fitness | super generic girl

December 5, 2012
by supergenericgirl 4 Comments

Running on the web

I post an awful lot of running-related stuff on my Facebook, often forgetting that my non-running friends and relatives might not actually give a crap about it.

Before I alienate them all and suddenly stop getting invited to birthday parties (and start missing out on free cake), I thought it’d be a good idea to link to those other sites here and then link to this post on Facebook, thus decreasing the number of running-related updates on my Facebook profile and creating the illusion that I actually do have a life beyond running (hahaha, fools).

One

The Badass of the Week website this week features one of the nicest badasses of all time – Cliff Young, a “toothless 61 year-old potato farmer from Beech Forest, Victoria, who’d lived in a one-room bark hut with six brother and sisters during the Great Depression and showed up to the starting line of the [Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon] race in overalls and rain boots”. We’re talking 875km, people.

So you think “whatever, old dude thought he’d have a go and then realised it wasn’t for him”. Wrong. Try “had a go at it, beat all elite athletes and smashed the record by two entire freaking days”. Head over to the Badass of the Week site for the whole story. It’s a great read, simultaneously inspiring and hilarious.

Two

Running naked (and I mean birthday-suit-type-of-naked, not “naked running” to refer to running without a tracking device or music, like some runners do) has been deemed legal in New Zealand. I’m all for personal freedom and all that stuff but I’m also hoping this doesn’t become a thing.

Three

The Hairpin nailed my usual half marathon training plan. Mine usually has more beer and less trips to Brazil but the rest is pretty much the same.

Four

The T-Rex Runner found and interviewed Thomas, the man in the “50, fat, diabetic, ahead of you” that has been doing the rounds on the internet. You can read all about it here.

Five

Holy muddy shoes, New Zealand has a new magazine dedicated to trail running! Can you tell I’m excited? I’d be happy even if the magazine was a little bit shit because, who cares, it’s about trail running! But not even! It’s really well written, super interesting and with a great design. It wins all around.

I got a copy with my subscription of Wilderness magazine (published by the same company) and headed online for the digital issue. The full digital version is available online for free (!!!) until December 24, by which time you’ll have to be smart enough to realise you really ought to fork out the mere NZ$30 for the yearly subscription.

Righto, that should keep you out of trouble for a while.

December 4, 2012
by supergenericgirl 6 Comments

That morning I ran from one side of the country to the other (well, sort of)

The face may say “I’m excited so let’s run” but the reality was more like “it’s cold so let’s run!”

A couple of months ago, I watched the video shot by Andrew Evans (National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad) of his run across Liechtenstein. Coincidentally, I watched it just days after I had driven across Liechtenstein (during an amazing European road trip I really should tell you more about one of these days) and had one of those I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that-myself moments. Liechtenstein is a tiny country and one of the few where someone like me can actually run the length of it in one go so I was a bit bummed about not having thought of that.

But never mind. On Sunday, S. and I sort of did that. Well, not really. Let me explain. New Zealand can get really narrow in some points. Conveniently enough, one of those points is right near where we live which means we got to run from one side of the country to the other, technically, in what was only a 16k run.

I made a sweet, sweet illustration in MS Paint to scientifically prove we ran from one side of the country to the other.

The Auckland Coast to Coast Walkway is an official walk established and maintained by the city council, that takes walkers (or, in our case, runners) from the Manukau Harbour (Onehunga) to the Waitemata Harbour (Viaduct), on the other side of the city (and the island). Along those 16k, whether you’re walking or running, you get a really good taste for what Auckland really is all about. Boring suburbs, yes, some of that. But also an amazing range of great parks and reserves, extinct volcanoes, historic buildings, etc.

Then realised the thick pink lines in that image covered evidence of water on both sides so used all my skills to create yet another masterpiece, this time zooming in on the map a bit more. SO MUCH TALENT.

