Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...: Arun Gupta's Weblog

Sunday July 30, 2006

18.3 miles this morning

This morning's statistics ..

Distance: 18.3 miles
Time: 2:42:17
Pace: 9:11:02
Start time: 6:55am

Personal longest distance.

Technorati: Running Marathon Training

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running |

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Thursday July 27, 2006

Marathon Pace Band

Found Marathon Pace Band to help maintain my pace and also achieve marathon goal time.

Click on "Pace Band" link in the window and it will launch a pop-up window. Make sure pop-ups are enabled in your browser or at least selectively enable them for this website. Enter marathon goal time (hours, minutes and seconds) in the left side and click on "Create Pace Band". This fills up an HTML table on the right with 27 rows (1 row each for 26 miles and last row for 0.2 mile) . The left column indicates the number of miles covered (static) and the right column indicates the time that should have elapsed to achieve your goal (populated based upon your goal). This table can be cut along the border, water proofed and wrapped around the wrist during the marathon.

I expect it to be a handy tool as it will provide feedback on whether I'm running ahead or behind the goal.

Technorati: Running Marathon Training

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running |

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Wednesday July 26, 2006

Change of Blog Title

I changed the title of my blog from "Arun Gupta's Weblog" to "Miles to go ..." today mainly because of 536.3 miles I need to run in the next 3 months while getting ready for Silicon Valley Marathon.

Technorati: Marathon Training

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running |

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Tuesday July 25, 2006

Vegetarian and Marathon Training

An interesting read for vegetarian friends training for a marathon.

I've been on a completely vegetarian diet for the past few weeks and cant feel a difference.

Technorati: Running Marathon Training Vegetarian

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running |

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Sunday July 23, 2006

Uphill run this morning

Today's running target was 16 miles but Sawyer Camp Trail closure for today (probably due to high fire hazard) and high temperatures in the valley cut my run down to 10 miles. This particular trail has mile markers all through out and is almost 85% shaded. I thought it would be perfect for a long run and also trying out my new Nike Pegasus. But then after talking to some fellow runners, found another shaded trail in the Wunderlich Park. This park offers numerous trails and mostly shaded which was definitely required for the hot temperatures today.

I did a full loop of The Alambique Trail (5.1 mile one way) and it was fun. The more enjoying part was the fact that I could run all the way to the top at Skyline Boulevard and then of course came running down. Took me 2:03:41 (12:22/mile pace, aargh) and burned 1937 calories. The pace was definitely slow but I enjoyed running uphill.

Here is the detailed training calendar until today:

Silicon Valley Marathon 2006 Running Schedule
Week	Monday			Tuesday			Wednesday			Thursday			Friday			Saturday			Sunday			Total
	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Time	Exp	Act	Pace	Weight
1/May 29th							4.5	4.5	00:39:17	4.5	4.5	00:39:12	4.5	4.5	00:39:11		4.5	00:38:46	4.5	4.5	00:37:49	18	22.5	00:08:38	179
2/Jun 5th		4.5	00:37:43	4.5	7	01:00:13	4.5	4.5	00:36:43	4.5		00:45:00	4.5	7	01:01:46		9	01:25:34	7			25	32	00:08:49	178
3/Jun 12th	4.5	7	01:02:09	4.5	7	01:00:56	4.5	3.5	00:29:16	4.5	4.5	00:39:09	4.5	7	01:00:55				10	10.5	01:32:32	32.5	39.5	00:08:44	177
4/Jun 19th	3.5	3.5	00:31:19	7	7	01:01:26	4.5			4.5	7	00:59:07	7	7	00:58:45				10			36.5	24.5	00:08:36	176
5/Jun 26th	3.5	12	01:49:13	7			4.5	7	00:57:42	3.5	7	00:59:15	7				12.2	01:48:53	12			37.5	38.2	00:08:46	175
6/Jul 3rd	3.5	9	01:17:13	7	17.6	01:22:13	4.5	7	00:59:49	3.5	11.5	01:43:58	7	3.5	00:46:13		9	01:23:29	14	7	01:02:19	39.5	47	00:08:54	173
7/Jul 10th	3.5	4.5	00:44:27	7	7	00:59:27	4.5	7	01:01:04	3.5			7	7	00:55:57		15	02:19:03	16			41.5	40.5	00:08:53	171
13/Jul 17th	3.5	7	01:01:06	7	5	00:43:11	4.5			3.5	7	00:55:42	7	8	01:11:57				16	10	02:03:41	41.5	37	00:09:37	169
14/Jul 24th	3.5			7			4.5			3.5			7						16			41.5
15/Aug 7th	3.5			7			4.5			3.5			7						10			35.5
16/Aug 14th	3.5			7			4.5			3.5			7						20			45.5
17/Aug 21st				7			4.5			3.5			7						16			38
18/Aug 28th				7			4.5			3.5			7						20			42
14/Sep 4th				7			4.5			3.5			7			7			10			39
15/Sep 11th	3.5			7			4.5			3.5			7			7			10			42.5
16/Sep 18th	3.5			7			4.5			3.5			7						24			49.5
17/Sep 25th				7			4.5			3.5			7			7			14			43
18/Oct 2nd				7			4.5			3.5			7						26			48
19/Oct 9th				7			4.5			3.5			7			3.5			14			39.5
20/Oct 16th	3.5			5			4.5			3.5			4.5			3.5			10			34.5
21/Oct 23rd	4			5			4			2			2			3			27			47

