The book remembered!

I've done a bit of digging and found the title and author of the book on guidance to which I made reference in my last post. The book is called: Decision Making and the Will of God, by Gary Friesen. It is still available, albeit with a new cover by the looks of things.

It's been such a long time since I read it, almost 30 years I think, that I certainly couldn't do it any justice in terms of a review. However, I still think it's a book you might want to read if your interested in thinking through how you understand and apply the principles guidance in your life.

I know some might suggest that the book dispenses with the idea that God has a plan for your life, but I don't remember thinking that at all. In fact my memory of reading the book was a sense of liberation from the debilitating need to have everything confirmed by some sort of sign. As with all things, there is a need to keep a sense of balance and to understand the interrelationship between obedience, choosing freely and applying what you already know about God's general will. Too often Christians can become paralysed, unable to make a decision because they are unsure about what God wants them to do. I wonder if that is in some way because we have a showed view of God's will, not grasping the differences between his revealed will, his sovereign will and possibly something more specific to particular events or decisions we have to make. I wonder too if there are not times when we want God to be specific because we don't want to do the "wrong thing".

Complicated stuff, guidance.

Unrealised dreams and the question of guidance

As a short follow-up to my previous post about unrealised dreams, I beleive the particular Bible reference I had in mind was from 1Kings 8:18-19:

But the Lord said to my father David, ‘You did well to have it in your heart to build a temple for my Name. Nevertheless, you are not the one to build the temple, but your son, your own flesh and blood—he is the one who will build the temple for my Name.’ (‭NIV)

I guess the hard part is always going to be figuring out which dreams are going to remain unrealised and which are not. We would love such a clear message from God about such things, but our reality is that things are rarely that clear cut. Guidance is not that clear cut.

I recall reading a book about guidance, but cannot remember either the title or the author (was it Gary something? I'll have to check my library catalogue). at the time I found it a really interesting read and very helpful. I don't remember too much of the content apart from a small part about marriage that sparked an interesting debate with a couple of friends at college.

Marrying, excuse the pun, guidance with dreams and discipleship is a challenge. What is harder perhaps is not beating ourselves up about it all when we either get it wrong or when he hear others talk in a way that makes us feel totally inadequate in the area of hearing from God.

Maybe the answer is simple. Rejoice in those times when God speaks clearly and don't fret on the days when he doesn't, just continue to live as a faithful follower of Jesus.

Unrealised dreams

I was thinking about my previous post about waiting and it reminded me of something else. I remember years ago when I was in my first church leadership setting that I was reflecting and praying about the future and how things might develop. I wasn't sure whether it was time to move or whether we were to stay in that place for the foreseeable future.

A wise person said to me, "Don't let the size of the task keep you here." Their point was that there would always be something that needed doing, always a reason to stay. I had my dreams, a vision for the church and what we could become as long as we walked with God. I may not have articulated it in the words I'd use today, but it would have been along the lines of partnership with God in whatever he was doing in our community. We had a passion to figure out how to reconnect people with the God who misses them and we were exploring how we could that. I'm sure that if we'd stayed we would have found our way towards the kinds of things I've been discovering over the 20 years since I left that place.

The turning point for me came as I was working my way through the story of David. I came to the part of his story where he decided it was time to build a temple. David had great plans, he had the dream, the vision to build a permanent home for the Ark. It wasn't about him and his achievements, but about his relationship with God. Although I can't quite track down the specific verse (I have a note somewhere in a journal form that time), the phrase that has stayed with me since the day I read it goes something like this: It was good that he had it in his heart... David was not going to get to build the temple.

I realised then that two things were true. Firstly, I was not going to stay and see the fulfilment of the dream or vision for the church at that time. It was not going to mine to build. Perhaps God knew I didn't need an empire! The second thing I realised was that God remembers and honours the dreams of his people. My vision wasn't wasted, even if it wasn't realised. It's okay to have an unfulfilled dream.

I know that some people might look at my ministry and see a list of failures, of unfulfilled potential and missed opportunities. I think that too from time to time. But what I remember and what I hold on to is that it was good to have had it in my heart to do something great for God. I'd rather have an unrealised dream than no dream at all, and after all is said and done it's not about my dreams, it's about God's grand plan, his mission among the people he misses most.

