Stamps and awesome workout

When I was growing up my father would sing a famous Flanders and Swann song called, "Mud, Mud Glorious mud." I did a quick google search and found this video. I guess you could ask what does this have to do with stamps. For the past little while I have been singing my own variation of the song, "Stamps, Stamps, Glorious Stamps." I recently volunteered to put stamps on membership cards for my honour society. Tonight, I finally finished after putting stamps on 700 envelopes. The chore started out with 300 envelopes but I volunteered to do some more. So, once I had put on a couple of hundred stamps I started to sing the song to keep my focus. It is a relief to get the chore finished.

Tonight, I had an awesome workout. The conditions were a crisp 15F/-9C with a windchill of 3F/-16C. It was the coldest conditions that I have run in this year. I was cold walking down to the canal. Once at the waters edge I started at a fast pace to warm myself up. After two miles I was starting to sweat. For the next five miles I was able to maintain a pace of 85% of my aerobic threshold. The workout felt great.

Flow/Fartlek workout - awesome

Tonight, we did out usually 11km fartlek workout backwards and something amazing happened. While at the running room I peeled off my running tights and decided to run bare legged. We set out running along the bike path that runs next to the canal. The speed demons took off midway through the run. Somewhere along the way they took a wrong turn while I stuck to the normal course. They would eventually catch up to me near the end of the workout and surge by. This happened at Dow's Lake. I was running at a good clip at this point and knew that if I stopped then the workout would be over. I went flying by the speed demons who were catching their breath. They didn't take nicely to me surging by. Rather than slow down, I sped up, it would take them 1,500 meters to catch me. They would surge and I would respond with a burst of speed. We surge back and forth a couple of times. My final kilometer was done in 3:42 which works out to a 5:57 mile. I didn't know I had such running speed in my legs this late in the season. It was an amazing experience to be running this fast. It sort of felt like being a pronghorn whose top speed is 61 mph (98 km/h).

A toga update

Last weekend, I headed back to my parent’s place to put in the final vinyl window inserts. It was a good feeling as all of the windows have now been replaced and the task is complete. I stopped by Fabricland to buy some material for my toga. I started looking at material on the rack and realized that four yards of anything could be expensive. I talked to the sale associate and she suggested I look at the one-dollar table but none of the colors were suitable. We went next to the half-off table and I found a blue-gray material that was the end of the line. I was relieved when there was just enough to make my toga. I am glad that I decided not to wear purple as I don’t want to look like a clone among 300 other students. I was debating whether I need some props like a sword, a clasp, or a laurel wreath but decided I just want to be an ordinary roman wearing a toga. The one thing I bought was a package of safety pins as they will come in handy keeping things together as I want to avoid an embarrassing moment. I’ll post pictures of Julius Caesar Chris once I am back from the conference.

Toga

In a couple of weeks, I head south to Atlanta, Georgia for a conference with some of my student peers. I attended the same conference in Phoenix, Arizona last year and had a great time. I enjoyed the conference proceedings but one of the things that brought me back this year was the CEO Boot camp. The boot camp was two hours of high octane exercises, stretching and seeing how could do more of a certain exercise than the conference CEO. The exercises were made a little more challenging as it started at 600AM. This year they had added something new which has started to get me excited. For one of the sessions you have to wear a toga. I have never worn a toga. My initial thought was to just buy a white bed sheet and dress like Charlton Heston in Ben Hur or Julius Caesar. But I did a quick google search and found a site called http://www.howtomakeatoga.info. The site strongly recommends not using a bed sheet but to go to a fabric store and buy four yards of whatever material meets your fancy. I was talking to some friends and they suggested that I not buy purple. Purple is the royal color and it is what most folks would wear. I let my imagination run wild for a while and thought about blue pinstripes or something in blue at least. I could go with a red and white combination but those colors don’t usually work for me. To add a bit of authenticity I’ll wear my five fingers as the Romans always wore minimal footwear. As I write this I still can’t see myself wearing a toga but there is always a first time and it should be a blast. I’ll be one of 300 students all wearing multi-colored togas.

Research July 2007 - 1

A little while back I heard through a friend that the UOttawa Human Kinetics department was seeking fit individuals for research projects. I have participated in two research projects in the past and so was eager to do another one. The research project involves measuring a person's body-thermal response when working in hotter and hotter conditions. The formal part of the research involves cycling for a fixed period of time under progressive hotter conditions while hooked up to a variety of internal and external measuring devices. Today, I was suppose to do a VO2 test but postponed it a couple of days to allow my legs to recover from the hiking. Instead, we measured my height, weight, blood pressure (normal), heart rate (low) and got wet. The getting wet part is cool as I had done this a couple of times, it is not what you think. The goal was to figure out what was my percent body fat. There are a couple of way of measuring body fat. The most common and least accurate is using skin fold method. The technique which gives a better estimate is known as hydrostatic weighting. The gold standard is something called the DEXA scan. In the past, I have done all three tests. For the current project, we did the hydrostatic weighting which involves getting into a tank of water and sweeping the bubbles off your body. The next part is to sit on a platform under water and blow out all the air from your lungs. You sit on the platform for a couple of seconds and they measure your in-the-water weight. We did a couple of hydrostatic measuring sessions until we got similar results. Early next week, we will do the VO2 test on a bicycle and then later in the week, we will do the first test session. Each test sessions will be under hotter conditions. Most of the protocols that we will use are things I have done in the past so much of it is familiar which is great. In future entries, I'll describe what happens at various sessions.