The statistics to back this fact up have my average km in the 1,2,3,5th kilometres at 5:57. The 4th km is 6:17. So I tried to concentrate on maintaining my energy levels through that kilometre on tonights run and I managed to run it in 5:34. It did lead to slower times on either side and I had to fight the brain going “slow down now and save your energy for the fourth”.  I think I’ll keep working on it as it helped me achieve a PB of 0:27:49 which means I’m ‘only’ 2:50 of getting under the 25 minute mark. Harder said that done as my fastest km so far has been 5:20, which is a long way off averaging 5mins for an entire run!

On the 12kg of Christmas I managed to lose another 400gm last week that takes me to 2.2kg in the first 2 weeks. Once again my Thursday and Fridays let me down so will try and concentrate on that this week. Grand Final on Saturday so will try and go for a run before it in case  I hear beer calling!

Have a great week

29:53

which was I was stoked about as I whittled it below 6min km.

From a diet point of view, I managed to survive, Thursday and Friday the rule book went out the window and I ate whatever I wanted. Was disappointing. I really want to try and get 7/7 this week to continue to push. I did manage to drop some weight though as the title aludes too. Over the past week I dropped

1.8kg

If you use myfitnesspal.com come join me HERE. The more folk I have with me, the more motivated I feel.

So I’ll kick off the week again, wish me luck. Will update next Monday, for now see my progress summarised below.

So I was reading my Runners World the other day and there was an article that covered running mindset. I realised I don’t try that often to set a pace PB and that it may help with my mindset and lifestyle changes if I’d attempt to reach a goal. So I’ve set a goal of 5km in 25mins. I’ve got a pretty stock standard 5km run near my house and its a nice quick distance so I shouldn’t need to find large blocks of time to test myself. You’ll notice my fastest on my PB’s tab is 27:52. I’ll log on each Monday and give you an update on how I am going.

In fact I test ran it tonight. I gave myself a goal of 35mins considering I hadn’t ran for a while and because I’m not currently built for speed (read fat).

#5in25

As you can see by this graph, and hoping my graphing skills improve, I managed to complete it in 31:35 which is still a fair way off 25mins but a better result than 35 mins. I’ll admit I got to the 2km mark feeling alright, but from there I was a train wreck!

My other goal is weight loss. As previously mentioned I’ve grown in the winter months and while I may look cool by growing a goatee to hide my spare chins it’ll make my nose itchy so its not a long term solution. While the overall goal is to lose 12kg before Christmas, I’ve set an interim goal of 6kg and to help motivate myself to do this I’ve given Melissa my cash for MW3 which is due to launch in early November. I shall not buy this till 6kg are gone! Which if anyone who follows my Raptr Profile would know or sees the continuous twitter updates, this is a pretty big deal!

I also have a myfitnesspal.com profile that I’ll use to track my consumption to help with the calories in less than calories out mantra that normally works for me. If you are keen to be “friends” on this site and make fun of my food choices go right ahead! On top of this I’ve booked in to see our Health and Lifestyle folk at work to see if they can offer any friendly advice.

Wish me luck blogosphere

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Weight Loss Tools

Weekly Stats:

I had the Bridges Fun Run yesterday morning and since I had ran it twice that week already I had a fair idea of what to expect. Perth being a windy city you always get half of the race with the wind in your face and the other half with the wind in your back. I was hoping to run it in under 1hr 5mins as the fastest I had done it lately was 1hr 8mins. Melissa, Lucy, Anthony and Marina and Kids were doing the 5km event too!
 
The conditions were quite good that morning, not to cold, quite a bit of wind but Perth Autumn hadn’t actually set in yet. The wind was blowing in such a direction that we’d start and finish into it, but have a decent chunk in the middle where it would be blowing in my back.
 
I started the race up the back as I enjoy slowly over taking people until I find the group that appear to be running my pace. Turned out to be a bit of a hindrance though as in the 3km we had to cross a few Bridges which meant going double file for a while, and I got stuck behind some slower folk.
 
