Breaking the Wall

A.M. Total of 12.3. Most with the kids. Benjamin did 7.3. We ran a little bit with James Tracy, a BYU steeplechaser. We had to catch him. When we I said - there is a 90% chance that you have served an LDS mission. I was basing my estimate on my perception of the Utah County demographic and on his running speed and form. Do not ask me how that works, but over the years running in Utah County to my memory I've never encountered a young man over 21 with good running form moving at a good pace that had not served an LDS mission, and I made sure to ask everybody who I had a chance to talk to for long enough. Although Utah County has a large number of return missionaries, by far not every young man 21 and older had served one. Just among those whose parents are active in the Church the rate is only around 40%. But for one reason or another I only find return missionaries among the ones that are running and can keep up with me.

Turned out he had served a mission - in San Antonio, TX speaking English and Spanish, 2009 to 2011. Then I asked him if he had found his new companion without delay. Sure enough he had - got married last November. November is a good month to get married - that is when Sarah and I did. In fact, I do not think there is a bad month to get married - the best one is always the current or the soonest you can arrange it, I think, if you are not married yet.

 Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Usual run with the kids. It was cold. Benjamin did 7, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Total of 12 for me.

A.M. It keeps getting colder and colder. 2F at the start of the run today. Ran with the kids as usual. There is a Russian saying - "in this weather a good dog owner will not take his dog out for a walk". So I say that, in Russian for full effect, adding that we are taking the kids out. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Total of 12 for me.

A.M. Usual run with the kids. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12 miles total. Most with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny did not run - had a sore throat,  Julia ran 2 - she also got a sore throat, but hers got better, but we still decided she should run only 2 as a precaution, Joseph did 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Benjamin and I did a couple of pickups.

Day of rest. Went to church. Sarah stayed home with Matthew, then when I returned with the kids she went to the Sacrament meeting of another ward. The kids were very good. Our schedule changed to 9:00 AM start, and I had a ward council meeting at 7:30 AM, but when I got home at 8:35 or so they were all almost ready, and by a miracle we made it to church on time.

A.M. 12 total. Rob joined us today and ran 4 miles. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, and William 0.5.

A.M. 12 total. Ran with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Ran with the kids. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

P.M. With the help of my friend Brock I bought a 4x4 ATV with a snow plow for $1200. I got tired of getting stuck in the snow on the runs and decided to do something about it. Otherwise the purchase is quite a bit out of character for me. I do like to do any of the wild man things such as camping, fishing, hunting, water skiing, shooting, rock/mountain climbing, etc. I had never been on an ATV before even as a passenger and overall have tried to stay away from them as far as I could. So Brock had to teach me how to drive it. I asked him if there was a learning curve. He said at first that there was not if all I wanted to do was plow snow. After watching my first attempts he adjusted that with "Some have more of a learning curve than others".

When I got on the beast my first reaction was - where is the seat belt, and where is the turning signal? I quickly realized that ATVs do not have such safety features, and that gave me some understanding why some car drivers do not wear a seat belt and do not use their turn signal.

Finally I got used to the beast enough to try plowing some snow with Brock's supervision. It was a good experience. 

A.M. My last pair of Crocs made it to 2147 miles before the strap broke. So I put on a new pair today. Ran total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Benjamin and I did a pickup for 0.5.

P.M. Plowed snow. The ATV died and would not start in the middle. I called Brock for support, which ended up being more of an emotional that technical support because it is difficult to troubleshot a vehicle not starting without being there. However, knowing what not to worry about helped me start it eventually and it all ended well. I felt a sense of accomplishment in having subjected a wild man thing such as a 4-wheeler and having done with it something useful. If anything, learning something new at an older age protects you from Alzheimer's disease.  

Also got another gadget, this one is also out of character somewhat but not as much. It is a GPS/Footpod watch. I generally despise common market devices that tell you how far you've gone and how fast you are running because their accuracy is frequently worse than my own sense of pace. So when I am wearing I fluctuate between being frustrated when the numbers are obviously wrong and wondering if they are really correct when they are reasonable. However, this one is different. It is a MotoACTV (8 GB variant). For the average user it appears no different than a multitude of Garmin-like watches. However, for someone with technical skill there is a world of difference. MotoACTV has an ARM v7 processor with Android and an easy way to replace the boot image. So I put it in the Fastboot mode, replaced the boot image with a custom one I found already prepared by a hacker that had ADB daemon, connected to it with ADB, installed the HoneyComb launcher, removed the default one, installed a couple of my own Android apps to see how they would behave, loaded strace, and started researching the running processes. My goal is to write an app that would use GPS, foot pod, and HRM at the same time along with some knowledge about the runner. E.g if GPS says he was going 12:00 mile, but his HR, his leg turnover, and his ground contact time are following the pattern of 8:00 mile, adjust or even throw away the GPS data and just assume that he was going 8:00 for that period. Or if the GPS pace is fluctuating, but the ground contact time, the leg turnover and the HR are steady, do not trust the GPS. I am wondering if we can throw away the GPS altogether assuming we can get good data on leg turnover and ground contact time. Will have to play with it.

