Den fungerade mycket bra. Den har kanske inte alla finesser hos alla betalapparna men den gör det den skall väldigt bra. Navigationen är mycket smidig och det är lätt att hitta alternativa vägar om man vill jämföra lite olika vägar till sitt mål. Den är väldigt snabb på att räkna om rutten ifall man väljer att köra en annan väg än den föreslagna (läs: kör fel) och jag är väldigt väldigt nöjd med den.

Jag har tidigare testat ett antal olika navigationsappar för Android men de flesta har fallit på antingen orimligt pris (ofta får man en 30 dagars prövotid eller liknande) eller så har de helt enkelt fungerat rätt dåligt. En som har fungerat bra för mig är annars NDrive men jag kommer nog inte nyttja den jättemycket nu när Navigate fungerar så bra.

Jag har inte hittat fartkameradata och liknande till den ännu men skall undersöka vilka add-ons som finns där ute.

When registering I got buttons to select imperial/european units but none of the buttons seemed to work when I pressed them and in the end I had to chose to move on. When I did so I could not find another way to go back and change the settings, nor could I update my personal data such as weight and so on.

Today I took it for a test run and I used other tracking software at the same time. After about 2/3 of the way the iMapMyRun software stopped recording it seems and instead it just plotted the last position when I turned it off at my finish. Therefore it just went in a straight line for the last 1/3 of the run. Definitely something fishy was going on there. Neither did it record the GPS elevation data for some reason, the accompanying web site says “There was an error retrieving the elevation”, I have no idea why. Of my 5 km run this app recorded only 3.

Both other recording apps (Google Tracks and Endomondo) worked fine through all this. On top of all that it feels unintuitive and quirky and a little backwards but that may be just me expecting things from being used to the other apps in this field.

When the workout finished I got a ridiculous question about peanyut butter, an ad that felt intrusive and out of place. Peanut butter is hardly the stuff for athletes so it felt rather misplaced. The whole app and the accompanying web site is riddled with ads. If you are viewing your runs, you have to upgrade to the payed version or wait 15 seconds before you can see your run. Again it is not on the level with the competing softwares in this respect.

My recommendation is to wait and see if this app matures. In the mean time check out BuddyRunner or Endomondo, both very mature and well working GPS tracking apps for runners.

It gets one running shoe out of five for now.

Blir samtalet för intensivt brukar de flesta välja att avbryta samtalet för att koncentrera sig på körningen eller stanna bilen för att prata klart innan man kör vidare, jag har en känsla av att det är mycket få som inte löser problemet när det uppstår. Det är nämligen en naturlig reaktion när man blir stressad. Det här kan man se själv, när man kör lugnt och fint på en väg där man hittar kan man ha radion på, man kan samtala med sina passagerare eller liknande. När det börjar bli svårt är den naturliga reaktionen hos i stort sett alla människor att begränsa intrycken. Radion skruvas ned, samtalen tystnar, mobilsamtalet läggs på och uppmärksamheten riktas mot att navigera trafiken och hitta till destinationen. I vissa länder är det helt förbjudet att prata i telefon under färd, handsfree eller ej, här har man i stället observerat ett beteende där folk tvärbromsar och stannar på mindre bra ställen när telefonen ringer – för kommunicera – det kommer folk inte att sluta med – det strider mot hennes natur. Jag anser nog att en specifik lagstiftning på detta område är galen. Ta yrkestrafiken då, skall taxibilar inte få svara i sin kommunikationsradio under färd? De flesta sådana är ej utrustningsbara med handsfree även om det blir mer vanligt nu för tiden med tex blåtandsteknik att det faktiskt går.

Samma förslag var också ute och cyklade på en helt anna punkt nämligen användandet av GPS i bilen. Den ville man också förbjuda eftersom det tar uppmärksamheten från vägbanan. Låt mig då påpeka att en modern talande GPS inte alls nödvändoäigtvis gör det. När jag själv använder en sådan kör jag mer på de talade instruktionerna än kartbilden när trafiken blir stressig och jag inte hittar men även om man tittar på skärmen för att se om det är här eller i nästa korsning man skulle svänga, så är det hundrafallt mycket bättre än när man satt med några urrivna blad från en telefonkatalog vid en telefonkiosk i knät under körning och försökte hitta till en god väns adress i Göteborg. Snacka om trafikfara! Skall paketbud också hänvisas till papperskartor igen som förr? Det är ju detta som återstår om man förbjuder specifika apparater som användningen av GPS-navigator under färd. Samtidigt håller jag med om att det kan vara olämpligt att sitta och programmera in sin destination under färd. Det kan vara smartare att ha gjort i förväg för det är en helt annan division när det gäller att navigera menyer och mata in adressfält jämfört med att följa instruktioner.

Vore det inte bättre att se över lagstiftningen om vårdslöshet i trafik, samt att se hur den lag vi i dag har tillämpas? Det är ju redan kutym har jag förstått att kolla om föraren hade ett uppkopplat samtal (genom teleoperatörernas loggar) om det finns minsta misstanke om att det kan vara det som är orsaken till olyckan. Jag tror GPS-apparater hjälper för vad är mer trafikfarligt än en stressad människa som inte hittar till sin destination, bilatlasen uppslagen och ett samtal uppkopplat för körinstruktioner?

Dessutom finns det ett annat problem med så specifika förbud som detta handlar om, och det är att det ger ett intryck av att andra saker som inte är förbjudna då plötsligt är tillåtna i stället. En så specifik lag måste också hela tiden förändras med tekniken vilket bara är dumt, detta eftersom det hela tiden kommer nya tekniker, man kan vara ganska säkert på att GPS kommer ersättas av något ännu smartare på sikt.

Är man orolig över folks bristande uppmärksamhet i trafiken borde man radikalt förenkla skyltningen i stället samt se över användandet av reklamtavlor och framför allt de här nya ytterligt ljusstarka videoskärmarna som man nu sätter upp lite överallt. Här finns definitivt saker att göra och även om jag tycker moralpaniken när HM kommer med nya underklädesreklamen på trafikreklampelarna är ytterligt överdriven så kan jag hålla med om att det stjäl uppmärksamhet i någon mån. Är det då trafikfaligt? Nja, inte nödvändigtvis.