Total	47	47.5	07:03:10	131	50.6	06:07:26	94	33.5	04:43:51	76	41.5	06:41:23	132	44	06:34:44	31	49.7	07:35:45	306.5	32	05:16:21	817.5	281.2	00:08:52

536.3		Miles to go
		Tennis
		Rancho PG&E
		Walk
		Biking
		Wunderlich Park

Technorati: Running Marathon Training Trails

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running | Comments[2]

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Polar F11 status report

I'm using recently bought Polar F11 for past 3 weeks and have no major complaints so far. Today I transferred daily files from previous days to Polar Personal Trainer using Polar Weblink (ver 2.2.0.240) Sonic Link.

The instructions along with Polar Weblink are detailed. After starting the software and configuring the network settings, I tried connecting to the network kept getting the error "Connection failed ... an unknown error happened during connection!". I finally disconnected my VPN and then could see the "Listen" button. A more meaningful error here definitely would have helped. But googling (yep, that's one of the newest verb in dictionary) for solution gave me pointers to Australian Polar Forum.

The display of heart rate as absolute and %HR_max tells you about the training zone. I like the fact that I can change HR limits during the run to meet my requirements but have not tried this feature yet. Here is my wish list so far:

Distance logging would make it a complete runner's paradise.
F11 does not give the feel of a sports watch. There are definitely brighter colors than Red Chili and Black.
Why data is stored for 12 days ? I would've rather had it for 14 days so that data can be uploaded on a bi-weekly basis.
There is no way to export the data from the website. This would allow me process the data and populate my training calendar at a click of button.

Technorati: Running Marathon Fitness Training Polar Heart Rate Monitor

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running |

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Friday July 14, 2006

RESOLVED: WSIT and WCF Jun CTP Interop Bug

Taking on from previous post ...

Even though the list of breaking changes from Feb CTP to Vista Beta 2 and Vista Beta 2 to Jun CTP are documented. The list is missing a "minor" detail of changing the WS-Addressing 1.0 WSDL Binding namespace from http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing (same as SOAP Binding namespace) to http://www.w3.org/2006/05/addressing/wsdl (WSDL Binding CR namespace). As a result a user reported interop problems between Jun CTP and WSIT.

I updated the namespace for WS-Addressing WSDL Binding in WSIT this morning. After deploying one of the JAX-WSA unit tests and invoking svcutil.exe to generate proxy, got the following warning:

Warning: The optional WSDL extension element 'UsingAddressing' from namespace 'http://www.w3.org/2006/05/addressing/wsdl' was not handled.
XPath: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='http://example.org/wsaTestService2']/wsdl:binding[@name='wsaTestPortTypeBindingAddressingRequired']

Seems like this CTP completely ignores a standard W3C extension element to indicate WS-Addressing on a binding/port. It generated the proxy correctly but of course the client did not send expected WS-Addressing headers and thus the endpoint faulted appropriately. Anyway, I specified UsingAddressing within a policy assertion, regenerated the proxy and invoked the client. The server returned the response correctly and CTP client displayed the response in console.

WSIT is now again interoperating with Jun CTP.

Technorati: WSIT WCF Indigo Interoperability Web Services

Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices |

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WSIT and WCF Jun CTP Interop Bug

One of WSIT user reported an issue with WCF June CTP in WSIT user forums. And thus I tried installing the latest CTP from Microsoft. But as always, there are different runtime and SDKs floating on the website (dejavu). Lets see which one are required.