The course itself is fairly well marked by blue signs with arrows (if you’re going from Onehunga to the Viaduct, which is the way we went) or yellow arrows if you choose to start from the Waitemata Harbour side. There were only two or three occasions when there wasn’t a sign telling us which way to turn so we sort of had to take a guess. Luckily, the signs were not far apart and, surprisingly, we never got lost along the way. The arrows also tell you where you should cross the streets but I’m not entirely sure you should take their advice every single time (some of them seemed to have been placed in random spots, away from traffic lights or crossings). Other than that, the route was really well chosen, leading us through reserves whenever there was one nearby, and up and down special places like One Tree Hill, Mount Eden and the Auckland Domain.

Not being great fans of routes that loop around and force us to see us the same things twice, we were pretty pleased with this run. There was always something nice to look at and 16k was an easy enough distance, only made slightly more difficult by the elevation of the terrain in certain areas (but that’s only a worry if you have enough will-power to run every single hill, which we don’t).

So there you have it. From one side of the country to the other. Another training run down, about a bazillion to go.

***

Not completely unrelated, there’s a guy who’s not cutting any corners and can actually claim to be running the length of the entire country, top to bottom, rather than across one of its narrowest parts. Dan Burgess is just about finished with his epic running adventure from Bluff (down the far South) to Cape Reinga (right at the very top). He is raising money to aid Parkinson’s UK and Cystic Fibrosis NZ and if you’d like to help his fundraising efforts, you can do so through here or here.

December 2, 2012
by supergenericgirl 12 Comments

A runner’s Christmas wishlist

Back in the day, I started running because I thought it’d be the cheapest possible way to exercise. All I needed was any pair of old shorts and an old tshirt, some sneakers (and, with the size of my shoe collection, I had a few to choose from already) and the willingness to get my butt out of the door. No membership fees, no monthly payments, no big expenses.

*pause so we can all stop laughing at how wrong I was*

Like anything else, if you get really into it (and one can say writing a blog almost solely dedicated to running qualifies as being “really into it”), it gets really expensive really quickly. At first, I think, came the dri-fit shirts. I got posh and decided running in cotton shirts was too gross. Then, with the first knee pain, came the doctor’s appointment (another $40) and the medical advice to buy proper running shoes. Hello, $300 receipt. Then, since I had the fancy shoes, I got a little more excited about taking them out. And so came the receipt for the first ever running event (Wharf to Wharf on Waiheke Island), which got me completely hooked onto crossing finish lines. Since then, I’ve been averaging about one official event per month. Some are fairly cheap, others do make me think I’ll have to resort to instant noodles for the rest of the month (mostly because some of these events are out of town and involve travel expenses). Fast forward a few months and I got hooked on trail running. This means mandatory equipment for races, in some cases. Hi, expensive hydration pack with all sorts of stuff inside.

Anyway, you get the point. This stuff’s not cheap. So I’m always on the look out for good deals on running-related stuff. I’ve got a list. I’m pretty sure it’s filled with stuff all runners want to have. So, if you have a runner in your Christmas gift list (or some extra money floating around that you might want to use to start the Super Generic Girl Running Fund), this is a good time to take notes.

1. Gu energy gels are the perfect stocking fillers a runner can ask for. At about $3 a pop, these little things don’t come cheap.

2. Garmin Forerunner 10. Or any Forerunner. Or, whatever, any GPS watch. I’ve been using the Nike+ watch (powered by TomTom) and we have sort of become best buddies.

3. Running shorts. Or any running apparel, as long as it’s cute. Oh and the right material. I suppose that’s important too.

4. Camelbak hydration pack. Especially useful for trail runs or long road runs, especially if you enter events and like avoiding the water stations.

5. Apple EarPods or any good headphones for runners.

6. My Cep compression socks are simultaneously my most expensive and my most amazing pair of socks. Don’t think a runner can have too many of these but, for the price, I think one pair is pretty much enough. Has to be.

7. Spi belt. I bought a hydration belt a couple of months ago and it sucked because there was no ideal way of adjusting it to my waist without it ending up jumping up and down while I ran. I heard these are quite good in that aspect. All I want is a way of not carrying my phone in my hand the whole time.

8. Running necklaces. Down here in Kiwiland, they aren’t too keen on giving out medals at running events. You’ll probably get a medal for a full marathon (and, even then, not all full marathons), but you are very unlikely to get one for anything below that. Some achievements, though, deserve to be celebrated with something long lasting. When we ran our 35k trail run, I headed to The Run Home on Etsy and got S. a customised necklace with her name and the distance and location of that race. Beats a medal, I think… but I still wish we’d gotten medals.

9. These running nutters sometimes decide that darkness isn’t a good enough excuse to stay home. I pack my head torch every time we head out for the trails, just in case. Also good for after work runs in Winter, when it’s pitch black by 6pm.

10. Tech gloves. Because surely I’m not the only one who checks Facebook while waiting for the pedestrian lights to turn green, amirite?

11. Road ID bracelet. If I happen to run my way to afterlife, there are a few things people need to know like: my name, my emergency contact details and that under no circumstances should my obituary refer to me as a “jogger”. Just the basic important stuff.

12. Running-related literature. I’ve got an Amazon wishlist the length of an ultramarathon. Lisa Tamati‘s Running to Extremes is just one of them, among a long list of practical marathon training guides. Basically, anything that’ll make a runner want to keep reading while, at the same time, put the book down and head out for a run.

November 29, 2012
by supergenericgirl 9 Comments

ADRA half marathon recap – the last minute PR

A sunrise. I don’t witness these things often but I’m told they happen every day and not just on race days.

YOU GUYS! I think I’ve got it. The secret to running a really good race can sometimes be a lot less to do with preparation, training and tapering and a lot more to do with just chilling the heck out and heading into it without much planning.

Well, maybe. Don’t listen to me, ok? My only doctorate is in kitty cuddles and even that one is just honorary. But the fact is that the experience from last weekend showed me exactly that and I’m going with empirical knowledge here. So let’s recap, shall we?

I headed over to the Auckland Domain on Saturday to walk with Kim Allan (an experience I will hopefully be posting about in the next few days, once I can come up with the right adjectives to describe her epic feat). I wasn’t the only one there. Kim had the support of lots of other people, runners and non-runners, and, for a few hours, we all became our own little group of friends. One of the guys I was talking to mentioned the ADRA half marathon that was going to be on the following day in Mission Bay. I had read about it but decided against it a couple of weeks before. However, as he started telling me more about how nice a course it was and how the weather looked like it’d be perfect for it, I started feeling the bug bite. Knowing I absolutely had to get out of the house for a long run on Sunday anyway, as part of my less than stellar marathon training, I figured having some extra motivation wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Living in Auckland sometimes makes you forget not everyone can run alongside views like this one. Volcanoes are awesome.

On paper, it wasn’t a brilliant idea but that’s never stopped me before. I’d run 4 times that week and ended up walking 16km that Saturday (and getting sunburnt in the process). Tapering was non-existent. The only thing I had time to do, as far as preparation for a race goes, was a pasta meal for dinner on Saturday night, just in case. I didn’t even know for sure whether I’d be able to run it. Registrations had closed online so my only chance was to drive there at OMG o’clock on Sunday morning and check if I could register on the day. So I inhaled my pasta, used the potential half marathon as an excuse to have a bucket load of ice cream and set my alarm for 5AM (when 5AM was only about 5 hours away).

I thought to myself that if the alarm went off and I didn’t feel up for it, there’d be plenty of other half marathons to run and I could still go for a long run later on in the day. But then 5AM came around and I jumped out of bed with the usual race-day excitement. I left home while it was still dark and crossed fingers that they’d still take my registration. Of course the title of this post alone tells you they did and, at 7AM, I had my bib pinned on my shirt and was lining up at the start line with a bunch of other runners. My kind of sunday morning!