The good news is that once it is ready, the app will run on any Android with ANT+. 

A.M. Plowed snow before the run. 12 total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

P.M. Plowed snow again. Feeling like the ATV was a good investment. 

A.M. Total of 15. Chad joined me. We ran most of it with the kids. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Met some runners on the trail and they joined us. Their names were Chad, Caleb, and Steve. Caleb was converted to the true religion immediately and join the blog after he got home from the run.

It was good to run on the self-plowed trail. I felt a sense of accomplishment. 

Day of rest. Went to church. Sarah stayed home with Matthew, but later decided to come to Relief Society and bring him with her. So I ended up with him during the Elder's Quorum. He was crying. I took him out in the hallway, and he was loud enough for Jenny and her Young Women's class to here him. Jenny was not expecting to hear Matthew, but she recognized him nevertheless and said to her class - this sounds just like my little brother, but he should not be here.  Well, it turned out out that he was nevertheless. 

A.M. Ran with the kids and Rob, then 1 mile with Sarah. Total of 13. Benjamin did 6 (recovering from the stomach flu), Jenny 2 ( same problem), Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Matthew broke 8 lbs in weight reaching his weight goal. We now have a baby scale. I weigh him several times a day. The girls decided to call him Mo-Mo. I think they picked a good nickname. I do not mind at all if he has Mo Farah's speed when he grows up.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 12.5 total. Benjamin did 8, Rob 4, Jenny 3, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Total of 13. Did 8 with Benjamin and Caleb, then ran with the other kids. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Then did a mile with Sarah

A.M. 12 total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. 13.5 total. 8 with Benjamin. Jenny, Julia, and Joseph did 3. Jacob 1. William 0.5. I did some pickups with Benjamin, and ran the last mile hard as well. It is actually a bit more than a mile, hilly, snow covered in most parts (I could only remove so much with my snow plow), and has a 180 turn in the middle. With a pretty hard effort that I would expect to give me something around 5:20-5:30 on a good road without the hills I got 6:09.

P.M. 0.5 with Sarah. She ran 4:57 on the first part of the mile that I earlier ran fast. My split for that part was 3:01. She is starting to slowly work her way into shape after delivering Matthew. The idea is this - we run for as long as we can at the pace 10:00 or faster. Even if it is only half a mile. No more plodding at 12:00 pace. My theory from observing various runners throughout the years is that if you can run 10:00 or faster you should work on increasing the distance up until you can run 8-12 miles at once comfortably on a daily basis, and only then introduce speed work. But if you cannot, you should increase the pace rather than the distance. It is better to run 10:00 pace with frequent walking breaks than to run 12:00 continuously. The basic idea that very slow running is almost walking, and there are a lot of overweight and otherwise competitively unfit people that walk long distances every day but would not be able to run sub-10:00 pace even for half a mile to save their life.

You could, of course, argue that  we might be confusing cause and effect here - some people just cannot run sub-10:00 pace no matter what they do, and that is why they walk or run at near walking pace, while others are more naturally fit and choose sub-10:00 pace from the very beginning. This argument does have some merit, but I would like to forget about it and approach the matter like this - get yourself out of the dead slower than 10:00 per mile zone immediately and to the greatest amount that your body will let you and see if that lifts you out of the mire. The longer your head is above the water, the more oxygen you can get, the higher your chances of not drowning.

Day of rest. Went to church with the whole family. Took a nap in the afternoon.

A.M. 12 total. 8 with Benjamin, then ran with the other kids. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. William was throwing up and did not run. 1 mile with Sarah. She got 4:52 for the first half, then walked/jogged  the second half with the 11:14 total.

A.M. Ran with the kids. Did 8 with Benjamin. Jenny and Julia did 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. Then added a mile with Sarah. Total distance was 12 miles. Tested the Fast Running Friend . My GPS correction algorithm is very naive - maintain a window of 8 most recent points sampling 2 times a second. For each new point, calculate the average coordinates of the first 4 points and the the second 4 points. Calculate the distance between the two average points, divide the resulting distance by 4 and add it to the total. That was the first thing I thought of that I could code really fast that had some promise of defense against mild GPS randomness.. No attempt is made to judge the validity of individual points which is my next project. No attempt is made to deal with the lost GPS signal. But anyway aside from the bug that lost some distance (about 0.04 miles) at the start due to the GPS signal acquisition delay, and the algorithm deficiency in handling a 180 turn (lost about 0.01 miles) all of my marks were spot on. That is encouraging.

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Did a mile with Sarah, actually the distance is a little more than a mile, she did it in 10:00, good progress for her. Tested the Fast Running Friend. Found a bug - the back button should be deactivated when the timer is running to avoid accidentally terminating the timer.

