In early October I returned to the Fresh Fitness gym to discover it had gone through a rather surprising transition: From being Average Joe’s half empty gym, it had turned Almost Average Joe’s packed gym. Unless I pop in on Sunday morning, the place is usually crowded, very often with the same people. There are some guys I’ve seen every single time I’ve been there since October and I’m beginning to think I might have to greet them soon. But greeting people could turn into a avalanche of social obligations and before I know it I’m someones best man in an Indian wedding. I really don’t have time for that, so I think I’ll stick to not greeting anyone.

There are even some gym babes – women who seemingly just hang around without really working out – scattered among the rest of us now. Unfortunately, the gym babes have displaced the ones who made Fresh Fitness Average Joe’s gym: People who could really need the exercise. That’s a shame, really, because there were a lot of them present earlier this year. Another problem with the gym babes is that since they just hang around looking at people, they notice you. My exercise plan takes me on a tour through most of the stations and I’m sometimes getting conscious about these women thinking I’m following them around. I’m certain it might look that way when I surface in their general area repeatedly, but it’s all a huge coincidence. I swear.

What would socially awkward penguin do!?

Anyway. Every now and then I sync the Forerunner with my computer to look at the statistics. Here’s the speed graph from a random trip (click to enlarge).

At 6:51, the Forerunner has clocked me at a massive 377 km/h (234 mph). I’m guessing the most probably explanation for this is that I’m riding through a few tunnels and this confuses the Forerunner a bit. Because I didn’t really ride my bike at 377 km/h. That’s insanely fast.  At 377 km/h I would be moving 105 meters per second and would get from our apartment to the office in a little over 32 seconds. For comparison the takeoff speed of an Airbus A380 is 280 km/h (174 mph) at normal circumstances. Biking at that speed would of course be nice, but I suspect air resistance would have its way with me long before I reach 377 km/h. Maybe some MATLAB geeks can do the math.

So I went for a jog instead. It’s been a while now and you can probably guess how it all turned out. Yes, I’m biking to and from work, but, no, it’s not enough to keep the cardiovascular system on high alert and it got quite a shock rather early en route. I used my lovely Garmin Forerunner 305¹⁾ on the run, and it recorded information like heart rate and pace; both miserable reads when I got home.

I used 36 minutes on 5,32 kilometers (3.4 miles) giving an average speed of 8,9 km/h (5.5 miles per hour). Old grannies could have walked past me with their walkers at that speed. The Garmin Training Center software calls it a “slow jog”, which is another punch in the nuts. My only excuse is that I had a total ascent and descent of 279 meters, meaning that the route is rather bumpy. And it was hot, so hot, I tell ya! Other than that, my only excuse is that I’m in lousy shape and should get my act together.

That said, it’s of course important to try to extract something positive from this whole ordeal: The route I found was excellent: From our apartment, down and through Svartdalsparken, then back on the North side of the stream that goes through the park, another lap, then over the bridge by the Bandidos headquarter and back home. A visually pleasant run, partly on tarmac and partly on your typical forest surface. The route is also close to our new apartment and getting a few laps into my weekly work out schedule should not be too much hassle.

But the most positive with all this is the huge potential for improvement. Yeah, here’s to improvement!

¹⁾ If you are looking for a great GPS/heart monitor/watch gadget and you find the Garmin Forerunner 305 on sale somewhere (I think it’s an outdated model), go for it.

I’ve been working out on and off for over five years now (at least that’s when I posted my first entry tagged with “exercise“). For the last three or so years I’ve been going regularly to the gym, which, by simple logic, should have turned me into a walking pile of muscle and Testosterone by now. But that is not the case. When I look in the mirror, I still see the same skinny kid I’ve always been. No six-pack in sight, but rather the beginning of a small keg. My consolation is that – considering how little I move around at work – what I’d seen in the mirror if I was not going to the gym would most likely be a mess going downhill and going there fast. And it’s quite possible that some of what I see in the mirror is a product of my imagination, because there’s a beautiful girl who lives with me who tells me she likes what she sees. Or maybe she’s just a product of my imagination as well? Still, what I’m doing at the gym now is purely maintenance work – but maintenance is what will keep this thing going and going and going and going until the bitter end.

