PeterSmith: Blog

Hydration (Part 2)

2011-01-01T22:59:51Z

I did a 24Km today, and my new XCT Camelbak worked well ... I was good to maintain my hydration, and this felt like one of my easier long runs. Actually, it was easier in pace, but I didn't have the same sort of fatigue that normally accompanies my long runs.

I quickly figured out how to drain the air out of the Camelbak so that it didn't slosh around (turn it upside down and suck the air out of it). I also figured out how to tuck the mouthpiece down so it doesn't flap around.

If there was a problem it was that the straps kept loosening themselves off. I may have to fix that (permanently) once I work out the right length for the straps. Nevertheless, it was pretty comfortable and I didn't really notice the pack once I had it adjusted.

It was great to catch up with Andrew. We both noted/noticed how much more enjoyable it is running with some one (as opposed to running alone). He tells me he has a new pack from Nathan, but he forgot to bring it with him today (and perhaps he regretted that). No doubt he'll write a review about it sometime.

Hydration

2010-12-30T23:03:41Z

It's hot. Darn hot. Looking at the comments from my street team at RunKeeper the heat plays an import role in how they feel about their runs.

I know that even after a 10Km run, or so, in this weather I'm quite thirsty. And then there are my long (20-35Km) runs. Even before summer arrived, I would drink a litre or two at the end of my run. But no more (I hope). I've invested in a Camelbak Octane XCT .

With two litres of water, that should make my long runs more comfortable. And yes, I did get the bright yellow one ... it was all I could find in the Boxing Day sales.

My first real trial of the pack will be on Sunday when I'm planning to do a 24Km run. That's also when I hope to get a blow-by-blow of Andrew's recent outing at the Taipei Marathon.

Replacing running shoes

2010-12-30T02:48:42Z

JustPlodIt, over at RunKeeper asked about replacing shoes. He said:

I read somewhere you should change your shoes every few months (depending on your mileage), to protect your joints. I guess I've done 750k in the current pair. Do I need to change? Any shoes you recommend?

I don't know about every few months, but (depending on the brand) I hear that retiring them after about 350 to 550 miles (550Km -- 880Km) is a good thing. How quickly they wear is also a function of your weight. When I was 105Kg I would have worn out shoes quicker than now (78Kg). Most people start a new pair at about half-life (say, at 400Km), and use both until the old pair is dead--at which stage they should be half-way through the life of the new pair--and so they'll get new shoes then. That way you always have a newer and older pair to run on (that's one way to tell if the shoes are shot -- the older pair will feel different to the newer pair). If you take your shoes into any good shop they'll tell you if they are end of life.

I'm currently working my way through a couple of New Balance shoes (1063, 1064), but the actual model of course depends on how much support, etc. you need. I'm a 'neutral' runner, but I get myself test at Shoe Science (or similar) each time I'm thinking of changing shoes. Andew has three of four different brands he uses (as he tries to find the 'perfect' pair). I'm just using something that suits my feet and doesn't cause any problems. (Then again, Andrew is planning to do an ultra-marathon in March ... that's about 70k too far for me.) Nevertheless, I do thing it's possible to become fetishised over finding the 'right' or 'best' shoe.

I'm a 'masters runner' (over 40 to say the least) and most of the twitches/aches/pains are down to non-shoe issues ... I've had ITB problems, but a bit of physio and exercise to build up the related muscles fixed that. I've had a stress fracture, again that's not the shoes, that's me putting too much stress (training too much) on my body. I've also had an Achilles' problem ... once again physio and some strengthening exercises put that right (after a month or so ... Achilles can be real problems).

Mind you, if I was running in the "wrong shoe" I'm sure it would create problems.

One thing I have found, is that sometimes, what I think is a knee problem is caused by running on a pavement with too much of camber for too long. If that happens, I switch sides of the road; that often fixes it.

Anyway, the short answer to your question is it's likely it's time to change your shoes, although they may not be end of life yet.

Lisa Callagher (soon to be PhD)

2010-12-17T05:33:42Z

My friend and colleague Lisa Callagher submitted her PhD thesis today. Yay; and I'm so jealous.

Interestingly, even as she was walking it over to the Graduate Centre, she was thinking on what/how she might change it. She says it's a sign of being a 'true academic'.

In her thesis, she uses theories of practice to explore innovation in the biotech sector. We're both practice theorists at heart. I don't recall how we found out that we shared similar theoretical views.... perhaps she'll remind me at some stage.