A.M. Today was the record of slippage on the road. After running with the little kids (Jenny and Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1), I decided to wait to run with Benjamin and Sarah until later. Working from home permits such luxury. Even then, Benjamin and I took 1:11:06 to run 8 miles. The Fast Running Friend had its first test under cloudy skies and the naivety of its algorithm showed. Near the end of the first mile it spuriously added 0.08 to the distance while the immediate pace went crazy. Then it drifted another extra 0.04 miles over the next 3. On the way back it behaved. Bugs discovered:

• Pausing the timer should not turn off the GPS signal because it takes some time to regain it when the timer is resumed.
• When the time is paused, the back button should be disabled. Enable it only if the timer has been reset.
• 00:13:14 pm for the time of day meaning 12:13:14 pm is wrong. Surprise from Java Calendar class.

A.M. Got a stomach bug. As an interesting coincidence I happened to read Pres. Bensons talk on missionary work from the 1974 General Conference shortly after getting it. This helped me feel thankful for my afflictions. The missionaries in the early days of the Church would have gladly traded a few months of my stomach bug for their illnesses and other forms of adversity.

Dragged myself through 12.5 miles. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 1, Julia and Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5, Sarah 1. At the end of everything I was running with Benjamin and he heard lots of groans. It was just easier to deal with the pain if I groaned. Have not eaten anything today except an apple, and I am still not hungry, although I am feeling weak.

Coded up the battery usage feature in the Fast Running Friend, made version 1.1 release, and got to test it. Some observations:

• Battery life of Fast Running Friend on MotoACTV with GPS and Bluetooth on is around 2:30 h. So I would have to do some tricks to make it usable for racing a marathon.
• When the battery drops to 5% the GPS signal first becomes low quality (I got 1:28 per mile pace at the end)  and then the GPS is shut off by somebody outside of the application control (kernel or firmware, I imagine). With the GPS off the battery life is much longer, and it can go at 5% for some time.
• The current Fast Running Friend distance algorithm needs fixing to deal with a cloudy day and other bogus GPS data. I do need to gather the data to a file to be able to come up with a good one, though, and I really did not want to do it in Java. So I learned how to use JNI with Android build, and started writing a C implementation of periodically flushing my circular GPS data buffer into a file. 
• I am very pleased that aside from GPS signal and battery issues the Fast Running Friend has been reliable so far. I have tried a few GPS apps on Android before, and every single one of them ended up freezing my phone after about 4-5 miles. I have not debugged but I have an idea why. My phone is a low-end, the cheapest Android I could find with only 160 MB RAM. An app that is not careful with memory allocation will quickly run it out of memory and bring the whole thing to a grinding halt, and it is easy to be sloppy with memory allocation in Java when storing large amounts of data. Well, there is no such thing as freeing memory in Java except running the garbage collector, and it tempts me to use profanity. MotoACTV has 256 MB RAM, so a little better, but still you need to be careful, you cannot just run any app off the shelf and expect good results.

A.M. Took Benjamin and Joseph to a chess tournament in West Jordan. Benjamin reaped the fruit of his labors winning all 5 games and the top prize along with it in the Junior High division. Joseph on the other hand got a lesson in what chess tournaments are good at teaching - humility. His first game was a draw, he got another point in his second because his opponent did not show up, and he lost the last three. He is now more motivated to practice.

P.M. 8 miles total, all with Benjamin. Sarah did 1, Joseph did 2, Jacob and Jenny ran 1 in the AM, Julia was sick, William did 0.5. I was sick as well with the stomach bug (norovirus?) and did not feel good for the entire run. The highlight of the run was throwing up, it made me feel quite a bit better for the last 2 miles, although still not 100% of course. 

Day of rest. Went to church. We had a Stake Conference.

A.M. Total of 14. Benjamin did 8, Jenny rested (recovering from stomach flu), Julia did 1, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, Sarah 1.5, William 0.5.

A.M. Regular 12 mile run. 8 with Benjamin, more with the little kids. Jenny did 1, Julia 2, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

A.M. Today was one adventure run. It snowed, so I decided to plow. The ATV was working well, and my confidence in the vehicle and my ability to drive it increased. Additionally yesterday the portion of the trail that I normally do not plow because others normally plow it did not get plowed in time. So I figured I'd plow all of it. Everything went well for 3.25 miles. Then it stalled. I tried to get it to start for a few minutes, then I was out of tricks, and I ran home. At least I ran on a plowed trail. Got home, ran with the kids. Jacob did 1, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jenny 2. Then I called Brock, and Benjamin and I ran together and met him. Brock could not get it to start either, and with some adventures we loaded the ATV onto Brock's truck and he took it home to repair it. Benjamin ended up with 9 miles for the day, and I ended up with 11.

A.M. Total of 12.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 2, Julia 3, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

P.M. 0.5 with Sarah.