Johnny Hall's Travels and Travails

I managed my longest run to date today - 21 miles (if my watch is correct, though I think it's way under, up to as much as a mile, which is useful). It went much better than I could have expected (especially considering that I woke up feeling pish and I've been taking antibiotics all week) and I ticked a big list of small achievements along the way.

• Sub 4 hour marathon pace (that's the biggie)
• Over 30 seconds per mile faster than two weeks ago and over a minute per mile faster than three weeks ago
• A mile further than I've run previously
• No significant leg problems slowing me down (just the usual that you'd expect)
• Consistent pace for the whole distance - the second half was only about a minute or two slower than the first
• I don't feel absolutely rubbish now, 6 hours later

So, I've run long at my target marathon pace, which should indicate that I can run quite a bit faster come the big event. Conservatively, I now know my capabilities, which is pretty important for a first marathon. I wasn't really intending to run at that pace but my fitness allowed me to. Mind, the last couple of miles were deeply, deeply unpleasant. I love running now and I can knock off 6 and 10 mile runs with no bother but running long is very difficult, mentally and physically (and logistically). Next weekend is the Great Scottish Run (the Glasgow half marathon). I'll talk about my aims there later in the week. Before then, we're off to Leek for a few days to visit with the in-laws. And I'm off to Cardiff whilst we're down for a couple of days to watch England get thrashed by Pakistan in a ODI.

It must be a universal truth that as soon as you become a parent, you want a camcorder. I'm no different. I was never really bothered about video before now, even when the boys I was mountain biking with in Switzerland were making cool films of long downhill runs with helmet-mounted cameras.

Anyway, now I see the use for a decent camcorder, especially in conjunction with a site like YouTube.

I'm looking for a camcorder that manages High Definition and uses a hard drive for storage (MiniDV tapes seem like very old tech to me). The only consumer camera that matches that spec - the Sony HDR-SR1 - isn't released yet. It should be out in the US at the end of October and I guess the UK soon after that. Hopefully, the price won't be prohibitive. $1,500 in America probably means around a grand here.

I'll probably want Final Cut Studio too but that's way too expensive. iMovie will probably be good enough for whatever meagre film skills I may have.

Let's see how/if this works...

Mad boarding skills...

Update: Smashing - now I'm going to have to get a decent video camera. Perhaps it's time to get that Nokia N93.

You'll be noticing (if you're not using an RSS Reader) the new site design. The original style was borrowed and altered from another WP blog. Finally, I took the plunge and spent a couple of hours reworking it. IE 6 chokes a little at the moment, and I've got to work on the header graphics but it's more or less done. For now. Let me know what you think. Update: Now we're done. If you're using IE6, take a look here, here or here for a decent browser.

I'm also looking at Ruby on Rails as a web development platform. I've been using .NET for years now and I'm very happy with it but I don't feel any compulsion to move to .NET 2.0 and learning a new set of technologies could kickstart my interest in programming again, which has waned a little recently. Rewriting Mentor using RoR (and MySQL) would be a big job but it might save a lot of money in the long run (£600 a month for a dedicated Windows 2003 Server for a start). RoR runs on OS X, so that would mean I wouldn't need Windows at all. Still, I need to put a fair amount of effort into learning it all first before I make any decisions.

I need a new laptop - I've had my Vaio for 3 years now and it's starting to creak. It's still a great machine but it's time to move on. I was looking to get a Tablet PC but unfortunately, there aren't any ultraportables that use the Core Duo yet. I was going to get the Lenovo X60 Tablet but it doesn't look like it's going to be released any time soon.

Anyway, I've been looking at buying a Mac for a while now, particularly since Boot Camp (and Parallels) have materialised. So, I've decided to get a MacBook as my new development machine.  I'm going to stack it with Photoshop and Illustrator, as I always seem to need them (even though they are expensive). 

I'm also getting a Mac Mini for the house, to store all of our music and photos and for Becky to use during the day.  I'll connect it to the LCD TV in the back room and I'll get a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The only software that I really need that doesn't work on OS X is Visual Studio.  I'll try running it under Parallels but if it's too slow then I'll use Boot Camp.  I'd imagine that it'll run just as quick as it does on my current laptop. 

Maybe if Vista was looking as good as it was promised to be 3 years ago, I wouldn't be moving now.

I ran 20 miles today, which, if the experts are right, means I'm theoretically ready to run a marathon. 20 miles is the generally accepted maximum training run required to be able to run a marathon. My legs are disagreeing with that assertion right now but I'm pretty certain I could push out another 6.2 miles. My time today (if I had continued at the same pace for those 6.2 miles) would have given me a 4 hour 13 marathon, which is pretty close to my 4 hour target. Given a 3 week taper, feed stations and a race environment (support, fellow competitors), I think I'd be pretty close to 4 hours (especially since I'm fairly certain I actually ran closer to 21 miles but I haven't measured exactly). I have a few niggles to deal with - sore ligament behind my right knee, dodgy left piriformis muscle on my left side and a huge blister which just appeared out of nowhere today (after 300 miles of running since April - weird). Once they are sorted I think I'll be alright. This week is a recovery week, where I train a lot less. Plus I have appointments with the podiatrist, the physio and the sports masseuse. I have 2 more long runs and a half marathon between now and Loch Ness, so I think I've got quite a bit more improvement to come. I want to be as close to 100% certain that I can get under 4 hours as I possibly can. I ran 10 miles on Wednesday in 1 hour 22 minutes which (if you check the charts) means that I should be capable of a sub 1:50 half and of going sub 4 hours (by a wee bit). Mind, running that hard on Wednesday probably brought on most of my leg issues, so I'll be taking it relatively easy on my mid-week runs from now until October. Anyway, this is a bit of a dull post, mostly for my benefit. Those of you who've made this far, I apologise.

Ow. I managed to come off my road bike this afternoon (here) whilst I was out on my long ride. It started to rain and the roads got a wee bit greasy and I put the bike down going round a tight corner. I wasn't even going too fast but the back wheel just slid right out beneath me.

Luckily, there was no real harm done. I have a very ugly looking graze below my hip and my knee and ankle are cut but my bike managed to avoid any major damage - just a scrape on the left brake lever and the rear quick release (which is just new as well, boo).

Anyway, that was the "highlight" of my training weekend, which was pretty hard. 18 mile run yesterday and 50 miles on the bike today. I didn't feel great yesterday (lack of sleep) but got round ok but I felt much better today. One more hard week before I have a bit of a rest. I have to trust my plan is going to work, since I'm following it closely. Seems to be working so far.

Keeping injury-free is really important now. I've only got a couple of months until Loch Ness and my training is going well. I'm conscious of a couple of niggly issues though, one of which I felt was serious enough to be checked by a physio. I went to SPACE on Dalry Road, just up the road from Run and Become and my physio, Matt, diagnosed an inflammation of a muscle (I think) and the bursa, just below my back side. It had felt sore from about 8 or 10 miles in to a long run. I turns out that I have a slightly mis-aligned pelvis (on my right side) and weak gluteus muscles, which has caused the muscles (don't ask me their name) to get inflamed. They are stabilisation muscles which means that I can continue running but I have a programme to follow now to fix the problem. I have exercises to strengthen my glute muscles and I have to take anti-inflammatories 3 times a day. On top of that I have to keep going back to the physio to allow him to straighten my pelvis (which bloody hurts). I'm glad I visited them, even though the problem seemed small. If I hadn't, there's a good chance I'd have done some real damage by training through the pain.