Walking (with) The Walk

If you've been reading this blog for a while, or just are used to hearing me yammering about my running all the time, you may have heard me mention an iPhone/Android app called Zombies, Run!, which has helped keep my runs interesting by adding a storyline and periodic zombie chases to them.  Now, the same UK-based folks behind that game have teamed up with the NHS and Department of Health to come up with something even more of you may be interested in.

It's called The Walk, and instead of setting it up when you're about to go exercise, you just start it at the beginning of the day, put it in your pocket or your bag, and let it keep track of your activity as you go.  All of the walking/running/stair-climbing/etc. you do during the day counts towards your progress in a story that involves your mysterious protagonist walking across the length of Great Britain to deliver an important package after an EMP blast shuts down almost all of the electronics in the countryside.  Hitchcockian spy antics abound.  As you make progress you unlock audio clips that tell more of the story, and there are a number of side-quests and achievements you can work on to switch things up as you go along.

I'm three days into it so far, and I've really been enjoying it.  It doesn't track my bike riding (the support folks I contacted said that motion's too complicated to monitor accurately), but the pull of the story has gotten me going out of my way to get in a few extra steps here and there throughout the day.  I've even been taking the stairs up and down to my ninth-floor office!  Progress is tracked by time, not by distance, so there's something here for folks at all levels of activity.  There's even an adaptive feature that can lower the number of minutes you need to stay active in order to complete the "missions" that make up the game (a slider in the settings screen lets you take control of this manually, too).

Now that the weather's getting colder outside (it's snowing like crazy here in New York as I type this), getting out and traveling long distances on foot may be a less-than-enticing proposition, but The Walk has me tempted to brave the cold a bit more.  I'd recommend it to anybody trying to avoid spending the entire holiday season curled up in a blanket on the couch (though hopefully you'll have time for that as well).  It's available for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, and it's $4.99, but for the next few days you can get it on sale for $3.99.

Before I go, I should probably mention that buying an app called "The Walk" can prove quite difficult in the vast wasteland landscape of the iPhone's App Store, especially when there's a little show you may have heard of called The Walking Dead that's inspired quite a few apps of its own.  The company that makes The Walk is called Six to Start, so adding that to your search should be enough to narrow it down.  Enjoy!

Marathon Training: Week 5

I've been spending so much of my time running lately that it's started taking over my thoughts.  I think about how I can go faster, hold out longer, chafe less, and ignore the intense heat that I feel whenever I'm out running in the humidity and sweating all over the place.  I hear the Pace Lady, as I've taken to calling her, in my head, telling me that my pace is at 11 minutes per mile, or seven and a half minutes per mile, constantly fluctuating as if to mock me, and still it's probably the most accurate running app I've used so far (including the watch I used to use with the foot attachment).

At least I'm pretty sure I can rely on my legs.  My upper body might be doing all kinds of crazy things with the sweating, and the heart racing, and the constant need for more air than it seems possible to glean from the air around me, but I've hardly felt anything at all that's worried me about my legs.  Occasionally my calves or my knees will make themselves known more than they should, but it hasn't really gotten to the point of what I'd call pain.  I think that could serve me well if I ever worked up the nerve to try an ultramarathon, but I'm not there yet.  I still haven't gotten through a regular marathon without hitting a point where my legs made themselves known quite vociferously, though I'm hoping that'll change if I can get my time down far enough under 4 hours.  My best so far is around 4:15, but last year was the first time I got really serious about sticking to an official training schedule, and the one I'm on this year is more intense than that one.  It's been working out pretty well: I'm on week 5, and I've actually been running more miles than I've been scheduled to.  It can be hard to fit the runs into my schedule sometimes, but the only time I've outright skipped one was last night when a thunderstorm was raging outside.  Even then I took the opportunity to get back to P90X and do some plyometrics.  I definitely felt that it my calves this morning, which I hope is for the better.

In three days I'm doing the second NYRR Long Training Run in Central Park.  I'm either going to go 16 or 20 miles, depending on how my legs are feeling.  I've gotten to 20 before, but I'm not even sure it's a good idea to be running that many miles so long before the marathon, when I haven't been running anywhere close to that distance yet, nor do I need to in order to ramp up to where I need to be.  I've got 11 weeks still, and a number of long races to run before then.  I actually feel bad that I've scheduled so many races, since it leaves only a few weekends when my wife and I are free to get out of the city for a couple of days.  Even when we do get away I'll still have to keep up with my runs, since my schedule has me running 6 or 7 days out of practically every week.