The waiting game

I decided to pick up the story of David in the Old Testament at 2Sam. 3 this morning. It begins like this:

That was the beginning of a long war between those who were loyal to Saul and those who were loyal to David.

How long, I don't know, but it had already been quite a long time since David had been anointed as Saul's successor and still he wasn't fully established as king. That got me thinking about a few other stories in the Old Testament.

Abraham, for instance, was around 75 when God called him and told him he would be the father of many nations. Yet it would be another 25 years before Issac was born. Joseph spent something like 13 years in prison and Isaiah spoke about things over 700 years into the future. Things he probably longed to see but would never do so.

So, how long is long enough to wait for God to fulfil a promise? Days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries?

It wasn't an epiphany this morning, just a reminder that things can take longer than we'd like them to, and that God moves at his pace and not ours. There are times when I wonder why I'm where I am doing what I'm doing. Days turn into weeks and months with no apparent progress and then all of a sudden something happens and God's hand is revealed. Learning to live with the wait is quite possibly the hardest part of being a disciple.

In support of exercise

I like these kinds of visualised talks, and although this doesn't tell you anything radically new it is still worth watching (unless you don't like illustrated talks!).

We all know that exercise is good for us but sometimes the message is confusing. Hopefully this talk will encourage you to make moving a part of your day. With all the recent talk about how much exercise is good for you and whether running long distances is ultimately damaging, this talk gives a research perspective on the value of exercise for positive health outcomes. The debate will still rage about over-exercise but the value of moderate exercise cannot be understated.

What is fascinating is some of the research cited. Another interesting thought is the "Whole Body" impact idea that comes up when he talks about stents. Think about the implications for a while. If a stent only fixes one part of the problem, but exercise addresses a wide range of factors, ho might that be true for other diseases/ risk factors?

 

Inaccurate fitness monitors

Lara Lewington at the BBC's Click has an article on the website about fitness/activity monitors that's quite interesting for those inclined towards gadgets. How long it will be available I'm not sure, but currently you'll find it here. Thanks to Adam for pointing to the article.

In simple terms, the article points out that if you take four of the most prominent players in the market, you will get significant discrepancies in the data they present to you about your activity levels and related data. I have to say that I don't find that particularly unexpected, and it certainly fits with my experience of my Polar Loop (which wasn't among the four tested). I guess the object lesson in all of this goes back to something I learned doing physics at school. We were taught the difference between precision and accuracy. As I recall, and it is a rather long time ago, the difference is that you can have very precise measurements that are inaccurate and conversely you can have accurate results that are imprecise. Sounds crazy I know, but we are talking about the mysteries of physics here. In common usage we might use accurate and precise to describe the same thing, but in science they mean different things.

So what does this mean for the activity tracker you're planning on strapping to your wrist? The most important implication is that the data you get has to be understood against the way the technology works, the kind of sensor it has and the maths it uses to convert what it measures into the data you get to read off the device. I've already blogged about the differences between a simple pedometer and my Loop and how the Loop converts body movements into steps. Even my pedometer doesn't necessarily measures steps exactly.

So why would you spend your hard earned cash on an activity monitor that can't tell you either accurately or precisely why you've been up to? I'm not sure the technology exists to do that, but that doesn't mean a monitor is a bad thing. The reason to buy one of these gadgets lies in a quote from one of the companies making the devices has to say.

Managing director of Fitbit Europe Gareth Jones advises people to simply be aware of the trend.
"Rather than get down to the half step or the next calorie is to look at the trend in their step pattern," he says,
"Are they increasing the number of steps in their day all week? Are they increasing the calorie burn day to day, week to week? Because it's that trend that's going to make you healthier."

It's pretty obvious that a device worn on your wrist is unlikely to give you a proper measure of steps taken, but it will indicate how active you've been. It's these trends that help you make choices about what you need to do to improve your health. So buy a gadget if you want, or get someone to buy one for you (mine was a Christmas present) and use it to motivate yourself to move. It's fun to see what yo've been doing, how far you've walked or run, how long you've spent sitting down. But don't get hung up on the raw data, look at the trends. Look at the bigger picture.

Is it a habit yet?

