In which we note the weather

63, partly cloudy.

This is important because…

In Houston, it’s already like six billion degrees.

Why this didn’t matter as much as you’d think

In Kansas, the ground does this weird thing where it goes up and down, so “running” often involves “climbing” as far as this flatlander is concerned. Ow.

What else is weird about running in the sprawl of KC

Wildlife next to the thoroughfares: squirrels, rabbits, and curiously tame geese. Also, goose shit; seriously, if it was any bigger, I think we’d have to consider them mammals.

Final score

3.5 to 4 miles, about 45 minutes. Left the Garmin at home. Oops.

So, I’m trying to find a good online running log/community site/etc. There are several, mostly of them I’ve linked here before. The one I hear good things about in terms of community is RunningAhead.com; the one with the most Google-juice is MapMyRun.com, a division of MapMyFitness, apparently.

Now, so, the features I want are:

• Easy logging. Make it simple for me to enter a new running/walking event.
• Easy GPS integration. Ideally, I just plug it in and say “upload” and the event get tagged on my calendar, potentially even without any other metadata. (But I should be able to add metadata like “crappy run” or “raining” or “had cramp” later.)
• Decent community forums & such.
• Open access to data, so I can pull it out on my own via (ideally) a RESTful API or somesuch.
• Facebook integration (which is actually an outgrowth of the previous item).

And when I talk about data integration in the log — i.e., from the GPS — what I want is:

• Date of run
• Time of day for start and stop
• Duration of run
• Distance of run
• Average pace
• “Split” times for each mile, i.e. time to mile X and pace for mile X

Everyone seems to be mad for RunningAhead, but it’s a labor of love from ONE GUY who appears to be absolutely allergic to code he didn’t write. Even the FORUM at RA is homegrown, which makes precisely zero sense, and he’s making noises about a 100% custom GPS integration solution (i.e., instead of utilizing the Garmin plugin that’s FREE and available NOW). Consequently, people have been asking for features for literally YEARS at RA — like GPS integration and data publishing/API/Facebook/Blog support — that are all coming “real soon now” and which may never see the light of day.

So, there’s that.

The other critter, MMR, is only marginally better. It supports the Garmin, and data flows in pretty easily, but it’s doctrinaire and rigid about some data I don’t care about (type of run, description of run). I’d rather it just sucked the data in and put it on the calendar automatically. Further, it doesn’t seem to gather splits data at all, focussing instead on the route, the time, and the average pace. That’s cool, but it’s incomplete.

Also, and this is the real kicker, the MMR site is FUGLY. It’s chock full of ads and would give any usability expert absolute HIVES. It’s poorly coded, poorly laid out, and fails to retain preferences or settings with any reliability (relying on cookies instead of internal profile data, for example).

So near as I can tell, they all suck, and nobody’s doing what I want, which is annoying. Heathen Nation, prove me wrong, would you?

(I’m also kind of afraid I’m not really getting all my data into an open format right now. The Garmin desktop is hokey and proprietary, but I can see splits there. Ascent will also show them. What I really want is an online tool like Ascent, and I’d even pay for it, but I’m not even sure it exists.)

A good one today: 5.01 in 1:01, average pace 12:18, and there was no walking after I started running after a two-block warmup. And — get this — my mile times got faster as I went: 12:50; 12:27; 12:31; 11:55; and a personal best 11:44 on the fifth mile after bargaining with myself for 2 miles about when I was going to take a walking break. (Turns out, the answer was “after the Garmin says I’ve gone five miles.”)

Mildly hungover on Saturday, I ran anyway: 4.46miles in 57:33, including my longest uninterrupted run yet (just over 2 miles, after which my heart was threatening to mutiny outright) and my lowest mile pace yet (11:55) — well, “yet” meaning “in this iteration of running.” Ten years ago, I could do a sub-30-minute 5K.

Perfectly fine today, I did a brisk 4.2 (or 4.12? Somehow, my Garmin desktop software and MapMyRun disagree) walk in just over an hour. Bit by bit… More running tomorrow, wherein I try to make it 2.5 uninterrupted miles running.

