Registered to “Courir pour une fleur 2010”!

I finally registered myself to this competition!

The goal is not to compete but just to run with others in the roads reserved for the runners, which should be quite fun. The last time I was involved in such a competition is already more than 10 years ago!

This time, I will take the 10km run, hope to finish in less than 70 minutes.

4th Run, Sophia Antipolis

It was very busy yesterday, I forgot to remind other two colleagues for today’s run, as a result, I went running alone. Taking the usual track, which is already very familiar to me, I tried quite hard to not run too fast to finish all the way running. This is something very important but really difficult to do when running alone. Finally, I made a new personal 1km and 5km records but I feel a little tired now in the evening.

Here goes the result.

3rd Run, Antibes to Vallauris

Will you run tomorrow as it's going to rain? Wife asked me the question yesterday as according to the weather forecast, it should be a rainy day today. Well, I'm going to run in the rain, that was my answer. However it turned out to be a beautiful day today so I decided to go to a beautiful place by running. It happened to be the Vallauris village, it's name is quite beautiful, I think.

I set off with a pace about 6min/km which is quite comfortable, the road I took is quite a small road and it's very quiet and with very few cars. I kept the pace for quite a while, then the road starts to go up to the mountain, I tried to continue for about 1km then I have to stop because I started to feel hard to breath. Then I entered into the valley where Vallauris sits. I did not spend much time in the village and I turned back immediately. The way back is easier as it goes down all the way. With no difficulty, I finished the 10 km run in 70 minutes.

Here are the stats, it's a round trip run, so a little bit hard to read on the map. Especially, we can see the elevation shown in gray, in the small figure to the right of the map, there is very important elevation at the middle of the run and the pace became null there :(

Bonus! A picture I took at the summit, it's a beautiful view to the sea.

Next Sunday, it's the "Courir pour une fleur" - "Run for a flower" competition. I want to go but have to get a medical certification first. Good luck to me.

2nd Run, Sophia Antipolis

Wednesday, it's time for running!

It's more like a habit to run once in weekdays, at noon, with colleagues, just around the company in the mountain. At this moment, it's no longer hot as in August so it's the ideal time for sports. 

Here are the results.

As it's during the noon and we have to work (unfortunately) the afternoon, we did it short and pretty slow. With 7min/Km, it's rather a jogging than running and it's really enjoying because in I have more complex terrain, e.g. there are a lot of turns and you need to go up and down quite often which makes the running more fun than just on the road. 

What makes me happy is that the Nike+ GPS worked fairly well in the region even though it warned me that the 3G signal was weak at the begging, it's probably because I just went out of the building.

Oh yes, it's the Chinese Mid-Autumn's Festival today, wish everybody happy :D

1st Run, Test of Nike+ GPS

Just did a first test of Nike+ GPS, I'm quite happy with the result :)

It's a nice day to run. I went out with my iPhone in hand... eh, I have no place to put it. Although I just got a gift from my wife a new shirt specially designed for running and it even have a pocket at the left upper arm, unfortunately, it fits only for an iPod, not possible for an iPhone. Well, it's not a perfect solution to run with an iPhone in hand but that's not an excuse to not go running :D  Anyway, thanks to my wife for the wonderful shirt and the short, they are really comfortable, they can evacuate the sweat quite efficiently so that I cannot even feel it!  Here are they, T-Shirt Adidas Snova, Adidas Short, both ClimaCool technology.

Ok, back to the point, the first run with Nike+ GPS. Personally, the first advantage is that I'm able to know how long I ran. Before, I count by time and each time I try to run between 40 minutes to 1 hour. The distance varies as I may change my speed for each run. Now the stats will help me to better plan each run and see the progress.

What's amazing is that the application uploads the stats immediately and when I'm back home, I can go directly to the website where I find everything about the run.  Here are the results:

You may wonder why there are two stats, well, I made a mistake during the itinerary. I paused the application and stopped to see the firemen saving people out of a building. When I restarted running, I accidentally stopped it. So I have to start a new workout. Back to the result, it seems that the itinerary is quite precise, as for the distance and the speed, I have no comparison so I don't really know if they are precise or not but I think it's at least acceptable. The graph is better on the iPhone, there is a Pace button, so the itinerary is drawn with different colors showing your pace. :-) On the web, the pace page is not drawn on the map so you lose direct link between your pace and where this happened.

The application is quite friendly to use, just a few settings such as your weight, height, age and if you want to link it with your on-line account, you need to provide information to let the app login. Of course, you need to create an account at nikeplus.com first. During the run, there is not a lot of things to do, you just run and let the app run with you :D  The application is able to play music and say some advices during the run, but I don't really used these functions, I don't like to run with earphones.

In conclusion, I'm quite happy with the Nike+ GPS. OK, I wrote a lot and I'm tired now.

Get the most out of your runs

After running for about four years once or twice a week with my old shoes, a pair of Nike Air as a gift from my sister in law, I finally need a new pair. This time, my wife bought me a pair of Adidas RESPONSE CUSHION 18.

It's marked as miCoach compatible, which triggered my curiosity. After a quick internet search, I found out it's a free training facility. What interested me most is that you can download an iphone application that tracks your run, thanks to the GPS on the iPhone. Also, you can upload stats to you adidas.com online account. I used to run with my iPhone 3Gs, it's quite convenient to have music, time, map and camera all together. Now I can even record stats of my run, how exciting! However, when I tried to download it to my iPhone, I got an error that  it required a higher version of iOS to install... Oh, no, I don't want to update the iOS just for this single application.

However, just yesterday, I happened to know from Dialla's blog "Le Blog de Dialla", another similar personal coach facility, namely Nike+. It also provides a similar iPhone application.

Again, I need iOS 4 to install it. Enh, ok, when it comes a second time, it seems that I need to do it, so I spent one hour to upgrade my iPhone with iOS 4. Then I installed both miCoach and Nike+ GPS. After a quick study on both, I decided to try the Nike+ first. It seems that Nike+ supports more social connection functionalities such as finding/adding friends, share with facebook, etc. However, Nike+ GPS for iPhone is not free as the miCoach of Adidas. Well, it's not expensive yet, it costs less than two euros.


Cannot wait for the first stat!

The first post, the running starts.

Well, actually the running does not start today, it started four years ago, at 2006, when I moved to Paris for my study. At that time, I have lot of time but not so many friends, with nothing to do, I said to myself, OK, why not go running?

So it started like this and during four months I went out almost every Sunday afternoon, running on the streets. It turned out that Paris is a nice place for running, I have beautiful parks, I have large boulevard with trees on both sides, I have nice buildings and famous sites to see and I have the Seine river. Running is such a pleasure, especially on Sunday afternoon, there is almost no car on the street! It's hot during the summer, yes, very hot especially in 2006, but it lasted for only several weeks, and actually I liked to run in hot days. I went out running early afternoon with a bottle of 1.5L of water, and came back at usually about 6pm with the empty bottle.It's very special experience.

Later, I moved again, this time to Brest. It's a western city much smaller compared to Paris and where I have a beautiful seashore right behind the campus. Running here is a lot of fun too. The air is really fresh, there is a small trail in the forest where people often run, it is very comfortable when you step on the soft ground covered by leaves and at the same time with a beautiful view to the sea at one side.

I went back to Paris after 18 months at Brest, I continued running on the streets and parks in Paris. Then I came where I'm currently living, a small southern town of Antibes, still along the beach but this time it's the beach of Mediterranean Sea. Now I run regularly twice a week each between five to eight kilometers. Once during the weekdays in the mountain and the other at the weekend along the beach.

And now with this opening post, I will record everything related with my running life in this blog.