Running has also become a major part of my Tuesday nights now, since that's when I'm taking my running class.  Including the warm ups and cool downs, each class has racked up nearly 7 miles for me, and some of them are the most intense miles of my whole week.  I've done three classes so far, and two of them have had us running loops in the north end of the park, where the most punishing hills are.  I've run some of my fastest miles there, but I can't keep up that kind of pace, and by the third of the three laps I've been dropping back a pace group to keep myself from keeling over.  The other week the course took place along what are roughly the last three miles of the New York City marathon, which helped remind me what I'm in for in November.  There were two minute breaks between miles during the class, which helped my pace tremendously.  Lord knows I won't be running nearly as fast after I've put 23 miles behind me, but it still felt good to know that I can keep up with everybody else when the hills and the humidity are a little less intense than they were on the nights when we were in the north end of the park.  I'd have to say that, from my two experiences with the NYC marathon so far, the mile coming up to Central Park has to be the most dispiriting mile I've ever run, since it's uphill pretty much the whole way.  It's not even a steep uphill, but it's constant, and it comes at a time when most runners don't have a whole lot left to give.  I'm not looking forward to that mile this year, but hopefully I'll be better prepared for it than I've ever been before.

Running

And I run as fast as I can, but it's never fast enough. I'm not good at this. But I'm better now than I used to be, surely. Back in high school I couldn't even go a quarter of a mile without needing to slow down and now I've got two half marathons under my belt. Granted I still tend to finish towards the back of the pack, but not too far back. In fact it looks like I do better when compared just to other Staten Islanders; maybe it's the pollution, maybe it's all the smokers. Maybe we're fatter down here from all those big Italian meals like the ones that assaulted me during the holidays and which I'm back in the gym now to counteract. Not that it isn't great food, mind you.

The madness all started in the fall of 2007 when my on again off again love affair with the YMCA became on again... again. I was particularly drawn in this time by the notion of what they called a “fitness coach”. A fitness coach is something like a personal trainer, except he's not around all the time and instead is just responsible for setting you up on all the machines with programs that match your ability, then checking in every few weeks to see how it's going. This process repeats for about three or four months, and then you're on your own again. It wasn't very intensive, but it was enough, and it got me using the treadmills, which I hadn't really tried much before (I was more a fan of the elliptical machines, but since they've gotten in the newer models I've lost interest). Running on the treadmill led to running in the park, which in turn led to joining the New York Road Runners so that I could finally try my hand at some competitive racing. That's when I learned how far I had to go: those folks who do three miles an hour while they read a magazine in the workout room don't tend to sign up for this kind of stuff.

But still, it helped me build up my endurance. The real world is always harder than the treadmill, what with the wind resistance and the small but important shifts in the surface that end up slowing you down just enough to make you wonder what went wrong after coming from the perfectly flat and stationary simulation. The scenery changes though, which is nice, and the park is obviously a lot prettier than staring at a wall (or more specifically, at a window that looks out onto a wall).

One thing that changed since I started running is that I don't listen to music anymore. In the beginning it was the only thing that got me through my workouts, and I couldn't imagine going through the long, repetitive slog without it. But as I started to work myself harder I found that it was starting to become a distraction, making me dizzy at times, and it certainly didn't help that earbuds are phenomenally bad at staying in place while your body is constantly bouncing up and down and your arms keep threatening to snag on the wires and rip them out. My iPod also seemed to have a habit of turning itself upside down in the pocket of my shorts, and while I know that there are accessories that prevent this kind of situation I never had the desire to pursue them.

I overdo it sometimes, and it worries me. I've thrown up more times now from exercise than I have from drinking, and while the overall total is still pretty low it's a feeling that I can do without. When I've overdone it (and there doesn't seem to be any way to know when I've overdone it until it's too late), I start to feel about the closest I've ever felt to dying, save perhaps that one time at summer camp when I nearly drowned. It's like there's an intense pressure building up inside me, and I don't have a way to release it. Sitting down helps. Closing my eyes and pressing my palms against them to shut out all possible light helps. Vomiting definitely helps, if and when it finally comes around. I've never passed out from this sensation; in fact, I've never fainted in my life: I wonder now and then what it feels like. The sensation's only happened to me a handful of times, usually after using the weight machines, so I guess I should be glad that I need to wait for an appointment to set my FitLinxx account up again on the new machines now that they've been replaced.

In a way, I've always been a runner, or at least a sprinter. As a kid I had a tendency to break into a run at odd times, just because I found the energy for it building up inside of me; I especially loved to do it in crowded places like malls. I'll still catch myself doing it every so often, but now more because I'm in a hurry than just for the pleasure of feeling everything whipping past me. It's weird... normally I'm irrationally self-conscious about the opinions of strangers, but somehow that never seems to factor into the equation when I'm running (unless I'm around other people who are running, in which case they sometimes shame me into running faster).

As of right now I probably won't be running for a day or two. I think I twisted a calf muscle on the treadmill tonight, so even just normal old walking is a pain in the ass (a.k.a. leg). The strange thing is that it happened during the cool down phase, after I'd been running on it just fine for forty minutes. At least this time I was sane enough to end my workout and go home instead of just trying to work through the pain and probably screwing it up even worse. I've got to take care of this body... I'm finding out for the first time that it has hard and fast limitations that are probably only going to increase through the years. No complaints, though: it's had a good run.