Running gear

June 10, 2014
3 min read

I guess, you probably can just go out and run, bet where is the fun? So during couple of months I’ve been running, I’ve acquired couple of things to help me with that activity. 

Shoes

This was the first thing I’ve bought after I’ve decided to pursue running. I’ve heard and read a lot about importance of good running shoes and couple of years ago I had problems with some shoes. I’ve got lucky, when I went to the store there was a sale on those Nike Pegasus running shoes. Beautiful and extremely comfortable. Friend of mine was saying how much better it was running at stadium and not on the roads. Finally I’ve decided to try it and didn’t notice ,much of a difference. Not being an expert, I totally give all the credit to my shoes. 

Clothes

Couple of Nike running T-shirts and shorts, also Nike, which one can call an overkill, but there was time when I had to motivate myself to go out and exercise and buying clothes was my first choice. It worked, knowing that I had these pretty expensive clothes motivated me to go running. Can’t say anything bad about them, comfortable even after more than an hour of running, I had some problems with regular T-shirts as they were not very comfortable for longer runs.

HRM + Watch

I’ve ordered Timex IronMan T5K214, just to have some more comparison information, I’ve used it only two times since it arrived, so can’t say much, but it’s fun to watch HR during the run.

Fitbit

It’s just always on me. When I first bought it, it didn’t change my activity. I’ve just tracked it and didn’t change anything in my lifestyle to improve the results. Only 2k steps a day? Meh, who cares? But then I’ve had a week with 6 days over 15k. After that I try to meet my goal every day, even if it means wandering around town with no reason.

Phone

I take phone with me on all the runs. I’ve wrote about how I choose what to run to. I have Pocket Casts and Spotify ready for my run. Also I track all my activities with RunKeeper. I’ve paid to become Elite user, mostly to support the service, but it does offer couple of useful features.

Headphones

In one week both my iPhone and HTC headphones died during the run. I’ve decided to buy something cheap, but at the store I saw Sennheiser CX 685 headphones on sale. They are designed for active use. It’s tricky to buy such headphones as you can’t try them beforehand and because of not traditional design I can imagine people having problems. Fortunately I didn’t have any, they fit perfectly and don’t drop out of ears. So far the longest run with them was hour and 5 minutes and they were fine during all the run.

Outdoor cinema in Riga

June 2, 2014
1 min read

As a part of Riga 2014 (Riga is European Capital of Culture) in June there have been made outdoor cinema in Riga center on Esplanade. We’ve been walking around town and got invited to watch the movie, for free! How can one refuse such an offer? It was the first such evening, they will show different movie every Saturday.

The opening was at 21:30 and we’ve came about half an hour earlier, all the seats were free, then, in about 20-30 minutes place was full and people were already standing, so it’s my advice to come earlier. It all started with some performances by accordionist and mimes.

Then mimes gave everyone popcorn (again, for free) and the movie started. This evening it was The Artist (2011). Movie wasn’t bad at all, but I loved the experience of watching it outdoors even more. This was the first time I’ve done something like that and I highly recommend to come and see themselves. 

Missing games

May 14, 2014
2 min read

I love doing “30 days” challenges. So far I’ve done 30 days without coffee, after which I don’t drink coffee in the morning. 30 days without bread, which helped me stick to the diet and lose weight, the other one I’ve done was writing something for 30 days, that was in the middle of 2012 and still I write something every single day, it could be blog post, but it also can be some note in OneNote, doesn’t matter, the point is to write. 

Since Monday, May 12, I’ve decided to do one more 30 days challenge, this time it’s “30 days without games”. Sunday before that I’ve removed all the games from my phone, tablet and PC. I mostly play casual games on my iPad (lately 2048 and Trial Frontiers) and couple of games on PC (the one I’ve played for about 11 years is PES – FIFA in the begging, but hen I’ve changed the camp – and couple of others, that change very often). 

Before this week, I didn’t even realize how much time is consumed by playing games. While I’m at home, about once an hour I think about playing couple of matches in PES, watching TV Show? It’s time to fire up some iPad game. I’ve actually started to pay more attention to TV shows and I’m getting more enjoyment out of it. 

It’s not even a week and I already see changes, I’m afraid to think how I’ll feel in a month. 

How I went from hating running to my first 10k

May 5, 2014
3 min read

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a week now, finally got to it!

For almost all of my life I was overweight and running was hard for me. I didn’t like doing things for the sake of it, like running, jumping etc., but I loved playing football, volley and other sports. At school we had to run some short distances every year, I had no problem doing that, but then there was 3600m. I couldn’t do it. Later, about 3 years ago, my weight peaked at 120kg, it was hard even thinking about running, I’ve tried once, ran about 500m and walked back home, I’ve bought a treadmill and was walking/running at home for 30 minutes couple times a week at best. Then I lost about 20kg and for 2-3 years my weight was at about 95 kilo mark. I tried running couple of times and could do 1-1.5k, but never loved doing it and there was no progress.

In the end of last year I started to gain weight, on 08.01.2014 it got to 103 kilos and so I’ve decided to lose some of it, in about a month I’ve lost 10 kilos and decided to start running. I’ve got Fitbit, Runkeeper, really nice Nike Pegasus running shoes and was ready to go! My first run was 2.28km with average pace of 7:02, it felt great and I could see, just by losing weight I could run more. This time I was motivated to run and, most importantly, I’ve enjoyed it. 

In another month I’ve lost additional 8 kilos and so my weight got to 85-86, progress with running was not big, but I could definitely see it and feel it. In exactly a month from my first run I’ve run 5.1km with an average pace of 6:21. It was the longest run in my whole life, the feeling was great!