The route followed Auckland’s waterfront from Mission Bay to St Heliers and back to the Port (where we looped around back to Mission Bay) and was similar to the Cathay Pacific half marathon I ran earlier this year. There were only a couple of hills at the start (Cliff Road and I have a love-hate relationship but only in the sense that I love to hate it) but most of the course was nice and flat. The stunning weather was a welcome gift too, especially since Auckland has this habit of giving us a good week only to then present us with a stupidly wet weekend.

There were some times when I felt the tiredness that comes with not tapering but I was feeling strong enough to know I could finish. When I got close to the 16km mark, I realised I had a chance to get a personal record on this one. I got a little too excited about it and considered my chances of a sub-2h but quickly dismissed it. As nice as the course was, my legs felt heavy and tired (handy tip: do not walk 16km in the sun the day before running 21km) and I was not doing my best at pacing myself either. I was just happy with the possibility of beating the 2:05 I had been sitting on since the Whenuapai half marathon back in April.

I swear not all photos of myself have me in running clothes soaked in sweat. No, really.

And I did beat it. 2:03:06 is not quite the sub-2h I keep chasing but I am now 2 minutes closer to it then I was before this last minute decision to run this race. It was also a pretty good little confidence boost for marathon training. I celebrated the best possible way, by having a nap, and now I’m preaching the benefits of not over-thinking (or even thinking) running events and just going for it on the day. Maybe there is some truth to Nike’s slogan after all.

November 22, 2012
by supergenericgirl 5 Comments

The importance of saying no

Cheesecake for lunch. Not the healthiest option but definitely one of the prettiest.

I started the week off on the right foot, running both of Monday and on Tuesday. No long runs, just a couple of post-work 5k, but enough to make me feel on top of things.

I was all on track for a three for three on Wednesday but then, instead, I got home from work and ate a mini Whittaker’s chocolate bar, nearly a whole bag of Coles pigs lollies, some salt & vinegar chips (I don’t even like salt & vinegar chips) and drank a glass of chocolate milk. Then after that, I went out to dinner with friends and tried on a few tapas, including chips and fried chicken, before moving to a different restaurant for Tiramisu. I don’t often report on my meals but this binge eating session was a little too crazy not to share, especially if you consider it was an alternative to running. Life – I’m doing it wrong.

Anyway, I digress. While out with my friends last night, one of them pointed out that I’m always agreeing to things and end up double and triple-booking myself and running out of time to do the things I actually really want to be doing (sometimes what I really want is to be out running, other times it’s simply to go home and play dead on the couch until the cat starts to worry). Basically, my friend worries that I’m a bit of a doormat and says I need to learn to say no. He’s right. Establishing priorities is not one of my strongest skills (unless you’re reading this because you want to hire me to help you establish priorities and you want to pay me quadruple figures in which case disregard what I just wrote, I’m awesome at it).

My marathon training plan has been sitting in the background waiting for me to have time for it. I’ve been squeezing in runs in between other commitments when, sometimes, I should be squeezing those other commitments in between runs. Running can’t become my number one priority (unless someone wants to pay all my bills for me), but from now until marathon day, it needs to be pretty damn close to that.

Training your body for something it is not yet ready to do is not something you can put off and then cram into a week or two at the last minute. I ran a shameful 7.5km last week. In the entire seven days of the week combined. I am now one week closer to that marathon and that is time I will not be able to recover.

So I’m sorry if I can’t make your breakfast/lunch/afternoon snack/dinner/drinks thingy. I’m sure it’ll be super lovely and I’ll totally miss out but I need to be out clocking up those kilometers, if I’m going to survive this thing in March. I may have to just catch the tail end of your meal (I’m very helpful with those few bites of dessert you couldn’t force yourself to finish) but if you are reading this, there’s a big chance you know how important this is and so you’ll understand.

But enough feeling sorry for myself. This morning, mainly driven by guilt over last night’s food antics, I got out of bed with 40 minutes to spare and decided to go for a run before work. I can’t explain to early risers how hard this is for me but suffice to say it’s only happened 3 or 4 times in the last couple of years.