I love this run because it’s very scenic and on paths most of the way. The folk at WAMC do a great job of organising and manning the water stations and the whole event seems to grow every year. This year they had a pad at the start too so they could record a net time, which is great as it can take a couple of minutes to get the 1000+ runners across the start line. I’m waiting to see my net time however I think I may have done a course PB which I’d be chuffed with! I know based on my Garmin that it was my fastest 10km since May last year.
 
My main plan was to maintain less than 6 minute km till the half way mark and asses how I am going. I managed to get there without any trouble and continued to maintain them all the way to the finish. The hardest part was climbing up onto the bridge in the last couple of kilometres.  I managed to finish quite strong and my last kilometre was my fastest, this probably let me know that I could have pushed a little harder earlier. It was good to finish and catch up with a few of my online training partners Mr & Mrs @ashulz, @agreeant and @michelletobes. They all help keep me motivated through the week especially when approaching the end of the day when I just feel like going home.

Below are my splits for the run. My Garmin was about 110 meters out by the end of the race to account for me not running the best line and GPS accuracy.

The next event I’m looking at doing is the Challenge Fun Run, It is another 10km that I’d like to do as it has some hills through it. That’s not on till mid-may though so I’ll keep running till then and hopefully get my splits down to 5:40 per km. My running calculator suggests I should be able to run 5:25 minute km over 10km in order to properly prepare for my 4hr 15m Marathon. My main test for that will come in late July when I run the ASICS Run For Gold.

This week I’ve got
Monday: 10km Recovery
Wednesday: 1km Fast, 500m Recover x 7
Friday: Speed Training
Sunday: 10km Race Pace.

Happy Running everyone!
 

http://blog.walshie.me/2011/04/04/so-who-wants-windows-phone-updates-like-right-now/

The program, which you run twice managed to flash my Telstra HTC Mozart to the latest update. No issues so far but use at your own risk! I now have cut and paste!

I’ve got the following events coming up that I’m hoping to participate in, previous bests in brackets.

10th April – 10km Bridges Fun Run (0:59:30)
15th May – 10km Challenge Fun Run (0:57:25)
22nd May – 14km Run for a Reason (01:27:15)
24th Jul – 10km Run 4 Gold
7th Aug – 21.1km Perth Half Marathon

After the Perth Half I’ll have a better indication of what event to enrol in for the City 2 Surf, while I’m hoping to run the Marathon I’m realistic that its a big effort over 20 weeks. My longest run lately has been 10km so I need to increase that right up. Last marathon I did I only managed a time of under 5hrs and I think that was due to not getting sufficient long runs in before the event, with that in mind I’ve ensured I’ve got 3 runs of 35km in my current 20 week program and a total of 7 runs over 20km. I also have traditionally struggled with the Hills in the City 2 Surf event so I have built in a few Jacobs Ladder runs and also a 15km Monday run that will involve that initial hill.

I’ve wiped my slate clean with PBs and set some goal paces using the McMillians running calculator all these details will be placed in the PB Section of this blog. I’ll update the blog weekly to let you know how my previous week went with my running.

The NextG Network:

I’ve been on Optus for the past 30 months, so getting a free chance to test out the Telstra network was appreciated. I found it to be more than satisfactory. While previously I’d have drop-outs, or my phone wouldn’t ring or I wouldn’t have coverage I found using the HTC Mozart/Telstra combination I didn’t have to think about coverage and didn’t once curse a dropped call. Awesome.

I’ll be swapping to Telstra Prepaid now the trial is over, just wish their plans were a bit more clear in what you get for your dollar.

Windows Phone 7:

Making Calls: Was quite phone like, no noticeable echo or distortion. The loud-speaker is great, along with the ability to flip it over to get to turn the loud-speaker on! very useful when driving, just answer and flip.