Well, as I've just tweeted, I passed 2 million steps and 1000 miles yesterday (4th February 2015). I've been recording the data since September 1st and I haven't missed my goal of 10000 steps a day yet. It's a record by some way given that I purposefully took a day off at 104 last time I did the 100 day challenge.

So, apart from some self-congratulatory back slapping, have I formed a habit yet? Actually, I don't think so. A habit is something you do almost automatically. It's a response, something you do because you always do it. It happens without much predetermined thought. Getting up and going for a walk everyday takes discipline, so I guess you could call it a disciplined habit, but most of the habits we do without thinking require no discipline at all and are usually bad habits. Maybe all habits that require no thought are bad habits.

No, habit is not the tight word to describe what I'm currently doing. At least not the right word for me. If I think it's a habit I'll more than likely stop thinking about it and that inevitably leads to a breaking of the habit. So I'll continue to call it a disciplined choice. There are days when I really don't feel like hitting the mean streets of Ockendon and pounding away at my goal. But I choose to do it.

Take yesterday for example.

I had two funerals to do and a visit to make. That doesn't sound like a lot of work I know, but funerals carry their own stress for me and I like to be there early so I'm settled and ready. Having said that, at yesterday's second funeral I managed to leave a candle in the chapel office and had to nip out doing a piece of music to get it! I did tell the family what I was doing, just so they didn't think I was running away! I've also got a nasty cold and I've got my torn calf muscle. Add to that the temperature and the fact that I didn't get ready to go out walking until gone 5:00pm and I definitely didn't feel like doing it at all.

But I did. I made he disciplined choice to exercise. Even with base layers, mid-layers and top layer on it was still cold. I wore a hat and gloves and I still found myself having to take some painkillers for the ache that gets in your face when it's been too cold for too long. This is why it's a disciplined choice and not a habit. You have to choose to do something like that, it doesn't come naturally. Of course once you're into your stride you mostly forget about everything else. You remember how much you get out of simply being outside and the pleasure of the walk or run. holding onto that memory is what helps making the following day's discipline choice to get moving.

Speaking of which, it's time to pull on the trainers and get out there again. Normally I'd be off to tennis, but I'm rehabbing my calf, so no tennis this week. All my steps will have to come from running or walking in circles.

Rehab progress

I thought I'd do a quick update on how my rehab is going on my calf injury. Friday was the first real opportunity to assess the damage, and it didn't appear to be quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. Everyone is different, and every injury is different. The muscle was certainly tender to the touch and there was a reasonably sized area that was both tender and firm to the touch. Dorsiflexion (imagine pointing your toes towards your nose) was the most painful movement, and I was most definitely limping. Running was out of the question!

I'd applied a Physicool bandage the previous day and rested it. I'd also put on a compression bandage, the good old tubigrip sort of thing. I decided that I would try walking and although it was obvious I was limping, I managed to do a steady, if rather slow, 4Km. Once home I reapplied the cooling bandage for 30 minutes before removing that and putting the compression bandage back on. About every 20 to 30 minutes I made sure I got up and walked around a little.

Saturday morning I went out for another walk and this time things were much better. I did a little bit of gentle massage of what had been the rather firm and tender area before setting out on the walk. My stride pattern was much more even, and I concentrated on making sure I was flexing my ankle while not stressing the soft tissue by going too quickly. There were still a few movements that were painful, but generally it was okay. I still couldn't run and when we were at the rugby match that afternoon it was pretty clear that running was difficult every time I needed to get across the pitch to deal with an injury.

By Sunday, walking was good, with very few issues. I even went for a faster 2Km walk on my own to finish off my sets for the day. Hopefully, by the end of the week, I will be ready to try a little running. Before I try that, I will do some simple weight-bearing exercises, and if they are pain free I'll try some short intervals.

And that's my rehab plan! I guess the lessons are pretty simple. Start moving sooner rather than later. Work within pain free ranges. Don't push too hard too soon. Listen to the feedback your body gives you.

Tis the end of January

Another month, another set of stats to reflect upon. Of course this month has been different because I've not only carried my trusty pedometer, but I've also had my Polar Loop too.