Free fitness equipment along the path near home. Everyone’s excuses are now gone.

I ran my usual route close to home, with a couple of laps of the nearest reserve. The city council has recently installed some fitness equipment along the path which had the side benefit of making the park feel safer even after dark, with more people staying there to use the equipment after hours. I noticed last week during an evening run that I felt much safer running a couple of extra laps after sunset while people were still hanging around the area. So yay for tax money being put to good use.

So, to sum up, cheesecake is awesome, running in the morning won’t kill me, and I need to learn to sometimes say no and go for a run instead. Noted.

November 18, 2012
by supergenericgirl 4 Comments

How Lord of the Rings and VFX relate to marathon training (at least in my head)

Well, if we’re going to talk about numbers, this week was a massive catastrophe. Good thing we’re not going to talk about numbers then, or else I’d have to admit to you that I didn’t get anywhere close to the goals I had set up for myself. Among the reasons I didn’t run nearly as much as I should have this week I include: work commitments (those bills aren’t gonna pay themselves, apparently), meteorology (can’t control the weather, amirite?) and just overall laziness. You know, the usual. And yes, I am feeling stupidly guilty about it but guilt won’t really get me running any faster or longer so I’ll just harden up and get over it now.

I did put together a bit of a training plan with S. on Monday evening (while not running because of the rain) so that’s gotta count for something. I then flew to Wellington for work on Thursday and, on Friday afternoon, managed to drag myself to the path along the waterfront (part of the route of the half marathon I ran there back in June). It was a lovely, albeit fairly short, run, during which I only stopped a couple of times very briefly for the photos you see here (Instagram is my new excuse to take breaks during runs).

The conference that took me to Wellington ended on Saturday night with a gala dinner at Te Papa Museum (hands down my favourite museum in the country). They had a guest speaker come and give a bit of a speech after the awards ceremony (or was it before? I don’t know, it was in between wine). The speaker was Wayne Stables, a name that didn’t ring any bells to me but must make serious Lord of the Rings fans’ hormones go a little nutty. He’s the big visual effects guru at Weta Digital, Sir Peter Jackson’s film company.

It was during his talk to the conference guests that I realised two things:

1. I need to immediately take a weekend off to re-watch all Lord of the Rings (including the bits during which I fell asleep in my first and, so far only, attempt)

2. I’m so obsessed with running and marathon training I’ll find a link between that and anything else in life.

All the man did was stand there for a few minutes talking about his amazing work in movies such as Lord of the Rings, Tin Tin and Avatar. My brain related pretty much each one of his sentences to running. One of his key messages was that working with massive visual effects productions means you have a lot of really big overwhelming challenges – like, for example, creating all the vfx for the battle of Helm’s Deep in LOTR or the super long continuous shot that was the chase scene in Tin Tin. There are a million little details that have to come together to create those scenes. If you think of the whole scene as one big thing, you’ll be completely stumped and overwhelmed by all the details that need looking after (stuff we don’t even think of as we watch the movie, such as cloth motion or the most realistic way to get water falling). So the key, he says, is to break those big challenges into tiny little ones and look at each detail at a time, rather than having the whole big picture in mind.

D’ya get it? D’ya? D’ya? Don’t tell me I’m the only one who made an immediate correlation to training for a 42.2km long run (not to mention that the marathon is only part of a much larger goal to run a 75k trail run, but that’s a whole new blog post). It’s all about breaking the massive challenge into little ones. Simple and yet genius. I went back to my hotel room later on having run a grand total of zero kilometers that day but with the distinct sensation that sitting through that talk represented some sort of progression in my training.

Probably bullshit. I better get my ass on the road and run because, at this rate, special effects really are the only way I’m ever going to be seen crossing that finish line.

November 11, 2012
by supergenericgirl 8 Comments

Marathon training – week 1

It still feels a bit weird to talk about marathon training with the word ‘half’ preceding it.