This transition probably signals her moving away from being a Senior Tutor, and becoming a Senior Lecture. That's something of which she is very deserving.

Kudos, Lisa (and I don't often use bold).

Our new house

2010-12-09T19:51:36Z

Well we have finally moved into our new house. It was designed by Chris Tate and built by DW Homes.

It's great.

Of course there are a few things for DW Homes to resolve, but that is probably true of any new building.

So this is before ...

And this is current(ish)

Why I run

2010-12-01T09:08:04Z

RunningForCake asked me

What's the motivation? (for running so much)

I tried to respond to her question on RunKeeper but the site couldn't handle the long post I wrote. So here it is (and I've reformatted it a little so the layout is better):

To answer that will take a while ... so go an get a coffee/wine/whatever, then sit back and enjoy my ramblings (or you could go an watch TV).

Last year I lost a bit of weight (27Kg). Not through really exercise but through diet. I've still got about 10Kg I'd like to drop and that will be my goal for next year. Around the same time I gave up playing squash. Despite my weight I played an okay game of squash because of (a) a lot of practice, and (b) a degree of pigheadedness/enthusiasm. I played squash mainly against myself -- I enjoyed winning but I enjoyed the internal game more. However, squash didn't agree with me. I had far too many accidents, and being rather rotund; e.g., when I hit the wall I REALLY hit the wall (or twisted my ankle, cracked a rib, or whatever). So it seemed like a good idea to give up squash. The result was that I was in the position of being fitter and having lost my principle outlet for physical activity. I tried swimming (which I used to do a lot), but it didn't really give me the same rush.

Now, Andrew had told me about the Couch-to-5K programme, and I thought "I can do that". Well, one week (i was on a writing retreat) I threw myself into C25K .... actually I just threw myself at running 5k and by sheer ignorance/stubbornness my first 5K was 30 minutes long. So, I did a few more runs that week and got down to about 27 minutes. After the writing retreat I did the odd little trot here and there but nothing serious.

Then Andrew and I were talking, and the idea of doing a half-marathon came up ... so I started training. After a few months I was doing half-marathon distances (pigheadedness again) and so I began to think about doing the full marathon, especially when Andrew promised he would do it with me. So, I signed up, but Andrew missed the deadline (fortunately he managed to get a ticket on trademe). So, that's how I ended up doing a marathon.

But that doesn't really answer your question ... what's my motivation. I don't really believe in motivation (in the way many people do), my research (I a bit of an academic) has led me to believe that routine and practices are a more useful way to think about such things, so I run because I've made it a routine in my life (along with the planning that accompanies it).

My routine is to do a 'short' run on Tuesday and Thursday with Andrew (if our diaries permit) and a 'long' run on Sunday. What constitutes a short or long run is relative. I have a goal of getting better at this (of improving my practice of running) so what I think of a short run now is different to, say, six months ago. My current schedule (just revised) has me doing short runs of 15K, and building to long runs of alternating 20 and 33Ks. Of course there is always (well maybe not always) the odd injury that necessitates the plan being revised but it is what it is.

To sum up, why do I run? Well its because I run. I can put up some post-hoc rationalisation about health or competition, but the truth is, I drifted into it, and now I'm habituated to it.

~~(The end. Let's see what RunKeeper does with such a long post).~~

Auckland Marathon

2010-10-31T19:33:35Z

Well, I completed the Auckland Marathon yesterday in 4:07:46. It all went pretty well, but I lost Andrew at around 29Km, and I began to slow (surely but increasingly) at 34Km.

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Running buddies

2010-09-11T20:29:46Z

I've just noticed that Andrew has just dobbed me in as an occasional runner and his sometimes running buddy.

Thanks ...

I've been sort of running since about March 2009. I'd been taking a few writing retreats at Orewa, Totara North, and Long Bay. In between writing, I'd walk a little. That turned into trying 5K runs, and it's grown. I started to get somewhat habituated to running, and found myself doing it most Sundays.

I then began to think I might do the Auckland half-marathon and began doing the occasional run with Andrew (so I could pick his brains about running). This became a regular thing, and now we run most Tuesdays and Thursdays for about 10k or so.

Today, for a change, we're planning to have a crack at the route of the Onehunga half-marthon. If it goes well we might do the official run at the end of the month ... but that really depends on how it fits with our training plans (mine for the Auckland marathon in October, his for the Taipei marathon in December).

Anyway, I should be getting ready to run now ...