I've already blogged about the Loop and the way it measures "body movements" which are converted into steps compared to the pedometer that simply measures steps as best it can. Anyway, here are the stats as recorded by the pedometer.

Total steps: 369, 313

Approximate mileage: 185

Despite my calf injury sustained in the last couple of days I actually managed to make my daily target, so that means I've now reached 153 consecutive days of 10k steps a day. On the other hand, January has been my lowest overall total since September.

The Loop recorded the equivalent of 527, 122 steps, which I assume means I swing my arms a lot when I play tennis! Oh, and there's a bit of swimming in there too. Overall, the Loop recorded 7 days 13 hours of activity. This breaks down into 4 days 5 hours standing, 1 day 21 hours walking and 1 day 10 hours running. If I could do 4 miles an hour walking and say 6 running, then I could have travelled 384 miles. That's nearly all the way to Leeds and back!

Of course this is mostly idle speculation and a bit of fun with numbers. Both the pedometer and Loop serve to keep me motivated to get out and be active and I'll take every motivation I can get. I know that it only takes a day to break a habit, no matter how good a habit it is. In fact the better the habit, the easier it is to break it. Bad habits come naturally and are easy to keep, good habits are much hater work.

The calf muscle is responding well to rehab. I can't run, but walking is easier and I'm pleased to have managed to keep going even with the injury.

Rice or meat after my injury?

So, soon after blogging about reaching my 150th day of 10k steps a day, and rambling on about targets and possibilities, I went straight out an injured myself. Turning to chase a cross-court backhand I felt the unmissable twang of a muscle strain. I hopped of the court, limped to the car and reach for the freeze spray and some compression bandage.

It was not good.

Back home, I strapped a Physicool bandage around my calf, elevated it and consoled myself for the next 30-40 minute by watching a bit of the Australian Open tennis on TV. I'll have a better idea tomorrow about how bad it is and how long it might take to rehab, but for now it looks like my consecutive day record will not go beyond 150.

The received wisdom with an injury like this is to apply the well-known RICE protocol. Rest, ice, compress, elevate,but there is an alternative that I came across a few years ago and that I've used on a more minor injury before. It's called the MEAT Proctocol, which stands for: Movement, Exercise, Analgesics, Treatment.

Movement begins soon after the injury, corrective exercise only after the acute phase has passed. Analgesics are pain relief (typically NSAID's like ibuprofen), and treatment speaks for itself, although treatment obviously varies according to the stage and severity of the injury.

The basic premise is that you need to start moving within the pain free range of motion as soon as possible in order to support the healing process. No moving, i.e. rest, doesn't help the blood flow which in turn doesn't help promote faster healing.

Clearly I'm not going to be able to run for a while, certainly not going to be able to play tennis, but I should be able to do some gentle walking. Hopefully I'll be racing around again sooner rather than later, but as with al injuries it's best to listen to what your therapist tells you. Unfortunately in my case that's me and although I talk to myself a lot, I rarely listen to what I'm saying!!

150 and still going!

Yesterday marked two milestones. Firstly, it was my 150th consecutive day of 10k steps or more. I worked out that I'm roughly 3 weeks away from hitting 6 months at this daily target. The other milestone was that yesterday was my first bout of the winter with the cold virus! Certainly having the flu jab in the autumn seems to have helped me avoid getting a cold so far, but it's finally nabbed me while I wasn't paying attention. Oh well, it should clear up pretty quickly, and in fact I already feel better today than I did yesterday. Let's hope that's not just a lull!

I also noticed that yesterday was the first day since I started wearing my Polar Loop that I didn't hit my target. I could have gone out in the evening and done enough, I only needed to jog for 5 minutes or so, but I decided enough was enough and I didn't need to push myself out the door for the sake a 2%. 98% of my daily target is quite possibly significantly more than many people without colds manage!

I remember years ago a friend saying that a target was like the bullseye you might aim at in darts or archery. Hitting the bullseye is great, but if you aim at it and miss, then you haven't missed the bigger target. If you run, you'll know all about personal bests. You might even be geeky enough to keep a notebook or spreadsheet about it. It's okay, if I were serious about running I'd have running journal of some kind I'm sure. PB's are subject to all sorts of things: fitness, terrain, weather, how you feel on the day, how many other people are around you and so on. Not making your PB every time you run is not a failure. The same is true of your health and fitness goals.