En annan sak i sammanhanget är ju att en av de viktigaste faktorerna för att förhindra olyckor är ett väl fungerande vägunderhåll något som äntligen börjar uppmärsammas mer och mer. En mer generell lag om bristande uppmärksamhet i trafiken vore bättre – och det har vi redan så låt oss i stället se över hur den lagen är skriven eller kanske hur den tillämpas, det kommer definitivt vara tillräckligt.

Then one day of resting the legs and hacking in the night (Carpe Noctum as we say) before setting off on my next run all the way out to Rullsand and back again completing a full 10 km if I include the warmup and cooldown walks as well, it was a beautiful run with loads of energy and the kilometers just ticked away as the legs moved. Not too fast either just a great running experience with the exception of the mosquitoes and flies that set on in the woodland parts of the track.

That was it for week 28.

In wk 29 I started on Monday with a tempo based run with lots of hills, the ordinary long track at home 3,5 km one lap and did a pretty good time despite being intervals and kept a 7:23 tempo on average. On Tuesday I did my second 10 km PLUS warmup/cooldown (Kallhäll-Ängsjö-Kallhäll) so in total about 12 km actually but the running part was 10,9 km. This was asphalt for the full length with the exception of the first and last km that was gravel road.

This run was also a really good one, I even though parts are extremely hilly on this run but I managed with a few walks to get the pulse down again to jog at a really steady pace most of the time. Tempo was about 9:07 min/km which is slow but still, for being me not bad at all, I was really happy but very tired when I got back home. A bit overtraining here if I believe the training watch I am using.

On Thursday I tried jogging again but it was terrible, I just went home after 2 km that felt terrible. Bad sleep from the heat and not enough fluid as well as the 10 clicks from 2 days earlier was still in the system, it was better just give it a rest actually.

Saturday I visited a friend in Täby, Jenny B and “borrowed” her usual track. Took a few wrong turns there so her 5 k run turned out to be a 6 k run for me but did well and it felt really really good!

Sunday was another first for me, running trail! I have heard much about it so I did myself a map over the trails in the area and laid out a 7 km run on them. It was not fun. It was just BRILLIANT! I have never really had so much fun running. Roots and fist-sized stones, slippery boulders, wet pine needles and loose branches as well as mud, cold water streams to jump across, a little bit of old forgotten gravel road and then back into the woods again.

There was a mist all through the woods, permeating everything and the really tricky parts I had to negotiate half crawling but it was challenging, hilly, technical, lovely and just something I really really enjoyed doing.

Challenging is an understatement. Compared to running on even ground this is so much more difficult, you got to keep a cool head and THINK all the time in order to not put yer foot in the wrong place and slip leading to a sprained ankle or even breaking something. When you get tired you have to be even more careful of the footing but it was just great.

I am going to keep doing trails more often now that I know how fun that is!

My favourite lap times five, it’s about 1800 meters and then down towards the beach and back going home again.

And it actually felt quite nice. Right now my feet hurt a little but during the running it just felt good. Strange that, I hardly thought I could make it and then it even felt good. I’ve been training at a too high pulse as usual before.

As usual the first run after a down-period was terrible, but I soon found my pace back and the condition is growing on me and I managed after just 4 runds to do a 5 km run again. Which is the goal distance of the C25k programme of course. I feel great but need more time to really get into the habit. They say that the workout habit needs about 5 weeks to form so I need to keep doing this.

The really good things is that the running at the gym from work is not bad at all and with the kind of temperatures that we are having and the treacherous ice and snow out there, trying to run trails in these conditions will probably just end with me needing a hip replacement or something, better to stay indoor another couple of months.

The treadmill actually interfaces with my el cheapo pulse watch. Not bad for a 59 SEK watch and HRM band actually, and that’s great. I can set a time, a speed and a target heart rate and the machine will then adjust inclination to achieve the target heart rate, all I need to do is to keep running the distance. When the time is upp there is a cooldown period.

My feet are a little sore after each workout but that’s just to be expected, I’ve gone all “tenderfoot” again after the break from my workout routine. Back on the bandwagon again is the melody.

Speaking of which, I have designed a Spotify playlist for 30 min running with warmup and cooldown which will be useful both in the gym and in the woods when that day comes. Another playlist for 45 min running and so on will be added.

Most of these songs have a really high bpm to get your tempo and step cadence up to close of 180 steps a minute but they vary a little which your running also should.

• WARMUP: Clint Eastwood – Gorillaz
• RUN: Born to Boogie – Hank Williams Jr.
• RUN: Vaterland – Melotron
• RUN: Up Tempo – Leo Kottke
• RUN: Rocka På – Markoolio
• RUN: Bloodshot Eyes – Pat Benatar
• RUN: Breakthru – Queen
• RUN: Shame, Shame, Shame – Aerosmith
• RUN: Lakeside Drive – Nitzer Ebb
• COOLDOWN: Jamo – Cooldown Mix – Skyway

Warmup: 5:43, running 30:00, cooldown 7:09, total 42.9 minutes

And of course, here is the spotify link. Load your mobile spotify client up, select to use offline for the playlist and then keep running! Off-line mode is great since it does not drain your battery as fast and you can keep running even if your 3G coverages is not so good where you are running.

I’d love more tips on good running songs!

Bonus is that the machine can read my pulse belt so it means I can do really good pulse training without effort, it is really easy to regulate speed and incline on the machine whilst running so you can keep the pulse in the zone all the time.

Doing round of about 3.5 km in 30 mins at the moment, will set out to increase over time up to 5 km and my goal is still to run “Midnattsloppet” in August which is a 10 km run.

A summary of each week’s training will be posted. I am aiming for three runs with one day of rest between them and then two days of rest in the weekend. Right now the runs will be the same all three but I will later divide them into shorter runs with intervals for speed, longer runs with slow tempo for distance and recovery runs.

I will go down to the gym at work on monday and see if there is some way to start jogging again. Outdoors is just too slippery right now although the cold is nit si much a problem for me.

Wish me luck…

I then had muscle pains for a couple of days and then the christmas party time set in full fledged! I had no less than three christmas parties to attend to this year, from work, with friends and again this weekend with more friends. It has been fantastic in every way and then finally the snow came as well. It now does look like christmas but it has not done me well in the exercise scheme, the roads are perilous to run now but since it is close to christmas I will see if I may sneak down into the exercise gym at work and find a cross trainer or something similar to work out on.