SMS: Not a huge fan of the way the SMS appear on the screen as a bar up the top of the phone, prefer the iPhone method. The picture below shows how the number counts up and a bar appears up top with the sender’s name and half the message.

e-mails: I like the way it shows new emails in the lock screen, means you can quickly look without unlocking. Didn’t like the way the number on the Live Tile didn’t represent the number of unread e-mails. Entering and exiting the application caused this number to reset. Sending an e-mail on the device however is very easy and it multiple cases used it over a sms.

calendar: The calendar is great, very easy to use, lots of options and the ability to send invites. Shared my Gmail calendar well and having the next appointment on the live tile was handy. I mostly used agenda view, though month was useful for seeing what days had appointments on them.

camera: I took lots of photos, but i’m not a photographer. For a point’n'shooter I found it delivered decent quality. when its low light it was quite difficult to get a good picture though and also if the flash when off to close to people’s faces it made people glow. It’s really easy to upload them to Facebook or email the photos direct. Video quality was perhaps as good as you could expect from a phone, but no way to upload or email which was frustrating!

Office Integration: I thought Microsoft would have nailed this. The ability to sync documents between the computer, phone and sky drive wasn’t present. Basically useless if you don’t have a sharepoint server. Poor as.

Zune: AAAAAAAAARRGGGHHHH! why could a product that looks so great not be available in Australia. The lack of Music Marketplace is crazy! Zune software is miles ahead of iTunes, the marketplace for videos and apps is quick and responsive yet we can’t buy music. Other countries have a product called Zune Pass which gives them 10 downloaded songs a month, plus unlimited streaming for around $150 US Per Year. My other gripe with the Zune Marketplace is that you are forced to use Xbox points to buy/rent media. Meaning you need to log in, use a credit card to buy points then use points to buy media. It’s the same on Xbox Arcade, cut the middle man Microsoft. If you let me strap my credit card to my windows live account you’ll get heaps more drunk purchases off me (like the time I bought Herman and the Hermits greatest hits off iTunes).

Bing: WTF is a bing? This search engine is terrible, which I had the option to switch the default search to Google. I did like the universal use of a search button though. Press to Search marketplace, or emails etc while in those screens.

RingTones: I wish I could set the vibrate mode to be on when the phone volume is on and off when I’ve got the phone off. Sometimes you want to leave your phone off and have it dead quiet.

The HTC Mozart

I had two main issues with the device while using it. First was the small non expandable storage. 8gb isn’t good enough, not sure what genius at HTC thought it would be, but I filled it up quickly.  Price? well the difference between an 8gb and 32gb microSD card is around $80. That would be $80 well spent. It really will end up being the deal breaker with this phone for many people. Luckily there are better WP7 phones out their and lovers of the Platform aren’t stuck with it. Second was the touch buttons down the bottom of the phone, the amount of times I pressed them by accident, it drove me batty.

On the positives, the form factor was great. Feels nice in your hand, the camera and flash was good for a portable device. The speaker is great too, and a lot louder than I found the iPhone.

There are loads better WP7 hand sets out there, the Samsung Focus would be the main one I’d look at.

Final Thoughts

Well, it was a step up from my iPhone 3G, but mainly due to apple crippling it with the 4.x software. I’ll be using it from now on as my main phone, but if someone offered me a iPhone 4.0 instead I’d probably swap. Its obvious the device was only released this year as the applications and features are clearly first gen. Hope that Microsoft stick with it as I think they are on to some winning features.

NB: I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

Twitter: I use the official twitter app, I tried Seesmic but didn’t like it as much. My main gripe with this application is how easily it moves between screens, you could be scrolling and accidently flick from Mentions to Timeline and vice versa. Also if you have a few custom searches you like to view occasionally (#theashes, #telstraWP7 etc.) it takes quite a few clicks (well presses) to get to them. Would be nice if it was one of the screens you could swipe to.

Facebook: Despite strong facebook integration I missed seeing the notifications you get when other people follow up your comments. So while I use the integration to see the timeline if I want to see my notifications I go into the application which is quite sluggish and overly slow.

Domain.com.au: Great applicaion and very well done, just like its iPhone counterpart

eBay: The eBay application is good, wish there were more selling tools and that it’d completely replace going to their website, but its still good to go to and search/bid on items.

foursquare: neat app, was able to find locations better than my iPhone but I think that was due to better GPS then an App improvement. I think it looks really nice and uses the look and feel of the WP7 well.

