Boxing Day

I haven't really been up to a lot in December, besides moving back to my parents house between working and going back to school. I still am not done with that whole ordeal. I got as much back here as I could fit in a Corolla. Now I have to go back for a dresser, minifridge, collapsing table and several select items. Once that is done, I can get it cleaned up and turn in my key. Hopefully, there can be enough time to have some fun on the way back.

Christmas was fun. My brother never would have guessed that I got him a lump of coal. He's done prank gifts for me a few years for Birthdays, so I finally did one for him. His real present was an iPad cover. My most useful presents were a drill with a set of bits and a ceramic kitchen knife. Sweetness.

Happy Holidays to anyone who happens to stop by.

First post of December

I guess I've been a little busy since Thanksgiving with an upcoming move to a different city and wrapping up work before I go back to school. Before I get to projects, I haven't been running in a week or two due to some tendinitis I developed on the outside of my foot. I was a little over zealous while on a long run with my friend Tom. We ran about twelve miles at almost my half marathon race pace. Apparently twelve repeated 6:34 miles is not great training. But now I know I can be doing much faster interval workouts.

Also on the topic of running. I have my first full marathon coming up this spring. I challenged my old teammate to a half marathon. He said double it, so how could I back down from a challenge. This should be interesting. I have until may to prepare.

Now on to projects. I have finished my SNAP now. I am experimenting with a couple barrel options as well as a couple different varieties of Stefans. My computer is having some trouble recognizing my memory card at the moment, so I will have to post pictures later.

My set of plushies ended up turning into one plushie and now the planned recipient is my mom for Christmas. This is about the perfect way to learn a bit about sewing. Make something handmade for my mom. Since I'm a little new to this, it won't be so articulate yet, but who better to take your rough draft projects than mom. She's been excited about all your crumby seeming artwork since you were 3.  Love you mom.

Don't think I had mentioned anything about it here yet, but I finally got my linux computer working with my router. Felt like a noob for not checking for MAC filtering sooner, but I couldn't connect to my modem either. Regardless, fishy. At least that's over with.

I think my current challenge is to use up all my perishable food before I move. Yeah eating. What a whirlwind though. I have to be back home, 6 hr away by Saturday night so I can leave for a ski trip on Sunday. Lucky I can come back for some final clean up after Christmas.

I should really set a day of the week to do updates more regularly. I really should be here weekly, with the occasional bonus posts. Mice and men, I guess for now.

Thanksgiving Week Update

Last week was a little busy. I don't even know where it went really. I am nearly finished with my SNAP though. I need to reattach the pistol grip since the hot glue I used before was cracking under the stress of the recoil from firing. I have a couple barrels for it. One fires standard streamline darts. The other will be for the stefans I make once I find some appropriately sized felt pads or an alternative pad/weight combination.

I didn't get a shot off at any deer over hunting. One of them could have been a reasonable shot, but it was pretty close to a "road" I couldn't see very well and firearm safety kicked in over-zealously. My loss. At least there should be more chances to come.

I have started a project to make a few plushies. I was rather surprised to find that a couple girls I know had never heard of little stuffed animals of the sort were referred to as such. Having had trouble thinking of anything to get family for Christmas, I think the first one goes to my mom. Something handmade by me for her and a mother is the perfect person to give such a "prototype" to since she has so much practice from the rest of my life. It's surprisingly befitting, I think.

I feel like this suffice for now.

Hunting Season

It's hunting season opener this weekend. That means...family reunion! (effectively any way) This year we are gathering the first weekend (which is fairly common) and some portion of the 12 of us who actually carry firearms will gather to see what game might be had  from the land. So looking forward to more venison, despite the fact that I still have part of a venison steak in my freezer...

Any way, it should be exciting. Six hour drive northwest tonight before my dad and I drive another 45min to an hour to reach the old farm in enough time to post up before dawn. I think that is officially around 7:45 at this time of year, if memory serves correctly.

I can't really force myself to see a deer. That's kinda up to them. So instead, lets go for kills to shots ratio.