It also feels a bit weird to talk about marathon training for this week when my average mileage was even lower than what I was doing back when I was training for the 35k trail. Still, every week from now until marathon day will be a training week and even if I waste it all on a giant caramel and cinnamon cake (which I may or may not have just done), you’ll get all the details until you’re so sick of it you contemplate disconnecting your internet at home so you don’t accidentally stumble upon this blog anymore.

But until you do that, I’ll be here to give you the exciting marathon training report, week by week, no matter how uneventful it actually is.

Like this first one. This week, I ran a grand total of 25k (divided in 2x 10k and 1x 5k sessions). Nope, nothing else. No gym visits, no other workout, unless slicing up the aforementioned giant caramel and cinnamon cake can be considered a workout. So there you go, weekly report done. Shameful, isn’t it?

Week 2 starts tomorrow and I decided it would be a good idea to set myself some goals for the week, to keep me on track:

– Run at least 42.2k in total. A marathon in a week shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. I’m flying down to Wellington on Thursday and I think that flat waterfront is going to help me with the mileage.

– Return to the gym. It’s been longer than I’m prepared to admit.

– Sit down with S. and draw up a proper training plan for both of us (okay, this is sort of cheating because we’ve already agreed to do this)

– Make at least one of the runs this week a morning one. Now I feel like I’m pushing my luck.

– Book an appointment with my GP to check on a recurring pain on my knee every time I run. If I’m going to do this, I better make sure I don’t completely destroy my poor bones in the process.

This should be enough to keep me out of trouble.

November 5, 2012
by supergenericgirl 9 Comments

42.2

Every time I run a half marathon, there’s a voice inside of me that wonders about a few important questions. Some common ones include “why did I add this song in my running playlist?”, “did I really think eating half a chocolate torte the night before the race was a good idea?” and, more importantly, “why am I not in bed like normal people?”

A few minutes after each half marathon, however, I wonder about different things. Lately, I’ve been finding myself questioning whether, with a little more training, I could push it further and keep going for a little while longer.

So it’s time to go a little further. More specifically, twice as far. Less than four months from now, I will be at the start line of my very first full marathon. It was all Stacey’s idea (and I’m putting this in writing here especially in case it all turns to custard). Yes, the same Stacey that had the 35k trail run idea. We had been talking about how exciting it’d be to enter a marathon in an exotic location in some faraway land. After one glass of wine too many, I even emailed the NZ-based travel agent responsible for getting kiwi runners into the Great Wall Marathon.

A couple of days later, Stacey emailed me saying she had found the marathon for us and added a link to the Mountain to Surf Marathon, in New Plymouth. Okay, so not really what I had in mind when we talked about exotic faraway locations (unless, of course, you’re outside New Zealand). But:

1. It’s not in Auckland. One of the things we had discussed was how hard it would be to run a full marathon along a place we know too well. We need the excitement that comes with running in a new location.

2. It involves a road trip. Or a flight. Whichever is the cheapest. Either way, exciting travel-related arrangements to be made.

3. It’s mostly downhill and flat. This could also very well turn out to be a bad thing, since downhills are so tough on the knees, but I definitely prefer them to steep uphills.

4. It starts in Mount Taranaki and ends right on the edge of the island by the Tasman Sea. So, beautiful scenery guaranteed.

5. Registration was only $70. Sadly though, there doesn’t seem to be a finisher’s medal. I might just have to add “marathoner” to my email signature and take that as my badge of honour since kiwis are clearly not into the whole medal deal. If they ask for my bib back at the end of the race, though, as it has happened before, I’ll lose my shit.

Mount Taranaki, a photo taken back in 2009, back when my hair was longer and my marathon dreams were non-existent.

