Archive - Apr 2005

We booked our tickets to NZ yesterday. We still have to figure out what we're doing while we're there but I'm not too worried about that. We've booked a car for the 11 days we're spending in NZ and we hope to see as much as possible. I've been asking people who've been there for suggestions on things to do and so far we've gotten a bunch of ideas.

I asked Boris to ask Shayne (who is from NZ) for some ideas and he came back with a bunch of info. I haven't really had time to digest everything yet but I've still got a month to figure everything out.

So anyways, I'm really excited about this trip, I think it's gonna be awesome! Now I just have to figure out how the hell we are going to pay for it. :)

Well I said I would post when I got my new GPS receiver and I'm only getting around to it now. I had a bit of time to play with it so I can post a few pictures of tracks I've done with it. First off, here is the actual unit:

As you can see, it fits nicely into the palm of your hand. Meant to be held in the left hand but can easily be operated with either hand.

It got delivered litterally 15 to 20 minutes before Amy and I headed out the door on our way to NB. As a result, I had to read up on it while we drove. I did manage to figure out how to reset the trip computer before leaving though.

Well either I'm running this marathon in a month or else I just wasted $74.00.

If I'm still tracking to the original training program then this is the end of week 14 and luckily for me, it's a stepback week which means the long run is only 14 miles. I'm going to try to run that tomorrow and see how I feel afterwards. Now that I have my GPS receiver, I'll be able to tell just how far I've run when I run on the trans-canada trail.

The killer is going to be next weekend when I'm supposed to run 20 miles.

A word to the wise - don't take two weeks off near the end of an 18 week training program and sit on your ass. If you hurt your ankle, find some cross training activity you can do to keep your stamina up.

I went for my first run today after hurting my ankle more than two weeks ago. I decided that since it was raining and it was my frist run on my less than 100% ankle that I'd do the run inside on the treadmill. It went ok I guess, but I only managed to run 4.5 miles and then walk an additional mile.

I've got four more weeks to finish off my training before race day. I said I was going to do it so I'll do it, but I'm thinking that my lofty goal of 3:45 is a pipe dream. At this point I'm sure I'll be happy with finishing the marathon in 4:30 or less.

So I just listened to a podcast from Brad Gibson's site. Of course I found this because of a post on Boris's site which I follow regularily. The podcast really opened my eyes to just how huge Boris is going to get.

I've always known that Boris is a really smart guy and I've never doubted that. I'm sure he's suffered more than his fair share of frustration in attempting to explain to me what he's working on lately while I just don't get it. To his credit though, he usually manages to make me understand at least the gist of it. :)

That's it! Anonymous comments are now turned off. I'm going to leave them off until this wave of comment SPAM passes me by and then I'll decide if I want to turn them back on.

It's not like I get a lot of comments on my blog anyways, but it was nice to leave them open for the odd passerby who actually left something constructive. I got some good info on my post about the ConvertX and also in my Freddy Beach post. Hopefully those who are inclined to post will take the time to log in (if they already have a drupal id) or create an account if need be.

Success! I've successfully upgraded from 4.4.0 to 4.5.0.

I've got the default 'pushbutton' theme going right now but once I finish the upgrade to 4.6.0 then I'll pick a theme and tweak it a bit. Not sure if I'll do the upgrade to 4.6.0 tonight or not. I'm concerned that I don't have a high enough version of PHP for Drupal 4.6.0. Need to investigate.

Just starting my research.

I found MacGPS Pro which seems to be very good GPS software for the mac. It has support for most Garmin and Magellan receivers. It even supports Steve's eTrex Legend so that is a possibility. An interesting thing to note is that the software only supports GPS receivers with a serial interface, not a USB interface.

The MacGPS Pro software is $39.99 USD.

I'll either need to get a serial to USB converter or hopefully I can use the converter I bought from Andy for my Palm. I seem to recall him saying that it may only work with the palm though. Perhaps they didn't map all the pins. Who knows.

The weather has been beautiful all weekend and luckily I had a plane booked so I really got to enjoy it yesterday.

I asked JK and Steve if they wanted to join me for a flight to Brockville and back. They both said yes, and Steve even brought his GPS receiver with him.

The planned route down was Ottawa (CYOW) to Smiths Falls (CYSH) to Brockville (CNL3). Then on the way back the route was Brockville (CNL3) to Morrisburg (CNS8) to Ottawa (CYOW). I had the plane booked for three hours so we had lots of time.

Here is the actual route we flew (in yellow) that Steve recorded with his GPS receiver:

Excited dogs and large potholes in your running surface don't mix! That's right...I manged to twist my right ankle up pretty good tonight. Talk about pain! Worst part was the 2 km hobble back home with the dog. I guess it could have been worse, I could have been 4 or 5 km from home.

I was debating with myself whether or not to take Ellie along with me tonight and it looks like I shouldn't have. I'm not saying it's her fault, but if she wasn't with me I definitely wouldn't have hurt myself. Ok, I guess I am saying it is her fault.

Anyways, needless to say I didn't finish my 5 miles tonight and my long run this weeekend is looking doubtful. We'll see how my ankle feels tomorrow. Could be worse I suppose, it could be the week before the marathon.