I mean it, I need to get more exercise and the weather and road conditions are just not really that fit for running right now. Fortunately snow rarely lasts that long here in Stockholm, it will be fine for running in no time.

Apart from that life just got in the way a lot training wise and I managed to squeeze in some long walks. All in all a not so good week but I will do better.

But, I did another 4 km today and it felt pretty good. My usual track around the Slammertorp cottage (2 laps on the easy path) and the time was about 8:30 min/km so not bad for not having been out much the last couple of weeks.

Gonna do better now, I promise. Feet feels nice tonight actually.

Did two runs this week, both of them were horrible, the first was a 4 km run at an extremely low pace, 9:15 min/km and today I did another one at 8:40 min/km but that was only a 3 km run. My body really did not want to run today so it was all in my mind really. I had set out to do 4 km today as well but my body refused to do more than 2. So we reached a kind of compromise on 3 km. Not that good really but I think it is going the right way slowly. Next week it will start feel better I’m sure.

And it did. I managed to get around 2 laps of my usual track and it took 37 minutes to complete 4 km. However even if the tempo of 9:15/km is just a sliver better than walking real fast, I actually did it. I tried to keep my pulse around 160-165, I have found it gives me the best burn workout I can get. At this heart rater I can keep going for some time without stopping and it gives me a good workout with plenty of sweat.

Today it was difficult to keep that rater even with the really slow running. On the second lap it started to creep up beyond 170 bpm and several parts of the track was done around 170-175 bpm rather than the 160-165 that was my goal.

So definitely I have lost condition. I have also gained weight these four weeks but that is about to come right off again as I start running more regularly so I am not too worried about that right now. And condition comes rather fast, especially when you start low

Even though my 7 km run looks distant right now I am sure that in 3-4 weeks time I might be able to repeat it if my health stays okay, that is.

Then I’ll go jogging again!

By Saturday night I was covered in urticaria all over my head and face, looking like something straight out of a 1950ies creature feature movie. Not a pretty sight. And it hurt — and the itching is hard to describe. Can’t give in to it though, that just make things bleed and scar.  I have had a rough night now but I have woke up feeling a little better actually. This might be because the human body produce it’s own cortisone in the morning or … perhaps I am slowly getting better.

I even played with the thought of putting a photograph of my horrible looks on my home page but then decided against it, the world might not be ready for that kind of disfigurement yet.

My better half Jeanette is having the flu and I believe that is what onset it this time for me as well. She’s feverish and coghy and tired and have all the classic symptoms. Even though I probably had a bit of that (last night my throat was a little sore) I think I got off the flu easy. Let’s hope this leads to something good, like immunization to A(H1N1) better known as the bacon plague.

My hands still hut a bit and I still don’t dare that perhaps I will now start to get better because I know when nightfall comes and cortisone in the body is switched to melatonine instead then these kinds of rashes usually gets worse. I go from cold sweats to hot spells regularly still.

And now the time has passed enough that I no longer longingly pass my sneakers in the hallway. I have forgotten the joy of running. I need to nurture the addiction once more and learn how to start slow. Not that I think I have lost everything but I believe there will be a couple of weeks of build-up before I can get back to where I was.

If I get better now…

En GPS-mottagare som skall låsa på en satellitsignal för att kunna beräkna sin position behöver utföra en två-dimensionell sökning efter signalen för att kunna hitta den. Den första dimensionen är i tiden — signalstrukturen hos en GPS signal består av en 1023 bitar långt pseudo random number (PRN) i en sekvens som sänds ut med en hastighet av 1.023 megabit/sekund, dvs hela sekvensen sänds en gång per millisekund.

För att kunna låsa i den här dimensionen måste mottagaren ställa in en intern klocka till det korrekta av alla 1023 möjliga värden inom en millisekund dvs timeslots (tidluckor) som kan innebära starten på telegrammet. Det görs som regel genom att man provar sig fram med möjliga värden och försöker hitta det som stämmer. De flesta mottagare behöver ett par millisekunder för att avgöra om en viss timeslot är den rätta eller inte så detta innebär att denna sökning tar ungefär 1-2 sekunder per satellit.

Den andra dimensionen är frekvens. Mottagaren måste korrigera för dopplerskift genom att försöka finjustera mottagningsfrekvensen till signalens frekvens och doppleravdriften. Genom anledningar som vi inte går in på här — men de involverar ovan nämna 1 ms timeslot samt en gammal kändis som hette Nyquist — så är de grövsta möjliga stegen man kan ta när man försöker finjustera signalen 500 Hz.

Mottagarens oscillator är dock oftast inte bättre än ± 10 kHz ungefär och det innebär att ca 20 olika frekvensinställningar kommer behöva provas av. Också denna process görs för varje satellit som skall användas och därför är den initiala proceduren för att erhålla en låsning ganska tidsödande och arbetsintensiv. Det är inte förrän de senaste åren som man faktiskt lyckats bygga relativt strömsnåla mottagare, delvis pga detta.

Den vanligaste strategin för att så snabbt som möjligt få låsning på satelliterna är att man börjar med att välja en oscillatorfrekvens baserat på vad man vet om sin position just nu. Den behöver inte vara exakt, några grader fel är inget problem. Detta baseras på att man antingen sparar ner positionen man hade sist man hade låsning eller helt enkelt frågar användaren var han befinner sig ungefär. Åtminstone vilken världsdel. Sedan gäller det att veta något om var satelliterna befinner sig och detta data finns också lagrat sedan föregående gång och nu behöver vi veta vad klockan är ungefär så det brukar också mottagaren kunna fråga efter.

När vi vet detta kan vi beräkna den apparenta hastigheten satelliterna bör ha och därmed välja en hygglig initial gissning för dopplerskiftet och sedan kan vi börja prova vilken time slot som verkar vara rätt. Då har vi 1023 kombinationer kvar att testa och sedan kanske vi behöver ändå skifta dopplerkompenseringen något eller några steg så i runda slängar behöver vi göra ett par tusen tester och de tar några ms var att göra. En sak till behöver vi också kontrollera och det är våran egen referensoscillators fel. Vi har kanske en uppskattning sedan tidigare kontakter med satelliterna men den driver med temperatur och kanske andra faktorer så vi måste eventuellt prova ytterligare kombinationer för att säkra att vi inte missar signalen vi letar efter.

