RunKeeper, Fitocracy and Immaturity.

Okay I've got to make this post fairly short because I'm eager to get a start on my weekend of vegetation, I'm having Modern Warfare 3 delivered next week and I want to finish the games I'm playing (Mass Effect and Batman Arkham City) before getting stuck in another. Given that I haven't even started Batman, it's going to be a busy, nerdy weekend - but I've deserved it.

Keeping up with the nerdy trend, I want to write about the two exercise/fitness websites I've recently signed up with.

RunKeeper

First up is RunKeeper, as you may have guessed, this is a website to track running and aerobic activity. Its main function is to capture running statistics with the use of mobile devices and GPS. The way it's intended to work is by the user pressing start and stop on the application on their phone before and after a run (respectively) and the GPS will report on distance traveled, speed, altitude etc. This is all well and good if the application doesn't crash every time you try and run it, as happened with myself. Luckily, the website allows you to plot the route you ran directly onto Google Maps - which is what I did and you can see the results of my first proper run in ages below:

I got a bit creative with Paintbrush to show the different types of Google Maps views you can use.

The website does some sort of trending and comparisons of your runs so you can tell when you're improving or have been slacking. It also (of course) plugs into Facebook so you can Share your run details and gloat, as I did. Even if I can't get the app working on my phone (though I'm going to try reinstalling it), I think I'll definitely keep using this site because I really get into the whole metrics thing and tracking my progress. Very cool website, I was very impressed that I was able to plot such an accurate route directly onto the map.

The site has a paid version called RunKeeper Elite which has a bunch of extra stuff like real-time tracking and exercise planning on something but I haven't really looked into it because the paid version is more than enough for me.

My Run (Wednesday)

As I said, this was my first proper run in ages and it hurt, lots. Especially given that I had trained legs on the day before; this was a major struggle. Luckily for me however, I was training with a very competent runner and my stupid sense of pride/ego/whatever wouldn't let me run too slowly and I made a pretty decent time - in fact I managed to beat my short-term run goal by a minute. Though doing so on the first attempt just means I set the bar too low. I was thoroughly wrecked by the end of the run and even more so the next day. That night I transformed into an eating machine and demolished a HPLC bar (a big 350 calorie protein bar) after dinner because I was still ravenous, luckily I got it down just before my eating window closed.

Fitocracy

The other website I joined up with is Fitocracy, this is an odd combination of social network/RPG/exercise tracker. The idea being that you enter your exercises (cardio/weights/whatever) and gain points which lead you to gain levels and achievements which you can then gloat about on Facebook and whatnot. It's exercise listing is quite extensive and it has direct integration to RunKeeper so I was able to bring my run details directly in. I don't really care about the whole points and levels part of the site but being able to enter my lifts and being informed that they're personal bests is very rewarding and I think will help should motivation become an issue. Overall it's a very fun site and definitely gets the Cal seal of approval.

It's currently still in Beta but I found it fairly easy to find an invite on Google. As with Runkeeper, there's a paid version where you become a 'Hero' and get special titles, badges and the ability to copy other people's workouts buuut as with RunKeeper, the free version is good enough for me.

My Workout (Thursday)

Despite my legs feeling like they'd been beaten with a crowbar, I was pumped up and excited to get into the gym to smash out a heavy weights session. I think this was partly because yesterday at work sucked, but hey, motivation is motivation.

EXERCISE	Set #1	Set #2	Set #3	Set #4	Set #5
Squat	90kgx5	90kgx5	95kgx5	95kgx5	95kgx5
Incline Press	42.5kgx5	42.5kgx5	45kgx5	45kgx5	45kgx5
Deadlift	65kgx10	90kgx5	115kgx5	XX	XX
Chin-ups	12	10	6	XX	XX
AB Crunch Machine	50kgx12	50kgx12	50kgx12	XX	XX
BB Bicep Curl	25kgx12	25kgx12	25kgx12	XX	XX

Couple of things about this workout, just as I was working myself up to my 5th set of squats and trying to decide if I could manage 100kg, I receive a text with the words from the below picture:

Needless to say, I was utterly distracted and once I stopped giggling like an idiot and when I could finally breath and stop grinning, there was no way I was going to do 100kg. Next time. 

Also, I was only meant to do 105kg on my last set of deadlifts but my maths was terrible at the time and I ended up doing 10kg more. With terrible form. It's good to know that I can lift that much, I just need to progress up to it so that I can do the whole 5 repetitions correctly.

Lift wise, I was pretty happy with the workout. Decent gains in Incline Press and I had enough energy to do some abs and bicep support work. However I saw some really dumb stuff which just put me in a bad mood, I saw a personal trainer not only drop DBs on the ground from waist height but 30 seconds later turn his back on his client who was box-squatting so that he could chat to a blonde. Moron. Right after that I saw a guy in a bench press position throwing and catching the bar inside the squat machine. Wow, just wow.  

Supplements

Pre-workout: Scivation Quake

Intra-workout: Scivation Xtend (grape)

Protein:  Dymatize Elite Chocolate + Dymatize Elite Strawberry- half a scoop of each to make the feared choc-berry protein shake. Eh.. it was okay.

Music

Blink 182 - Greatest Hits. I'm not sure what got me listening to these guys again, but I'm glad I did. Given my t-shirt giggling antics, I thought this was appropriate: