need – N + 1 expensive toys, where N is the number of toys that they currently own.

Too many toys is never enough!

It seems that my family has finally succumbed to the swine flu. With one child in school and the other in child care, it was only a matter of time. While my various members of my family have been sick at different times during the last two weeks, we only pieced it all together this week.

On Monday there was a notice on the child care centre door that one of the children had tested positive for swine flu. When my wife came home from the doctor on Tuesday and said the doc thought she had swine flu, we began to piece it together.

My youngest had become sick about two weeks ago. At first we just thought she was teething. A fever and runny nose. A little later she developed a cough. My older daughter got sick at school the Tuesday after. She came home that afternoon and lay down. Fortunately the following day was the Ekka (show day) public holiday, and the day after was a student free day at school. My oldest was lethargic on Wednesday. By Thursday she was perking back up, and by Friday she could have gone to school but we let her stay home (prep year attendance is non-compulsory).

My wife started to come down with it on the Thursday. She has had it bad and been quarantined in the bedroom until yesterday. Mind you, she managed to give it to me.

I had the bug on Monday and spent most of the day resting. On Tuesday I was back on deck, although still not 100%. If the sickness I had was indeed swine flu, then it is probably the mildest flu I have ever had. A slight fever, minor aches, and a cough. No big deal really, but still and inconvenience not to be feeling at the top of your game for several days.

The normal yearly flu kills a couple of thousand people every year. Swine flu seems to be doing the same. What is the big deal?

I went on a journey of discovery this morning, but was left disappointed.

For many years I have driven along South East Queensland’s Gateway Motorway and noticed the Taoist Temple sign near Deagon. Given my interest in Taoism (Daoism), my curiosity was piqued everytime I saw it. But I always had another destination to get to so could not stop for a look.

Googling for a Brisbane Taoist Temple reveals that it is the Evergreen Taoist Church of Australia. But apart from a 360 degree view of the temple courtyard, phone number and posts from a few people who have visited, does not reveal much else. Try the Google search for yourself! They do not even appear to have a web site.

So this morning I took a few hours off work and drove over to visit the Evergreen Taoist Church of Australia. I figured that was the only way I was going to find out about what they did.

I was the only visitor there at the time — 10:30am on a Friday morning. There were four staff visible — three in an office, and one cleaning the front display. None sought to speak with me. There were many statues and displays, but being the only visitor in the temple, did not feel like taking photos.

Unfortunately there was no explanatory pamphlet on their church, notes explaining the various displays and statues, or even a book shop. While visually the Taoist Temple is worth a look, from an information and fact finding perspective, I was left disappointed.

Now to look in a different direction to find out more about Taoism.

I like to refer to myself as a Taoist, in much the same way that many people call themselves Christians but do not go to church. I am a believer, but not a practicer … yet.

I have been saying for many years that Taoism sits with me comfortably (from what I know if it!) and it is something that I would like to explore further. I think that time is here.

My current understanding is that Taoism is not a religion as such, but a spiritual way of living where you are in the natural flow of life energy. Sounds all very new agey doesn’t it?

Update: while the following should work to circumvent the blacklist of sites, packet filtering is another issue altogether. But the real point is that we, as Australian citizens, should not have to go to these lengths to get a clean internet feed.

The issue of the Australian Federal Government filtering internet content has been brewing for some time. I have always thought that it would be relatively easy to write a Perl script to fetch web pages. It could be placed on a legitimate server anywhere in the world. From my computer in Australia, I could reach the Perl script that could then fetch any pages or files on the internet. The thing is, it made my head hurt just thinking about the time I would waste writing a little snippet of code just for the sake of outfoxing the Australian Federal Government.

Paul Syvret’s article, Internet Filter Danger, published in The Courier-Mail on 7 July 2009 got me thinking that I would not be the only person in the world who has had this thought. A two-minute Google search revealed that to be the case.

