Big Andy's Blog

The Year 2010

To start again you have to let go of the past and move forward to free yourself of the baggage that weighed you down. This is what I want to do with this post, to finalise the year 2010 and get ready to embrace 2011.

For me the year that was 2010 was an incredible year full of life changing activities and one where a number of big goals were completed. I’ll list them here:

• Proposed to my now fianceé Marion on the top of Glastonbury Tor – June.
• Completed my “Masters CIW Designer” course thus ending a long 2.5 year journey – December.
• I Became a front-end Web Developer for Heath Wallace and beginning my career in web- August.
• Quit Thames Water and thus ending my career  in Chemistry – July.
• Completing the toughest long-distance walking route – Corisca’s GR20 – with Marion – September.
• I passed my course in Digital Photography – January.

My next post will contain what I want to do in 2011 so keep your eyes out for that! Until then, adios amigos!

First Training Runs with Forerunner 405

For our 3-year anniversary Marion gave me a Garmin Forerunner 405 which is a running/cycling watch with GPS and heart rate. While out running it gives you pace information, you can train against a virtual partner, and see which Heart Rate Zone you are in. So far I have used it twice as you can see below.

We are going to do Corsica’s GR20 this August/September. Rumoured to be the hardest toughest long-distance path in the world, this is something that we’ve been dreaming of since we started going out 3 years ago. We’ve booked the flights to Corsica and now the training begins!

First Training Run – running at lunchtime is great in that you can go while you are full of energy but our shower at work is in a small room with no air extraction and on a hot day like this I was hotter and wetter after the shower than before.
This route was one that I have done plenty of times before and is one of the shortest. The day was hot and sunny and as this was my first run since May 10th I wanted a short route.

Second Training Run – aiming to stay under 70% of max-HR (Heart Rate) I’m still really unfit so I couldn’t keep my HR below 90% for any time – without resorting to walking – so I ran slow enough and stayed at approx 90% for the entire run. The day was hot and sunny but compared to the run on Monday I was able to enjoy running and the fantastic day, look at the scenery along the canal.

I am amazed at all the stats that the watch/computer gives me and you can upload the routes to the Garmin Connect website where you can see your route on google maps, see all the heart rate/pace/time information as well as calories burnt, elevation climbed/descended, and more. I will keep on training with the watch and post the results here.