Monthly Archives: August 2008

Running again

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I thought I’ve given up on running since my right knee hurts when I ran. But after talking to another runner friend, I realized that my running shoes may be expiring thus causing all the problems. So I got a new pair of running shoes and tried to run again and so far so good. Surprisingly, after 2 months of spinning classes, my heart and lungs are coping slightly better when I run.

Nowadays, when I go out for a walk/run, besides my nike+ipod, I’ll also put on my Timex heart rate monitor (HRM). So many gadgets for such slow running 🙂 but I really do like the numbers and stats. Here is a summary from both gadgets for today’s run:

Nike+ipod
Time: 1:17′ 46″
Distance: 8.33 km
Average pace: 9’19″/km
Calories: 557

Timex HRM
Time: 1:20′ 54″
Average heart rate: 151
Peak HR: 184 (too high: a clear indicator that running is still not easy for me)
Minimum HR: 86
Calories: 1088

The calorie count on the Timex HRM is definitely off. The nike+ipod calorie counter is more accurate. I wish the HRM calorie count was accurate though. 1088 calories is about equal to the BK Whopper plus medium French fries that I had for lunch 2 days ago 🙁

I found another feather today. To make my runs less boring, I scan the grounds for feathers and golf balls. Five feathers and four golf balls so far.

LIVE and Collective Soul

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Musikfest is here again. This time I went to the LIVE and Collective Soul concert. I bought the cheapest lawn tickets and got Marcie to come with me. Borrowed 2 collapsible lawn chairs from another friend and off to the concert we went. The weather forecast was troubling. The sky looked pretty scary when we reached the concert area.

Found a nice spot and set up our lawn chairs and waited for the concert to start. Then we saw a lady walking around the lawn area asking if people would like a free upgrade to the seated area (courtesy of Joe Straub, one of the big sponsors of Musikfest). Nearer to the stage? Definitely! We quickly packed up the chairs and moved to the seated area.

But the sky still looked rather bad..

8pm, the concert started, I looked around and saw all the empty seats behind us. I guess the two bands are not as popular now.

Collective Soul started the show. The lead singer with long blonde hair was very entertaining with his headbanging and hair flinging acts 🙂 I knew that my camera was really low on battery power, so I limited the length of the video clips that I took.

After about an hour of Collective Soul, there was a 20 minute break for LIVE to set up.

LIVE was definitely much louder. They did a nice version of Johnny Cash’s I Walk The Line.

Here is a full video of them doing Heaven.

And at last, their megahit Lightning Crashes. And the low battery icon started blinking, so the video is incomplete.

Overall, I liked Collective Soul better but LIVE had several really good songs. Considering I didn’t know them when they were really popular back in the 1990s, it was a really good show. Their songs are those really good ones that you hear but never know who sang them. It’s funny how each time a song started, both Marcie and I had the same look, the “wrecking our brains trying to figure out if we recognize the song” look. Most of the time, I didn’t know the songs, even though, I had been catching up on some of their more popular tunes on youtube the past 2 weeks.

Finally at 11pm the show ended. We carried our lawn chairs and took a long walk back to the parking lot. Even with the scary looking sky, the weather turned out to be really great for an outdoor concert. It was nice and cool. I may possibly go for another concert before Musikfest ends. This time it would be to see Over The Rhine. By the way, even Lonestar, famous for the song Amazed (the super sappy wedding song), will be playing at Musikfest this year.