Night Trail Run at Shakespear Regional Park

I just got back from an 11.5 Km night trail run up in Whangaparoa. I never would have thought that the limiting factor on my run time would be my cardio fitness, and I certainly wasn't expecting to finish so close to an hour (1:04:06), but I fell in with a group that had nice bright headlamps. I pushed hard to keep near enough to take advantage of multiple lights. One guy in particular had a huge spotlight mounted on his shoulder, there must have been a battery for it in his hydration pack. It was nice having him about 20 meters behind me for a good chunk of the race. :-)

The course was exellent . . . it was about an even mix of gravel road, single track, and paddock fence-lines. At one point we were running along a ridge with views of the Auckland skyline across the harbour on one side, and a stream of little multi-colored lights trickling up the hill out of the dark on the other.

I wish I'd had my little camera and a gorilla-pod along for that moment. At the finish, I did manage to grab my SLR and a tripod in time to catch some of the later finishers coming through:

As usual for TotalSport events, there were beer and sausages at the finish! Tomorrow is the last XTerra race at the same location. I'll get to see what we ran through tonight, plus a bunch of coastal rock scrambling.

Tumblr Badge for Blogs and CSS Troubleshooting

My post on how to use CSS to restyle Tumblr's default blog widget has been quite popular. One commenter pointed out that it wasn't displaying properly in IE6 or IE7 (surprise). After a bit of investigation, it turned out to be the Usual Suspect: browser differences in default Box Model behavior.

Specifically, it appears that IE versions lower than 8 use a large amount of default margin to move elements to their default starting position in a container.  Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, on the other hand, seem to use about the same amount of space, but in Padding. You can see the difference in the two screen captures below.   The Red border is the Tumblr_Posts div.

Note that in Firefox above, the whitespace is on the inside of the Div, it's "Padding" of about 50 pixels. In IE below, it's also about 50 pixels, same resulting position, but caused by outside the Div "Margin" space.

My goal with the stylesheet was to keep a minimum of whitespace between the outer container (Green border), and the little photo boxes (inside the red box). I did that with the first CSS property that came to mind: Margin-Left. I raised that number until it looked how I wanted it in Chrome, doublechecked it in IE8, Firefox, and iPhone Safari, then published it. Unfortunately, since IE6 started with Margin-Left at about 50px, the impact of setting Margin-Left to -30px was a 80px move in IE (compared to 35px in most other browsers). The result was the posts were chopped off about halfway across by the border of the sidebar.

The solution, as with most things in computing, is to reboot. ;-) Specifically, set all the box model numbers to the one number that puts all browsers on equal footing: zero.

Zeroing out both margin and padding did exactly what I wanted in the first place: let the Tumblr Post boxes fill the containing div. Any number would work actually, as long as you set them all explicitly, rather then letting the browsers use their assorted defaults.

.tumblr_posts
  {
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px; 
  }

Anyway, hope that helps. If you went and read up on the CSS Box Model, or have wrestled with this stuff before, you'll probably find this amusing:

CSS is Awesome! Mug on Zazzle


Here's the current, corrected CSS:

.tumblr_photo
  {
    width: 110px;
    height: auto;
    float: right;
    margin: 7px;
    border: 2px black solid;
  }
  .tumblr_posts
  {
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px; 
  }
  .tumblr_post
  {
    font-size: x-small;
    list-style-type: none;
    width: 210px;
    padding: 7px;
    margin: 5px;
    max-height:200px;
    overflow: hidden;
    border: thin black outset;
    background-color:#78a;
  }

Legend of the Seeker

Kel and I have gotten hooked on the Legend of the Seeker TV series. It's the latest from one of my favorite writer/producer/directors: Sam Raimi (Spiderman, Evil Dead, Hercules, and Xena). Like Hercules and Xena, it's filmed here in New Zealand.

I had to laugh while watching the pilot when I saw them go from riding horses in the Southern Alps to rolling down the North Island West Coast dunes in a matter of seconds.

I'm pretty sure the spot in the dunes where this scene was filmed is at Bethell's Beach where I was running The Superdune race just a week earlier. Though it could be the Te Paki Dunes up north. Either way I've been there . . . love it! :-)

XTerra Race #4 (Waiuku)

Last weekend was race four in the XTerra trail run series. This was the furthest I've had to drive so far. The race HQ was a ways south of Waiuku, nearly two hours from the North Shore, where the Waikato River meets the Tasman Sea. I'm glad I made the trip. Unlike the last race, this time the weather was perfect, and I think this was the best course yet.

That said, you can see from the photos that it had been raining right up to the day of the race. There were a number of large puddles out there, including this one right at the start.