The gym I go to is an interesting place. I used to go to SATS, which was quite expensive and they locked you in for a good twelve months. Lately, however, budget gyms have started to pop up everywhere. They usually charge under half the price of regular gyms and they have no or a limited lock-in period. I’m going to a Fresh Fitness gym, and just by the name of it you know that you will get both fresh and fit going there. Interestingly enough, Fresh Fitness is owned by SATS: There was a business segment available – people who most likely wouldn’t pay the premium price at a regular gym, but who want to work out – and SATS grabbed a share of it. Smart move.

And most of the people at my gym are those you’d never see on any of the premium gyms. I thought that my SATS gym was average Joe’s gym, but I was wrong. Fresh Fitness is. I’ve been going there since February and I’ve yet to see a proper Gym Babe. I once thought I did, but it turned out she’d strayed into the reception area by accident. Bummer.

Around half of the people at Fresh Fitness are in the spring of they work out career and I witness a lot of creative ways of working out. Not long ago, for instance, someone sat down on a lat/row machine with his back towards it and started pulling like a madman. I should of course have told him how to do the exercise without breaking his back, but some people are really touchy about being corrected by strangers at the gym. Or just in general. Thankfully, he stepped away from the machine before he got seriously injured. Other people tend to build up a lot of speed when working out and bang things together as loud as they possibly can. I’m not sure why, it might be a cry for attention. “Look at me, I’m working ooouuut!”. This is probably the reason why quite a few of the machines are always out-of-order. It’s budget equipment and someone is always using it wrong.

All right, the next time I see someone using any of the equipment a little bit too creatively, I’ll let them know, even with the risk of being punched in the nuts. I’m not going to claim that I really know anything about working out – I might even do a lot wrong myself – but if I can save someone from breaking any bones, I’ll go ahead and do it.

But today I felt better and took off out into the wild. I was planning to plot the route in Google Maps using the GPS file from the Forerunner and use it to brag about my run by posting it here, but it turned out that getting this done was a bit of a pain. So you’ll just have to take my word for it: From Gamlebyen, via Bryn to Østensjøvannet, around that and back home again via Helsfyr. A nice route, but perhaps a bit to much up and down for my taste.

Next week looks kind of bad in terms of running because I’m busy every afternoon except for tomorrow, but it’s not very likely that I will set out on another adventure that early. My feet hurt now and there’s a good chance they’ll feel a bit funky tomorrow as well.

Now it’s time to eat some dinner before the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada 2010 from Montreal starts. Damn Hamilton is in pole position, but we can always hope that he spins off in the first corner, making way for the Red Bull team.

I went to Canada once, but I can’t really remember if Montreal was one of the cities I visited. Memories – they fade. Bye, bye, memories. No hard feelings, I hope?

And now for something completely different.

A couple of years ago I bought a dead cheap surround amplifier from Argon. It was a demo model they’d used in the store and I got the amplifier and a region free DVD player for 900 NOK, about €114. A bargain. The DVD player gave me a mild electric shock if I touched it whenever it was plugged in a wall socket, but the amplifier worked like a charm until a few weeks ago, when a static noise began to sound from the right front speaker. Cleaning and dusting the insides of the amplifier didn’t help – I’ve successfully “fixed” a similar problem doing that in the past. The reason for the static noise is evidently a soon-to-fail thingy inside the amplifier and since I don’t have the wiring diagram, an oscilloscope, spare parts or the skills to fix it, I’m guessing it’s about time to get a new surround amplifier.

“What about getting someone with a wiring diagram, an oscilloscope, spare parts and the skills to fix it for you”, you might ask. Yes, that is a good idea in theory. The problem is my experience with trying to get people to fix my stuff. They either a) manage to misplace the gadget they try to fix or b) is unable to reproduce and fix the problem, but still charge me for the job. So by getting a brand new amplifier I avoid that someone a) manage to misplace the amplifier or b) is unable to reproduce and fix the problem, but still charge me for the job.

I’m no audiophile, so I don’t need all the bells and whistles, plus I really don’t want to sink a lot of money into this. My only real deal is actually the size of the amplifier. Most of the surround amplifiers I’ve seen are damn huge, at least if they are not part of a complete package with speakers. Since I have 5+1 excellent speakers, getting a package is not an option for me, but I really wanted an amplifier with a DVD player form factor. With that in mind I thought I’d check out what Argon had managed to put together since I bought the first amplifier.

It turns out that Argon doesn’t manufacture surround amplifiers anymore. In fact, it looks like they never did, because my failing amplifier is not even in their discontinued products backlog. Also, finding a slim surround amplifier turned out to be quite the challenge. I found the MARANTZ NR-1501, but it’s way too expensive. After a while I realized that my wish to go both budget and slim wasn’t possible and started looking at monster normal size amplifiers instead. Pioneer has some budget models, but it’s a brand I associate with cars and blue neon lights.