Photo Upload Challenge

I have been slacking on my posting for reasons focused on disdain for FB, but I bet my friends would really like to see the trove of treasures I have horded on my laptop. Therefore I challenge myself to upload 500 pictures to FB. Pretty sure I have that many lying around. If not, I guess I go on a night time photo scavenger hunt.

Happy November...hehe "loyal readers"

Here I thought 100 would actually be a lot. Had to come back and edit to 500.

Another Week, another Half Marathon

Well, I have another half marathon tomorrow. Shooting to be back around an hour thirty again. This one will be a little more fun since it is in costumes. I will be a race rabbit. (I am sorry to any of the non runners who do not get the joke). Any way, all I am really doing is wearing bunny ears and a home made cotton tail (made of cotton balls and a cloths pin) and I will wear a target on my back as though people are supposed to be gunning for me. Ha ha ...

Any way. I have a big, action packed weekend too. I will be leaving shortly to spend the night on a couch so I don't have to get up as early to get there on time. Then, after lunch, I will be going to a college cross country conference championship meet, probably still in my race rabbit costume. In the evening will be a costumed birthday party, where I will don the second, much creepier costume.

Sunday should include a house visit where I will live starting in January and a trip to a "haunted town" type tour with a college club I'm involved with. To be a pillar of safety or an extra creeper...hmm...We shall continue to ponder that. I bet it would be pretty funny to see a bunch of the HvZ crew at one of these places. (esp. if they brought nerf/socks).

Happy Halloween

Results of Homecoming Weekend

It comes as little surprise to me that I bombed the pictures challenge, but was astonished by the 5k results.  The race itself was 0.2 miles short, so it is not legitimately a 5k time, but my 16:11 pace for a 2.9 mile race means I averaged 5:34/mile.  With as good as i felt at the end, I have no reason to believe I could not have held that pace for another quarter mile for a roughly 17:15 5k. I would say this smashing success is well worth offsetting the minimal number of pictures taken.

Weekend Challenges Oct 14-16

For lack of input, I am once again unilaterally deciding my own challenges.

First is picture taking.
I often end up being notorious for having a camera and either not using it or hoarding away the photos I get on my hard drive.
That being said, the goal is to take 5 silly pictures with people at Homecoming. Take 5 serious pictures with other people at Homecoming. And (these can overlap with the previous 10) take pictures with 5 current students and 5 alumni. I don't think I need to worry about family, my mom does a good job of taking care of that. I could add however that at least 1 picture should be at the football game.


Second is running the Homecoming 5k
I have determined that my 5k pace should be very close to 18:40. This challenge will have completion tiers.
The first tier is run under 19 min (shouldn't be much of a problem, but you never know)
Second tier is to run under 18:50. (still pretty managable)
Third tier is to run under 18:45 (now a challenging goal, as my current PR is 18:43 if I recall correctly)
Fourth tier is to run under 18:40, leading to a new PR.
Ultra Level tier is to run under 18 min. (I don't think we have to worry much about this one. I don't see much reason to expect I can at this time. It is however a road mark for me running a sub 3 hr marathon)

Bit of a let down

Rather sporadically, I had decided to visit my school campus since I wasn't working over the weekend because I knew there was Humans vs Zombies going on this week + the Zombie pub crawl in the evening.

I arrived on campus to enjoy the fun to find the turn out for the mission was so low it did not get held. Really glad I payed for the 2 hr of parking to get there in time to figure out where this was going down. As a secondary turn ov events, the mission time was such that there was a considerable amount of time before the evening events, which I was only the least bit excited about because of the theme. Not getting a hold of any of my friends in the area, I decided to return home for the extra sleep I could really use.

Assistant coaching on the side of doing an internship is quite demanding, despite the fact that I still use time in the evenings to work on projects and watch movies/youtube videos. This lack of sleep thing couldn't be my fault though.

At least I get one more shot for the final mission tomorrow, as I am meeting my Mom for dinner, back in the cities, later that day. At least i will get plenty of sleep.