The course itself was amazingly fast. It's almost 3km longer than the Riverhead course, but I finished over an hour faster, and that's got nothing to do with anything I did between those two weekends. ;-)

I actually thought for a minute that I might break two hours for the long course in this race. But once again I'd underestimated the sadistic streak of the race organisers: in the last few klicks some horrific mud pits appeared out of nowhere, and the finish was a load of sand hills. I was so shocked to be struggling with what had seemed an easily reachable goal a few minutes earlier, that I neglected to grab any pictures of the mud pits. They really were one of the nastier surprises of the series. Nice work guys! ;)

So even if I didn't manage to break 2:00, I'm still quite happy to have knocked an hour off my 20k time. I've noticed that I've also broken into the top 10 in the overall rankings for the series long course. As with the Beach Series, mainly by virtue of attendance. But hey, swag is swag (if I can sneak a few places higher by the end)! ;-)

XTerra Race #3 (Riverhead)

Last Sunday was race 3 in the XTerra Trail Run Series. This time it was right in my backyard, just a 20 minute drive down the road to Riverhead forest. A couple of my co-workers decided to do the race as well: Marco (one of the members of our lunchtime running group) and Steve. That was probably a good thing, as I was pretty close to going back to bed when I woke up to pouring rain. ;-)

I'm glad I didn't, it's always good fun splashing through the mud and puddles once you're out in it. With the rain, this course was quite tough. We pushed fairly hard, but still came in at 3:03:11. Marco's wife and two little girls did the short course, they came in just a bit after us, with their umbrella's and gum boots. :-)

Next race is down at Waiuku, where the Waikato River meets the Tasman Sea. It's not far from Port Waikato, where my friend Tony and I once went to have a look (from a distance) at the Weathertop location from the Fellowship of the Ring movie. Hopefully the weather's nice that day. I wouldn't mind grabbing some photos, as that's another part of the Auckland region that you'd rarely have any reason to pass through.

The Watchtower of Amon Suil

XTerra Race #2 At Hunua Ranges

Sunday I ran race 2 in the Auckland XTerra trail run series. This one was at Hunua Ranges regional park. Once again we had perfect weather for it! The morning started out quite foggy, but unfortunately I was running a bit late, so there was no time to stop for photos of the misty hilltops on the way in. :-( The shot below was taken with my little point-and-shoot by sticking my arm out the car window!

The course was amazing. Damn tough, (as they'd warned us). At one point we were climbing UP the Downhill Mountain Biking National Championship course.

Which reminds me: my running shoes have pretty much zero tread left on the soles. I think I may go for a pair of proper trail running shoes before the next race at the end of the month.

Despite the toughness of the course I'm quite pleased with my race. I ran 2:59:30, which is almost an hour slower than the last race at Woodhill, but felt like a good effort on the Hunua course.

Next race is at Riverhead, right in my backyard. I was hoping for a fast course, but the race organizers are predicting a mud-fest . . . That's fine by me too! :-)

New Zealand Music Month

May is New Zealand Music Month. Last year I put up this post with some of my favorite NZ music. I figured I'd do the same this year. So here in no particular order or chronology, is some of my favorite NZ music since the last post.


Evermore - Between the Lines


Minuit - Species II


Tiki Taane and Julia Deans - Our Favorite Target


Opshop - Maybe


Midnight Youth - All on Our Own


Bulletproof/Tiki Taane - Dark Times


Kora - Skankenstein - The video is kind of distracting, but I like the tune. These guys are from Kel's hometown of Whakatane.


And of course what NZ music collection would be complete without Flight of the Conchords. I had this song stuck in my head all day after I saw the episode:

Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky


I like these guys too, but for some reason they don't allow embedding of their YouTube video.
Nesian Mystik - Nesian 101

XTerra Trail Run Series: Race 1 (Woodhill Forest)

On Sunday I ran the long course (21.5km) in the first race of the Auckland XTerra Trail Run Series.

Despite the forecasts, it started out as an absolutely beautiful autumn day. In fact it was perfect to the point where I had to stop several times during the drive there along the Coatesville-Riverhead highway to take some photos. Fortunately I had plenty of time to spare so I stopped to grab a coffee and pastry at the apple orchard cafe just out of Kumeu as well.

The venue for the race was Woodhill Forest, best known as a mountain biking and motocross destination. The terrain was fairly flat sandy logging roads through red pine forest. It actually reminded me quite a lot of Chequamegon National Forest back in Wisconsin.

I'd decided in this race that I'd focus more on racing, rather than all the picture taking I did during the Superdune. At the start I lined up around the middle of the pack, and when the horn went off, I took off fairly aggressively. About 10 minutes in, I started feeling fairly run down. That isn't too unusual early on given my usual lack of warmup, but I was also a bit disheartened by the number of people passing me. I seemed to be losing quite a bit of ground in the field from my starting position. I was a bit bummed out by that until we hit the first water stop at 2.9 km. I glanced at my watch and saw that we'd come in quite a bit under 15:00. Doh! That wasn't too far off pace for my fastest half marathon. I eased back a bit and seemed to have settled into my place in the pack.