Så mottagaren börjar på en kvalificerad gissning, hittar den ingenting provar den nästa time slot och så vidare. När den provat alla 1023 möjligheter lägger vi på en offset på vår referensoscillator baserad på den uppskattade felvisningen och nästa steg i vår dopplertabell som vi kan använda oss av. Sedan är det bara att testa ytterligare 1023 time slots.

Det här gäller förstås när vi vet något om läget. När vi gör en helt kall start och inte vet någonting måste vi gå igenom initialsökläget. Där får vi plötsligt väldigt många kombinationer att titta igenom och det här läget kan vi hamna i om vi trots vår kvalificerade gissning enligt tidigare inte hittar någon signal. Det kan hända att mottagaren har rest en längre sträcka, det kan hända att den har aktiverats inomhus där mottagningen är dålig, det finns inget sätt för oss att veta detta utan vi får helt enkelt prova kombinationer tills mottagaren hittar något som den känner igen som ett GPS-telegram.

Så fort mottagaren börjar hitta en signal som verkar stämma så etableras två stycken tracking loops eller faslåsningsslingor. En är en faslåst slinga i frekvensdomänen som skall försöka spåra satellitens doppler och justera mottagaren efter detta. Den andra är den tidslåst slinga som håller fast vid just denna kanals time slot eller tidslucka. Så målet är att vi skall alltid veta fasen och vilken kod signalen använder.

Så fort detta villkor har uppfyllts så börjar vi extrahera data ur GPS-telegrammet som skickas från satelliten. Telegramstrukturen innehåller ett 1500 bitar långt meddelande som skickas med 50 bitar/sekund och det tar 30 sekunder att skicka ett helt telegram. De flesta mottagarna kräver att man tar emot ett fullt obrutet telegram innan man får ut själva datat vilket betyder att om man kommer “in i” ett redan sändande telegram kan det ta upp till 30 s innan man får samma telegrams start igen, sedan måste man läsa in det telegrammet och det kan då ta upp till 60 s att få det första telegrammet “helt” ur mottagaren. I snitt sker detta alltså på ca 45 s för de flesta mottagare.

För att få en rå positionsfix i 2D krävs det att mottagarens klocka också går korrekt. Detta kan man få fram genom att man lyssnar på telegrammen från tre olika satelliter. Man kan då i ett enkelt ekvationssystem korrigera bort sitt eget fel och det förbättras om man väljer de satelliter som ligger högst i rymden. Efter att man har fått dessa första 3 satelliter kan man börja visa en position men fortfarande är noggrannheten oftast inte så bra, en upplösning på 25-50 meter eller så brukar man kunna förvänta sig i det här läget.

När man nu så har tre stycken katter i säcken kan man fortsätta och leta satelliter. Varje satellit man hittar och får lås på ger ytterligare tillskott till datamängden och minskar felet och man kan mer och mer korrigera sin egen klocka och använda sig av medelvärdesbildning mellan de olika satelliternas telegram och därmed också kunna öka noggrannheten ännu mer. Det tar ungefär 45 s att hitta varje satellit för varje mottagare som arbetar med att leta.

Varje satellit skickar också i sitt telegram en förkortad almanacka som ger information om satellitbanorna, eventuella deviationer som förekommer och detta lagrar de flesta mottagare pliktskyldigt för att underlätta låsningen nästa gång. Ju längre man lyssnar på fler satelliter desto mer komplett blir almanacksdatat och det blir då lättare att låsa när man startar upp sin GPS-mottagare igen.  Har den legat avslagen länge — ett par månader eller så — kan det hända att almanackdatat åtminstone för några satelliter inte stämmer längre så väl. Almanackdatat tar upp ca 25 av de 30 sekunder som varje satellits telegram sänds på och det tar totalt 12 minuter och 30 sekunder att få ner en full uppsättning almanacksdata för hela nätverket. Därför är det en bra ide att alltid låta sin GPS-mottagare vara igång en kvart eller så efter den fått låsning.

Har mottagaren helt felaktig eller saknar almanacksdata finns inget annat sätt än att göra en all sky search vilket kan ta 20 minuter eller mer. Då provar man slaviskt kombination efter kombination tills man hittar satelliterna så man kan få ner almanacksdatat och därmed börja bygga upp den information man behöver för att kunna erhålla låsning inom ett par minuter. Det är mycket ovanligt att mottagare idag startar i det här läget. Det finns nämligen vissa grundförutsättningar som är så pass vanliga att man direkt kan utesluta ett antal testfall man aldrig behöver göra. Och frågar man dessutom användaren ungefär var han befinner sig och vad klockan är kan man också dra vissa slutsatser baserat på grundförutsättningarna för GPS-systemet och dess satelliters grundbanor.

När man har hittat fler än 3 satelliter kan man även få en 3D-låsning vilket innebär att man kan börja kalkylera vilken höjd man befinner sig på. Denna kalkyl är dock inte riktigt lika noggrann som positionen, man brukar säga att felvisningen kan vara upp till 3 ggr så stor på höjden som den beräknade positionsfelet uppgår till.

Moderna GPS-mottagare som sitter i mobiltelefoner fuskar ordentligt. Om de har täckning går de helt enkelt ut på mobilnätet och kontrollerar vad klockan är. Många operatörer skickar också en grov koordinat till mobilen från basstationen (det är basstationens egen koordinat som skickas) och då har ju mobilen redan en hel del information att börja arbeta med när det gäller att hitta satelliter.

Det skall också sägas att mycket av det ovan beskrivna när det gäller att hitta satelliter och få låsning sker parallellt. De flesta mottagare på marknaden idag har åtminstone 12 parallella mottagare så de kan söka av de möjliga kombinationerna 12 ggr så snabbt som de tidiga enkanaliga mottagarna.