James Marshall has written CGIProxy – a 509 kb file size Perl script. Don’t be fooled by his plain text web site either. I quote from his web site:

This CGI script acts as an HTTP or FTP proxy. Through it, you can retrieve any resource that is accessible from the server it runs on. This is useful when your own access is limited, but you can reach a server that in turn can reach others that you can’t. In addition, the user is kept as anonymous as possible from any servers. Common uses include: anonymous proxies similar to The Anonymizer, other personal uses, VPN-like functionality, and others. It’s very simple to install, and very configurable.

From that description, it is easy to think that there might be a few Chinese and Iranians using this script! Imagine putting Australian’s in the same censorship category as those countries! It just isn’t right!!

As proof of concept, I downloaded the Perl script, installed it on this web site, and within two minutes I was surfing the internet anonymously fetching pages. In fact, it has taken me longer to write this blog post than it took to find and install CGIProxy. The Perl script can be run within a secure sockets layer (SSL) and with the URL encoded. I have not bothered to test this yet, but there is no reason it should not work. (There is some debate as to whether running under SSL will prevent packet inspection of data if the Australian Government colludes with root certification authorities, and whether this can be got around through VPN tunnelling … no doubt there is someone out there smarter than me who will solve this problem, and perhaps the answer is already available, VPNOut.)

This web site is hosted in Australia, but with around $100 and 15 minutes work, I could easily run the CGIProxy Perl script from a server anywhere in the world. That would give me my own private anonymous surfing system that can access unfiltered web page and file content on the internet. Try finding and banning me then!

My blog and business web site statistics give me an insight into what is happening on the internet. Sure, it is a small, statistically-insignificant snapshot, but can be interesting none the less. The following numbers are for the last month.

Take browsers for a moment. Visitors to this blog in the last month have used the following browsers.

• Internet Explorer 46.42%
• Firefox 39.27%
• Safari 8.08%
• Chrome 4.04%
• Opera, Mozilla, Camino, Konqueror and Opera Mini the rest.

Anyone heard of Safari? (Sorry Mac users …). Chrome is high on the recognition list with Google’s involvement, but does not seem to have a strong take-up. And what about Firefox? It has got a strong showing against the Microsoft juggernaught Internet Explorer. It will be interesting to see whether Chrome can make any headway — it has been holding a around this level for the last few months. Unfortunately I can not give a comparable snapshot from my business web site because I have not yet got around to excluding my own hits from it, so my visits distort the picture.

Another interesting development is Bing. And for this I can make a comparison with my business site because I do not search for my own web sites (well, I do, but I don’t click through). Google sent 97.69% of search engine generated visits in the last month, while Bing sent … none. Interestingly, Bing sent 92.54% of search engine generated traffic to my business web site, while Google only sent 7.46%. There is a vast anomaly there, which is mostly accounted for by the fact that Bing has only indexed the front page of this blog so far.

I have not yet had anyone visit this blog using Windows 7. XP still rules, with 68.41% of Windows users, while Vista accounts for 28.90%. All versions of Windows account for 84.97% of total visitors. MacIntosh (12.44%) and Linux (1.35%) are still well behind Windows’ dominance, Interestingly, iPod and iPhone account for 0.93% of visitors.

As always, I can not see any personal details in my statistics — all results are aggregated and not attributable to individuals.

I recently bought a new PC running the Microsoft Windows Vista Business 32-bit operating system. After a couple of days, the gadgets in the sidebar stopped working.

I Googled for an answer and came up with numerous posts about an issue with Internet Explorer 8. I decided to just put up with the issue and wait for Microsoft to bring out a patch.

However, I recently changed back to a standard sized font and discovered that the gadgets suddenly started working again. I had set a custom font size at 115%, which is 110 DPI – slightly larger than standard 96 DPI, but less than the large size of 120 DPI. On reverting back to the standard 96 DPI, my sidebar gadgets – including the clock, CPU monitor, calendar and weather – have worked perfectly.

To access this setting, right click on the desktop -> click on personalise -> then change font size (DPI).