From there on I pretty much cruised along. The trail was nice and smooth, without any significant climbs, and quite good traction for all the sand. I hit the sign for 16km at about 1:24, so I had well over 30 minutes to run 5k and still come in under 2:00. That made me quite happy. So I picked up the pace a bit. I remember looking at my watch at about 1:47 and thinking: I've been running like clockwork, and the terrain's been the same, we can't have more than about 2km to go. Just then we hit the sign announcing "1km to go". Disturbingly, it was positioned right in front of a tangle of deadfalls. They turned out to be the gates of hell. ;-) From that point on it was a roller-coaster dune-slog. I had to laugh every time I staggered to the top of a sandy hill to see more sand as far as you could see. It took me damn near 20 minutes to cover that last "1km". I finished in 2:09:26.

Next race in early June is at Hunua Ranges. Rumour has it that the course is way tougher. I'll have to put in some hill work before then. Fortunately, I'm back at ASB starting next week, so I've got my lunchtime running partners back! :-)

After the race, I wandered around and took some photos of the beach at Woodhill. Typical west coast beach: mile after mile of beautiful sand, and not a soul in sight. I also stopped in at Muriwai beach on the way home. By then the weather had turned to crap, but it kind of suited the pounding surf. The fishermen and the kite surfers certainly didn't seem to mind.

Star Trek Rocks

In honor of the premier of the new Star Trek movie tonight, I thought I'd share this little Facebook exchange I had with my friend Kevin last week. It's Facebook, so read from the bottom up. This made my day:

In Facebook, I posted the link to the Wikipedia article on the episode, but I should have posted this link to the YouTube video that's the #1 listing in a search for "Worst Fight Scene Ever". You can also see those rocks in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, numerous music videos, and just about every low budget Sci-Fi T.V. show ever made. ;-)

Superdune Half Marathon 2009

On Sunday I ran the Superdune half marathon. I was excited to do this race as much for the location as anything. Bethells Beach is one of the west coast black sand beaches. I've seen lots of photos of it in books and postcards, so I was looking forward to seeing it myself and grabbing a few photos of my own.

Bethells Beach is a ways from Albany, but it didn't take as long to get there as I thought it would, no more than 45 minutes of the hour or so I'd planned on.   After parking and signing in, I had almost two hours to kill before the race start. I grabbed a cup of coffee from the van at the race HQ, picked up my camera, and headed down to the beach. The light was flat and grey, with a bit of mist, but I could see patches of sun now and then. Only a couple of my morning pictures turned out, but I could see that there was potential for later.

I wandered around for a bit, then headed back to HQ for the race briefing, and to watch the multisport race start.

The start of our race took us into the black sand dunes straight away (hence the name).

Around the other side of the dunes, we dropped into a shallow creek, and followed it along like a road. I always love these bits of an off-road run. It's like playing in the puddles on a stormy day  when you're a kid. It's not something you'd usually do if you just came out here to go tramping around outside of the race format.

After the creek run, we climbed up a large hill overlooking the beach. I won't post everything here, but there are a few more photos on Flickr. I'll probably add a few more to that set as I fix them up.

The course then dropped down off the hill and back onto the beach. We had one little channel crossing to do (about knee deep) to get back onto the main beach.

After the beach run we had a massive uphill climb followed by roller coaster ups and downs. I think the stats on the course were that the highest point was 230 meters or so, but the course as a whole has 750 meters of climbing. Yow! It was quite a slog on the uphills, and the red sticky clay that piled up on your shoes and accumulated every loose thing you stepped on didn't help. ;-)

The view from the top of all that was quite amazing. It always blows me away how far 20 kilometers is when you see it all laid out like this. In the photo below, the race start is about where you see the structures at center-right. The dunes are out of frame to the right. The first big climb is the dark green hill right in the center, with the course rejoining the beach on the far side. The beach run is obvious, and the red clay climb goes from there to the point where this photo was taken (which I think is just past 12-15k or so).

After the big climb, we dropped down through some pine forest, back to the dunes and the creek again. We started the first hill again, but this time around we cut out of it early and made a beeline back to the finish.

I'd finished near the tail end of the mens 21k field with a time of 2:33 (too much time messing around taking photos I think).   There were still plenty of multisport racers out there. I watched a bunch more people finish, then I grabbed my SLR and headed down to see how things were looking at the beach.

Despite my sore legs I made the hike down to the far end of the beach to check out the big sea cave and see what was around the big rocks at the end. On the way back the sun popped in and out of the mist, creating a rainbow over the beach. The combination of patches of blue sky and the white puffy clouds was quite amazing. I'm really bummed that none of my photos come close to doing it justice.