Shazam: Same Same

Torrent Applications – Torrent Remote/Torrential: I was trying to find an application that matched well with utorrent. Torrent Remote and Torrential are very similar. Torrent Remote wins due to its ability to download torrents from any site where Torrential restricts you to

Weather AU: meh, an application that could use a live tile to show current conditions doesn’t. its devoid of good information too (max temp, low temp). Was hoping it would be similar to weather apps on the iPhone that use BoM data

Wiki: I found this much more responsive than the iPhone App. Was actually useable

YouTube: disappointed that the application was just a link to their website. Also no way to upload videos onto youtube on the go. Boo!

They are the main ones I used.. ones I would of liked to have seen were

• TV Guide
• TV Episode Tracking Application (NextEpisode on iPhone)
• Words with Friends
• miso
• Remote
• Word Press
• Quota (@SouthFreo said he had plans to develop one but no timeline and will come after android)
• Weight Management/Calorie Counter
• MapMyRun

I hope the apps contiune to grow, if people don’t start using the handset though the Chicken could kill the Egg.

NB: I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

I’ll just give a review of a couple of games that have got my most attention

Max and the Magic Marker: This handy little platformer revolves around getting a little guy through a series of levels and challenges using the magic marker. Situations arise that will involve you drawing in some of the landscape or other objects to either pass tricky terrain, kill monsters or climb up to objects. The puzzles are challenging and you can collect special black marble like objects for completing harder objectives (such as bouncing a ball into a basketball ring). This is probably my favourite game as it lends itself well to the WP7 design and you can get creative with what you draw.

Tetris: I’m a hardcore tetris fan, my main issue with this version is that I can’t exit the game and comeback to it. If you half decent at tetris this means you need to set aside heaps of time to play it. Apart from that the controls are very similar to the iPhone and work well till you get up to the higher levels than it becomes a lot trickier then its keyboard counterpart.

Flight Control: Land planes, same as iPhone but just as good.

Flowerz: great little puzzle game that you can enter and exit quick so its good for trains and waiting and bus stops. You have to align three flowers of the same colour so they disappear. gets quite challenging the longer you go. Love that it has a scoreboard with your xbox live friends.

Guitar Hero 5: Not really a fan, if you love the series you may enjoy it, but doesn’t have the same impact of the big fake guitar you play with on the consoles.

The Sims 3: I like logging in and randomly playing, but really don’t get addicted to it, not surprising as I wasn’t a huge fan of the main game and the hand-held version could benefit from a keyboard and mouse.

Need for Speed Undercover: Great little game, it assumes you want to accelerate unless you touch the screen and you steer by moving the phone left and right, works really well and gets quite addictive. Can’t play it in moving vehicles without some issues though.

de Blob: Another great puzzle game, get the blob through a room while freeing the little guys along the way, you just can’t cross back over your own stream of ink you leave behind. It works really well with the touch screen and the scoring system for unlocks etc makes it very replayable. I found myself trying to get through levels faster and faster.

They are the may games I’ve had the opportunity to play so far in a little over a week of using the device. The ones that work best for me seem to be smaller puzzle games. While the achievement structure is quite good and I like the fact my score goes up for playing games on the train, and also that I can read the achievements and try to unlock the quirker ones. I can also see myself changing my avatars clothing more now as I can do it via the Windows Phone 7. In fact I’ve changed the clothes more often this week then I have since I’ve owned a xbox.

It would be cool if you could see some stats from some of your first person shooters (BFBC2/COD:BO etc.) but thats more about those developers releasing apps like Halo Waypoint for their games. Also I hope all the games don’t restrict interaction to just with xbox users, I’d love to see a cross-platform word with friends etc.

Anyway, if your out playing on your windows phone – add me DamoRev and I’ll let you beat me.

NB: I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

• Zune Pass/Music Store to Australia
• Turn by Turn Navigation
• Office / Sky Drive Integration
• Copy and Paste

Will keep updating as I find more items, if you know of any please comment.