In the back of my mind I wonder if I can keep achieving my 10k goal every day for a year. I'm a very long way from doing that at the moment, so I don't think about much. It won't become even a remote possibility until I get to somewhere in June, and then not a real possibility until I hit August. Thinking about it now is just not realistic. In fact the only reason to think about it now is to encourage me to go out each day and finish, because if I don't then I can't achieve that particular goal. Okay, so that probably makes it realistic in some way, but the point is I'm not focussed on the 365 target, I'm just focussed on the 1 day target. The big target will take care of itself if I keep hitting the smaller one.

Maybe you set out at the beginning of the year with the intention of getting fitter or being healthier and you said to yourself that you were going to go for a walk everyday. Maybe you've managed it, maybe you haven't. It doesn't matter if you've missed a day or even a week as long as you get back out. Make each day a challenge, and when you can conquer that challenge, make each week a challenge. Do whatever it takes to keep yourself motivated and don't let the things that demotivate you take control.

Today is an interesting day. Now I've missed my activity target do I say to myself it's not worth the effort and give up on it. At least I hit my 10k target. Or do I simply say that yesterday was a good result given how I felt most of the day. Today I feel better, so there are no excuses not to achieve both goals. That's the choice I need to make.

Has anybody seen my tennis shoes!

Bit of an update on the iPod Touch and GPS

I posted a piece about using Runkeeper on my iPod Touch and the inaccuracy of the tracking I experienced with it. Given how well Runkeeper works on the iPhone, it can't be the app that's got the problem, it has to be something to do with how the device itself accesses its location.

Now there have been one or two occasions in the past when my old 3GS iPhone would produce a sudden leap off my know route leaving me both confused and with a PB unlikely ever to be beaten! That aside, I think I may have a handle on the issue with the iPod.

Reading an article about how to use your wifi only iPad or iPod to navigate around a city, it appears that these devices use a map of local hotspots to track your location. According to the article you can use your map to navigate simply by setting a route between to points while you are using say a local hotel's free wifi. Once you've done this, your device loads a database of all local hotspots.

So, if it's using hotspots rather than GPS (which might be a feature only available via the cellular data network I'm thinking), that would explain why it jumps around so much because it's not actually tracking your true position but rather the location of these hotspots. And if that is true, then the iPod will never be useful as a route tracking device which is a shame, but at least it gives me a wider range music to which I can listen while I run or walk.

The moral of the story is: If you want to listen to music, buy an iPod Touch, if you want to track your route, buy a GPS device!

Inactive, me, really!!

Okay, so this amused me a little bit today. I was looking back at my activity data for the last few weeks, wondering what it was going to look like at the end of a month of wearing the Polar Loop. Apparently I've averaged 169% of my daily goal so far. Some days it's much higher.

This activity overview is from a Friday a couple of weeks ago. It was a day when I'd spent 2 hours tennis training in the morning and another hour having a one-to-one session with my tennis coach in the afternoon.

According to the tracked data, I'd spent over 7 hours being active, counted nearly 25k steps and burned around 4000 Kcals.

Overall that meant I'd reached 300% of my daily activity goal. Yes, that's not a typo, it was 300%. So what made me smile?

See that small red triangle at around 18:00 on the left of the picture? That's an inactivity stamp. It means that for an hour I'd done nothing, just sat on the sofa. I probably fell asleep, given all the exercise I'd had during the day.

Maybe I should suggest that they redesign the software so that it uses a blue triangle to say you've been inactive for an hour but you probably needed the rest. Why don't you treat yourself to piece of cake!

Typically I get the inactivity stamps because I've been somewhere in the car that's taken over an hour. I'm not about to stop every 55 minutes to walk around just to stop little red triangles appearing on my timeline. As I look back over January so far, and in fact the whole month I've been wearing the Loop, I've actually only had 9 alerts about being inactive, and 6 of those were in 1 week.

Given that I've been sitting around doing a few bits of writing and admin so far today, I think I'd better get up move just in case I'm due another stamp. A little stroll should do the job.