I'm not sure what the problem was. I shot with almost the same settings, lenses, and filter setup that I used for my Coromandel photos, but those turned out much better. I think maybe the UV and Polarizing filters on my small lens didn't work out well with the misty clouds. Unfortunately, due to an accident years ago involving a drop from some height and a rock, the threads of the UV filter are pretty much locked into my small lens. :-(

Anyway, here are my favorite few from that hike after the race. There's more on Flickr, and I'll add in whatever others I salvage in post processing as I get around to it.







I was also bummed to see that almost all the surfers were gone by the time I got done taking photos. That usually means that its either no longer fun or getting dangerous. Ah well, probably best that I wasn't too tempted to grab my boogie board. Another hour or two of kicking around in flippers probably would have been way too much for my worn out legs.

Another Photo in Wikipedia

This one's in the German Wikipedia article on the Tongariro River.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongariro_River

My Photo in Wikipedia

I noticed some unusual stat numbers on my Flickr photos the other day and discovered that one of my photos is in Wikipedia now.

I have three that have been pulled into the Wikimedia Commons, but this is the first one (that I know of) that's been put into an article in the English Wikipedia. It's a photo of a cruise ship docked in Tauranga Harbour used in the Port of Tauranga article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Tauranga

The Dual: Motutapu Rangitoto Traverse 2009 - Half Marathon

The Dual is now my all-time favorite running race! (Sorry Wild Turkey, you're just not the same without the canyoneering and creek swimming.) Short version is that I ran a 2:44 on quite a tough technical course, and had a great day out on the island.

Long version (with photos) follows:

---

I was up at O'Dark-Thirty to catch the ferry out to Motutapu. Weather was looking perfect and there was a nice sunrise going at Devonport Wharf. I'd arrived quite early, so I hit the cafe. There I just happened to run into my friend Derek. He was headed over to Auckland to sail in a regatta. He was on the yacht Thelma, racing around Rangitoto island but I only ended up seeing the regatta from quite a long ways away.

Note to self: Pain Au Chocolat + Large Coffee = excellent pre-race breakfast! :-)

It's about a 30 minute ride out to Motutapu, so I wandered around the boat taking some photos of the Auckland skyline on the way out. Auckland from that angle is mainly containers and cargo cranes, so nothing worth posting there. There were a couple nice views of Rangitoto on the way in. This shot gives a good idea of the scale of the volcano. The race course runs just around the peak.

Once we landed on Motutapu, I put my race gear together, stashed the rest, and had a wander around the race HQ. I ran into a few more friends from work while waiting for the start. Speaking of which, in this photo, the start of the course runs straight up that hill in the draw just to the left of the inflatable arch. :-(

The start of the race was quite packed. It was pretty much a solid mass of people walking up that first hill bit. Given the off-road course, I certainly wasn't planning on setting any PR's, so I just settled in and went with the flow. I managed to snap quite a few pictures through this stretch. In this one you can see Rangitoto out on the horizon. From where we are (about 2km into the course), we go over onto Rangitoto Island, straight up the hill, around the edge of the peak/crater, and back.

The first 8 k's or so were all mown grass truck trail through rolling pastures. The instant we crossed over onto Rangitoto island things changed dramatically. We were now running on a road of pulverized lava rock running through a field of not-so-pulverized lava rock. It was quite a long steady climb up to the shoulder of the peak.

Just after the highest point on the course, we dove into a bunch of lava rock singletrack through the bush. This stuff was extremely technical. People piled up a bit again as there was no way to pass. I was happy just cruising along, but my heartrate recovered quite a bit from the big climb at the pace we were going. Every now and then the trail would widen a bit and people would get a little crazy. I saw one guy take a tumble just ahead of me. He stuck his hands out to catch his fall and got absolutely shredded by the lava rock. I stopped to see what I could do, but he had some friends with him so they sent us along.

I got back to running thinking "Damn, I'm glad I know how to fall." About 5k later, the trail turned back into sort of a road. We were at about the 10k mark and I'd hardly been running, so I picked up the pace quite a lot. Sure enough, at some point I kicked a big tumbling hunk of lava rock and went down. I did a nice shoulder roll, so I took only a couple tiny scratches on my lead hand and a small tap on my elbow, but I must have come up with my weight on one knee because I ended up with a nice hunk of rocked stabbed into my leg just below the knee. I took a couple jogging steps and didn't feel any problems, so I stopped and pulled the rock bits out of my leg. There was a big bloody hole that I couldn't see the bottom of, but not that much was coming out, so I figured I'd be fine to keep going.

