Breaking the Wall

Week starting Feb 24, 2013

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Location:

Orem,UT,United States

Member Since:

Jan 27, 1986

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Olympic Trials Qualifier

Running Accomplishments:

Best marathon: 2:23:57 (2007, St. George). Won the Top of Utah Marathon twice (2003,2004). Won the USATF LDR circuit in Utah in 2006.

Draper Days 5 K 15:37 (2004)

Did not know this until June 2012, but it turned out that I've been running with spina bifida occulta in L-4 vertebra my entire life, which explains the odd looking form, struggles with the top end speed, and the poor running economy (cannot break 16:00 in 5 K without pushing the VO2 max past 75).  

 

Short-Term Running Goals:

Qualify for the US Olympic Trials. With the standard of 2:19 on courses with the elevation drop not exceeding 450 feet this is impossible unless I find an uncanny way to compensate for the L-4 defect with my muscles. But I believe in miracles.

Long-Term Running Goals:

2:08 in the marathon. Become a world-class marathoner. This is impossible unless I find a way to fill the hole in L-4 and make it act healthy either by growing the bone or by inserting something artificial that is as good as the bone without breaking anything important around it. Science does not know how to do that yet, so it will take a miracle. But I believe in miracles.

Personal:

I was born in 1973. Grew up in Moscow, Russia. Started running in 1984 and so far have never missed more than 3 consecutive days. Joined the LDS Church in 1992, and came to Provo, Utah in 1993 to attend BYU. Served an LDS mission from 1994-96 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Got married soon after I got back. My wife Sarah and I are parents of eleven children: Benjamin, Jenny, Julia, Joseph, Jacob, William, Stephen, Matthew,  Mary,  Bella.  and Leigha. We home school our children.

I am a software engineer/computer programmer/hacker whatever you want to call it, and I am currently working for RedX. Aside from the Fast Running Blog, I have another project to create a device that is a good friend for a fast runner. I called it Fast Running Friend.

Favorite Quote:

...if we are to have faith like Enoch and Elijah we must believe what they believed, know what they knew, and live as they lived.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie

 

Favorite Blogs:

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Miles:This week: 0.00 Month: 133.01 Year: 776.88
Saucony Type A Lifetime Miles: 640.15
Bare Feet Lifetime Miles: 450.37
Nike Double Stroller Lifetime Miles: 124.59
Brown Crocs 4 Lifetime Miles: 1334.06
Amoji 1 Lifetime Miles: 732.60
Amoji 2 Lifetime Miles: 436.69
Amoji 3 Lifetime Miles: 380.67
Lopsie Sports Sandals Lifetime Miles: 818.02
Lopsie Sports Sandals 2 Lifetime Miles: 637.27
Iprome Garden Clogs Lifetime Miles: 346.18
Beslip Garden Clogs Lifetime Miles: 488.26
Joybees 1 Lifetime Miles: 1035.60
Madctoc Clogs Lifetime Miles: 698.29
Blue Crocs Lifetime Miles: 1164.32
Kimisant Black Clogs Lifetime Miles: 720.62
Black Crocs 2023 Lifetime Miles: 1312.70
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
74.650.002.000.6077.25
Green Crocs 5 Miles: 77.75
Night Sleep Time: 40.00Nap Time: 3.00Total Sleep Time: 43.00
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Day of rest. Went to church. Took a long nap when I got home. It was much needed.

Night Sleep Time: 8.00Nap Time: 3.00Total Sleep Time: 11.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
12.000.000.000.0012.00

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

Green Crocs 5 Miles: 12.00
Night Sleep Time: 7.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 7.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
13.250.000.000.0013.25

A.M. Total of 12. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 1, Jacob 1. Worked on the fix of the pause repositioning bug in the Fast Running Friend, but it was buggy. On the positive side got the wireless connectivity to work.

P.M. 0.5 with William. Fixed the repositioning bug and ran 0.75 testing the fix.