Dessutom har man lagt till ett nytt system som heter EGNOS[1] här i Europa med ytterligare satelliter som via markstationer skickar ut kompletterande deviationsdata. I USA har man en motsvarighet som kallas WAAS[2] Har man en mottagare som klarar EGNOS-signalen (och den är tillräckligt bra för att kunna användas) så får man ytterligare kompletterande information och noggrannheten på mottagaren kan då bli 2-3 meters felvisning vilket är helt otroligt egentligen.

För bilnavigation behöver man som regel en noggrannhet på runt 15 meter, blir den sämre kan det bli svårt att ha framförhållning och för den som går i skog och mark kanske man inte ens behöver ha bättre än 100 meters felvisning medan på sjön vill man gärna ha 5 meter eller bättre för att undvika en grynna.

[2] WAAS betyder Wide Area Augmentation Service som betyder ungefär service för förbättning av vidsträckt område och det är underförstått att det är navigationsdata man försöker förbättra.

I miss the running, my shoes are calling to me when I pass them by on my way out through the door. Tomorrow I am missing my sixth scheduled run in a row but I am not too worried about it.

These softwares are CardioTrainer and BuddyRunner, two wonderful applications to help you run well when doing exercise. Both offer similar features and are mainly aimed at runners that want to keep statistics on their exercise and perhaps also their competitions.

The Cardio Trainer Android application

But what do they do? To make a long story short they are both personal trainers and logging instruments that can upload your running data to a web site where you can review what you have done and compare runs over time.

They are using the GPS in the phone to log your position periodically and thus can calculate your speed. They also measure the time and therefore knows at all times your speed and pace, the distance you have ran so far and in what time you did it.  If you are using earphones and listening to music on your Android mobile as you run they will muffle the music or silence it completely and announce the running data periodically.

Feature-wise they are very similar, CT offers more settings to smooth out GPS positions during a run which can be good if you get bad measurements occasionally but won’t really help much in the long run, so to speak, but after testing the two producs side-by-side I can only conclude they are very similar in the distance they measure when running. The distance on both of them is perhaps a bit on the conservative side compared to distance measured on map or with a really good outdoor GPS (Magellan eXplorist XL) which shows a slightly longer track most of the time. Not certain why this is but they seem to be on the conservative side. My 2 km track registers as 1 850 meters roughly and that is 7.5% on the conservative side.

CT has a huge disadvantage for us Europeans, the tracks it records are shown in metric units on the handheld if you set it up to do so, but on the website everything is by imperial measurements which is really sad because it is otherwise a very good application. I have written them and they are looking into developing it. In fact there’s been two new versions of CardioTrainer released recently both with some small improvements.

The Buddy Runner

BuddyRunner however has a really wonderful web site where you can see the run on a Google Maps interface, statistics on your run such as pace for each part of the run, and elevation. It is interesting to see the elevation go up and the pace time per km increase at the same time. You can compare several runs (up to three) download your running track and it keeps tracks of your records, longest, fastest and so on. Over all it is a much more developed web site than CardioTrainer has. However the application on the handheld is less sophisticated, it does not have the same filters and settings as CardioTrainer does and when it speaks to you it always abruptly pauses the music, the CardioTrainer can lower the volume but keep the music running which is better if you are trying to keep your pace to the music.

In the phone however both applications are very similar however and the settings screen also offers settings to change the announcer frequency and the contents of the announcing messages. BuddyRunner performs well int he background but CardioTrainer wants to run in the foreground, otherwise it pauses. CardioTrainer can also automatically play a certain playlist of music for you while BuddyRunner just leaves the music player alone.

Example of the website for Buddy Runner, click to check it out in reality.

Sharing your things with others is easy on the BuddyRunner, the application and webside can write RSS feeds to your Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed site and so on, you may show your dashboard to anyone you like, they can’t manipulate it unless you log in but they can leave a comment on your run if they want to.

CardioTrainer has a secret passcode to the webside, you can not display it without this code and when you enter the code you may also remove runs and modify the content, so you would not want to post that publicly. There is also right now no integration with Facebook, Twitter and similar sites, no RSS feeds and the tracks can not be downloaded from the site.

In the end the factor that is the most deciding one for me is the website. BuddyRunner has a much better web site and I love the feature that you can download your runs in GPX format to have them displayed on Google Earth or some similar mapping software if you like. Great stuff!

August 29: So I have graduated from the C25k programme. I am now capable of running 5 km continuously without any walking and resting. Although the pace is not great, I do it in just above 40 minutes I feel very happy about this and now the continuation is to keep doing it three times a week. Tomorrow I celebrate 5 months as a runner!

I will of curse run and alternate between shorter and faster runs and slower and longer runs. For the coming couple of months I believe that there is no reason for me to go beyond the 5 km.

After that I might keep adding to it to go for the full 10 km that I want to be able to do by next summer. I have plans on running the Midnattsloppet (the midnight run) here in Sweden by then.

Thinking back I never really thought I would be here. I still vividly remember the first time I put my trainers on and my running pants and jacket and went out to run 1 minuter, wallk 1 minute and so on for 20 minutes. It was really terrible and now a 2 km run is hardly something to think about and a 5 km run can be done although I admit that I will they feel more like routine than a maximum

August 28: I did a recovery run today. Still feeling that last 5k run in my legs so I did a short 2k run today. It was great however, good speed and the feeling was lovely. Even though I felt the last run a bit I had no problems what so ever and in fact I think the short run just did me good.

Gretting the legs really warm again helped the recovery it seems. I feel great and I am looking forward to this weeks last run tomorrow which probably will be around 4-5 km again…

August 26: I have now returned from my holiday trip and I have been pretty good att keeping my exercise schedule varying the distances I have been running and lots of uphill training the past three weeks. Back up where we got the cabin it feels like everything is uphill. Now tonight it will be nice to test out how it feels on the old track again taking my normal 4 km run or perhaps going for another 5 km run if that feels right. We will have to see about that.

Most of my runs have been with short parts walking. The uphills are really killers when you have a bit of overweight. I have however lost another kg despite the holiday barbecues, drinking and snackning so I will be working on getting my weight down even further. Apart from that I don’t really have much else right now for you but I will be getting back to my regular schedule soon…

Two more weeks of holiday…

August 2: Today I have managed something I could not dream about about 4 months ago when I embarked on this silly quest. Not so silly any more, my general condition and health has improved beyond what I would have expected.