My knee felt quite bashed at first, but it warmed up in a minute or two. A kilometer or so later there was a water stop, I chucked a cup of water on the cut and had a look at it. I thought "Oooh, that's not good" but again, the bleeding was surprisingly light, and it didn't hurt to run on, so I thought I might as well keep going. It would probably take just as long to sit down and wait for an ATV evac, not to mention I'd be tying up the ATV that somebody else might seriously need. After that I didn't think about much of anything other than exactly where every footstep was going.

After quite a long stretch of lava rock singletrack segments, I was breathing a sigh of relief to be off Rangitoto and back in the rolling  pastures of Motutapu. I didn't even mind the massive gradual uphill. It was actually kind of fun passing up mountain bikers slogging along in their granny gears.

B.t.w. I love how you can see people strung out all along the horizon in this photo. Though it kinda sucks that they're all ahead of me . . . I suppose that's the price of an extremely careful 7 or 8 k's through the last of the lava rock.

This was my favorite photo of the day . . . and not just because I'm almost done with the race . . .

This was the view from just the other side of the signpost in the last picture. The last K was pretty much a dive bomb run to the beach. Over the last few k's I'd spotted my friends from work, so I'd been chasing them a bit. I didn't catch them, but they were still gathered up at the finish when I came through.

I drank my sports drink and ate a banana while I chatted with them for a bit, then decided I'd better go see the ambulance guys. They dribbled some sterile water on my leg and said I should probably visit an A&E to have them "whack a few stitches in it". Well yeah, no kidding. ;-)

Ah well, I'm not sure what I was expecting, probably best that they saved their sterile water for dehydration IV use, and no sense bandaging a dirty wound that's clotted up and stopped bleeding.

So I went down to the beach, jumped in the ocean and scrubbed out the wound myself with seawater. :-) I still really didn't like what I saw, but there wasn't anything more to be done about it in the field.

After that I hung out for the after race festivities: lamb burgers, beers, merit prizes, and watching the rest of the racers come in. Ferry's were coming in every half hour or so starting at 1:30 or so, but the queues were really long, so we sat around until about 3pm before we decided to go join the queue. At that point it was pretty clear that there were some logistical issues with the ferry schedule, but we all got off the island by about 5pm.

On the way home I stopped at a pharmacy and grabbed a bunch of supplies, including some steri-strips (3M adhesive stitches). It's been over 72 hours now, the steri-strips are holding nicely, and the leg wound is looking ok. Or at least better than the other minor injuries, which are being treated with my usual regimen of total neglect. So score one for the healing power of seawater. ;-)

Note: stuff to pack in a real first aid kit for Adventure Racing:

• Good squirt bottle with clean water.
• Green scrubby pads (still sealed)
• Liquid Antiseptic
• Antibiotic cream
• Big gauze pads
• Steri Strips
• Athletic/Duct Tape

But the bottom line is: despite another clumsy injury, it was a great day and a nice workout on an excellent course.

Here the NZ Herald write-up of the event:
Multisport: Scenic Dual attracts full field
And a promotional video from the Organizers (TotalSport.co.nz):
http://www.totalsport.co.nz/video.html



Technical note: I had tried a little experiment with my iPhone during the race.    I'd downloaded an app called RunKeeper that acts as a little GPS waypoint recorder.  Unfortunately, due to iPhone OS limitations, you can't use the hard screen lock while it's running, or it will stop recording. It has it's own soft lock, so at the race start, I started recording, locked it, and chucked it into the hip pocket on my hydro-pack. Somewhere around the halfway point in the race it seems that my gel-packs in that same pocket warmed up enough to start triggering the touch screen. They seem to have unlocked the screen, exited the app, made 4 phone calls to a 6-digit (fortunately nonexistent) number. They then proceeded to start a new text message and type lots of random keystrokes into it for over an hour. I'm very lucky that was never sent, that would have divided into hundreds of parts. As it was it drained the battery, and took 10 minutes to delete! I'll have to grab a little hard case for the iPhone before trying that again. :-)

Anyway, I mention that because I was hoping to have a map of the route here. Instead here's a plain Google maps view of the two islands. Crude route is Home Bay -> connection to Rangitoto -> Straight up the hill to the volcano's cone -> round the peak and down to Rangitoto wharf -> along the shore back to the Motutapu connection -> back across the pastures to Home Bay.

There's a detailed map on the website if you're really interested. There's some cool stuff on the islands, I wouldn't mind getting back out there sometime soon to check out the WWII fortifications, the volcanic crater at the very top, and the old lava tube caves.


View Larger Map

Beach Series Race 17 and Upcoming Races

It's been quite busy at work, so I rushed out the door at the last minute on Tuesday. I'd forgotten to check the tide during the day. When I arrived I saw the water right up to the loose sand at the top of the beach! Doh!

