Money Out of Thin Air

Vibram Sprint

I know I talk a big game about stickin'-it-to-the-man, but I'm still a capitalistic wimp in certain cockles of my soul. This week, I bought two pairs of running shoes-- 1) the Saucony Kinvaras, which I'm married to and 2) I finally caved in and bought the Vibam Five Fingers which I wanted as my foot-mistress. When I showed my wife (Department of Homeland Cuteness), she vetoed the Vibrams for being too ugly, so I returned them straight away. In my warped non-Euclidian universe, that "compromise" just saved me $90!! Pay attention, it gets better.

Saucony Kinvaras. Can you tell which is the new one?

You're probably wondering what I spent that "saved" $90 on (and how Susie's vetoes leave me with any clothes at all). Well, the answer is that I bought a Garmin GPS watch-- the Forerunner 210 to be exact.

Forerunner 210

I've had a GPS watch on my Christmahannakwanza wish list for a long time, but I've just never caved. What I really wanted was the Garmin 310xt since it has a 20 hour battery life and is water proof. Unfortunately, it also costs $350. Since the Forerunner 210 only costs $250, I just saved another $100!!

310xt

Before taking the watch out of the package, I was semi-suffering from buyers remorse, so I went on the Garmin website to explore their online community and all the cool data-logging features of their GPS watches-- lo and behold-- they just came out with the replacement for the 310xt, which I covet even more. It's called the 910xt and it's a bad mamma-jamma!!

910xt. Sweet sweetness!

You don't have to know non-Euclidian math to know that

910xt -210 = 700xt

So, I kind of just saved 700xt!!!!

I will probably return the Garmin watch this week. That'll put $250 back in my pocket. It just doens't make any sense for me to buy a runners watch, when I really want a triathlon watch. You know what they say, we don't buy drills because we want drills; we buy drills because we want holes. I don't really want the watch, but I want what the watch provides-- DATA, right?

If you're keeping track of my nonsensical economics, out of thin air this week, I saved

$90 + $100 + 700xt + $250 !!!

While I know this kind of math is crazy, my psychology fudge-factors it anyway. In a sense, I think I am telling myself that not buying the watch is providing me with some kind of extra "imaginary capital" to put more effort into training without all the gadgets and gizmos and technocracy.

As a matter of fact, I have quasi-factual anecdotes backing me up on this.
1) My friend Lee Ann qualified for Boston this year and attributes her breakthrough to finally training without her GPS watch. She said running with a constant number in her face took the fun out of running as a free-spirit.
2) The guy who sold me the Forerunner 210 today warned me that I had to be careful at first because the temptation to constantly look at the watch is dangerous for running. 
3) Barefoot running is free, so why buy shoes that are advertised as barefoot shoes?

Being my off-seaon, I haven't been pouring crazy hours and efforts into my workouts this month, but I did stay up way too late exercising my nerdiness this weekend. I re-built my excel spreadsheet that programs my training calendar for the year. I also rebuilt my training log. (Just email me if you'd like me to send these to you). The key difference to my planning and logging this year will be my new-found attention to heart rate intensity points as described by Sally Edwards in her book The Heart Rate Monitor Guidebook . I've always trained with a heart rate monitor, but never with the precision that really makes the critical difference.

Here's a quote from Karl Foster Ph.D, Professor of Exercise and Sport Science from Sally's book:

"I can almost accurately predict when an athlete, almost any athlete will break down. Here's how. I take their logbook, calculate their Heart Zones Training points and then I know their workload. Next I plot that value along with their racing performances, injuries, illness over a year period of time and can then determine quantitatively their individual workload threshold value. When they surpass their workload threshold for a relative period of time-- KABOOM, they are hurt, drained, destroyed, fried, trashed."

Calculating your Heart Zones Training Points is easy only if you're familiar with your own heart rate numbers and your own five heart rate zones.

Zone 1 (50%-60% of Max)

Zone 2 (60%-70% of Max)

Zone 3 (70%-90% of Max)

Zone 4 (80%-90% of Max)

Zone 5 (>90% of Max)

My max heart rate is around 190 beats per minute, but it really depends on the activity. When doing sprint intervals on the track, I've seen it hit 200, but I don't like to do that often.