Challenge 5

Well, I have been contacted about a voluntary coaching position I have sought out. I will be helping coach high school boys cross country. The timing for this is a little unusual since I will be starting no less than 3 weeks into the season.  I foresee the potential for several mini-challenges, like learning everyone's names. This will end up being about two months of my life, so it conveniently fits quite well into the pattern of my adventure. Just waiting on a background check to be complete and to finish an online quiz required by the state and I can start.

Challenge accepted.

Challenge Requested 2

Not to sure where to go next. I need some ideas for new challenges I'm not already working on. Even if you're just a passer by, challenge me. I dare you.

On another note, eventually, I would like to run all the way to the next town and back, but I'm not sure when to attempt it. This coming weekend is available, but I have a race the following weekend. I'm not sure if it will be enough time to recover sufficiently to make a good showing. Most of October is very up in the air.

Challenge 4 expires

So I guess I failed this one. I had a whirlwind of an end of the week. Friday just disappeared on me. Saturday my long run occupied plenty of my day, along with additional working out. I also lost much of the evening to making monkey bread and 3 hr of driving to play Risk. 

I have some measurement issues to work out with my nerf homemade and some logistics to figure out concerning the smoker.  As a simple matter, I still did not touch the radio.

Challenge 4 Update

I presume my fourth challenge is going well.

I have not actually touched my radio project, but hopefully, that will simply be a matter of assembly.

The SNAP (homemade nerf gun) has made a significant progress in the respect of getting a barrel, since I found the local Ace Hardware, which had the desired brass tubing for the majority of the barrel. I intend to telescope, so I need to get the next size down from another local Ace. I still have to remeasure my plunger compression to correctly place the hole for my catch pin. My previous attempts were too far back. I also need to produce a handle and assemble the trigger mechanism.

The biggest disappointment could be my stovetop smoker. It would seem I did not look at enough of the plans I am modifying, as it did not totally occur to me I would be releasing a significant amount of smoke in my poorly ventilated apartment kitchen. I may have to be modifying my specifications to be a smoker that can be used without destroying a heating pad to make it. As far as construction goes, I have yet to cut the hole for the thermometer or mortar some of my pieces together. I also still need to get a cheap cast iron pan to use for smoldering the wood.

Where we go from here:

I still expect to finish my radio project and intend to get my SNAP assembled to the point where I only need to add the barrel. I still need to figure out how I will be mounting my brass tubing, since it is much smaller than the 1/4 inch threading of the adapter on the end of my pressure chamber. As for my smoker project, I am modifying the plan to be having the body of the apparatus finished, so I can focus on the other projects and still allow myself time for a long run on Saturday.

Challenge 4

Challenge 4: Finishing projects

I have a few projects lying around that I have been neglecting. In an effort to get them finished up, I am giving myself until next Saturday, the 10th of September to get them done.

Homemade Nerf Gun:
I have the pressure chamber mostly assembled, along with my plunger. I need to make the catch and trigger system and attach the adapter that will stop the plunger on the barrel end. I still need to find a barrel material that will fit my darts and/or find some foam backer rod to make my own.
I have a lead to find some places to try finding tube, but none of them are sure bets.
To consider this completed, I will need to be capable of dry-firing my gun, have a handle on it and have the trigger attached.
Frosting on the cake would be a working barrel for my intended darts.

Foxhole Radio:
I believe I have all the pieces for this. Completion will depend on if I can get it working well enough to hear static since I have not made a slider to adjust the frequency in this round. It is a first run trial.

Stove-top Smoker:
This is based on some of the smokers I have seen in instructables.com and I decided to modify mine to work with my stovetop instead of a reworked heating pad. To consider this completed, I will have to test it and either determine it is crap and in need of refinement or I must cook with it and make an instructable for it.

Challenge 2 Update

I totally forgot about my deadline for this challenge as I have considered it succeeded early. I have reached a level of functionality for this blog to be able to allow the proper level of interaction with visitors. It is a little bitter sweet, though, as I have not been posting updates as regularly as I had intended. At the very least, these should be weekly.

