London Marathon 2014 Training: The Journey Begins – Week One

My journey actually began last year when I decided to start sorting out my in-balanced knees, which have always kept me from running more than a few miles before having to take some time off.  I sorted out some physio and mostly kept to the regular stretching, yoga and strengthening of my knees, legs and core.  I did fall off the wagon a number of months later though and sadly then didn’t manage to make it to the St Albans half marathon I’d signed up for.

Fast forward a year and I’m back.  Why? My wonderful wife signed me up for the 2014 London Marathon, the same race that she actually wanted to do and I would be there to support her in doing. I got in and she didn’t, it sucks, but due to her re-occurring Asthma and recently mended ex broken foot, it’s not a bad thing.  She will be back stronger than ever, but for now, she is my motivation for doing this.

I’ve been slowly building my fitness up over the summer months and my knees are less fragile than they were a year ago.  I’ve been doing some gentle running up to this week, but last Tuesday was the first day of my 17 week virgin money beginner london marathon plan.

Shattered but relieved to get to the end of week one intact.

Tuesday 17th Dec consisted of:

• 10min Walk
• 20min Easy Run
• 5min Walk

3.67 miles felt ok for the 1st day.  I’m aiming to finish the 16.2 miles of the london marathon in under 4 hours, so that’s just less than 7 miles per hour, so all good.

Thursday 19th Dec consisted of:

• 10min Walk
• 30min Easy Run
• 5min Walk

3.68miles but in the gym as I’ve been pretty rough of late, so I opted for not going for a rainy run in the cold.

Friday 20th Dec I headed to the gym for a stretching, core and weights work out which felt good, it’s essential that I get these sessions in to ensure that my knees stay as they are and improve as once the miles clock up I’ll soon start to feel the strain.

Sunday 22nd Dec I did my first weekend run to see where I’d got to, it consisted of some hills, riverside running and was pretty nasty due to my cough, which is thankfully starting to go.

• 5min Walk
• 30min Long Run
• 10min Easy Run
• 5min Walk

Does anyone know what how the Long Run differs from the Easy Run? Longer Strides? I managed to cover 6.12 miles in the 55mins. Tough but enjoyable.

For anyone that is interested, the gear I’m using is:

• Brooks Men’s Pure Flow 2 Running Shoes
• Adidas AdiViz Jacket
• Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS Enabled Mens Sports Watch with Heart Rate Monitor

Ok that’s it for now, catch you all in a weeks time. Keep on Running!

The 7k Great Gorilla Run in London – My Challenge, the necessary speedy recovery and THAT embarrassing video.

After a decision at the back end of 2011 to lose some weight, get fit and fast, I found out that actually I quite liked this whole running and cycling stuff far more than previously thought. So I thought I’d do some more of it…

Turns out that really going for it and losing a stone and a half in 6 months can take a bit too much off from areas where the extra weight had been supporting the knees.  Just after I signed up to run the 7k Great Gorilla Run and the 5k Zombie Evacuation.   Great!!

One physio session later and I know that I have a muscle imbalance around my knees which will need some fairly constant special exercises over the next few months.  It’s working, but it’s taking some time and the occasional let down of a session can be annoying.  So….now that’s working, on with the running and the charity fundraising.

So what’s the 7k Great Gorilla Run?

London’s best all-costume charity fun run – 100’s of people, all dressed as gorillas and going ape for a day on 22nd September 2012.  Since the first Great Gorilla Run in 2003, thousands of people have donned their gorilla suits and run, jogged or walked the 7km City and Bank side fun run route.   Take in sights such as Tower Bridge, The River Thames and The Tate Modern.

What’s the Charity?

Now in it’s 20th year, The Gorilla Organization works internationally to save the world’s last remaining gorillas in the wild from extinction by funding grass-roots projects run by local African partners aimed at tackling the very real threats to the gorillas’ long term survival.

The Sponsorship Raising Video

On the hottest day of the year so far, I along with my colleague Michael Breeze, as part of our Interactive Ideas Gorilla Marketing Team met up in a local kids playground and park in Ware, Hertfordshire so I could film and put together a video to help raise the minimum £400 needed for the charity…..and here it is.

