Belgian championships half marathon 2011

So... today was all about running a half marathon.  Tine, Jenne, me and our Croozer Kid for 2 decided to take our bikes on the train and head for Diksmuide where the championship took place.  For Jenne, it was his first train-trip.  Although from the following picture one would think that he felt quite uncomfortable, he actually did enjoy the train very much!

Tine was the photographer of the day and cruised around with the Croozer to shoot some pictures somewhere half-race.  Jenne controlled the whole thing and gave instructions to his mom and other marathon-marshals:

 

As for the race... i finally figured out one should train for half or full marathons!  Having not trained too much the last weeks/months, I've put my goal at 1:30:00... which later turned out to be quite wishful thinking...  The start was OK, as the following pictures proves:

Quite fast I was 250m ahead of my Garmin Virtual partner (which was setup to run 14 km/h).  Somehow, the first kilometers I had the feeling that I was going to be able to keep up this tempo... but wait... this is a half-marathon, isn't it?  And one should not underestimate half marathons!!!  All went fine up until 10km... from then on my 250m started to shrink... after 14kms I was zero meters in front of my Virtual Partner and from then on, things went bad... very bad... See my Garmin tracklog for the proof!  This picture was taken somewhere between 14km and 15km, a very miserable moment:

I got behind my Virtual Partner very quickly.  I ran my first wishful thinking kilometer in 3m51s, and my worst kilometer in 6m59s... notice the difference of 3m08s!  Before the race, i had in mind to run the whole thing... I was definitely going to run the whole 21km!  But hey... this is a half-marathon, isn't it?  And one should not underestimate half marathons!!!  Somewhere around 17km, i was half-dead... and my body told me that I had to walk otherwise I would probably crash... so I walked... shame on me!

I finally finished the race in 1:38:34 (time from my Garmin), which is a modest 13 km/h.  I think I now know that training is the key to succes... luckily, it was fun after all and Jenne was so proud of his father's gold medal!

Finally, I am on Google+ !!!  Watch my profile!

Smooth, smoother... smoothest!

After a visit from Mr. Gardener, the conclusion was clear: we had to level our garden even more!  So that was what we did today.  I hope Mr. Gardener will be happy with the new result:

Note that we didn't have a spirit level.  The only tools we used were:

• a spade and a shovel
• a garden and leaf rake
• a rope and some wooden sticks

 Life can be so simple sometimes...

Open Source alternatives for Adobe Dreamweaver

Quite recently, Tine got interested in digital photography and now she is looking for a way to put her nice pictures online in a nice personal website.  The question remains: what software-tool should she use to make this website?  From what I asked her, I have the impression that she will only need a static website with some photo gallery, so I'm looking for good Open Source alternatives to Adobe Dreamweaver.  I'll try to summarize my findings in this blog post.

• KompoZer 
• Aptana Studio

Real-time GPS tracking

For a while now, I've been looking for good real-time GPS tracking options that work with my Android phone.  I want to use this technology for the following things:

• When I'm away from home, to let my family know where I am.
• If I go running or hiking, to let others follow me online and in real-time.
• For fun and safety while paragliding, also in real-time.

Some criteria that are important to me:

• low battery consumption
• possibility to view everything live in Google Earth
• preferably allow customization of the time between two track points
• ease of use

These are the current solutions that I came across, together with their advantages and disadvantages:

1. Google Latitude: advantage is that it falls back on mobile phone or WiFi networks for the localization if GPS is not available.  Battery consumption seems also ok.
2. Gaggle with LiveTrack24: seems nice for paragliding, but looks a bit overkill for simple running or hiking.  Rumors indicate that it has a high battery consumption...
3. InstaMapper: haven't tested this one yet, but might be an option for running...
4. WiaTrack for GPS-Trace Orange: haven't tested this one yet.

If you have other (preferably Free and Open Source) suggestions, please let me know!

Kortrijk Loopt 2011

Yesterday, a lot of recreational runners gathered at sports centre De Lange Munte to participate in Kortrijk Loopt, a quite commercial running event here in my city.  I was one of those participants and decided to go for the full 11km, just to check the status of my physical fitness and to have a reference race for future comparisons. Here are some pictures of state-of-the-art running-action:

Unfortunately, Murphy stroke me again... after a full one and a half minute of racing, the battery of my Garmin Forerunner 305 decided to give up... so there I was for the rest of the race without the technology that would deliver me all the statistics that a scientist could ever dream of! Luckily, there was a backup solution: the electronic time recording setup by the organizers. However, big was my surprise this morning when I found myself classified as a 'Did Not Finisher' in the end results! Of course I finished! Of course I would not give up on a stupid 11km race like this! Who the hell did they think they are, putting me in the DNF status!

I immediately emailed the organizers and after a few minutes got a friendly reply saying they were looking into it. And yes, a few hours later, they seem to have corrected my result. I am now listed 85th out of 929 starters of which 914 finished the race. I have squeezed the 11 km in 46m03s, which gives me an average speed of 14.34 km/h or 4m12s per kilometer. The complete results can be found here. The organizers assured me the correctness of my result with the following email:

Dag Bart, 

Deze uitslag is 100% zeker en geregistreerd door onze computers.

Normaal gezien moet je over 2 aankomstmatten lopen bij de finish. Deze liggen net achter elkaar, het tijdsverschil is dus haast nihil. De gecombineerde registratie levert je resultaat op. Als 1 van beiden ontbreekt, vissen we je resultaat op door de jouw registratie op 1 van beide matten op te zoeken. Deze uitslag is betrouwbaar en correct en bewijst het nut van een dubbele registratie aan de aankomst.  

Vriendelijke groeten, 
Lien

I guess this means I can be 100% sure of my result... *fwew*... Murphy didn't strike that hard after all!

Spring cleanup: basement part 1

Today, Tine and I decided to do some spring-cleaning.  Our goal was to tackle a small part of our basement and be happy with that... the rest of the basement is planned for later ;-)  After a few hours of cleaning up dust and reorganizing things, this is our result:

 Notice the nice spot for my paragliders on the left, and the mathematical subtlety by which everything is organized!  We are doctors after all, aren't we! :-)