Runkeeper on the iPod touch

I decided it was time I replaced my iPod touch that was stolen a year or so ago. I opted for the 16Gb version and called in at the Apple store while I was in Lakeside waiting for a call from the garage about the car (another story for another day). One of the reasons I decided to buy a new touch was that it will run apps like Runkeeper that use GPS to track movement. I rather assumed that the technology in the touch would be similar to the tech in the iPhone, but I got quite a surprise when I took out this evening for a short test run. I seemed to be covering the distance at quite a fair pace, and it wasn't long before I realised something was wrong. I know I walk fast, but I don't even run at less than 6min/Km!

It seems that the touch has much more difficulty with the GPS than the iPhone does. Here's what the touch reported:

Expanding the map showed that the GPS was jumping all over the place adding almost 2Km to the actual distance walked. Cleaning up the map took a while, but the difference is clear:

This is disappointing because I bought the touch so that I didn't have to use my phone, running down its battery and having the potential for access to more music on the iPod rather than the phone. It would also mean that if I didn't want to take my phone with me for some reason (I can't think of one except maybe because I was planning to run through a river and didn't want to ruin a phone!), I wouldn't have to. Shame really, the new touch is slim and light and lovely like it should be.

There may be a reason, even a fix, but at the moment, while I love the new iPod, I remain disappointed with the GPS performance.

Thinking about training, and how to reduce the boredom

When I go out training I have to remind myself that any fitness gains I might achieve have to have some benefit towards tennis because that's what I do most. While you need a degree of endurance, last year I played a 2.5 hours single match against a younger opponent, mostly you need explosive speed, flexibility, power and good recovery.

Sounds good, but it's to that easy to fit it all in in a normal week, and so there will always be a compromise. Plus, I actually quite enjoy doing a little bit of running. So my main approach, as you know, is to do intervals. I run for either a set time or a set distance and I slow down, usually to a brisk walk for the low intensity intervals. It's mostly random because I don't carry a stopwatch with me, although I do have one that can be set to time intervals. In the end I rely on a number of things.

For time, I tend to have Runkeeper to tell me what I'm doing every 5 minutes. Polar Beat tells me every Km, if I'm using distance. These are great for even intervals, but for something a bit more random I often use lampposts, telegraph poles or even bus stops. I also work on the principle of running when I feel like running and not running when I don't. I'm not training for a 10K or marathon, so if I don't feel like running I have no need to run. It's pretty obvious that there is a  physiological benefit to running over walking the same distance. You work your heart and lungs harder, your muscles have to be more efficient, as does your whole cv system. But a healthy cvs doesn't require that you do anything much more than moderate exercise for 30 minutes a day five days a week. I've tried to include an element of running in my training schedule only because I want to get fitter not just healthier.

Here's the data, for example, from my most recent 7Km session:

The red line is heart rate and the blue line pace. You can see that the intervals vary, and interesting to see how a couple of times my heart rate peaked just as I was coming to the end of an interval. For me, I think this is a good session because it pushes my hurt rate and recovers before going again. This, in theory, should improve my sprint speed and recovery.

So when you see bits of data about me running or even walking a given distance, it's invariably true that it's a mixture of both. Occasionally I'll run all the way just to prove to myself that I can. It's a bit of a fitness test and psychological test too. When I run, the first 100m or so can often feel like my lungs are going to burst, but once I settle into a rhythm and take control of my breathing, I find a manageable pace and away I go. Exactly how far I could maintain this pace I don't know. I do know I can run 5Km without stopping, and I'm guessing that stubbornness might just carry me another kilometre or two. One day I might try it.

Activity Tracking Update

I've been using my Polar Loop to track my activity data for 3 weeks now, and apart from the questions I have about the overall accuracy of the data, it's been interesting to say the least. Interesting of course for someone who likes these sorts of things, overwhelming tedious and boring if you don't! I get that.

Since I last posted anything about the Loop I've added using a heart rate monitor. This can be paired (it's Bluetooth) with either the Loop or with an app on my phone. I've only done the latter so far, but will have a go with the Loop at some point.