But today I actually ran 5 km. Not very fast, the path is a wooden path with many hills up and down, some of them quite steep and taxing but I managed to keep a rather nice ongoing pace all through the workout.

Two more runs like that and I will have graduated from the C25k programme! I feel incredible really, I thought 4 km was tough enough but tonight it was a wonderful night. A slight fog and chill in the air. I sat out to do my workout around half past eleven in the night and I got back home again about half past midnight after having a nice wind down walk as well.

Lovely. No pains anywhere, no blisters, nothing from the knees or the hip I have felt slightly before everything just went really well. I am still a big guy of about 100 kg + but my health and stamina has improved immensely over the last four months.

Now the trick is to continue this and keep doing what is good at the same time as I will have to work out a diet with a little less calories in it!

July 31: I have mostly kept up my deal of the bargain so far and been runnint 2-3 times every week. I have now a new workout path I am running mostly on asphalt which is faster and less hilly than my wooden path but also a little harder on the legs. The last couple of runs went rather well but today was a tough one again. I have been taking more walks than usual and perhaps my legs was not very rested really when I set out today. After the first km or so I started alternating between something like 5 min jogging and 2-3 min walking and I managed to do my 4 km with intervals but I was very tired in the legs.

I hope the next workout will be better, I am considering going back to running my usual wooden path again next time. We’ll see!

I have been fine, no pains really anywhere that is holding me back, my condition is pretty good again and my legs are getting stronger although it takes a long time. I have not been able to go much beyond my standard 4.3 km really it’s been rather hard but there is no rush to increase the running yet. I get a good workout from these runs anyhow and that’s what matters most.

July 25: This week has been two runs so far. One tough on my normal track and this morning I went for a new circuit I have never done before and it went really well. More asphalt this time, I run a lot faster on that compared to gravel. Also not so hilly as my usual circuit, this one has one very steep hill and then one very long hill that just drains your energy a lot.

Even though I walked a bit this run I did my personal best on 4 km yet, 30 minutes 29 seconds! That gives a pace of 7:33 per km which is a personal best yet on 4 km at least. Yay!

The new circuit is mainly on asphalt but I don’t seem to be any worse off running on that compared to gravel and paths in the wood. Feel fine and strong. So far just two runs this week I will get one more run in Sunday night if it feels right.

Last week was the Summer Hack week and although I did one run I did not complete my other two runs that I wanted. Things just got in the way but I did play one match of “brännboll” a sort of Swedish version of Baseball and that was something I felt in my legs!

This week started better, a nice but hard run on monday. Today is wednesday but I am resting today so my next run will be tomorrow! See you then!

July 12: Level 8! I am getting there, though slowly, but I am getting there! Woohoo!

Another great run, though I felt the front side of my shins the whole way. Rather painful actually but I ignored it, lowered the pace worked on and got through the whole ordeal. Except for the painful shins the run was really nice. Next time I hope I will not have to feel them and then this would be really a great run actually

Still having a bit of trouble with the downhill running, need to let go and increase my speed there but I am not comfortable doing it, legs needs to be stronger than they are now. Don’t know, perhaps a few visits to the gym may be helpful for that. Gotta think about that (hate the gym).

I am slowly getting better at this. Even though I don’t feel like it when I work out at the pace I am going but the numbers don’t lie, I have started to pick up the pace a little from 8:45 to 8:20 or there around and on this hilly track that’s not too bad.

This weekend was full of junk food and resting doing nothing. In fact I was barely outside at all this weekend, save for this run and for a trip to the gas station (emergency supplier of potato crisps). So considering that I think it’s great. Next week is back on the wagon again.

On Thursday we are going to the Summer Hacking Camp in Skutskär. That will be nice, meeting up with all the nice people there and I hope I will find some nice places around there to do my running on. That should be interesting

July 10: Did another 4 km run today and the pace was around 7:45 min/km this time. I took the path down by the lakeside to the train tunnel and back again.  I just went out and ran today, I forgot all about my pulse watch and everything. Don’t really look that much at it these days, I know by heart so to speak where I am in the zone.

We had a few drinks yesterday so I was perhaps a little slower than I should have been otherwise but hey, one has to have some fun as well!

This was my sixth run on the 4 km level. I will be going for 4.5 km next time I run because I have already done 4.3 km and 4.2 km regularly. It is time for level eight!

Today's run, home to Trappeberg and back home again same route.

July 7: Today I was back on my normal path again runnit it in the “reverse” direction again so I can finish off with a longer down slope and start with the uphills. Started running just outside my door and then did 4.25 km in 36 minutes.

So slow tempo and everything went really good. Tempo 8:30 is no competition tempo but I did manage to run the full way without any stops or walking.

July 5: Did a new track today down by the waterfront, went off in a pretty high tempo and burned out around the third km so I had to walk a few minutes, muscles really stiff and tired, but even so I did a great tempo for me, 7:30 on average though this path is not so hilly.

July 3: Today was a rather tough set actually, my legs got really tired after the first 2 km so I resordet to walking/running the rest of the track I had set out to do. On the map below you can see the result. Almost one minute worse per km than usual. It was hot, humid, a bit of rain and it was later. All these things may have contributed and I was running in full pants rather than shorts because of the mosquitos and the raining yesterday. The heat is terrible for running. But fortunately Swedish summers rarely stay around 35 degrees for very long however so I will soon be back on track again.

I have realized I need to get a runner’s shirt however in a good soft material and with some pocket for my keys and MP3 player. I will go looking for something suiteable this weekend. I do have pretty good shorts to run in as well, they dry out very fast and are comfortable.

Legend: Black 0-3 km/h, blue 3-6 km/h, green 6-9 km/h, yellow 9-12 km/h and red above 12 km/h. Or if you prefer in tempo: Blue 20, Green 10, Yellow 6:40, Red: 5.

This track above is pretty good, hilly but without the killer slopes that the track closer to the lake has and it is usually pleasant to run on the track of gravel and wooden paths.

In two weeks I should be able to go 5 km (I hope) and thereby reaching my goal with the Couch to 5 km running programme that I have been following (more or less). Then I will keep at this level for some time until my body has the time to stabilize before getting into the next programme.