Please do watch, laugh and then please donate anything you can to our sponsorship page: http://bit.ly/Qo371R

A band named Sparrow

As a 30 something who has always been into my music…and by music I mean music played by people who write songs, play instruments and perform live.  I’ve always gone to festivals, Glastonbury, Big Chill, Offset, The Great Escape, Reading, even V! (once when Radiohead headlined supported by Beck, this being the main reasons for what I now see as a less impressive festival from the hundreds every year).  However I have certainly been to a lot less of late, citing a few reasons, I listen less to new music, money is tighter and London where most bands visit more often on tours is a little further away.  These are clearly factors that bother some in their teens/twenties pre-mortgage, increasingly demanding day job etc, but I’d probably go to a hell of a lot more if….the bands were half as talented, personal with their fan base and sounded as live and cared as much about their music as Sparrow do and did when they played on Friday at The Enterprise in Camden.

This is not what I’d call a good photo of Sparrow, iPhone usage at gigs not advised.

Sparrow played through about 40mins of amazing music from their first album ‘Playtime’ including from what I recall including ‘All the things you were hoping for‘ ‘Secret‘ ‘Everyone leaves’ one of my personal favourites ‘Stuff‘ and a bunch of new songs from their new ‘The Rose Garden E.P’ and their forthcoming album ‘However did the wolf get in’ which comes out on the Numbskull record label on May 2012 of this year and available from The Sparrow site and I’m sure Amazon.co.uk where their previous album Playtime is available in Physical and Digital versions and well as being available on iTunes.

If had to point to musical references I’d say think Radiohead, Elbow and Eels (great Eels cover on their ‘The Rose Garden E.P’).  However they shouldn’t be pinned down to those references and they really do weave their own magical musical path.

I highly recommend, check the above links for their youtube songs, and I’ll leave you with a video of the final song they played from their BBC Introducing Stage performance at last year’s Glastonbury and do expect there to be many more similarly great moments for Sparrow.

Here’s Secret from their BBC Introducing Glastonbury set:

52% of consumers want more information before buying a product online, why?

Technology Distributor Interactive Ideas have released the first of series of four Free Best Practice Guides specifically for Retail Brands that are looking to grow their online sales.

Content is the Sales King was released in February and takes a close look at:

• How web COPY can make the difference in converting to the buy button
• The effectiveness of simple advertising banners
• Why 90% of consumer traffic on the internet will be video within 3 years
• How to boost your products desirability by adding images

To register for the download of “Content is the Sales King” and all future best practice guides visit: www.onlineretaildistributor.co.uk

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Rock Of Ages Finally Looks Like It Will Rock on Film

Finally a film of a musical that looks like not being pretty awful. Ok so not the most positive of starts to a blog I’m sure you’ll think. But to me that’s a great thing! I think maybe my world of musicals has been tarnished by a long list of pretty awful looking west end shows that have been jumping from film to theater and theater to film and a never ending loop of celebrity filled nonsense.

But, Rock of Ages is now looking a great prospect for a film, with a pretty good cast, topped by Mr Tom Cruise, who I have learned to appreciate over the years through his early days in Top Gun, Cocktail, Days of Thunder, Rain Man, Colour of Money, Born on the Fourth of July, Legend even! Through to his middle period of deeper films in Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Magnolia, Last Samurai and a couple of comedies where his straight role in it often steals the limelight as its played so well.

Tropic Thunder being my favourite of those…

Alongside the Mission Impossible movies which have got better and better…anyway away from the Tom Cruise thing…starting to sound obsessive.

Bit of background about Rock of Ages if you were not aware, it was originally a book by Chris D’Arienzo, built around classic rock hits from the 1980s, especially from the famous glam metal bands of the decade. The musical features songs from Styx, Journey, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Steve Perry, Poison and Asia, among other well-known rock bands.

The film features a good line up and I’ll be making the rarer these days trip to the Cinema for this one.

• Drew Boley Diego Boneta
• Sherrie Christian Julianne Hough
• Lonny Barlett Russell Brand
• Stacee Jaxx Tom Cruise
• Dennis Dupree Alec Baldwin
• Justice Charlier Mary J. Blige
• Stacee Jaxx’s manager Paul Giamatti
• Mayor Mike Whitmore Bryan Cranston
• Patricia Whitmore Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Constance Stack Malin Åkerman

Rock of Ages is pencilled in for a UK and USA Release date of  15th June 2012

Trailer below, and the music from the stage show is available on Amazon UK and can be found via this link: http://amzn.to/xdR09S

My 2012 Health and Fitness Resolution

Ok so most people start a new years resolution in January, I decided to kick mine off just before Christmas, but seeing mine was healthy eating, drinking less and exercising more, I wanted to get off to a bit of head start rather than pile on the extra weight over Christmas and have more to work off.