The app in question is Polar Beat. I can use both Runkeeper and Beat at the same time, and I could, as far as I know, link my heart rate monitor to Runkeeper. The dilemma is that Beat is obviously integrated with Flow, the web based service from Polar, whereas Runkeeper isn't. On the other hand, if I want to set challenges in Runkeeper, I have to use it's tracking facility because it doesn't record manually entered activity against any challenge. It's also a case that as yet I don't seem to be able to get Beat to post activities to either Facebook or Twitter so that impressed and admiring friends can feel guilty about the exercise they're not getting!!

So, apart from the issue of where I store all the boring stats about how far I've walked, run, jogged or moved on a tennis court, I've discovered the fairly obvious fact that when I play tennis it's easy to reach my daily goal and when I don't I have to do something else instead. What is helpful, and interesting to me at least, is to see what kind of exercise I'm doing. I know about heart rate zones and progressive overloading etc from my PT studies, but having a simple graphic showing me that data is nice. I haven't had to sit down and create a spreadsheet to do it for me, it's just all done on the website.

So far I've managed to exceed my daily activity goal everyday. Some days by small margins, others by quite some distance. Last Friday, for example, I managed 300% of my daily goal. Now, because the Polar Loop is a simple device, I'm not exactly sure what constitutes my daily goal, although I can hazard a guess from the "to go" information and what I personally have to do to reach it. According to Polar the level 3 goal (that's the highest one) is about 1.5 hours of high intensity exercise.

Beyond all this information and data, the big question has to be, "Does it keep me motivated?" I think the answer is yes. By monitoring my activity I do tend to check it and make sure I reach my goal rather than assuming I've done enough on the basis of how I feel. But then again, as I've said before, a simple pedometer can do that for you. In the end it comes down to one simple thing: Whatever it takes for you to get out and get moving, it has to be worth it. I have my gadgets, you'll find your motivators if you really want to.


Just in case you're interested, here's the summary from 29th December to today. Distance and steps are from actual steps and body movements made, which is why it overestimates steps.

Honours for some

Well, once again the honours system has shown itself, or at least those who decide these things, to be wonderfully out of touch with reality. Amongst the often strange and sometimes unfathomable awards there of course a number of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve the recognition of a honour, but then there are those that make no sense at all.

The one that bugs me most this time around is the singling out of only two members of the England Women's rugby team. When the men's team managed to win the World Cup in 2003, they all got something, along with other members of staff. Clive Woodward got a knighthood! But for the women only two players appear on the list. Why?

This isn't about fairness, it's about recognising that a team won not one or two individuals. Something the sport realises by giving every member of the squad a medal rather than just those who run out onto the pitch on a given day. Of course it's not always been that way. England footballers who played in the 1966 squad only got a winners medal if they played in the final, and only recently at the Paralympics have the support runners been awarded medals alongside their competing partners.

So perhaps it's time whoever it is that advises those who decide who gets honoured and who doesn't ups their personal game and makes sure that when it's a team effort the team get the recognition they all deserve.

A week with Polar Flow

I've had my Loop for a whole week and it's been interesting looking at the data. The is very simple to set up. It has only 3 options when it comes to your activity level and goal setting as far as I can see. I chose "Mostly Moving" from the list and the software set a few parameters automatically from the information I supplied (max. heart rate, aerobic and anaerobic heart rates, VO2 max). There is a fitness test you can do to get a better VO2 max by the looks of things, but I haven't explored that yet.

You can also pair a heart rate monitor with the Loop. I have a monitor, but I've only used it once and I paired it with Polar Beat on my iPhone. I might try pairing it with the Loop while playing tennis one day just to see what happens with my heart rate over the course of a single match.

I charge the Loop each evening at the end of the day and put it back on just before I go to sleep so that I get the data for sleep. There isn't much information about how the Loop collects the data and what algorithms are used to analyse it and how accurate you can expect it to be. After a week, I'd suggest that it provides a reasonable reflection of how active you've been but some of the numbers are less accurate than you might want them to be. The only evidence I have for that comes from comparing the steps taken as recorded by a simple pedometer and by the Loop. My pedometer is an Omron Walking Style II. I've been using one of these for years to record my daily steps. Comparing the two devices the difference is quite significant.