Since I have not gotten any votes for my next challenge, I shall unilaterally decide that it is to be finishing my DIY stovetop meat smoker project and my SNAP project (my first attempt at a homemade Nerf gun). These will be run in parallel with Challenge 3: Advertising. My next post is to lay out what should be considered success for Challenge 4 and the time frame.

Simplified Novice Training Plan

Given that the request was made by a fellow runner in the Ragnar Relay, I will assume at least a basic idea of athletic training exists. This plan is to refine that training, or even provide a stepping stone to  move on to more advanced plans yet. To gain an idea of whether this plan outline is for you, you should be able to maintain a ten minute mile pace for six miles.

As I will explain shortly, this will also mean you should be starting from being able to run about 30 miles per week for the seven day plan and 25 miles per week for the six day plan. The full plan will eventually require about two hours of moderate to hard training per day.

If you find this plan to not cover where you have already reached and require something more advanced, I would suggest finding a coach or doing some research yourself. Arthur Lydiard's book on running would be a good next step to start at. This plan is based both loosely and indirectly on his training plan, which is a seminal work on modern running philosophy. Most heavily, it is generalizing what my coaches had me doing in High School Track and College Cross Country and Track to train for running distance races.

First thing is to find a regular time when you can easily schedule your runs. This will help you keep track of when you are cheating the plan and provide some regularity to help you get through the workout.

Second, have a realistic goal to work for. This may be as simple as finishing a race of significant distance or improving on a previous time. This goal should have a date associated with it, such as the day a specific race is being run. While races are ultimately disruptive of short term training, they still have long term benefits if you have goals beyond running one race. At the very least, have set dates for time trials.

Third, try to find someone at about your level to run with. They will help keep you accountable and provide motivation to press on through the harder workouts.

The basic outline of the structure of a week is as follows (for the six training day plan, eliminate Day 2:
Day 1: Long Run
This should be about 1/5th of your week's mileage and should take about an hour at first. Thus for a 30 mile week, this should be six miles at ten min/mi pace. If you can run faster at an easy pace, you should be making an effort to be doing more distance in that hour. As you increase your weekly mileage, this should fluctuate between a 1 hr run and a 2 hr run. Once it takes 2 hr to meet 1/5th of your mileage, the rules change.
Mileage: 6+

Day 2: Medium Run
This should be a run that is about 30-50 minutes of vigorous running.  You should be breathing hard, but not raggedly. At this pace, you should be able to hold a broken conversation with another runner (another reason a partner is handy). Keeping with the minimum mileage, this should be about a 5 mile run for the 10 minute mile runner. Faster runners will naturally hit a longer distance, but this should not be under 4 miles on a normal week.This day will help step you down to the speed workout from your long run day, but can be rolled up in the long run day for a 6 day training week.
Mileage: 4-8


Day 3: Speed Workout
There are a few ways to go about speed workouts, but for the this one, a better choice is to use a Threshold, Long Interval (these will be a little more advanced), or Fartlek style workout. I will explain more about specific workouts later. At least a mile of this day's total should be warm-up/cool down. At least a half mile of each.
Mileage: 3-7

Day 4: Medium Run
Similar to Day 2, this day is to both increase mileage for the week and allow for some recovery after the speed workout. If you have trouble doing a similar run to day 2, you did your speed workout too hard and will have to adjust how hard you go in the next week. Active recovery will go much farther for training than a total rest day while this plan directly applies.
Mileage: 4-8

Day 5: Speed Workout
Again, this is another speed workout. The same types of training apply here as on Day 3, but this is a good time for shorter speed workouts as well. Intervals can get as short as 200m, but should not be shorter or all out since that will cost part of what the mileage is for and stunt your training, however the week of "The Big Race" that rule can be fudged a little for Tapering.
Mileage: 3-6

Day 6: Recovery day
This day is to emphasize recovering from your hard workouts from the rest of the week. It should be at an easy pace to maintain for a much longer distance, but slightly faster than the pace of the long run (once you have tuned your speed workouts). The emphasis of this day is Active Recovery.
Mileage: 3-5