Then I’ve got couple of colds, so I couldn’t run, but when I did, I’ve got the distance of about 6-7km. The week before my record I barely managed 6km and whole week didn’t have any physical activity.

When I started this particular run, I wished I could do 6km again and after about 3km I was pretty sure that was my limit for the day. After next 2km I was almost dying, but decided to try to beat my own record of 7km and so I continued to run and this “almost dying” feeling was there until 10km, it didn’t get any worse, it just was the same feeling. When I saw 10km on the screen I’ve jumped, I was very happy! It was unbelievable.

Was thinking how to end this story and the only thing I can say, is some cheesy thing, like “you are capable of anything, just go and try!”. But it really is true, you just have to believe you can do it.

Comparison videos

April 17, 2014
1 min read

Love comparison videos from thematic blogs. “Let’s see how they will handle Skype calls and the winner is Cortana!” Really? Makes sense, doesn’t it, since Microsoft owns Skype. Author could have tried making FaceTime call on all of the platforms and I think I could guess who the winner would be. 

And when asking for nearby restaurant, Google Now gave a result of one, that is 0.4 miles away, while the closest one from Cortana was 8.9 miles away, I’m not sure you can call it a tie. 

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Spotify’s biggest redesign ever brings long-awaited Collection view

April 9, 2014
1 min read

Spotify’s biggest redesign ever brings long-awaited Collection view

Unfortunately, without its famous yellow stars (and with the addition of a few prominent design cues), the app looks more than ever like a darker shade of chief competitor Rdio — but that might not be such a bad thing for Spotify.

I finally got the update and it messes up with the way I interact with an app. I’ve left Rdio because of all those features. I don’t need collections. I was syncing Starred playlist for offline listening on a phone and it was very easy to add a song to that playlist. Now I have to add it to my Collection and then to a playlist for sync? Not great at all. 

What to listen to while running

March 17, 2014
2 min read

In my recent post I’ve wrote about choosing activity tracking app. After that there is even more important and difficult choice – what to listen to. Running without headphones is not an option. I get borred pretty fast and start thinking about how hard it is to run early on. Here are my thoughts about enterntaining yourself while running.

Running with music

About a year ago I completely ditched iTunes and started listening to music only on Spotify. I have Starred playlist with about 700-800 songs, which get cached on my laptop and smartphone. Being lazy person that I am, I didn’t go through this playlist looking for perfect songs for running. Instead I’ve found two playlists [1] and [2], that were a good fit for my tempo.
My first couple of runs were pretty quick. I’ve run a little more than 2km, so listening to music was enjoyable. Then, as my runs got longer, music started to get boring after about 4th song and it does a bad job blocking those “I can’t! I want to stop!” thoughts.

Podcasts

My second choice was – podcasts. I’ve tried many of them, some work, some don’t. They are just too slow and mess up your tempo, but you can find something that will fit you. Looking for a good one in your podcast listening app takes couple of minutes, and then there are ads. If you listen to podcasts, there is a good chance you’ve heard Squarespace ad hundreds of times. Chance are you skip ads and it’s not easy done while running. That means you have to look for a podcast, which doesn’t mess up your tempo, is long enough and doesn’t have ads, easier said than done.

My last choice – audiobooks

As with podcasts, you have to find the right one. Books, though, are much longer than a podcast, which means you can listen to one book for a week or two. This was the last thing I’ve tried and I stuck with it. If it’s an interesting book, you forget about the fact that you are running. Often I get surprised by the distance I’ve run without even noticing. 

Choosing the right one

March 7, 2014
2 min read

It looks like user base is all that matters right now. Facebook bought WhatsApp and Instragram mostly for their users, you won’t use a service (especially social one) if your friends aren’t there. It was the case with me. I’ve chosen WhatsApp, not Viber or Line, because more friends are using the first one. It wasn’t as fun using Foursquare before more of my friends joined.

Finally I’ve found one space, where it’s not true, for me at least.

I’ve been trying (successfully) to lose weight since the New Year’s. I’m currently on a diet (which desires a whole blog post by itself) and also I’ve started running. Although I have Fitbit, I’ve decided to use running app, for more detailed information.

My choice was between two apps – Endomondo and Runkeeper. I’ve used Endomondo couple of times before, when I had a Symbian phone and the website looks the same ever since. Runkeeper is cleaner and more modern looking service, so I’ve started with that one this time.

When I wanted to add friends, I’ve discovered that all the friends who track their activities, are using Endomondo. That made me to return to the Endomondo. After couple of runs I’ve came to conclusion, Runkeeper pushes me more than my friends.

I’m a novice runner, which means it doesn’t matter to me, that my friend ran 10k today. I can’t do that. My record right now is 4.37km. It’s more fun to compete against myself, so all those stats and encouragements from Runkeeper (like showing couple of times, that you beat your distance/time/etc. record) make me feel good and, what’s more important, encourage me to try harder next time.

In the end, I’m using Runkeeper despite not having any friends on that service.

Flipboard acquires Zite

March 6, 2014
1 min read

Flipboard acquires Zite

When I first started following technology news, I added a lot of tech news sites to the RSS and was sorting through them using Google Reader. Then there came Flipboard for iPhone, I’ve connected my GR account to it and was sorting through feeds that way, looking for potentially interesting articles and saving them to Pocket.
But recently I’ve changed this workflow. Now I have mostly blogs in my RSS, it’s more interesting to read opinions then a lot of junk news. But then I would use Zite to quickly sort through news whenever I’ve had time, in my opinion it does that job much better than Flipboard. So it’s a shame they won’t update Zite anymore.