Pulled pork (cochinita pibil)

2010-07-03T04:41:56Z

Amongst the stream of articles that turn up through my RSS reader was one for pulled pork, aka cochinita pibil. Eric Guthey had told me how great pulled pork could be, so I thought "why not?". So, off to Mexican Specialties for some achiote paste and 24 hours later I had some of the most delicious pork ever.

This recipe is definitely a keeper.

I should say that my darling wife made some picked red onions to go with the pork. It was the perfect accompaniment.

Videon or Vide-gone

2010-06-27T08:53:01Z

For a long time (ever since I've been in Auckland) my preferred video store has been Videon. No matter where in Auckland I have lived, I have always used them. They've a great range (more than just block busters) and really well informed staff.

Recently, the moved from 654 Dominion Road in Balmoral, to 244 Dominion Rd, Mt Eden

it's a move of only about 1.5 Km, but I worry about the impact it will have on the business.

Here are some of the reasons why I think the move might be less than successful for Videon:

When we visited the store on Saturday only one other person came into to browse while we where there. In the old location, at a similar time, I would have expected around a dozen or more customers.
The new store is almost invisible from the street. The store is now very narrow and provides little street appeal. The signage--what there is--looks unappealing and doesn't echo the previous location's style. We nearly walked straight past the store even though we were looking for it.
Insider, the store is very long an narrow. There is little room to browse (which is worrying given that it was just my wife and I for most the time). There is no ambiance; it feels very sterile. The fit-out of the store is looks cheap. In fact, our impression that from the outside that it was a cheap DVD outlet store was reinforced by the inside.
Although we decided to walk to the store, parking seems to be a problem when compared to the old store. At the old store, Videon had its own parking and it was relatively easy to find street parking. This isn't the case in the new location.

Now it may be that the extra foot traffic will compensate for the invertible drop off in customers (who can't be bothered to go the extra distance). But I'm not sure. Perhaps the managers at Videon have examined their records and know how many people were very local to the store and how many are actually traveling some distance to the store (and thus may not be bothered by a little extra distance). I don't know.

What I do know, is that the store didn't feel 'alive' and that might be fatal. This move could be the end of Videon. It may be Vide-gone.

Around the bays

2010-03-14T03:22:14Z

Around the bays is an Auckland tradition. So, I had a go this year. My time for the 8.4km was 45 minutes 47 seconds or about 10.5 km/hr. Lisa assumes that I'll do it next year -- she is probably right. Now I have a target to beat.

Andrew did it in about 41 minutes (having run distance from the finish to the start). Outstanding!

Ten years to master ...

2010-01-26T07:23:18Z

Norvig says (with tweaks to the contemporary references by me) ...

Researchers (Bloom & Sosniak, 1985; Bryan & Harter, 1899; Hayes, 1981; Simmon & Chase,1973) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt. Peppers, was released in 1967. Malcolm Gladwell (2009) reports that a study of students at the Berlin Academy of Music compared the top, middle, and bottom third of the class and asked them how much they had practiced:

Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time - around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount - about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.

So it may be that 10,000 hours, not 10 years, is the magic number. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) thought it took longer: "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer (1340-1400) complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." Hippocrates (c. 400BC) is known for the excerpt "ars longa, vita brevis", which is part of the longer quotation "Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile", which in English renders as "Life is short, [the] craft long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult." Although in Latin, ars can mean either art or craft, in the original Greek the word "techne" can only mean "skill", not "art".

References

Bloom, B. S., & Sosniak, L. (Eds.). (1985). Developing talent in young people (1st ed.). New York: Ballantine Books.

Bryan, W., & Harter, N. (1897). Studies in the physiology and psychology of the telegraphic language. Psychological Review January 1897, 4(1), 27-53.

Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4(1), 55-81. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(73)90004-2

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers : The story of success. Camberwell, Australia: Allen Lane.

Hayes, J. R. (1981). The complete problem solver. Philadelphia, PA: Franklin Institute Press.

Strategy as practice

2010-01-20T20:17:40Z

I'm stepping down as the bibliographer of the strategy-as-practice website. That site is going through a redesign, and as part of that, the team is considering how/what to do with the bibliography.

My own view is that a social bibliography, such as mine might be more useful than a stand alone bibliographic silo.

As many people know, I keep my bibliography in Zotero. Zotero also does community base groups too, such as this one on strategy as practice

Orgmode: Part 2

2010-01-19T02:49:27Z

There is a very good (well, I like it) summary of how to use Orgmode as a day planner at Lost in Technopolis.