I thought "Ah well, I'm here now, might as well do it". So I proceeded to the registration area. When I got in there, I realized that I'd run out of race credits, having only purchased enough to do the majority of the main series. So I headed over to the Top-up table. There I discovered that I didn't have enough cash to top up. I was just about to bail when the woman at the table said "No problem, just bring the rest next week.". I agreed to that, so now I'm committed to running next week, rain or shine, hell or high water. Great . . . teach me to hang around at work. ;-)

Anyway, can't expect much out of the high tide course, I finished 16th, but most of the usual lead pack weren't there. It was a 24 minute slog through loose sand and broken seashells. But it was a nice late summer night for a beach run.

Tomorrow is The Dual 1/2 marathon on Rangitoto Island. With a nice 250m climb up the volcano. Should be fun, I've never been out there. ;-)

Following weekend is the Orewa Beach 1/2 Marathon. It's also my friend Staton's birthday, so this is just a social one (if I can still move at all after The Dual). :-)

Week	Time	Place	Notes
2	23:21	22nd	High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps.
3	20:56	28th	Low tide course - perfect weather.
4	22:52	28th	High tide course - good weather.
7	20:49	21st	Low tide course - hot.
8	22:23	23rd	Low tide course - out of shape.
10	23:23	30th	Low tide course - still losing fitness.
12	22:05	26th	Perfect weather, hard work.
13	22:30	21st	Perfect weather, some loose sand and splashy bits. Still feeling Sunday's run.
14	21:49	23rd	Perfect weather. Very low tide.
16	22:03	25th	Perfect weather. Very low tide.
17	24:21	16th	High tide course. Perfect weather.

No point in tracking splits this week as it's a totally different course.

Beach Series Race 16

Last night was the last official race in the Beach Series. That said, due to daylight savings time and good weather, they've decided to add two "bonus races" for the next two Tuesday nights. They're pretty much the same event, but they're done tracking points for the series standings. Speaking of which, I ended up ranked 4th (out of 45) in men 30-39 in the final standings for the series. I'm 16th in the male standings for the beach run (out of 185).

Last nights race went quite well. It was perfect conditions again: warm with very low tide. I was running quite late, so I didn't squeeze in any warmup. I still ran fairly well: 22:03. Slightly slower than last week, but I didn't push too hard.

Week	Time	Place	Notes
2	23:21	22nd	High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps.
3	20:56	28th	Low tide course - perfect weather.
4	22:52	28th	High tide course - good weather.
7	20:49	21st	Low tide course - hot.
8	22:23	23rd	Low tide course - out of shape.
10	23:23	30th	Low tide course - still losing fitness.
12	22:05	26th	Perfect weather, hard work.
13	22:30	21st	Perfect weather, some loose sand and splashy bits. Still feeling Sunday's run.
14	21:49	23rd	Perfect weather. Very low tide.
16	22:03	25th	Perfect weather. Very low tide.

Splits:

Leg	Last Week	This Week
Start to South End	4:07	4:01
South End to North End	5:29	5:40
North End to South End	5:41	5:43
South End to North End	5:25	5:32
North End to Finish	1:07	1:04

Flickr, Tumblr, and a Tumblr Badge Widget for Blogs

I've really been loving Tumblr lately. It's been making my photo publishing workflow a lot simpler.

Here's the typical process now:

1. Take a bunch of photos.
2. When I get home, pull out the memory card and import everything into Picasa.
3. When I get time, flip through the photos in Picasa. Delete crap ones, Star the good ones, tag others for repair or editing later.
4. Select the Starred photos in Picasa and hit the Picasa2Flickr button. This little guy is a huge win. It basically just chucks all the photo file names onto a command line for the Flickr Uploader. You can set titles, descriptions, and tags as a batch.

Now here's where Tumblr starts to come in handy. I've always been tagging some of my favorite photos with "BlogBadge", which causes them to be eligible for appearance in the random 10 photos that go in the Flickr badge in the right sidebar. That thing uses the Flickr API, a bit of script and a bit of CSS, but I've forgotten how I originally did it, so that's a whole other post for later.

Anyway, I configured Tumblr to subscribe to the RSS feed for "BlogBadge" tagged photos as well.
So Tumblr will pull in the photo, it's title, and description. I've then set up Facebook to pull the Tumblr feed. So that saves me the trouble of cross-posting photos to Facebook.

Now to save the trouble of posting tiny little "here's what I did last weekend and a couple of photos" posts to Blogger, I created a little badge widget for my blog sidebar.

Tumblr provides a basic script to pull badge HTML, but the images are full size.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://rengber.tumblr.com/js"></script>


I've whipped up a bit of CSS to cut down the image size, tweak the colors, and contain the Tumblr post text into a sidebar box. Just stick the following in your stylesheet, or in a style tag near the widget script.