The runtime components can be downloaded from here. There is a separate link for .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components Beta2 for Windows XP + SP2. But similar runtime components for Jun CTP are available for Windows XP only, no SP2. This is confusing but I took "Jun CTP" in the link name as the main indicator and hoped it was just a typo. Plug and Pray and yep, that was the correct runtime component.

The Windows SDK can be downloaded from here. If I click on 3rd bullet to download Windows SDK, then this is SDK for Beta2 of Vista and WinFX Runtime Components. This seemed incorrect but I still tried installing it and hoping it was a typo as in the previous case. But nope, not this time. Related Resources on the runtime website finally showed a link to the correct Windows SDK.

Why cant the runtime and SDK be published together in a consistent manner ? Once again, here is the correct runtime and SDK that gives you the functionality of Jun CTP.

Now I can get back to my work.

BTW, The svcutil version is 3.0.4219.0.

Technorati: WCF Indigo Bugs WSIT

Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices |

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Free AJAX Codecamp

Sang Shin is starting a FREE 10-week "AJAX Programming" online course from August 4th, 2006. This course is for anyone who wants to learn AJAX for the first time or increase their knowledge on AJAX. In this 10-week course, students learn basic concept of AJAX as well as how to use various AJAX frameworks and toolkits such as Dojo toolkit, jMaki, Google Web Toolkit, and AJAX-fied JavaServer Faces (JSF) components.

More details are available here.

The only thing you have to do in order to register for the course is sending an blank email to ajaxworkshop-subscribe-AT-yahoogroups-DOT-com.

Technorati: ajax codecamp Dojo Google Web Toolkit Java Server Faces Programming

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0 |

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Thursday July 06, 2006

11.5 miles this morning

I'm trying to make best use of July break by running some extra long distances. 11.5 miles this morning was just superb. The run up Saratoga was definitely great but Quito Road had no shoulder for significant part so I don't think I'm going to repeat this route again.

Technorati: Running Marathon Fitness Training

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running |

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Monday July 03, 2006

Heart Rate Monitors and Marathon Training

With only 16 more weeks remaining for my marathon training, I'm planning to buy a heart rate monitor (HRM) to assist me. Read here to see why heart monitoring is beneficial along with an explanation of different features of a HRM. Here is a comparison of features for the options that I'm considering:

Feature	Timex 5C411 Ironman Triathlon	Polar S120	Polar F6	Polar F11	Nike Triax C6	Description
Heart Rate Display	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Zones	5	3	3	3	4	Preset desired heart rate exercise zone.
Out-of-zone Alarm	?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Alarm notification when you are not in zone.
Time in Target Zone	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Amount of time spent within selected heart rate target zone.
Average Heart Rate	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Average heart rate over a period of time.
High Heart Rate	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Maximum heart rate achieved during a session.
Recovery Heart Rate Timer	Yes	Yes	No	No	?	Measure your heart rate after a timed recovery.
Calories Burned	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Total calories burnt per session.
Lap Timer	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Laps	30	60	-	-	100	Number of laps that can be recorded.
Clock	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Stop watch	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?
Countdown Timer	Yes	Yes	No	No	?
Date	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Water Resistance	50m	50m	30m	30m	50m

Heart Rate Memory Recall	?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coded Signal	Yes?	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Minimizes interference with other HRM.
PC Compatible	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
User Replaceable Battery	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Opinions	1	1, 2, 3	1, 2	1	1
Price	amazon.com ($69.99, original $90.00)	amazon.com ($79.95, original $99.95)	amazon.com ($99.95, original $109.99)	amazon.com ($149.95, original $159.95)

A detailed set of comments from the users of HRM is available here. Here is an extensive review of Polar AXN series. REI allows to generate a comparative chart of different HRM here. Overall, I've heard mostly positive comments about Polar. Timex and Nike seems to have a few problems as can be found from the opinions row in the table above. The opinions row in the table above helped me decide on Polar F11. I finally bought it yesterday from Sports Authority (fka Sports Mart). Got a $25 discount for any purchase over $100 and then there is an additional mail- in rebate of $10 so it will turn out to be $125.64, that's pretty much the cheapest I could find anywhere on the web or in retail stores.

I used it for a 9 mile run this morning and found it useful. The out-of-zone alarms are just great and a continuous feedback about the heart rate really kept me within my target zone. I plan to use it more-and-more during my training sessions and report on it's usage in subsequent entries, so far it's a pleasant experience but I've hardly used it!

A random set of helpful reviews is given below: