I began running at night last autumn. I referred to them as “night runs” but this phrase was mostly aspirational, as I would usually take off around 18:00, or shortly thereafter. But it was dark, and that was the point.
I found that I enjoyed running through the dark, sometimes through city streets, other times down wooded trails, solitary in my small forcefield of light. I’ve seen all sorts of wildlife: raccoons, coyotes, Donald Trump’s motorcade. I once ran by a guy valiantly attempting to blow on a didgeridoo while playing death metal on his phone.
This year, as the days lengthened, my late afternoon runs started to become light enough to not require a headlamp. That was no fun, so in the spring I rescheduled my runs to start around 21:30 – sometimes as early as 21:00 if I’m heading up Twin Peaks and want to catch the metropolitan alpenglow. Now they are actually night runs.
I purchased a pair of Zensah Compression Leg Sleeves in 2008 after reading about them at MilitaryMorons. This was when minimalist running was beginning to take off – Born to Run was published the following year – and I found that the sleeves ended up being a valuable part of my transition to less supportive footwear.
The story I was sold in various wilderness medicine courses was that compression aided recovery because it constricted the blood vessels, raising the percentage of oxygen delivered to the area, which in turn speeds muscle regrowth. I understand there is some debate about whether this explanation is accurate but, whatever the reason for it, there seems to be no debate that compression aids recovery and performance.
I still use my 12 year old pair of Zensah sleeves. They’re not a piece of equipment I reach for frequently, but they’re invaluable when I do use them. If I’ve been pushing myself on runs – or, in the Before Times, if I had a hard training session at the boxing gym – there’s nothing better than the immediate comfort I get when sliding them on. Because I don’t use them often, sometimes I’ll forgot that they’re buried in the bottom of my sock drawer and I’ll go a couple days with discomfort in my calves that I can’t get out with a roller or massage ball.
Prior to buying the Zensah sleeves, I would occasionally accomplish the same thing with 3M Vetrap. It works, and is worth having around for splinting (the self-adhesive property makes it superior to the classic ACE elastic bandage), but wrapping and getting the tension just-so is more of a hassle than just sliding on the sleeves. Vetrap is also not as comfortable as Zensah’s material, which is both breathable and moisture wicking.
I bought a pair of Bedrock Cairn Adventure Sandals when they were released back in 2016. They are my favorite sandals. In addition to being great everyday and hiking footwear in the warmer months, the Cairns are my preferred running footwear year round.
My only complaint with the Cairns was that the adjustable strap would occasionally slip, loosening the sandal. The webbing would only slip a couple of millimeters over a handful of miles. If walking or pedaling I wouldn’t notice it, but when running this allowed just enough movement of my foot across the bed of the sandal that I would eventually develop a hot spot if I didn’t reach down to tighten the strap every 6 miles or so.
I mentioned this in one of Bedrock’s customer surveys. They reached out to me and suggested that when tightening the strap, rather than keeping the loose end of the webbing inline with the part connected to the wing, I kink the webbing slightly forward. This allows the buckle to get a bit more bite. The added friction from this adjustment has eliminated any loosening of the sandal on my runs.
A GPS track provides useful a useful log of physical activities. Beyond simply recording a route, the series of coordinate and time mappings allow statistics like distance, speed, elevation, and time to be calculated. I recently decided that I wanted to start recording this information, but I was not interested in any of the plethora of social, cloud-based services that are hip these days. A simple GPX track gives me all the information I care about, and I don’t have a strong desire to share them with a third party provider or a social network.
Recording Tracks
The discovery of GPSLogger is what made me excited to start this project. A simple but powerful Android application, GPSLogger will log to a number of different formats and, when a track is complete, automatically distribute it. This can be done by uploading the file to a storage provider, emailing it, or posting it to a custom URL. It always logs in metric units but optionally displays in Imperial.
What makes GPSLogger really stand out are its performance features. It allows very fine-grained control over GPS use, which allows tracks to be recorded for extended periods of times (such as days) with a negligible impact on battery usage.