Orgmode: Part 1

2010-01-16T22:39:20Z

I've been a big fan and user of Remember the milk. I found it a great way to manage my task, and so on, in a GTD like manner. As a bit of an aside, the GTD methodology really works for me ... and every time I find work getting a bit out of control its because I've not been ruthlessly applying the principles of GTD.

Anyway, I've switched to using org-mode (aka orgmode). I don't recall how I stumbled across Org-Mode: Your Life in Plain Text. No before I go any further, let me say that I don't think orgmode it for everyone. Its an extension to the emacs text editor, and in this WYSIWYG world a texted based programme may be 'a bridge to far'. But, as an old hand a unix (albeit a a vi/vim user) the transition to emacs hasn't been too hard.

But why change? Is this just part of the ongoing search for the perfect tool [Andrew might comment here]? Is it just displacement behaviour (avoiding doing PhD work)?

As I said at the beginning of this post, when I find things spinning a little out of control (or what I've come to regard as control) it's because my GTD system isn't out of date/wack. So, moving to a new central store (orgmode) is a mechanism for me to get things back in order (and on track). So, today I've finished the migration from Remember the Milk to orgmode. No doubt I'll have some ongoing tweaking of orgmode ... but I have deleted my Remember the Milk account.

There are lots of useful resources on using orgmode in a GTD way. For example, this one, this one or this one. Most of the articles assume you have emacs up an runnign already (which isn't hard), and that you know how to configure emacs (which is harder). Fortunately, emacs now ships with orgmode included, so there isn't a lot of additional work that needs to be done. you can just jump right on in.

Orgmode understands lists and dates ... and a whole lot more; but lists and dates are enough to get started with.

First of all, one needs to turn on orgmode. There are a few ways to do this. I do it thought my .emacs file (which, is normally in your home directory; if it isn't there you can create it). In .emacs I have the following text.

;;
;; Peter's setup for orgmode in .emacs
;;
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\\(org\\|org_archive\\|txt\\)$" . org-mode))
(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)  ; Org buffers only
(setq org-log-done t)
;;
;; Some more settings
;;
(setq org-agenda-files (file-expand-wildcards "~/org/*.org"))
;;
;;
;;quickly open my gtd file - "M-x gtd"
;;
(defun gtd ()
	(interactive)
	(find-file "~/org/gtd.org")
	)
;;

The main parts of this code are (1) the first line turns on orgmode for any file that is ends with .org .txt or .org_archive. (2) I keep all my orgmode files in a directory off my home directory, i.e., ~/org. any files ending in .org in that directory are scanned when orgmode puts together my agenda. (3) The last little bit of code opens my main 'to do' file called gtd.org when I execute M-x gtd (for non-emacs users that means pressing ALT-x then typing gtd and pressing return). This provides me with a quick way to get to my my to do list. Oh, the "org-log-done" line results in my to do items getting a date attached to them when I mark them as being done.

Now for some fun stuff. First I create my gtd.org file (using c-x c-w org/gtd.org ... that means Control-c Control-x and then typing the path/file name). I can then start making my to do list, vis:

* Work
** Review APR
** Revise article on governance
** Order textbook for INTBUS 202
* Home
** Pick up milk on way home
** Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).

So far so good. I have to have my APR review done by Monday, so let's put a deadline beside it. Positioning my cursor somewhere on the relevant line I type c-c c-d mon (and press enter)

The line changes to be:

** Review APR
   DEADLINE: <2010-01-18 Mon>

And I what to schedule doing the article revision on next Monday. So, on the appropriate line, I type c-c c-d +2mon (and enter). The line changes to be:

** Revise article on governance
   DEADLINE: <2010-01-25 Mon>

I also want to schedule buying "The Wire" today. On the correct line I type c-c s and press enter. The line changes to be:

** Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).
   SCHEDULED: <2010-01-16 Sat>

Now I have dozens of tasks to do. And looking at them all at once doesn't always add clarity. So let's look at my agenda. Pressing c-c a a will bring it up (no need to press enter). My agenda looks like:

Week-agenda (W02):
Monday     11 January 2010 W02
Tuesday    12 January 2010
Wednesday  13 January 2010
Thursday   14 January 2010
Friday     15 January 2010
  gtd:        Scheduled:  Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).
Saturday   16 January 2010
Sunday: 17 January 2010
  gtd:        In   1 d.:  Review APR
  gtd:        In   8 d.:  Revise article on governance

And that's probably enough examples for now. So to sum up, c-c c-d marks an item with a deadline, c-c c-s marks an item with a scheduled date. Oh, and to save your file (the currently open buffer) use c-x c-s