.tumblr_photo
{
width: 110px;
height: auto;
float: right;
margin: 7px;
border: 2px black solid;
}

.tumblr_posts
{
margin-left: -50px;
}

.tumblr_post
{
font-size: x-small;
list-style-type: none;
width: 210px;
padding: 7px;
margin: 5px;
max-height:200px;
overflow: hidden;
border: thin black outset;
background-color:#78a;
}


So from a simple batch Flickr upload, I've now covered both my Blog and Facebook, and the photos are available via iPhone. Which brings me to the main reason I love Tumblr: their excellent iPhone app.

From the dashboard of the Tumblr app, I can post any photo from the iPhone, and using CoolIris or Flickr mobile, I can pull any Flickr photo into the iPhone. Which means that I can do simple photo updates easily on the bus ride to or from work every day. Much more pleasant than messing around in Blogger (which is quite painful from the iPhone).

Beach Series Race 14

I had a good race last night, but it probably had as much to do with the course, as anything. I was about 40 seconds faster than last week, though that's not saying much, the course was a mess last week, and I was out of breath at the start. Last night the tide was the lowest I'd seen, so the lines between the two ends were a lot closer to straight. Anyway this was my fastest post-holidays race, but still about 60 seconds slower than my fastest pre-holidays time. I suppose there's just no substite for running several times a week.

As I expected, I've moved in to 4th place in my age group for the series total points. I'm about 70 points behind the 3rd place guy, and about 50 ahead of the 5th. I've never beaten the guy above me, and we've both got 10 good races on the score sheet, so I think we're pretty much settled into our final ranking. Bummer, one of those Flight Centre travel vouchers would have been nice. ;-)

A couple interesting things were going on last night. Just as the race was winding up (luckily for the kayakers) a fairly large cruise ship was leaving the harbour and passing between Takapuna beach and Rangitoto Island. Just my luck, my camera batteries were dead when I went to grab a shot of it with all the kayaks in the foreground. Ah well, I'll repost one of the photos from the series site here when they go up. I'm guessing there'll be at least one shot that's pretty close to the one I wanted to take.

There was also a TV crew there filming something for Sky TV and TV One. I thought I heard them say something's airing on TV One on March 22nd. That's a Sunday, so it might be a profile of Rob Matthews a blind guy who did the swim last week, for the TV Show Attitude?

Not sure what the Sky TV thing would be, but there are a half dozen or so current Olympic team members who show up every week. Could be some background sort of footage for anything on any of them.

Week	Time	Place	Notes
2	23:21	22nd	High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps.
3	20:56	28th	Low tide course - perfect weather.
4	22:52	28th	High tide course - good weather.
7	20:49	21st	Low tide course - hot.
8	22:23	23rd	Low tide course - out of shape.
10	23:23	30th	Low tide course - still losing fitness.
12	22:05	26th	Perfect weather, hard work.
13	22:30	21st	Perfect weather, some loose sand and splashy bits. Still feeling Sunday's run.
14	21:49	23rd	Perfect weather. Very low tide.

Splits:

Leg	Last Week	This Week
Start to South End	4:04	4:07
South End to North End	5:50	5:29
North End to South End	5:48	5:41
South End to North End	5:42	5:25
North End to Finish	1:04	1:07

Not too much to say about the splits. I went out fast again, but I was well rested at the start this time, so I held the pace together this time. I don't recall feeling slack on that middle leg, so that may have been headwind, or it may have been that it's tougher to pick out the best line on that leg with the majority of the run field in your face on the first run back. Anyway, happy with the race, going to be damn tough to improve on this one next week. Need to get at least two good workouts in between now and Sunday.

Beach Series Race 13

This last week I actually did a bit of running. I did about 10k in our neighborhood, up the hills and around some of the back roads. It's a nice route, it passes some farms, paddocks and orchards, with nice views out towards the Waitakeres. I'll have to haul my little camera along one of these times. That was Sunday, I could still feel it a bit while warming up.

In any case, it was another perfect night for the beach series. I was feeling fast, but the course didn't quite cooperate. The tide was on it's way in, pushing the course lines up a bit from the optimal line, and putting the north end turnaround flag into a big wide pool about a foot deep (more so on the second lap).

So I pushed hard, but my time was about 20 seconds slower than last week. I probably would have been faster on the same conditions. Hard to tell, I also did a fairly hard warmup, and ended up coming in hot to line up at the start with just seconds to spare before the gun went off . . . oops.

There are 3 races left, the series tracks a point system though all 16 races. I've noticed now that I'm currently ranked 5th in Men 30-39. The top 3 in each age group win some nice travel vouchers. I don't think I can break into the top 3, they're way ahead of me, but I think I can take number 4. Still holding out for getting back to my pre-xmas times before it's all over. We'll see . . .