For activities like running, shorter hikes and bicycle rides I tend to err on the side of accuracy. I set GPSLogger to log a coordinate every 10 seconds, with a minimum distance of 5 meters between points and a minimum accuracy of 10 meters. It will try to get a fix for 120 seconds before timing out, and attempt to meet the accuracy requirement for 60 seconds before giving up.
For a longer day-hike, the time between points could be increased to something in the neighborhood of 60 seconds. For a multi-day backpacking trip, a setting of 10 minutes or more would still provide great enough accuracy to make for a useful record of the route. I’ve found that being able to control these settings really opens up a lot of tracking possibilities that I would otherwise not consider for fear of battery drain.
Storing Tracks
After a track has been recorded, I transfer it to my computer and store it with git-annex.
Everything in my home directory that is not a temporary file is stored either in git or git-annex. By keeping my tracks in an annex rather than directly in git, I can take advantage of git-annex’s powerful metadata support. GPSLogger automatically names tracks with a time stamp, but the annex for my tracks is also configured to automatically set the year and month when adding files.
$ cd ~/tracks
$ git config annex.genmetadata true
After moving a track into the annex, I’ll tag it with a custom activity field, with values like run, hike, or bike.
I also find it useful to tag tracks with a gross location value so that I can get an idea of where they were recorded without loading them on a map. Counties tend to work well for this.
One could also use fields to store location values such as National Park, National Forest or Wilderness Area.
Metadata Views
The reason for storing metadata is the ability to use metadata driven views. This allows me to alter the directory structure of the annex based on the metadata. For instance, I can tell git-annex to show me all tracks grouped by year followed by activity.
$ git annex view "year=*""activity=*"
$ tree -d
.
└── 2015
├── bike
├── hike
└── run
Or, I could ask to see all the runs I went on this July.
$ git annex view year=2015month=07activity=run
I’ve found this to be a super powerful tool. It gives me the simplicity and flexibility of storing the tracks as plain-text on the filesystem, with some of the querying possibilities of a database. Its usefulness is only limited by the metadata stored.
Viewing Tracks
For simple statistics, I’ll use the gpxinfo command provided by gpxpy. This gives me the basics of time, distance and speed, which is generally all I care about for something like a weekly run.
$ gpxinfo 20150725110839.gpx
File: 20150725110839.gpx
Length 2D: 6.081km
Length 3D: 6.123km
Moving time: 00:35:05
Stopped time: n/a
Max speed: 3.54m/s =12.74km/h
Total uphill: 96.50m
Total downhill: 130.50m
Started: 2015-07-25 18:08:45
Ended: 2015-07-25 18:43:50
Points: 188
Avg distance between points: 32.35m
Track #0, Segment #0
Length 2D: 6.081km
Length 3D: 6.123km
Moving time: 00:35:05
Stopped time: n/a
Max speed: 3.54m/s =12.74km/h
Total uphill: 96.50m
Total downhill: 130.50m
Started: 2015-07-25 18:08:45
Ended: 2015-07-25 18:43:50
Points: 188
Avg distance between points: 32.35m
For a more detailed inspection of the tracks, I opt for Viking. This allows me to load the tracks and view the route on a OpenStreetMap map (or any number of other map layers, such as USGS quads or Bing aerial photography). It includes all the detailed statistics you could care about extracting from a GPX track, including pretty charts of elevation, distance, time and speed.
If I want to view the track on my phone before I’ve transferred it to my computer, I’ll load it in either BackCountry Navigator or OsmAnd, depending on what kind of map layers I am interested in seeing. For simply viewing the statistics of a track on the phone, I go with GPS Visualizer (by the same author as GPSLogger).
Yesterday I felt that I was becoming too complacent on my runs. I needed something to increase the challenge. So, this morning I tossed 20 lbs. into the FAST Pack and strapped it on. That made things interesting.
Occasionally I get asked what motivates me to run on a regular basis. For me, running is fun. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t. During the run, I take pleasure in partaking in an activity that I believe Homo sapien sapien was designed to do, and after the run my body feels better.
If that’s not enough, try this: In his autobiography Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, Sir Ranulph Fiennes said that, now in his late sixties, the only way he can manage to keep up a decent level of fitness is to run at least 2 hours every other day. I’ll not be physically bested by an old man, even one such as Fiennes!