	Pedometer	Loop	Difference
Friday	11933	14918	2985
Saturday	12978	18469	5491
Sunday	12974	17050	4076
Monday	14779	22373	7594
Tuesday	16168	26273	10105
Wednesday	13345	18875	5530
Thursday	11946	16217	4271
Total	94123	134175	40052

The Loop consistently records more steps than the pedometer. Now that is probably due to the fact that you wear it on your wrist and it must therefore be influenced by the movement of the wrist. The magnitude of the difference might well be a reflection of the amount of tennis I play!

Once you've synchronised the Loop with either the desktop app or the mobile app you get an analysis of your data in numbers and pictures.

The graphical image gives you an overview of the day and shows you when you've had an inactivity alert. The two in the image here are when I was in the car. The heart symbol indicates a time when a heart rate monitor was in use.
As you can see, activity is broken down into 5 categories from lying down to running. The hatched area is when the Loop was charging and therefore not being worn. The small hatched area at around 1:00am is a mystery!

There's also a summary in the form of a table.


Knowing how much sleep you get is good, but I have no idea whether the restful sleep figure is meaningful or not. And the inactivity stamps are okay, but it would be nice to get some sort of alert via the Loop or maybe even via the 'phone app.

Polar have two web based applications that you can access for free. Polar Flow is where you get to see all your data and the personal training website, polarpersonaltrainer, is also available for doing more detailed training management.

I quite like my Polar Loop, but if I were wanting to get significantly more serious about monitoring my training and progress I'd probably be wearing something with more functions. But, if you're interested in getting a broad picture of your activity level and need something to give you a little motivation to get out and do some exercise, then the Loop is a great gadget if you like gadgets. 

December 2014 walking stats

I'm not planning on going far in the next couple of hours, in fact staying awake will be enough of a challenge! I'm not big on seeing in the new year.

Anyway, as December ends, it's time to look at the numbers once again. The bear facts are as follows:

Steps taken: 398898
Approx. mileage: 199.45

With no missed days that makes it 122 consecutive days over 10k and a grand total since 1st September of 1592575 steps. My biggest day was 18971, and there were several days over 15k.

So I quite pleased with the effort but now I need to up the intensity of I going to get any fitness benefit. 10k walking will always help keep my heart healthy, but I'm interested in improving my fitness too. Interestingly I set out today to run/walk to the gym for a swim. I actually ran almost all the way. That's about 3 miles, 4.5Km. Knee problems have stopped me running for a long time, but today it just felt okay to run. I'm not planning any long distances, but if I can begin to run 5k on a regular basis that would be great.

The only problem is that the more running I do the fewer steps I take over a given distance. At the moment I estimate I take 20% fewer steps per Km when I run compared to walking. Consequently I'd have to run about 10Km a day to do the 10k steps I do walking 8Km. Given that I ran 4.5Km is 30 minutes, 10Km would take about 66 minutes, which is still faster than I reckon it takes to walk 8Km, but that's all academic given that I can't yet run 10Km!!

What I'll probably do is continue to do my favoured interval training and then do some additional walking.

Just playing with a couple of apps

It's not easy to run two activity apps at the same time, you have to start one and then the other, but I thought it might be quite interesting to run Runkeeper and Polar Beat side-by-side this morning.

There's not a lot to say really about the two programmes. The possible value of PB is that it links to my new Polar Loop, at least I think it does. It's all a bit confusing to be honest.

Anyway, with so many ways to capture all your activity data the only thing that is probably missing is the motivation to get up and do something!!

I've had my Loop for a few days now and it is quite insightful to see how the day pans out. Long periods of sitting, punctuated by little bits of movement with the occasional bursts of frantic activity as I hurl myself around a tennis court.



The one thing Runkeeper can't do is recognise interval training. I have to set it to running or walking. But that's not really a problem. Most of these apps will work with a range of bits of kit like heart rate monitors and stride measuring devices. I think you are either the kind of person who sets them up really accurately and keeps a detailed training dairy, or like me, you just use them to keep a rough track of what you're doing and to help with motivating you to get out and get moving.

A simple pedometer works just as well, but I do love a good gadget, and my Loop is a nice gadget!

Anyway I need to get ready to go and do a job before setting off for a drive to a tennis tournament. No problems reaching my daily activity goal today! I might blog a bit more about these apps later if I'm not busy trying to run round the block to earn some stars on Everymove!!