Eventually, I turned to Denon. Even though the guy who designed their website needs to be thought a lesson about the use of Flash intros, frames and pop-ups, they do make high quality audio equipment. They also offer budget lines, which suits me well. In the end, I will probably settle for the Denon AVR-1611. It has a lot of crap I don’t really need, like “3D pass-through technology” and “Audyssey MultEQwith Advanced Low Frequency Correction”, but it supports 5 speakers and a sub woofer, optical digital input and HDMI. Sounds like a blast!

Unless you have any better suggestions?

Today I had the first run with my brand new Garmin Forerunner 305. In spite of the transporter strike that’s still going strong, I got it in the mail on Friday because the online store I ordered from changed delivery company from the one I’d chosen, which is on strike, to one that wasn’t. They probably had to go to striking company’s storage facility to get the package; from what I could see from the tracking on the website, that was were it was stuck. Kudos to Komplett.no for their proactive thinking and customer service.

So, what about the Forerunner, then? Well, yet again I’ve experienced that no matter what kind of cool gadgets I strap to my body, jogging is exhausting. But, considering this was my first actual run this year, I think I did all right. The GPS on the Forerunner seems fairly accurate – I uploaded my route to Google Earth, and even though it looks like I ran on the wrong side of the road, it’s still the correct road.

That I’m able to track my routes with the GPS is one thing, another very interesting thing is that I’m possible to see my elevation as well. Looking at the various graphs presented by the Garmin Training Center software, I can see that my pace wasn’t too good for the two first kilometers, but I can also see that I was moving from roughly 25 meters above sea level to 155 meters above sea level. So the slow pace doesn’t mean that I’m in bad shape, no, no, no – the air at 155 meters is really, really thin, you know.

I love having a good excuse.

My exercise regime has worked out (pun intended) quite well so far this year, with an average of three visits to the gym a week, and with the added bike ride to and from work I feel all right shape. The last three weeks have been lazy, though, with only one work out each week. The main reasons are some added workload at the office, an urge to get home to Anniken and that I really don’t like to work out when I’m hungry. So, to be able to work out as much as I want to and juggle everything else, I’ve decided to start running jogging again.

The good thing about jogging is that it’s marvelously ad hoc, you really don’t need to plan it and you don’t need a gym to do it. And once again I can listen to my own music when working out. At the gym, I usually share the space with spinning classes, aerobics and the like, people who play the worst teen dance trance music you can imagine. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some electronic rhythms every now and then myself, but not the same tracks every single week.

And if all that aren’t enough motivation to get me started, I’ve decided to pump it up a notch and get a brand new sports watch slash hearth monitor thingy. I already have an excellent Polar CS300, but it has one major shortcoming in these modern times: No GPS. Of course it’s no problem to work out properly without a GPS, but when I saw the Garmin Forerunner 305 on sale online, I just couldn’t resist the temptation. That a colleague of mine has the same watch and recommended it also helped.

The only setback is that there is currently a nation wide transporter strike happening, which means that only a handful of parcels are moved around every day. There is no end in sight for the strike, so there might be days, weeks or – in worst case – even months before I receive the watch.

In the meantime, I think I’ll focus on exercising the brain by playing some computer games.

I did manage to drag my ass to the gym today, though, and had a great workout, too. On the first weekend of the new year, the NRK gym was totally crammed with people starting a new life. The weekends after that have been rather quiet and today I turned on the lights in the men’s locker room and the gym when I arrived and turned everything off when I left. Didn’t see single soul anywhere. I was supposed to go to the gym yesterday, but somehow managed to leave one of my jogging shoes at home. When I waited for the bus, it struck me that I might have left one of them at home, but shrugged it off and got on the bus to the gym. Bad move. Well, at least I got to ride the bus a lot and I usually enjoy riding the bus.

Among other things I’ve done this weekend is to play a little Company of Heroes, a great strategy game that I picked up at one of the many Steam sales last year. If you like WWII strategy games, it comes highly recommended; the single player campaigns, multiplayer and skirmish, which I prefer since I really can’t stand loosing at strategy games. Beat me in any other type of game, not a problem, but don’t beat me in RTS games! I have no idea why it is like this.

And that’s about it! Next week is crammed with social activities, it feels like I really need it.

*Or, as it’s also known, “the workweek”. Now even the yanks should be satisfied.