Day 7: Hill Workout
While this will ideally be a run through hilly terrain and perhaps even trails, it can be supplimented with hill intervals, weight training, resistance training, or other speed workouts, but remember they are not a substitute for a good hill workout. They are patchwork to fill the gap. Any serious road race will have a few hills and you will not be as prepared for them from alternative workouts.
Please note that I will not be covering alternatives here that are not already part of other sections of this outline, as my experience and knowledge in these areas is lacking by comparison.
Mileage: 4-8

While it can be seen by the numbers that this plan can be dropped to a 27 mile training week, I advise against that as the smaller numbers are actually supposed to be tied with the harder speed workouts. The main emphasis on the training is for the mileage until around 40 miles a week is attained. From the ground up, this should take no less than 3 weeks to reach by following the idea that your weekly mileage should only increase by about 10% per week until around 60 miles a week. At that point, it is again my suggestion to seek more tailored training plans that are specific to your running style, target race distance, and running community (fellow trainees and coaches).

The Long Term Component
Over the course of about a month, you will notice that the shorter runs will become easier. If you are following the plan aggressively and increasing your mileage weekly, you should be running something like 35% farther per week. Don't worry if you have not increased that fast, it is quite demanding and more in line with training in season for running. If you still consider yourself to be a recreational runner rather than a competitive runner, you can be increasing your mileage every couple weeks instead.
As you approach your race deadline, you will increase your mileage to a point and then decrease it shortly before your race (Tapering). This will allow your body to recover and make more visible use of your training.  Depending on your time frame, you may want to be training through a race to get better results for a future race. In that case, simply treat the race day as a speed workout and include it in your expected mileage (this requires a little planning ahead).

Increasing Mileage
As I have already made mention, you should only be increasing your mileage gradually. This is to prevent injury. The 10% per week rule was the guideline from my college coach, since we were more free to track our own week, in the effort to make us more independent runners. As I have mentioned, this is a more aggressive rate of climb for those seeking to be competitive. On average, you should be increasing your mileage, but you should be hitting 10% on a cycle of some length. After 3 weeks/cycles, you should decrease your mileage to what it was at 1-2 weeks/cycles ago. This will both allow your body to recover a little, increase how much you can do in training, and decrease the likelihood of burning-out. At the competative level, many coaches will look at this climb in terms of half a year. For Cross Country and Track, this means the Summer/Cross_Country half and the Indoor/Outdoor Track half. The shortest I would advise would be 3 months on the competitive rate of increase to see useful results. Just keep in mind that the longer you let the cycles get, the slower you will see results, until such a point where you would not even notice them if they are there.

Since it is getting late and I have work tomorrow, I shall continue this in a second post, where I will cover
-Speed Workouts
-Tapering
-Injuries
-Getting Off Track
-Adding Mileage (as in where)

In Person Challenge

While I was at the Ragnar Relay, I was given a challenge in person as a request for a basic training framework. As I have started it offline in a notepad on my home laptop, I will be getting back to that this evening.  It should be up by tomorrow morning.

I will also be posting about my experience with the relay soon.

Ragnar Relay

Tomorrow, I face the start of the Ragnar Relay. What is that you ask?
It is a race series run through out the USA with each race being a relay over a couple hundred miles, on unprotected roads in the open countryside. Each of the 12 runners has three legs with varying distances anywhere from 3 miles to 9 miles. My race starts in Winona, MN and finishes in St Paul, MN. My team is split up between two vans. As it turns out, I will be in a van with five women...

Good ration, but sticky situation. Over twenty-four hours of probable girl-talk. That may turn out to be the REAL endurance challenge.

Nerdy Me

So I have a few friends that are really into Minecraft (and a few that are highly opposed to it). One of them decided it was sufficiently worth trying that he paid for my copy (so I could play online instead of the free single player account). At first I kind of just dinked around digging a really long tunnel and looking for stuff. This past weekend, he had me join him on a special server: Pandemonium.

