I am getting back into running at the moment. I have run several times recently, irregularly enough not to feel pain in my knees or other articulations so this is a good sign. The advantage of running, over other sports, is that it’s easy to catch a bus, car, train, parapente or other form of transport and start running. The second advantage is that it is twice as fast as walking.
Six or seven years ago I ran regularly. I kept pushing until I reached over 10 kilometres in a run but I had to stop because I got pain in my legs that was so bad I sometimes questioned how I would get back. It’s not that I couldn’t run faster, or further, but that I didn’t reach training plateaus, and then improve speed and stamina. If I achieved A I went for B, and from B to C, without ever giving my body time to strengthen and adapt. That’s why I ended up injured, and why I paid the price for several years.
This time I sometimes ran only until the first feeling of pain and stopped. By doing this a few times I allowed my body time to be pushed right next to the limit, without overdoing it. As a result of this more gentle and understanding training regime I got back to running for seven minutes, and walking for three minutes, without feeling any pain.
The next workout will be seven kilometres of running and one minute of walking three times. I could try tomorrow, or Saturday. I think it’s better to do this workout on Sunday. This gives my body time to adapt to running, and recover. I want it to recover. I don’t want my progress to be blocked because I was too greedy to allow my body time to adapt.
Running is a good winter time sport because you can do it in the mud, on the side of roads, through fields or in other locations. You can also dress quite normally, compared to cycling and other sports. It is also flexible gradient wise, unlike rollerblading, where you need to learn to stop on steep descents in a landscape like this one.
And Finally
My goal is to run five kilometres, first, and then to keep running five kilometres, but faster, without pushing myself beyond a threshold. Eventually I may run further but I think I would run the routes that I usually walk. When the cycling season comes back I should be able to resume cycling in good shape.
Despite having a frosty morning today I still decided to go for a run in the morning rather than the afternoon. I mention the frost because I noticed that one velux had the usual frost fractals but the others were clear. This is curious.
Frost fractals on a velux
I wore a thermal layer, a fleece, a t-shirt and some running shoes that were not waterproof. I would have run one route but a couple took the entire width of the road so I ran along the side of the road, and in the grass by the side of the road. Due to my wearing different shoes my feet and socks got wet and I could feel the dampness, a feeling that I usually do not get.
Safety
I am experimenting with running for two reasons. The first is that I don’t feel safe cycling on roads where drivers do not slow down, or give enough space when overtaking. I don’t like having to look behind me continuously to get drivers to slow down and give enough distance between me and them. I don’t know whether my fear is due to walking by the road every day for almost five years, and cycling for one and a half hours per ride. These might have amplified my sense of danger.
Easier to Dress for Running
The second reason is dressing warmly. Cycling is one of those sports where you dress to be streamlined, but by being streamlined it is easy to feel the cold. Warm cycling clothing is also expensive and although I can layer I am quite happy to walk.
Efficient
The nuance of running, rather than walking is about time. By running I can cover the same distance in half the time than I would if I was walking. This means that what would take one hour might take half an hour. That is more time to do other things. It is also easier to play chicken with the sunset, or grab a break between rain clouds.
Full Body
Running is also a full body workout, rather than a lower body workout. Running uses the upper body and the lower body. You can feel the shoulders, lower back, and pectoral muscles working. You can also feel tightness in certain running muscles after a run.
Avoiding injury
The reason for which I am careful with running, and why I am working towards a 5km goal is body strain. I found that when I pushed towards running more than 10 kilometres it hurt my knees. I want to give my body time to adapt to running, before pushing beyond 5 kilometres.
Cheap and Light
If I grow comfortable with running then I have a cheap, light, versatile sport to enjoy year round. I do need to get comfortable with hills around here. If I leave the village where I live then I have two directions with hills, one that is too short and too busy to be a workout and the other that is towards a town and civilisation. The other routes take me to the countryside.
Solitary
Aside from the points I have made above running is also a sport that you can do alone. Climbing, diving, via ferrata and other sports require at least one more person, and the relevant equipment. With running you need shoes and that’s it, if you want to be a minimalist.
And Finally
Walking and hiking for four and a half million to five and a half million steps per year doesn’t count as improving fitness after five years of routine. Cycling does, when I push myself, and so does running. I want to see my fitness go up, not down over the cold winter months. I want to feel that I am progressing, not stagnating. Running is a way of achieving this goal.
Either you can buy a collection of casios that each have different functions or you can download apps that have a niche purpose. I have been playing with Gentler Streak and Training day. One looks at heart rate and training. The second looks at resting heart rate and heart rate recovery.
