December 2012

[Sweder]

I've just frittered and wasted some hours in an offhand way. Or, to be more precise, wrestled with a running spreadsheet (in Numbers). The analogy of bobbing for apples springs to mind. I've just come up for air, bug-eyed and sweat-soaked. This is an alien world, full of data and coding, inducing paroxysm of panic in the uninitiated.

For reasons best known to myself I have been running two sets of SportTracks, the free Garmin reader. One on my ever-traveling laptop, the other on a home-based PC. Being a Luddite of the first order I managed, at various times during the year, to clear the Garmin without downloading data to both devices, resulting in conflicting totals. Hence the dabbling with spreadsheets. Here's a 2012 summary broken down by time (minutes) and distance (kilometres) per month.

   

I'll soon visit Le Grande Fromage in his Alpine lair where I will beg shamelessly for help. Ideally I need a good online, cloud-based programme that I can access via iPad to upload and read Garmin data from more or less anywhere.

December has been my most consistent running month of 2012, possibly ever. Over a hundred miles banked (and still a few days left) with a long run of only ten miles. I haven't yet ramped up the distances as planned. Although likely to impact on my performance in Almeria this has allowed me to lay a solid base for Brighton training. That, of course, starts now.