But I have so many nice places I want to run

So this is my new friend and toy. I have previously been an Ericsson fan until they released the ridiculous K600i telephone and then I switched to Nokia N95 for a short while and I detested the Symbian OS completely. So then I tried a Windows Mobile based HTC the Dual Touch model and my current work provides me with a HTC S740 which is also a windows mobile but with some nice features like GPS and so on. Last thursday however I went and bought myself the first big Android phone released in Sweden, the HTC Magic through the operator 3.

Just WOW!

I can honestly tell you that this mobile has become one of the best gadgets and most useful tools I have ever possessed and in a very nice package. The mobile looks a little bit like an iPhone, slightly smaller display area and with a few more buttons on the front side. However when it is started it is obvious that it har borrowed even more from the iPhone in terms of the interface but also it is far from the special locked down feeling that I get from all Apple’s stuff.

The great Google Mobile! Picture shows a Vodaphone mobile, mine is without that logotype but otherwise the same.

Connector

First of all the multiconnector contact on the phone is a slightly modified USB connector. The modification is only there so that you won’t insert audio connectors into a normal USB but they will fit your phone. However normal USB cables will fit the phone so you can connect it to any laptop or desktop PC or mac just like that with any normal USB connector.

The phone charges over USB and syncs really well. This has been the standard for HTC phones for quite some time now and I hope that other makers of phones will abandon their special connector solutions and just use a normal USB plug or a lightly modified one like HTC does.

Battery time

The battery is depleted quickly if you are surfing a lot, streaming music running the GPS and so on but if you are using it in stand-by mode it will keep you happy for a couple of days at normal use. In the beginning you will probably – like me – need to charge it nighly because it is just so fun to try all the features and bring up the GPS assisted maps, stream YouTube when you are bored and so on. Of course using heavy applications and lots of 3G and HSPA data networks will definitely use up the battery quickly.

But I have no complaints really, if you are conservative with you will probably not have to charge it more than every second or third day. It also recharges pretty quickly if you use the wall plug charger. Charging over USB from a computer that can only deliver 500 mA maximum takes of course much longer.

Software

The software for syncing and backing up is included on the phone. Connect it to your computer using the USB cable, then mount the SD card that comes with it and the sync application, manual et cetera is showing up on a removable disk volume. Just install the software straight from the phone and you are ready. Or look something up in the manual.

Adding your MP3 music is just as easy, just drag them to the music folder on your phone, allow the copy to finish and then you are done. The copying is pretty fast as well, seems to be USB2 which is so much faster than my older HTC mobiles that was taking forever to store music.

Oh, and the mobile can be used like normal whilst connected to the PC with the USB.

Android OS and Interface

The Android OS is developed by Google and this is obvious from start when setting up the phone since it asks for your Google online username and password. Once given to the phone it syncs the calendar and mail account with the online GMail and Google Calendar and many other services you might be using such as GTalk and so on. Lovely stuff if you like the G approach to online life then this phone is definitely for you! It also have mail applications that can handle Exchange mail and normal POP/IMAP accounts as well of course though I have not had much use with these yet and gmail is doing the job rather nicely for me.

The interface is smart, sleek and very fast. I have not been able to make the phone slow down yet with the applications I have been running. The menus just slides out and back again really smooth and nice. The settings in the phone is very logically arranged and it just takes seconds to find something you don’t have to hunt around in an obscure menu system and most of the things just works out of the box.

The on-screen keyboards

There are several of on-screen keyboard to chose from and whenever you touch something to type the phone gives a tactile response by a very short vibration. This is really great because most touch keys are difficult to see if you hit or not because even if the key gives a visual response the finger usually blocks the view! Great thinking here.

Swedish keys are located on one of the keyboards directly and in the others you will have to press the A button or O button down to bring up a row of accented characters and then slide your finger off to the Å, Ä or Ö characers as desired.

Sky map

The mobile features a GPS receiver, a magnetic compass and accelerometric sensors that can tell how you are holding the phone. And of course google has released a real killer app to go with that, the google stars. Go out on a starry night, give the GPS a few seconds to locate your position (or use the cell towers to triangulate your position down to a few hundred yards accuracy) and then start the Google Stars app and hold the mobile up to the part of the sky you are viewing. Instantly the mobile will show you the stars and their names, constellations, where the polar star is and show you the positions of the planets and so on. I can’t really tell you how fun this is – you just got to try this out yourself. Incredible!

Navigation for car and by foot

Oh I already mentioned the GPS. It loads information over the network where the satellites are so it aquires a position within seconds when outdoor. If it can not find a GPS fix it will still give you pretty accurate position based on information from the cell towers if your operator supports this. The magnetic compass shows where you are heading and the GPS plots your current position on Google Maps. Now just find where you want to go and it will take you there. Really good for finding addresses, stores, shops, people… searching on the map ties in to many other databases on the Internet and usually gives you really accurate information. I am a jogger as you might have come to know by now.

One of the more esoteric application is a metal detector that detects ferro-magnetic materials. It’s quite funny and uses the compass of course to do this but it is great fun. It may even be useful to locate  stuff in walls…

Geocaching

The phone with GPS and magnetic compass also have applications for Geocaching through the Application Market (where most apps are free) and I have tried out the GeoBeagle application which is a really great app. Press a key and it will take you to the Geocaching online site listing the closest caches for you that you have not already found. Select one of them and then press view as a google map and GeoBeagle snatches it up, shows you a directional compass where to go, distance, accuracy of your position and you are ready to go.

When you find it you just press a key to log your find (or DNF, did not find, as it may be) and you have logged another cache. So simple

Cardio Trainer application

Yesterday I found another killer app that you can use that plots your running on a google map, keeps track on your progress in tempo (minutes per km or mile) and distance and time in km or miles and minutes. The application can also be set to regularly announce the tempo you are currently keeping and how many kilometers you have been doing so far and on what time. So, with the built in MP3-player and this application I sat off. One minute later the mp3 music fades slightly, then a voice announces that I am doing 6:30 minutes per km. Later on when I reach my first km running the voice tells me that I have now done 1 km in 6 minutes and 52 seconds and so on. Makes you really aware on how fast you are going, if you are keeping a good tempo or slacking off or if you are pushing harder than you wanted. When finished you can upload your track to the web to have more information about it there, share with people or just compare several runs with each other.