Green Crocs 5 Miles: 13.25
Night Sleep Time: 7.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 7.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
11.400.000.000.6012.00

A.M. 12 miles total. Rob and Caleb joined us. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1, Joseph 1, Jacob 1, William 0.5. Benjamin, Caleb, and I did a pickup for 1 K in 3:14 down the canyon. Caleb had Garmin Forerunner 610, so we had a chance to test it against the Fast Running Friend. Total distance in reality was 8.00 and that is what FR 610 reported. Fast Running Friend said 7.99. However, FR 610 won hands down on immediate pace, which surprised me. It sampled it every second, and every single time got it right on - verified against land marks. Fast Running Friend was OK, but it sampled every 0.08-0.15 miles, so the data came with delay.

Even though we've got David fighting Goliath here - one hacker that rights code in his spare time vs a large business, I am still competitive when it comes to what matters to me - precision. Besides, when David vs Goliath analogy is used it is frequently forgotten that it was David who won. So I started researching. First we tested the position  reported FR 610. When we stood in place it did not change - Fast Running Friend (working through Android and MotoACTV GPS receiver/driver) cannot stay still - it wiggles. To make sure that FR 610 was not playing tricks we moved a few feet. It changed. We went back to where we started. The position went back to what it was originally. So it was apparent that FR 610 had the upper hand on the position itself.

I did some research and discovered that FR 610 uses SiRFstarIV chipset which has a lot of cool features including the ability to neutralize the noise. It was quite an adventure to figure out what GPS chipset was in MotoACTV. I knew it was some SiRF chip, otherwise Motorolla would not have named the driver SiRFDrv., but all of my diagnostic tricks as well as internet searches failed to unearth the info. I got really mad, replaced the driver in /etc/location.cfg with a dummy one to avoid unwanted restart of the real one, killed the driver, then manually turned on the GPS via /dev/gps_standby and dumped /dev/ttyS0. Downloaded the protocol description PDF for SiRFStarIII, and found an message that had an unsupported code. Then I found the manual for SiRFStartIV and sure enough that message was documented. So from this I think we can fairly safely assume that MotoACTV does have SiRFStarIV just like FR 610.

The difference, it appears, is in the quality of the driver. It looks like while Garmin did a thorough job using all of the features of the hardware, Motorolla quickly put something together and threw it out on the market. Thus the difference in the quality of position reporting. This is correctable in Fast Running Friend, though. I can write the driver to match the one used by Garmin. This will be an adventure and a great learning experience.



Green Crocs 5 Miles: 12.00
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
11.500.000.000.0011.50

A.M. 11.5 miles total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1.5, Joseph 2, Jacob 1, William 0.5.

Green Crocs 5 Miles: 12.00
Night Sleep Time: 7.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 7.00
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Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
12.000.000.000.0012.00

A.M. 12 miles total. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1.5, Jacob 1, Joseph 2, William 0.5. Last night I could not sleep so I decided to be productive, and added an HTTP daemon into the Fast Running Friend. The idea is that you enable WiFi, it connects, tells you its URL (something like http://192.168.1.178:8000), then you go to that URL and configure it or view workout history, your routes, or upload the data to the Fast Running Blog. I suppose data upload and limited workout viewing  can be done via local menus as well, but a web browser is much nicer.

The configuration part is not working yet, I just have the daemon than says Hello, World when you go to its URL.

Green Crocs 5 Miles: 12.00
Night Sleep Time: 2.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 2.00
Comments(2)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
14.500.002.000.0016.50

A.M. Made up on the lack of sleep from the night before. Did the longest run since Matthew was born. Total of 16.5. Benjamin did 8, Jenny 3, Julia 1.5, Joseph 2, Jacob 1. Benjamin and I did a 2 mile tempo down the canyon in 10:55 with the splits of 5:27 and 5:28. The pace was not super fast, but the effort felt healthy.

Green Crocs 5 Miles: 16.50
Night Sleep Time: 9.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 9.00
Add Comment
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
74.650.002.000.6077.25
Green Crocs 5 Miles: 77.75
Night Sleep Time: 40.00Nap Time: 3.00Total Sleep Time: 43.00
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