Week	Time	Place	Notes
2	23:21	22nd	High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps.
3	20:56	28th	Low tide course - perfect weather.
4	22:52	28th	High tide course - good weather.
7	20:49	21st	Low tide course - hot.
8	22:23	23rd	Low tide course - out of shape.
10	23:23	30th	Low tide course - still losing fitness.
12	22:05	26th	Perfect weather, hard work.
13	22:30	21st	Perfect weather, some loose sand and splashy bits. Still feeling Sunday's run.

Splits:

Leg	Last Week	This Week
Start to South End	4:23	4:04
South End to North End	5:29	5:50
North End to South End	5:34	5:48
South End to North End	5:37	5:42
North End to Finish	1:05	1:04

Hmm . . . now that I've entered the splits . . .it definitely looks like I went out too fast: This weeks splits compared to last weeks: (-19, +20, +14, +5, -1). Looks like out too fast and into oxygen debt, followed by a gradual return to a stable aerobic pace. Wouldn't matter if there were 5 or 10 more Ks to the race, but that's typical marathon behavior that I'm trying to get rid of. ;-) Need to run more anaerobic: go out fast and keep it up.

Beach Series Race 12

Last night was race 12 in the beach series.

Weather was pretty much perfect: warm, with a slight crosswind. Tide was about halfway up the beach. I think that ends up making the course slightly longer, but it's hard to tell by how much. You can always see the lines you need to run, and the waves push that line in a bit from straight, but the snakey line of fellow runners ahead of you is just as much of a distraction, if not more.

Anyway, I ran a 22:05, which is over a minute faster than last week. Not due to fitness, pretty much by will alone. I was sick of getting slower the last few weeks. Last nights time was the fastest since before xmas.

Week	Time	Place	Notes
2	23:21	22nd	High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps.
3	20:56	28th	Low tide course - perfect weather.
4	22:52	28th	High tide course - good weather.
7	20:49	21st	Low tide course - hot.
8	22:23	23rd	Low tide course - out of shape.
10	23:23	30th	Low tide course - still losing fitness.
12	22:05	26th	Perfect weather, hard work.

Splits:

Leg	Last Week	This Week
Start to South End	4:49	4:23
South End to North End	5:56	5:29
North End to South End	5:52	5:34
South End to North End	5:37	5:37
North End to Finish	1:13	1:05

Digital Inventory

Picking up an iPhone has made me take stock of all the applications and sites I use to ourganize myself and keep in touch. At this point, I should be able to do most of the miscellaneous organizing and reading I do on a computer from my iPhone.

Calendar: Google Calendar - synched with iPhone calendar app via Nuevasync.
Mail: Gmail - iPhone mail connects.
Tasks: Remember the Milk + free iPhone client.
Work Notes: Combination of TiddlyWiki and Evernote. I started on Evernote, switched to Google Notebook, and recently switched back. They have an excellent iPhone client app.

RSS Reader: Google Reader. Has an iphone optimized site. Also use Gazette offline reader for iPhone, it synch's with Google Reader subscriptions.

Workout and Run Logging: Shapelink. Has a mobile optimized site. Nice mapping interface to Google maps as well.

Links: Delicious primarily, though I still have stuff on Google Bookmarks.

Books: Shelfari for tracking and rating, and Safari Books Online for technical reading.

Social:
Social Hub: Facebook - all my social content feeds hit Facebook eventually. Facebook has a fantastic iphone client. I prefer it to the web interface! If I didn't have to type on that tiny little keyboard with my big fat fingers, it would be the only interface I'd use.
Photos: Flickr (though see below)
Status Updates: Twitter + Tweetie iPhone client. Though I find Twitter a bit limiting, see Microblogging below.
Blogging: Blogger (obviously). Blogger's a little too clunky for iPhone.
Micro/Mobile blogging: Tumblr. I like Tumblr a lot. I think I may start doing small and minor technical blog posts on Tumblr in preference to Blogger. Blogger's still great for larger posts requiring more layout and formatting, but for a single picture and a little blurb, or a small status report, error message screenshot and technical solution, Tumblr is nice. Their iPhone interface is excellent.

The Photo Problem

Picasa 3 is my camera import tool and the first catalog they go into. They get sorted, picked over, and edited. The best ones, or the ones I need for blog posts get uploaded to Flickr using the Picasa2Flickr plugin.

I'm still trying to figure out the best process from there. Photos that tell a story end up here on the blog in a post. But other snapshots don't necessarily warrant a blog post (say from the Lantern Festival last night).

Facebook wants photos to be uploaded to their photo library. That's OK now I suppose as Picasa has both Facebook and Flickr buttons to make that easier.

So far I've been importing my Flickr photostream RSS feed into Facebook, but that get's slightly annoying, there's not much control over how they're displayed, and I'm getting duplicates from the feeds from the MyFlickr Facebook app. I think the solution is to turn off the wall posting of the flickr stream item. I can subscribe Tumblr to a specific RSS feed from Flickr, and subscribe Facebook to Tumblr.