Points = Zone Number x Minutes  

So, if you spend 10 minutes at Zone 1, that's 10 Points. If you spend 10 minutes at Zone 5, that's 50 Points. Add up all your minutes in all of your zones for the week and you get some number that may provide a healthy dose of adaptive stress to your system, or it just may overload it. Amateur athletes can handle about 2000 Points per week, while Olympic athletes handle as much 6000 Points per week. For many elite athletes, about 3000 Points is the norm.

I've never kept track of my Points, so I don't know where my limits were last year. I'm anxious to find out this coming season. To help keep me on track, I interviewed a coach who looks very promising and who I think may be able to better orchestrate the timing and amplitude of my peak this year. With all the money I saved this week, I'm one step closer in affording her. Hooray!

One [Chimney] at a Time

Next weak I'm headed to San Francisco and that reminds me-- Happy Birthdays-- to Emotiv and my father-in-law Ben!

My company, Emotiv, was actually born in San Francisco in October 2005, which means we're six years old. Holy smokers! Back then, I had a lot of confidence and excitement that I was starting a really cool and necessary business. I was a dude in a "truck" (sedan) out to save the planet. Success was destined to blow-in on the winds of booming real estate, skyrocketing energy prices, consumers' growing sensitivity about Mother Earth getting raped. That was my business plan, stripped of all the math, anyway. 

I envisioned forming deep relationships with my customers, such, that after six years of hand-holding, we would have retrofitted their houses into high-performance energy ass-kickers and would by now be cutting their last ties to the grid, selling our franchises by the dozens, and harvesting squash out back. But things haven't exactly gone according to plan. Emotiv is now solely doing business on the astral plane, fighting the forces of evil in non-conventional-profit sorts of ways, while I do similar energy gymnastics for Sol design + consulting. 

When I look back on it, I realize my biggest mistake was that I didn't do one...damn...thing...perfectly. I did many things adequately, many things 95%, many things I enjoyed, but too many that I didn't enjoy. So for now, Emotiv is just kinda haunting this One [blank] blogosphere with it's spirit until it finds a new materialization.

As a tribute to my wise, hilarious, sincere father-in-law, Ben, who celebrates his 70th birthday this month, this reflection's for you. You're the youngest 70 year old I've ever known. Thanks for teaching me about the "one thing".

One thing. Period!

This week's One Thing
Fixing my water leak with my brother Matt is integral to my own "one thing" this week.

This spring's record rainfall found its way into the house above the fireplace.

 "Maybe the flashing is loose at the chimney?" 

"Negatory. We've got bigger problems with the chimney's brick and cap."

How bad is it?

Well, the top six courses of brick are more like six courses of top soil and roots. Very moist. Very bad.  Let's just rebuild the chimney.


OK-- I'm not training for anything. I can be training Karate Kid style.

 

 It gets worse before it gets better.

Matti about to pour the new chimney cap.

Chimney finished-- the 8th wonder of the world.

This week has been uncharacteristically hot and dry, which means we haven't had a chance to see what this baby can do in a storm. I trimmed back the branches that were in danger of touching the house, which should also help future-proof our casa. Matti's been tuck-pointing the brick too over the past couple of days. What a talented guy! Now we just have to re-plaster the wall and ceiling above the fireplace and we should be home free. Oh wait!!!! This week's One Thing turned into two.

25 years is about 3 times the life expectancy of a water heater. 

Our water heater died. It was actually the ideal week for it to happen if there is such a thing. There is nothing worse than cold showers to stress your marriage. But we were able to go the whole week without losing our stride. Susie just showered at the gym and I just took cold showers after my evening runs.

Luckily I had done my homework on a model that I thought would be both a good temporary fix as well as a good segue into my solar water heating system that I have almost all the parts for. (I just need a large storage tank). 

Of course the new water heater is just a bit taller than the old. This made the flue slope downward, which is a dangerous situation. So, I had to open a new hole in the cement block wall and chimney. You really get in touch with your manhood in a deep way when you have to bash a hole in your house with you wife watching. 

Whatever the DIY books and the internet sites estimate as the amount of time it takes to complete a project, I normally just multiply that by pi to budget my time. But this project took 10 hours when it should have taken 30 minutes of work and 60 minutes of logistics and prep. Note to self-- when you go to the hardware store and they ask, "Would you like some help?" when you decode those hateful words, what they are really asking is, "Would you like a red herring and all the wrong pipe threadings?"