I have been a member of Nuffield Health Centre in Hertford since September 2011 but not really gone more than a couple of times a week, and due to a pretty heavy work commitment which usually goes on until 6:30-7 most nights I prefer to start at 6:30am and be on my way to work for 7:45 which usually gives me about 45 mins in there, 15mins over the recommended daily amount, perfect!

Since mid December I’ve upped my routine to 5/6 days a week with my fiance (increased status of greatness since New Years, high fives all round). I feel better than ever before, plus five-a-side football with work once a week and I have just put myself forward for both a 22 mile river boat race in September and a charity boxing match in May so I feel this is all going well. (I’ve never boxed before so expecting to be knocked out in the first round but at least I’ll be even healthier after the 20 weeks of training I’ll get as part of that on top of my current training.

Last night I had my Health MOT which included blood tests for all the usual..so I’ll open up the stats for all to see at this stage and give you all the low down in 3 months time at my next Health check.

Height: 181cm (5ft 11 inches)

Weight: 81kg (12 stone 11 pounds)

BMI: 24.7 I fall into the low end of the healthy weight, close to the border of slightly overweight category.

Systolic Blood Pressure: 128 mmHg – Centre of a normal level

Diastolic Blood Pressure: 74 mmHg – Bottom end of a good level

Aerobic Fitness V02: Max 49ml/kg/min – Top end of good level

Resting Heart Rate: 65bpm – Centre of normal level

Total Cholesterol: 4.44 mmol/L A good level

Blood Glucose: 4.6 mmol/L – A good level

Overall Health Score: 80

So basically I’m doing ok and 80 puts me into the category of the top 20% of the UK population of men aged between 30 and 39. If i get to 86 in 3 months I reach the top 10% so that is my aim, to get as close to that as possible.

On the subject I thought I’d open this up for a Poll.

Is winter on the way?

With the temp dropping, it looks like we are heading for something similar to last year……its all well and good until you try to drive, walk or even stand on it!

An early insight into 1 of the Top 3 “Essential Gaming Hardware” consoles for 2012

With the news just out that Europe’s leading video game industry magazine, MCV has placed the GameGadget in their Top 3 “Essential Gaming Hardware” guide for 2012, we ask, “What is the GameGadget?

The GameGadget has been pitched as the ‘play everything’ retro gaming device described as an “ipod for games” where by gamers will be able to pay for, download and play a huge catalogue of games across an unlimited number of platforms on just one device, alongside having the possibility to allow game developers to create new games for the device without the limitations and high premium costs that have been previously reported exist with the current consoles on the market. Sounds like a dream come true doesn’t it?

The GameGadget 1.0. has been built alongside a new software service (GameGadgetGames), http://www.gamegadgetgames.com/ which offers Gamers, Game Developers and Game Publishers, unrivalled choice and flexibility in how they play, create and sell games.

Check out the teaser YouTube video below for a closer look

Open Source Unleashed Once Again

Consoles are no stranger for the Linux operating system, but its use here has been far from hidden, reading the press release is has been stated that:

“GameGadget 1.0 uses a Linux based Operating System which has been highly optimized for handheld consoles. This allows programmers to develop content just like they would do for any other Linux based system”.

“Popular game development libraries such as SDL and DirectFB are fully compatible, creating a cross compiling environment. GameGadget provides all documentation, start-up guides for developers, lists of available libraries and specific platform notes”.

We won’t have long to wait until the product hits the market, and I’ll be one of the first in the queue to get my hands on one of these as the press release states that the GameGadget will be available exclusively from www.gamegadget.net for £99.99 from its launch in Q1 2012. I can also see that the Game Gadget already features on Amazon UK, but unavailable currently, but worth a look: http://amzn.to/wm8QQ9

Prometheus…brought back some fond memories

The ever building excitement over the forthcoming Prometheus movie led me to take a look through my European Road Trip photos for the ones from the HR Giger Museum and Bar in Gruyères, Switzerland which was an incredible experience and took me back the excitement I felt when watching the movies all those years ago.  Just in case you somehow missed the first trailer from the Prometheus movie, here it is: http://bit.ly/ym6nK6 . I’ll upload the rest of the photos from the Museum and the European Road Trip in general to my Flikr account over the next couple of days.

Motor Boating Emptiness

This felt like it could have been one of the most eerily quiet places in the world, that day in Geneva.  According to Wikipedia, its the second-most-populous city in Switzerland (after Zurich) but it certainly didn’t feel like it, with the haze and mid teen temperature and not a person in sight.