4.24mi, 1:07. Weird route this time that I don’t think I’ll repeat, given the traffic involved, but it was (sort of) worth trying.

Today I broke 5 miles; prior runs advertised as “about 5” were in the 4.7 to 4.8 range; this one was 5.04 according to Garmin, and I covered it in a little over an hour — average pace just over 13, including just three walking songs. Bit by bit…

I’m doing it again. I said I hated it, but I’m doing it anyway.

I had a private moment in the Jos. A. Banks dressing room about six months ago (wherein I had to opt for the size above “38”), and consciously decided that, after the holidays, it was all going to change — and, shockingly, it has. I set my sights low to begin with, and just decided I’d do two things:

1. Eat better by keeping healthy foods in the house. I have a tendency to take the path of least resistance, foodwise, so this is key. Keeping healthy choices around means I eat healthy things.

2. Take an hour-long walk every day. I’ve run in the past, and can’t go daily, but walking I figure I can do. In an hour, I’d typically go something around 3.2-3.5 miles, depending on pace road choice and whatnot.

I kept to that for January, more or less — there were still pizzas and walk-less days, but precious few — and managed to lose ten pounds. Then we got to February, and my walks seemed to need a little something. Then I got to last Thursday and a similarly private yet completely opposite moment in my own closet: formerly tight pants fit again.

Well, there’s nothing like positive reinforcement, so on Friday my walk became about half walk, half run, and I ended up going 4.09 miles, according to Google. It’s not a great pace, but it’s my pace.

I thought the run was going to be a one-off, and returned to walking on Saturday (faster: 3.7 miles) . . . and then on Sunday I did the half-and-half again (just over 4).

And then I got tired of mapping these things manually after Gary told me about the Garmin running GPS devices, and in a moment of weakness I popped for one on Sunday. Today’s run was my first time out with it, and it’s really encouraging to see pace and distance in real time. It’s even more fun for a geek like me to have this data — and even period data, by miles! — available later. How fast was my first mile? My second? Am I keeping pace? It’s all right there, and that’s neat. (Today: 4.7mi in 1:05.)

Even better, the GPS will spit out mapping info that sites like MapMyRun.com (as well as Garmin’s own MotionBased.com) will map using GMaps, even creating embed-able maps like below. Delightful.

Well, sort of. MapMyRun is completely overrun with ads and geegaws, and if there were a better option I’d jump on it in a heartbeat. My friend Andrea suggests RunningAhead.com, but that site, while cool, doesn’t seem to do data import at all yet (at least not inside the browser, which Garmin publishes a plugin for — that’s how MMR works). It’s also essentially the work of one guy, which makes me nervous — I’d rather use a site with a business plan (though, in RA’s defense, it does appear to be endorsed by Runner’s World).

So, Heathen Nation, any suggestions on online running logs with GPS integration?

So, here we are, all done. Results pleased pretty much everybody, but are inexact because it wasn’t a “chip” race, so if you weren’t at the starting line to begin with your official time is off by as much as a minute or two:

• Eric: 43/44 and change (under his goal of 9s!);
• Lindsey: 1:02 or so;
• Chief Heathen: 1:03 or 1:04 or so, only a bit behind Lindsey;
• Mrs Heathen: 1:20, with lots more running than walking

We will now commence drinking beer and eating meat.

Today: the combo-route that is Rice + Hermann Park; Linds reports that we covered 5.92 in just over an hour, which is a new personal best in terms of both distance and speed. Mrs Horne ran the whole way; I did intervals of 4:30 running and 1:30 fast-walking. Mr Horne was way ahead, and Mrs Heathen did her 3 mile loop in a personal best 43 minutes.

We’re feeling pretty good about the Wurstfest run next Saturday now. I’ll be in Seattle most of the week, and I’ll be lucky to get in an easy run on Tuesday (3 miles or so, max), but that should set the stage for a good experience in the hill country next week.

