Working on my Fitness!!

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Working on my Fitness!

I know it may come as a shock to some of you, but I am no athlete…

I have just entered week 7 of the couch to 5km running program.

[youtube http://youtu.be/5T0utQ-XWGY]

If this fitness thing all sounds a little familiar, well yes.

I have been using the fitbit ecosystem for over 12months now. First the fitbit Flex which the band died after 9 months and there were little to no replacements available at the the time, so I imported the fitbit force which still does not seem to be available in Australia widely.

Throughout this whole time I have also been using the Fitbit Aria Scale. Because I love data I can see how many steps, how much I weighed or what my body fat as a percentage was for every day of the last year.

For those of you about to smash me saying fitness and weightless are different, just like climate change deniers thinking weather and climate are the same… I was getting to that.

If you look purely at the numbers, I am barely meeting my daily 10000 step count, and I have never had a higher weight or body fat percentage… however, 4 weeks ago I could not complete 2 x 3 min jogs with a walk in between, last saturday I ran more than most of a 5km fun run, and today ran 4.2km non stop.

For any one saying, I can't run - try the program, it slowly steps you up. It is not about speed - I am sure there are snails overtaking me when I get my little grandpa shuffle happening, but I am constantly moving.

For the uber nerds out there, I use my Lifeproof Arm band with my Lifeproof phone case, with Runkeeper and my Pebble smart watch ) to keep track of my runs.

Although twice now, my iPhone 5 has died during a simple 30-35min run. Before you ask, it is not one of the iPhone 5 models that are eligible for battery replacements.

Go on.. try it.. I dare you, better yet… take a friend or friends, other people really help with pace.

Try it Here

There are also many many apps available for your phone for free.

Run run as fast as you can !!!

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This week had been a big week for me in the fitness / jogging side. Every night this week I have been out walking and jogging in Darwin - how could you not. The whether has been sublime. I usually run at night. Later the better. Averaging 6-8kms. The nights here don't drop below 22 degrees C.

My fitbit flex has really changed the way I view activity. It's right there on my wrist. It's blinking lights shaming me into activity. The more lights the more active you have been. It has 5 lights that break your goal into 5ths. My daily goal is currently 10,000 steps ( roughly 5kms) so each light is 2000 steps. The nature of my current role at work means that I am largely sedentary (desk bound) during the day - I would be lucky to pass 2000 steps at work. But by bed time I am usually clocking up between 12000 & 16000. My walking partner who can walk to work recently scored 24kms in a single day with only a normal day activity with a night walk.

Weight wise I am still hovering between 76-78kgs. But body fat as a percentage is dropping from 26% to as low as 24% this morning.

How far do you usually run per day?

Quantifying self - Fitness / life tracking

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I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 program about Life tracking ( they had a fancy title, Quantifying self). While listening I was thinking HOLY CRAP, thats me.. my whole life is recorded - whether pictorially through Facebook or Instagram, textually through here or tumblr and fitness wise I will go into below. I recently have been trying to shift some KGs after hitting my highest weight without much effort! (mid 80kgs)

As you are probably aware, I am a gadget man, the first item that grabbed my eye was the new Fitbit Flex.

Basically its a Bluetooth Enabled Pedometer which doubles as a sleep tracker.

The wrist based device 'gameifies' the process of basically moving your body. In default setting of 10000 steps as a goal per day the device shows one single light per 2000 steps, providing vibration feedback when the 10000 is reached. The crowning glory of the divide in my opinion is back end - the app tracking and recording.

More recently I have added the Aria - the wifi enabled scale that perfectly couples with the Flex and the Fitbit app, not just measuring KGs but also lean body mass.

For the record - am now in the 70kg range.

Fitbit Flex:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/viZsv2kMZeo]

Fitbit Aria:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Pap8wqbKqIM]

Adding runkeeper to my arsonal has really helped to, I am finding I am racing my own personal best minutes per KM rate.
Runkeeper
I have recently found a new service that claims to link / sync everything together - I am still testing this:
Sync Metrics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02mfzrw