I ride the bike to work every day, which is 30 to 40 minutes one way. On top of that, all the running. I suppose I must be in the 53%. Plus the video does say that there is a diminishing ROI.
23 and 1/2 hours
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Category Archives: Sport
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Két nap múlva bejelent a Nike valami forradalmit. A videóból nem sok derül ki, de gondolom valami elektronikus, ha már a Nike+ márkanevet használják.
Első maratonok
Az enyém ilyen volt, viszont most ajánlok két blogot, ahol több-kevesebb rendszerességgel arról lehet olvasni, milyen felkészülés vezet el egy maratonig.
Az egyik Lórié, aki a tavaszi bécsi maratonon fog rajthoz állni, a másik pedig Tschöppyé, akinek a terveiről csak annyit tudok, hogy valamikor 2012-ben szeretné teljesíteni a 42,2 kilométert.
Mindketten voltak a siófoki téli félmaratonon, ami nekem sajnos kimaradt, így élménybeszámoló helyett maradt az ajánló.
“Fly, you fools!” - Gandalf the Grey
Kühlwasserschlauch
Spar Budapest Marathon, 2011. Around the 28th kilometer.
ZOMBIES, RUN!
Bekötöd a cipőt, beteszed a fülhallghatót, és megteszed az első lépéseket odakint. Alig pár száz métert teszel meg, amikor meghallod őket. Közel vannak. Mindenhonnan csak a torokhangú hörgésük hallatszik. Zombik! Nem tehetsz mást: futsz!
A Zombies, Run! egy futásközpontú poszt-apokaliptikus játék lesz iOS-re és Androidra. Két részből áll: futás közben lehet hallgatni a történetet és összegyűjteni azokat az eszközöket, amelyekkel később otthon a bázist lehet fejleszteni. Az edzések alatt merülhet bele a játékos a történetbe, mindig egy-egy újabb darabját megismerve a sztorinak, hogy mi is történt a környező világgal.
A rádióutasítások és hangfelvételek mellett természetesen saját zenét is meg lehet előre határozni a futáshoz.
A játék mellett terveznek bele RunKeeper integrációt is, és futás közben sem hiányoznak az idő és távolság értesítések.
2012 első negyedévében tervezik kiadni. Jelenleg a Kickstarteren fut egy pénzgyűjtő pályázat, ahol támogatókat keresnek.
26th Nike Half-marathon
The pressure was on to match the surprisingly good time I ran at Vivicittá in the Spring, so I lined up next to the pacemakers carrying a red balloon aiming at 1:45′.
The first few kilometers were spent taking over some really slow people. I wonder what the point is in starting in the front when you know you’ll be much slower than those behind.
I had the worst time somewhere after the 4th kilometer, when we were running on the embankment of the Danube without even a little cooling breeze and the scorching sun right in front of us. I had doubts if I could keep up the speed I wanted to the end.
After the turn, however, the slight headwind was a welcome refreshment. I managed to take over the pacemakers even and soldiered on.
The last challenge came around the 16th kilometer in the form of a foot cramp. At that point I was resolute: no stopping to compromise the time. So I tried to step differently and think of something else but the sole of my foot to finally finish with a 1:44’05″ official time.
This is about half a minute improvement compared to the Spring half-marathon, which is – considering the heat – quite satisfactory.
Now the question is, do I dare sign up for the marathon in just four weeks?
25k
This is what happens when I have excess energy I can funnel into running…
WTCC / Trofeo GT MC
As a very nice birthday surprise I got a paddock pass from a friend to the Sunday WTCC race at Hungaroring. This was the first time ever the touring car championship came to Hungary.
When we arrived the first Trofeo Maserati race was going on, resulting in the victory of the local driver Norbert Kiss.
There was also a race for AutoGP cars, which proved to be way too fast to photograph and also incredibly loud. Not being familiar with the series I had to look it up: AutoGP is the successor of the Euroseries 3000 or Euro Formula 3000, using engines roughly the same power as GP2, formerly Formula 3000. TL;DR: it’s one size smaller than F1.
The big attractions were of course the WTCC races themselves. The Zengő-Dension team was well prepared: for the people at the finish line seats they handed out posters of the car with backs matching the Hungarian national colors. We were asked to hold these up to form a giant flag whenever Norbert Michelisz, the Hungarian driver, passed. With the grandstand full the atmosphere was fantastic.
To much ovation Norbert ended up coming in 2nd in the first race. In the subsequent one, however, a too ambitious first corner landed him off track with the car’s nose wrecked beyond hope, only to be saved by the torrential rain which caused the race to be suspended. Boosted by the continuous encouragement coming from the stands the crew managed to put the car together with heroic effort. Michelisz risked rejoining on slick tires enabling him to run the fastest lap of the afternoon even with his car barely being held together by duct tape.
Most of my pictures ended up blurred or showing half cars or an empty track. The semi-decent ones are on Flickr.
Budapest Cycle Track
Just the day after I wrote about BAM I bumped into this piece of news about a project called Budapest Cycle Track. The creators attempt to collect traffic data via iPhone and Android apps to map popular bicycle routes through the capital in order to find out where new tracks are most needed.
The app itself doesn’t have much functionality other than mapping, calculating the distance and sending over the data. This is where I see the issue, similarly to BAM. Why would anyone bother loading up an app just to supply data. Many would, I guess, but if penetration is the goal, something like this won’t be enough.
At the time of writing this only 114 km was submitted to the website. The visualisation would be created once they reach 10.000. I have my doubts.
Not to mention, given the current leadership, building new bicycle tracks look like to be the lowest priority.
BAM
BAM is “bringázz a munkába” which translates to “go to work by bicycle”. It is a joint project of the Hungarian Cyclists’ Club and the Ministry of National Development. Every spring and autumn – this time between 4 April and 8 May – people who ride a bike to work at least eight times are eligible to win prizes.
People can log their journeys on the website, join up with their colleagues to form company teams and compete with each other. Cyclists can indicate if there was rain on a particular day or if they got a flat tire.
Admirable the initiative may be the website itself is barely passable. The menu system and site structure is convoluted and unintuitive, the whole thing looks a decade old. The social aspect is severely lacking, for example I can’t check on my own teammates or find out how much they ride every day. There isn’t any option to invite people either, or at least I haven’t found one. Social media integration is limited to a Facebook app but its functionality stops at offering bragging rights for distance traveled. It’s ugly as hell and I couldn’t make it work either.
A shame really, because there are so many great possibilities here, as the Chromaroma project proved. If anything, riding the bicycle to work makes a perfect candidate for gamification. The whole project has been running since 2007, it’s high time to make it more enticing. Prizes are great but there could be an achievement system with award badges. Foursquare integration also comes to mind where routes are calculated from start and endpoint check-ins. People with smartphones could opt to use GPS apps to track their journeys. Monetization would be possible via targeted cycling accessory offers, etc.
Anyway, so far this month I traveled 128 km by bike which burnt 2580 calories (so little, compared to running). If I’d had a car I wouldn’t have needed to buy 10 Euro worth of gas and would have prevented 24 kg of CO2 from getting into the air.