According to the Gentler streak app my fitness “seems stable”. It looks at the routine over the last few months and years, and by this metric decides whether fitness is increasing, stable or declining. With the Gentler Streak app I am fine with my routine.
In contrast the Training Today says that I am overdoing it. I have played with the app for one day so I don”t understand the data yet.
I have been going for two walks per day, and on some days a walk and a swim, or a walk and a run, so it makes sense that the app would say that I am overdoing it at the moment. You can smooth by as many days as you like, from none, to several days. You can also adjust the default intensity.
Both apps give different results so they may be mutually exclusive, at least in my case. They’re interesting because they provide you with an overview of fitness over a period of time. Instead of “time” or “steps” these apps tell you about the health impact of training and whether to push harder, rest, or slow down. It is an alternate way of fitness training, without using Strava or other fitness apps.
Both apps are European. Gentler Streak is Slovenian, funded by the European Union, and Training Today is English. With this quick glance of both apps, I prefer Gentler Streak at this point.
I was inspired by an article about this type of app in the Google app where articles are suggested. This is a niche I had not yet played with.
We are in the middle of a pandemic and governments see no urgent reason to end it by rational means like soft lockdowns. As a result of this we can pay 1100 CHF per year to go to an indoor gym, rebreathing the same air as other people, using the same machines, and the same washrooms or we can go for the cheaper 49 CHF per month option but run the same risk. I found Option three. Some Freetness machines were installed in Celigny by a children’s playground.
These are just the type of machines that I like to use when I am at the gym. They’re not as resistive as I would like. They require workouts using our own body weight. Today, to escape noise pollution I found the motivation to try the machines. At first I did three reps of ten before following their recommendation of 12 reps, 4 times. I could definitely feel the effort by the last machine.
It’s nice to have machines like this outdoors because they can be used at any time of day or night, as long as you’re quiet. The other nice thing, is that if you have your own disinfectant you can clean your hands and the machines, before and after you use them, as well as your hands. There is plenty of fresh air, because you’re outdoors. The sun, rain and morning dew should help to keep them clean too.
The two machines I didn’t really like are the eliptical machine and the rowing machine. The rowing machine only works the upper thigh muscles, not the entire core. The eliptical machine felt far too light for me so within two minutes I stopped.
If the body weight machines are not to your liking then you have the body weight lifting bars where you can work on lifting your entire body while hanging from some bars. I didn’t use them today, because I was blown from the other exercises. If you went every two to three days you would soon see some gains, and you do have variations of excercises, to keep it from becoming boring.
There is an app, but I haven’t looked at whether it allows you to track what you’re doing, or whether it is just video tutorials on how to use the machines properly. I can check that before my next session. I might throw this into my daily walk, rather than driving to it. I feel a double workout would be more advantageous. This workout takes 10-15 minutes for now. That is too short.
When in Geneva we can easily walk by the lake, or through the city when we’re not looking after children but when we are walking might be more of a challenge. I am not looking after children in Geneva but as you might there is an opportunity here.
Several exercise machines for grown -ps
You have a choice of machines to play with. You have a rowing machine that uses body weight. You have turntables to work your core, you have a swingy leg thing for leg muscles, an elliptical machine for cardio and another rowing machine that also works your core and arms. I tried the rowing machine and the turntable. The turntable is good. It allows you to go at the speed that’s comfortable for you so that you work your body correctly.
The turntable has a choice of three heights so you can either choose the one that’s at the right height for you or you can use all three heights and work a variety of muscles within that group.
These rowing machines are okay. They’re better when you do small movements rather than the entire range of motion it offers. I found that if you go beyond a certain point it leaps.
The elliptical machine needs to be maintained because I found that it’s not as smooth as it should be so it may strain your body without giving you a proper workout.
Such machines are good because they can be used throughout the year and at any time of day or night as they’re far enough not to disturb people living nearby. It’s convenient because it’s near a children’s playground so while children play on their swings you can enjoy yourself too.
Yesterday I took over 16,000 steps. Some of those steps were during a short run from Eysins to Nyon and the rest were during the walk around Nyon and back to Eysins. By the end of the day I had manage to accumulate the step goal of 15300 steps.
With Fitbit and other activity trackers this would be fantastic because you would have met your step goal and you could look forward to meeting the same daily goal day after day. Garmin Connect is different. If you reach and exceed the goal on one day the goal is boosted the next day, and the day after that.
Last Tuesday the step goal was 10950 steps. Yesterday it was 15,300 and today 15,510 steps. That’s an increase of 5000 steps in a week. The issue I face is not with getting to that step count but rather with the amount of time it takes and the fact that cycling and workout intensity are not considered.
I went for two ten minute runs with a three minute break in between today and when I got home I had no spring in my step and I just wanted to rest. I am still getting back into the habit of running so it takes its toll.
I love that it encourages me to take those extra 200 steps compared to yesterday and I love that in theory I could get to the point where the step count requires me to walk for 24 hours to reach it. In practice I want to do other things as well.
In the past I have taken up to 40,000 steps a day on more than one occasion and regularly reached over 20,000. After a hiking weekend the figure will be high, but you’ll be stuck in the office with your daily commute and lunch hour to make up the difference.
The other option is to run. I walk at up to 110 steps per minute but run at around 140 consistently. If I run for as long as I walk I would reach the goal in less time.
When you miss a step goal the counter degrades the required number of steps for the next day. The emotional cost is that you lose the streak. In practice I will lose the streak every Wednesday, as I save energy to go climbing so it doesn’t matter.
Physically I find getting to ten thousand steps really easy. It doesn’t tire me. The challenge when using fitbit was getting to that step count for two or three months in a row. If you’re driving for twelve hours or if you go on a bike ride you miss the goal and you’re stuck with the prospect of going for that many days+1 to beat your old goal. The better you are at reaching your goal the harder it is to beat it.
The easy option would be to edit the daily goal to a fixed number. I could set it to the standard 10,000 steps and beat it daily or conversely I could do the opposite.
The opposite would be to look at the graph above and to select a daily step goal that puts me above 95 percent of other users. According to this chart if I consistently reached 15,000 steps I would beat almost everyone on the graph. I could be more, rather than less ambitious.
The summer hiking, climbing and Via Ferrata seasons are about to start and already I am in the top eight percent for floors climbed per day. 92 percent of Garmin activity tracker users climb less than 21 floors a day. On a good hiking day I climb the equivalent of over 400. I look forward to seeing the stats over the summer months.
In the last two or three days as I tracked my activities I noticed this anomaly. When I checked the GPX file it seems that Garmin tracks activities automatically and when you’re outdoors it knows where you are. When you go indoors or the signal is lost it auto-corrects the location to a cell tower that it can sense.
The tracker is intelligent enough to detect where we are and what we’re doing but when the GPS signal it auto-corrects to a location kilometres away. This is a flaw. If a GPS signal loses location information it should persist at the last known location until it has a solid fix. If I have such a big fluctuation in a location I usually delete the track. It is worthless.
I would like Garmin to take the data from thousands of fitness trackers and create a formula that automatically degrades or increases step count according to weather, number of hours of daylight and other factors. Imagine if instead of “if user “a*” beats previous day then increase by 200″ it updated or decreased according to whether someone cycled, ran or regularly went climbing. As things are I will never have a seven day streak.
The more often you boulder and climb, the stronger the muscles that pull the tendons to your fingers become, and the stronger those muscles become, the higher the grade of your climbs. Hand holds are not the rungs of a ladder or via ferrata. Sometimes you can use your entire hand but at other moments you will use just the fingertips of one hand.
On a climb such as this one I managed to get up two thirds to three fifths of the way up before my fear of falling took over. In this context it wasn’t that I was afraid of falling, after all I had “fallen on an easier route half an hour earlier. It’s that I could see what move I wanted to do, but my finger muscles would not allow it.
When this happens you look down at your feet, to see if there are other footholds and you lean back and try to see if there are other holds that you can use. Eventually you decide “I know what to do and I can try but there is a very good chance that I will fall. It’s a shame that my drive to succeed is overtaken by my instinct not to fall.
Professional climbers train for weeks, months and even years to strengthen their fingers. They have finger boards, they have balls that they hang from. They use elastics and plenty of other tools. They train with the whole hand, with four fingers, down to two fingers, or even one. That training means that they are able to hold their entire body weight while hanging on an overhang and last for long enough to clip in.
I have lost my former finger strength and I am trying the same grade of climbs as before, set by different route setters. At Rocspot in Lausanne I could consistently top 6a lead climbs. At Vitam I am still struggling. I haven’t learned the route setter’s techniques yet. With time I will
There is something to be noted. When outdoor climbing with the groups I am part of one individual often climbs as high their skills allow, they struggle for a bit and then they give up and come back down and the next person goes up and tries to make some progress. In so doing the lead climbers set up the top rope for less experienced climbers. In so doing everyone can enjoy specific routes. As we get better indoors we will not need to do that.
On the overhanging part I saw an agile climbing up 7 or 8a routes over and over. She would climb until she fell and within seconds she was back on the ground, ready to try again. She was climbing according to the IFSC rules. The rope is there for protection in case of a fall, not as a means of resting. I love watching such climbing. I spent three days watching it for hours at a time two or three years ago and I still enjoy it now.
Watching great climbers is fun because it gives you an appreciation of what you could do if only you developed the finger strength, sense of balance and agility. Climbing is an art form but it also requires the strength that goes with that art form. I would love to climb those overhangs but my finger strengths is currently blocking me. It has blocked me for two years. Persistance is an important part of climbing. I will get there.
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 is the first activity tracker that I see tracking descent as well as ascent. It is yet another fitness tracker and in theory I had no need for it as my Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro and my Apple Watch Series 4 do almost the same thing.
I was curious to play with this device for two principle reasons. The first of these is the body battery functionality that looks at the energy we use during the day and the sleep we get at night to say whether we need a rest day or not and because I wanted to fill the daily activity metrics in the Garmin connect app.
Some of you might like this fitness tracker because it looks tiny on the wrist, is waterproof and because the battery lasts for days rather than hours. This means that you can hike for several days and track your activities before you need to recharge it. it automatically detects walking and other sports.
Ups, downs, and intensity
At the moment when I sat down to write this blog post I had walked down 29 floors and walked up 25. A floor is usually a standard three metre elevation change. This is a nice feature because when you’re hiking in mountaineous places it’s nice to see the full vertical movement, i.e. 54 floors today. When you’re hiking you will see why descending is just as interesting as ascending.
Intensity minutes are good too. According to this article in the Guardian: “A Public Health England survey last year found that people in England are becoming so inactive that 40% of those aged between 40 and 60 walk briskly for less than 10 minutes a month.” With a cheap device like the Garmin Vivosmart 4 and the Garmin Connect app people will see that the standard intensity goal per week is 150 minutes per week. That’s around 22 minutes a day. The article goes on to say that training as an athlete is not what improves overall health but rather the habit of walking from 15,000 steps a day onwards.
I am currently reading “The Story of the Human Body” and this book, which looks at human evolution, also explores the importance that movement has on the health of individuals from our species. Many modern diseases are due to how sedentary we have become. By walking and by being active throughout the day we alleviate many health issues because we our bodies have not had time to evolve to the lives that we currently live.
The energy imbalance
Humans evolved from hunter gatherers and their bodies were optimised for a diverse diet of fruits, vegetables and meat. The shift to agriculture diminished the diversity of foods we ate and led to certain health problems. The shift to industrialised societies led to more health problems, some of which were mitigated by advances in healthcare and medicine. The move from industrialisation to office work led to yet more health problems and evolutionary mismatches.
We have the ability to ingest more energy than previous generations and we have the ability to save energy thanks to cars and other technologies. It is now easy for us to spend hours at a time sitting. This means that we consume more energy than we need.
By moving every hour, and by practicing sports as simple as walking at a brisk pace we give the opportunity for our bodies to do what they were designed for. I recommend reading the book as I’m doing a poor job of explaining the theory behind why physical exercise is so important.
Step Auto Goal
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 detects how many steps you do on a daily basis and according to this adjusts the goal for the following day. In less than a week the goal has gone from 5000 steps in a day to 6000 and today up to 7430. I took 12,939 steps so far today so I will have a new goal for today. The advantage of such a system is that it adapts to what we do on a daily basis, rather than a static goal.
Apple watches have the same feature but rather than measure steps it measures calories burned. This is interesting if you do a multitude of sports, like cycling where “steps” can be low despite a high energy expenditure. I put a fitbit tracker in my trousers when cycling to get a more accurate step count. This isn’t ideal but it works
Limitations
Activity trackers do not have a way of converting exertion whilst cycling into “number of steps taken”. I’d love to go on a one hour bike ride and for that hour of cycling to be counted as a certain number of steps. It’s superficial but frustrating to see that you have 2000 steps for a day despite cycling 30+kms, especially if there was a lot of climbing
The second frustration is that Fitbit, Suunto, Garmin and Apple all count steps but none of them speak with each other. This means that if you want to feed each network you need to carry a device from each brand. I don’t want to wear an Apple Watch Series 4 when I’m climbing because I know that their screens are not well suited to this sport. I don’t want to wear the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro to work because it doesn’t fit under my shirt sleeve. I have no problem carrying the Garmin Vivosmart 4 in any context because it’s tiny. Its limitation is that it has limited functionality, especially when you like to work out.
Conclusion
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 is a small fitness tracker that is easily worn alongside the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro for days at a time. It provides a lot of data to the user without requiring an entire wrist. It is no wider than bracelets supprting a variety of causes. With being so small you can easily wear it beside your watch or hidden under a sleeve during the winter months.
No wider than cause supporting bracelets
This is a device you can forget about for five to seven days a week. If you’re the type of person that wants a smart device but without the tedious task of taking it off to shower every morning, and taking it off to swim, and taking it off to charge on a daily basis then this is better than the Apple watch. Add to this that the screen is small so you won’t be distracted, especially when you’re driving. The series 3 and 4 have that drawback.
If you’re really adamant about it not distracting you you can even turn off haptic feedback and just check it on the phone at the end of the week. This being said you can also check it every morning to get an idea of how well you slept without sharing your bed with a phone. It also tracks you in those moments when you’re walking around the office or home without the phone, giving you a more complete appreciation of how much activity you are up to.
I have 100 move day goals reached. The difficulty of this goal depends on how high you set the bar. If you set the bar at two hundred calories a day then the goal is easy to achieve. If you set the goal at 500 or 600 calories then the achievement is slightly more interesting.
An easy goal to reach, one days with the move goal achieved.
I would have reached it sooner if the screen on the apple watch had not broken and if I had not had a few sub-goal days over the last three or more months. I set the goal high enough that I would need to walk for more than two hours a day to reach it. On the bike I reach it within 40 to 50 minutes.
I still haven’t had a perfect month. To have a perfect month I would have had to burn 550 calories every day for a month. I’d tease myself by saying that I set the goal to high but I reach it almost every day. It’s fun to set it high enough for it to be a challenge. It would be cheating if I set it lower.
Despite its simplicity these goals and medals are having a positive impact on my fitness habits. Sometimes I reach the goal by sitting very little. On days when I go for long hikes or cycle I double or triple the move goal so I exceed the requirements of this badge.
On other days I burn less than 200 calories over the day and I rely on the evening Zwift session to get myself over the daily goal. This habit is great. Earlier this week the CDC issued a statement that people should do any form of exercise for two and a half hours a day. They even removed the requirement for it to be in ten minute or more sessions. I exceeded this requirement by five and a half hours a week over the last four weeks.
Monthly challenge
In August the monthly challenge was to double the move goal eight times. In Octobre the challenge was to do 27 workouts in a month. In November the challenge is to move 189 kilometres. If I put the road tyre back on the rear wheel of my bike then this is an easy challenge to reach. My bike rides range between 20-50km a ride. If virtual bike rides count then I would have achieved this goal days ago. As things are we’re half way through the month and I have just 80km.
For about six weeks I have been trying to do at least one seven-minute workout every single day. I eventually fell out of the habit for a few days because I had to fight a little virus. I’m feeling better again. Time to see if I can beat my old maximum of 36 days.
At least one circuit a day
The Seven-minute app I was playing with is by Perigee. The app provides you with the opportunity to train for fitness, for strength or to lose weight. I tried to last for seven days on the Fitness program and suffered. I managed to stick with the routine for a week once as a challenge. Now I choose the routine that I feel I am most in the mood for. On some days I choose a stretching routine and on others I choose to push myself. I tried a chest workout and I found it hard. Yesterday I went for an animal routine and it was easy.
Workout to your day’s energy level
The beauty of these apps is that as you get familiar with them you can give yourself different intensity workouts depending on the time of day and how you’re feeling. You can start with one of the morning routines if you like or an office chair workout. When you’ve finished with a run you can stretch or you can do the post workout routine.
Chose the trainer
I tried the drill sergeant for a while but he frustrated me so I tried the hippie and the kung fu master (or whatever name they used for the app). I have settled for the cheerleader. If I met someone that cheerful in real life I’d probably avoid them but for the workouts it’s nice. I’m usually working out either an hour before bed or more recently before dinner. This is the best time when I can decompress from the commute.
Complimentary
These workouts are complimentary to the rest of my day. I have started training with the c25k app once again and I’m trying not to push too hard. Eventually I want to get to 10km runs and beyond but only when my body can keep up. During week days I walk at least 2 and a half kilometres to work and back as well as walk during my lunch break. Today was an average day and I walked up the equivalent of fifty floors. The 7 minute app is just a bonus.
Motivation
I’ve tried a few of these apps and after less than a week I usually stop using them because they’re either too expensive or they’re a good challenge but not much more. With this app I like that you get badges for the challenges you accomplish. I My goal with this app is to go for seven months without missing a single workout. I managed for 36 days and now I have to start all over. I’m on day 8 of the current challenge. When I finish typing this blog post I will have accomplished day 9.
If you threw in some running between workouts then it would be just like parkour vita. That’s what they should do next.
12 exercises with three or four minutes of running between routines. By the end, you’d be exhausted. With perseverance, you’d be fit. Or you could just do crossfit.
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