Some of the Heathen have been a-running since August, and not because anyone’s chasing us. The stated goal is the completion of the Wurstfest Five Miler a week from Saturday (where, it is said, they hand you sausage and beer upon completion; that’s our kind of race), but the real point is banishing the mid-30s expansion that’s happened to all of our waistlines (shut up, Lindsey). I’ve run before, and even once did a 5K in under 30, but it’s been a long time, and at the start of this I was easily in the worst shape of my life.

Even so, in the last week or so, I’ve noticed a drastic drop in the “suck” of running, and some actual improvements in time and performance, so I’m ready to start talking about it in public to reinforce the social conditioning aspects of this process.

Last Friday we did the loop off White Oak, which is about 2.1 miles; since it’s short, we did it twice. I was pleased to discover my current alternating pace (run 4, walk 2) kept me more or less up with Lindsey, at least until I hit some sort of wall around 2 miles in. The final damage was something over 4 miles in something under an hour, even with my wall-hitting halfway through. The previous acknowledged time was the Memorial Loop at about a 12-minute pace, even with walking 1/3 of the time, so it was within tolerances especially factoring in the weird “hills” they have at White Oak.

We did some walking between then and yesterday to rest from the mileage increase, but when running time came last night, Mrs Heathen was feeling ill. I went alone in the neighborhood over a circuitous route through the Montrose (basically, a big loop of Taft to Peden to Park down to West Alabama, over to and around the Menil, down to Richmond, up Yoakum, over on Harold, and back home, but with some switchbacks I inserted to make the time come out roughly correct) that took about an hour; GoogleMaps reports it was 5.2 miles or so, which is a distinct improvement. Another shocker: I wasn’t miserable or nearly dead at the end, and found I was getting bored during the 2-minute walking breaks. Clearly, it’s time to adjust to 4:30 x 1:30 or so, which will have the pleasant effect of increasing my speed. The goal is to run for about an hour, but it’d be nice to get to the point where running for an hour goes farther than 5 miles.

Which brings me to the next point: route selection. Up to now, we’ve been doing 3-mile routes over at Memorial Park and my old up-and-back route on the Heights Boulevard. As we push distance, twice around the White Oak/Sawyer trail seems like a better idea, but is difficult for me mentally since I’m most likely to want to bail at a place on the track where it’s easy to do so (i.e., as I return to the start to being lap 2). Twice around Memorial is a good goal, but it’s dead boring to repeat, and would suffer the same temptation aspect as the White Oak trail. Fortunately, Fleet Feet has some maps that are useful.

The first is a rundown of an absurd 9.76 mile route that includes both Memorial Park and the Allen Parkway trail, but it includes the information that the AP route alone is 4.76 miles, crossing at Shepherd and Sabine. That’s a nice long loop with essentially no chance of cheating, which is nice.

The other is one I knew of before, but had forgotten. Rice’s outer track is 2.9 miles, but is close to another 2 mile loop over at Hermann Park (Marvin Taylor Loop, 1.98miles). They’re connected by a .73 mile jaunt from the main gate of Rice over to the Rose Garden, yielding about a 5.5 mile loop. The nice part about this route is that you could go with folks who prefer the shorter 3-mile course and still meet up at the same endpoint.

Of course, there are also planned runs, which are much better than running alone. The Wurstfest run is already on the calendar, but we feel like most any 5K/5 mile/10K runs are in our grasp. I’ve done the MFA run a few times, but they no longer do it for some reason. What other inner-loop runs exist in the sub-half-marathon range? Is there a decent calendar somewhere? The one at SignMeUpSports, well, sucks; surely there’s a better option.

Even factoring in the sucky available calendars, though, I did find these:

• Rice 5K on 11/1, at 6pm on a Thursday. I’m out of town, but the rest of the crowd could consider it.
• Chevron Jingle Bell, with 5 mile and 5K options, Sunday 12/9, 2pm. I suspect there’s no reason not to do that one.