We agreed to sign up for it on pay day but I didn’t trust myself not to chicken out before then and so went ahead and signed up straight away. From now on, the clock is ticking and it’s time to get training. According to the marathon training programme I downloaded from the event’s website, I’m already behind. Training will, of course, be an essential part of my life in the next four months. I’ll probably talk about it ~~a bit~~ all the freaking time so, dear friends, if there’s a holiday you’ve been meaning to take or any plans that involve not having contact with me, now is the time to put those into action.

It’s good to be back in training mode with a major goal in mind. Not to dismiss half marathons in the least (they’re still a challenge), but it was time to move on from those into something more, especially since I can’t bring myself to worry about speed so training to get faster never ends up happening.

Chocolate milk and a cinnamon cookie – an essential part of marathon training.

To prove I’m taking marathon training seriously, the day after signing up I headed to the newly opened Moustache Milk & Cookies bar in Auckland to inaugurate marathon training season with a cookie.

Just kidding. I started marathon training the day I signed up. With a chocolate doughnut. So you know I mean business.

November 2, 2012
by supergenericgirl 73 Comments

If you didn’t record it, did it really happen?

When the TomTom watch crashed right at the start of the Adidas Auckland Half Marathon last weekend, I panicked for a second or two before realising I had my iPod on me and could still track my run. Had I not taken it that day, though, my stress levels would have probably turned that run into a really bad one. And why, really? The course was gorgeous, I felt good the whole time, the day was beautiful. All of that is true but if I had not been able to add that run to my Nike+ profile, I would have been one unhappy runner (and an unhappy runner in a tutu is not a pretty image).

Now before you think I’m weird, the concept of the quantified self has been documented for some time now (since 2007, in fact). There are companies dedicated entirely to tracking devices capable of helping us cope with this newfound need to track our every movement. Last year, both the US and Europe even held Quantified Self conferences, the type of event that makes my nerdy hormones jump up and down with excitement. Obsessively tracking everything is now a thing. So no, I haven’t completely lost my mind. Compared to some, I’m actually mostly normal (stop laughing. No, seriously, stop it).

I don’t track my sleep patterns, or my food intake (well, sometimes), or my mood or the number of steps I take every day. I don’t track these mostly because I don’t currently own a device capable of tracking them all in a hassle-free way, like FitBit) but I’ve got all the symptoms of someone who would totally get addicted to one of those. The analog expression of my self-tracking needs is in my constant diary updates (I have religiously kept a Moleskine diary for years now). I’ve always used that diary to keep track of things like movies watched, books read, recipes tried, restaurants/cafes visited, or albums listened to.

More importantly, I track every single one of my runs. I know my stats well and, at times, analyse them to the point of exhaustion. I once turned around and ran back home after 400m because my iPod ran out of battery and couldn’t track the run. I know it sounds terribly lame but, in my head, if I can’t add that run to my total numbers, then what’s the point of even getting my clothes sweaty?

In a way, self-tracking helps me feel like I’m in control, especially during particularly stressful times. It ties in with my obsession for making lists (and lists of lists) and helps me feel organised. The time I trained for a 35k trail run was, so far, the height of my quantified self. On top of tracking a number of non-running related things (websites like Good Reads have helped simplify the process), I tracked my training runs, gym sessions, most of my meals and even my water and caffeine intake. Have I ever sounded more like a freak to you? Didn’t think so. But you know what? It helped. Mostly mentally, of course, although I’m sure tracking my progress also indirectly led me to make adjustments to my training and end up with better physical results. So, in the end, it’s as much about how much data you obsessively gather about yourself as it is about what you then do with all that information.

The good folk at Slimkicker have contacted a number of fitness bloggers, yours truly included, to try out their new device that will come out early next year (their iPhone app has been around for a while now). I had a look around the website and, as much as the feminist in me has a problem with their branding (slim does not equal fit, people!), I’m more than a little excited about trying out the gadget. It is one more in a pool of connected heath devices (or ‘health 2.0’ as some people call it) and even though I’m not big on counting calories (there just aren’t enough zeros to quantify some days), anything that gets people excited about getting healthier and fitter is good in my book.