The Engineered Boulderer

Stumbled onto a formula for calculating your maximum heart rate. The formula is very simple, and for me works much better than the 220 – age.

max heart rate = 205.6 – (0.685 x age)

It finds my heart rate to be 185.05 which is quite close to the 186 I measured in my max heart rate test. Awesome. Of course, as my aerobic conditioning gets better from training my max heart may change a bit again, but this is just a ballpark number.

Let’s just get it out there from the beginning, I didn’t reach 100 push ups as I guess I had hoped. In fact, I don’t even feel I came close, but we’ll get back to that.

In danger of turning into a fitness blog I recently took a maximum heart rate test. I was concerned about the accuracy of my maximum heart rate. Since I’m in the middle of a heart rate based training program, I need to be sure that the heart rate zone I’m in matches reasonably well.

I regularly visit Reddit and broaden my horizon considerably through that avenue. The other day I clicked through to the site one hundred push ups. The site has the premise that anyone can train themselves up to do one hundred consecutive push ups with just six weeks of training.

I would tend to agree with them, and since I’m not at 100 yet I decided to take the challenge.

I finally did it. Yesterday I completed my first marathon, the Copenhagen Marathon, in the time 3:59:55 (five seconds below the four hour mark).

Honestly, I don’t know now whether I will run another marathon. However, given that I am already–the day after–looking at possible races, I think it is very likely that I do run another marathon. If I do run more marathons I also know that I will strive for the Boston Marathon. There’s only one hitch in that you have to qualify for the Boston Marathon. For my age group it means I must complete a marathon in 3:10:00…

Thinking back to yesterday this entry describes how the race unfolded from my point of view with a few lessons (hopefully) learned thrown in for good measure.

Today I ran a half-marathon. The aptly named Helvede I Nord, or in English Hell In the North.

This is it… I guess I’m officially grown up now… I’ve turned 30! (Oh, the horror.) Of course I got pretty much nothing but toys: iPod touch, Nintendo Wii, Garmin Forerunner, a Manfrotto Super Clamp, and some board games.

To celebrate we had family and a few friends over for a nice dinner Saturday night. At least it turned out very well, as it should, I had been doing food related stuff (shopping, prepping, cooking) for most of Friday and all of Saturday. The menu was a variation on the traditional danish suppe, steg og is or literally soup, steak, and ice cream.

Update: Now with recipes.

Having given up the iPhone again (it wasn’t mine to start with), I really miss the iPod functionality off it. Of course that can mean only one thing, I really hope I get an iPod touch (16 or 32 GB of course, have to have room for all my music) for my birthday.

I’ve expressed my frustration with the Nike+iPod system before, listing both shortcomings and improvement ideas. After declaring my marathon goal I have become even more aware of those shortcomings, and those frustrations topped Sunday last week when I ran a new personal best in a 10 km race. After the race my iPod, which I had calibrated just the week before, said I had run 9.47 km. That’s a 5% deviation.

Having wanted a Garmin Forerunner 305 for a while I finally decided to just buy it. I had just learned that my next bonus would be quite reasonable, and my birthday is just next month. Of course, it was only after talking to my mom a couple of days later I realized how stupid it was to buy something off my wishlist this close to my birthday.

Yesterday I ran the Sparta Marathon Test 1. A 10 km race in and around Fælledparken in Copenahgen. As with the Marathon Start Op race in October my goal was to run the 10 km in 45 minutes. A goal I feel short of last time, finishing with a time of 46’24” (which was still a personal best by-the-way). This time, however, I felt better prepared, even if the run was at 9:30 on a frosty February morning.

I felt really good throughout the race, and although I had periods where it was hard going, I did have energy to sprint the last 100 meters or so. So, what time did I reach? Well, I’ll tell you, I crossed the line in 45 minutes 3 seconds!!

Although I missed my goal by a measly 3 seconds, I am still very happy with that result. Of course, I am now setting my sights higher for my next 10 km, but I don’t think that will be until the autumn. In the meantime my next focus is Marathon Test 2 which is 15 km, a couple of half marathons, and of course the marathon in May.