Here's the scoop
The basics: normally you can break most blocks (the whole terrain is blocks of something and you can break all of them except the bedrock) on the surface by hand and you can then place them to build things. Monsters only spawn at night, in caves or unfortunately well shaded areas and burn in the day. When you die, you just click a button and you're back to playing, minus what you were carrying.

On this server: you start in a giant desert. Ok, lots of sand. Well, you can't actually pick up the sand because the server has a mod (modification for the less tech savvy) that makes many blocks not drop resources if they are not broken with tools. Even then, they don't always drop resources. So start the game and there is nothing to work with. Well, then there's the matter that some of the monsters stay around during the day without burning. And there's more of them than normal. In addition, they randomly spawn near you (which normally doesn't happen since they have to be outside a radius around you to spawn). To make matters worse, zombies now break many kinds of blocks to get at you.

My friend told me most players don't last more than a half hour without dying until they can get some kind of base set up. At least he told me that before hand. But if you die on this server, that's it for the night. You get a fifteen hour ban, since it's a hardcore server. In many cases this means restarting since you lose everything you had on you. I have heard that there is an area past the desert if you find the right dungeon to venture into.

Challenge 2-3 Progress

As for setting up my blog, I think that is well underway. I have completed the guidelines for challenging me and it is possible to vote for my next challenge to undertake.  I have edited my layout to the point where it is not simply text on a page.

On the other hand, I am kind of failing at gaining followers. At this point, only 5 people have even visited. I guess part of the problem could have to do with not doing any "advertizing." I am trying to avoid simply telling people I know about it since they are already interacting with me regularly. I need to find ways to leave a link here places...

Challenges Requested 1

In the interest of not just polling visitors on things I already want to do, I could use some challenges. If you are just passing through, leave a request anyway. It will mix things up a bit. For now, I will make a poll of things I already have in mind.

Challenge 2

So far I have been looking into some of the customization available through the default editor. Now, I think what I may need to do is just hammer out what I want to have available.

I need a brief description of what it is I'm doing here.
I ought to describe myself a little: make this a little more personal.
I need to write a terse, but description of what I am looking for regarding challenges.
I need a few challenges to stew over so I can do the next part...
Add the "best" recent challenges to a poll for the next cycle.
-I think this one depends on me doing the third item.

Wee2Mo

The Beginning

I was sitting in my room one night imagining how I could convince myself to more aggressively pursue self-improvement projects. (Since when is last night "one night?" It seemed funnier to leave) An idea struck me: get my friends and strangers to help me. How would I do that when most of them are hundreds of miles away? The Internet, duh. Where on the Internet? Facebook? Only my FB Friends would be even remotely likely to do anything with it...boring. Google+? Too new, it isn't heavily adopted enough yet and I would have to make a special circle for my followers. Twitter? I would need to get people to start following me first. Solution: a blog.

My initial thought had been to simply buy my own domain and build a website from the ground up. It could be the first challenge. Then I could have a bunch of really cool content, like a submission page to help format submissions, challenge archive, a "current standings" board, a forum, etc. That seemed like exactly the sort of thing I was having trouble getting done, but I put it on the back burner.

Today at work, it occurred to me to check if a similar thing had been done, since I had only checked in on the domain name I wanted. I had to tweek my search (since I had my project on the mind), but I found http://onemonthchallenge.com/ on Google. After reading his initial post, I discovered something to the effect of what I wanted to do was in Wired Magazine a few years ago now.

Not so original, but still worth while. Here it begins. I am accepting challenges of anything that would improve my life, be a manageable adventure, help me meet new people, who knows. The main thing is that I can reasonably accomplish most tasks in a time frame of about a week to two months. I will explain more about how I plan to accept challenges soon.

Challenge 1: Start the blog.
Complete

Challenge 2: Get the blog up and running
Run Time: 2 weeks
Deadline: August  22
In Progress

Challenge 3: Gather a following of >10 people
Run Time: 1 month
Deadline September 8th
Let the games begin.