I really really like this!

June 30: Three months celebration today! I have now been running for three months and know I can do 4 km of jogging at a slow pace. It is wonderful considering how I felt when I started on March 30! At that time I ran 1 min walked 2 min and then did that for 20 minutes. I had problems maintaining this and by the end of the first attempt I walked 4-5 minutes after running one minute.

Now I can run for 30 minutes without stopping and generally I could likely push myself more but at a gentle pace of around 7’45″/km I get around my jogging track in the woods. The terrain is hilly and there are a lot of up and downhills. Feels good.

I cut my feet last sunday when I was at the beach swimming. Some idiot had smashed a bottle or something where I went into the water so I got  several rather painful and deep cut on my left foot and one even deeper (and more painful) cut on my right foot. So today I was taking it easy.

I set out on my normal routine but decided to quit after my first lap on the 2 km track since I discovered I was not running normally, instead because of the extra pain I was not letting my feet work in the proper position so I realized I was probably doing myself damage if I’d continue that.

But I did 2 km in 16 minutes, that’s a slightly lower tempo than usual but I am happy of getting out at all tonight. I will have to see how it feels on thursday, my feet are okay now, don’t think the feet were damaged further by the running tonight but I think it was wise to get home instead of doing the second lap and downhill finale. It was more painful downhill than anything else.

June 29: No running today, my feet hurts too much from the cuts I received yesterday so I will postpone it until tomorrow and see what happens then.

June 28: We went to the beach today and was sat on a small half-island out in the water. As I was getting in I took the route over some rocks in to the water and managed to cut both my feet soles on some glass that was thrown away by some idiot. I hope it heals up before my next run tomorrow…

At least I got the sports tape to cover the wounds to prevent dirt to get into them. After one nights sleep they look a little better but feels more sore but after taping the feet they are okay so I better get to work now.

I have now mentally started to prepare myself for a 5 km run by the end of the week and found the route to run. It finishes on asphalt however but I think it will be okay since the major part is on gravel and wooden paths anyhow and my shoes are supposed to be really good on asphalt.

I have also found that I run more easily on asphalt – and faster too although the impact for the legs is probably a little harder. But I have no problems at all currently with my knees or hips or anything.

June 26: Another good run of about 4 km, actually a bit more than 4 km, more like 4,3 km and that in 33’46″ which is not that bad really.

See dashboard here.

I am getting closer and closer to the 5 km now. I can feel the goal within my grasp and we will see what we can do about that in another weeks time.

I was pretty tired after this run but in a good way and most of the run was pretty nice, some uphills was really hard but I never had to stop, I could just lower my tempo to catch my breath and then keep at it picking up the pace again downhill and then keeping a pretty good pace on the flat ground (which is all about 50 meters on this path through the woods!)

I met nobody in the woods today, or rather tonight and it was nice to get out now when it was not too hot to go running.

June 24: Wow, total trance run. Great run, low tempo but the full 4 km in 30 minutes! The 5 km is not that far away any more now!

June 22: Another great run today although very late actually, got out around 21:30. I have however started to feel something in my hips, I hope it is something that will pass but after today’s run I feel something in both left and right hip and after the last run last week I felt something in my right hip. It’s not really a pain and it goes away after a short walk but there is a certain stiffness that is a bit disconcerting. We’ll see what happens, right now no big need for concern. Soon there is my 12 week celebration actually and although I am right now sort of stuck in a plateau in the programme I am doing progress speed wise. Today I did 3.55 km in 26 minutes which is pretty good. I also noted a personal best at 2 km on 12 minutes, I usually am somewhere around 14 minutes on the first lap.

Perhaps time to push the 25 min continuous run by the end of the week then?

June 20: We are going to Yasuragi to have a nice weekend over midsummer

June 19: Had a good start actually but then the sky opened it’s flood gates and drowned me. Everything was off from that point my speed and everything, I had to cut my running a bit short today. So it was 2.2 km in 16 minutes instead, tempo 7:16. But it felt pretty good.

June 18: Yesterday I had one of my best runs ever. It was really great. I ran the full 2 km in 14 minutes first and then the second lap in 15 minutes with short walks in some of the more uphill parts. Great, today my legs feels really worked out but great!

I also discovered the Cardio Trainer application for my HTC Magic mobile. Lovely little application that plots your run on a Google Map and then gives you all the stats while you are running – in your ear phones! It speaks to you and tells you which tempo you are running, how far you have gone, how long you have been doing it regularly. I had some MP3 music going and it just faded out slightly and then told me these things regularly. Tempo was given every minute and distance/time every km. You can of course set how often you want these announces to happen in the preferences.

I did a good run I think, pulse was artound 165 for average and peaked on 195 just perfect I think. The tempo was just above 7 min/km and the whole run was 29 minutes for 4 km.

June 16: I have now had one week of resting. My legs needed this desperately. I also got a wonderful massage from my great friend Veronica running the Achelois massage practice. Book her, she is wonderful!

Yesterday I was out running again and it was a little tougher condition wise after a week of resting and then running again it was a bit to catch up with I think. But the legs felt good and strong and I did a 10 minutes run and then another 8 minutes run. This time what stopped me was a stomach ache really. Not sure where that came from but it was a painful experience. My gut’s not used to the running yet.

And I got a rather painful blister on my left foot. Gotta check that shoe a bit, the right foot is always okay but the left one gets a beating most of the time.

One thing that was different on this run compared to the last weeks was the pulse. I had a higher average pulse and I am not sure if that is because I actually just worked harder this run or if it is because of something else. We will see.

Another run tomorrow evening and then one on friday which is midsummer eve here in Sweden, a holiday just as big as christmas. Actually we are then going away for midsummer celebration to the Yasuragi spa in Hasseludden close to Stockholm. A piece of the far east

June 7: Third time this week and today I used the bike instead, 9,8 km in 28 minutes on hilly gravel roads and with uncooperative legs. Don’t know exactly what is wrong with them, they just don’t want to work properly. Stiff and hard and in the first uphill the energy just drains away and then the rest of the track becomes just a pain. But it was a little bit better than yesterady although not really good but I hope things will improve next week.

Perhaps time for some more stretch exercises and some yoga? Imagine that?

June 6: Sweden’s national day today. I did my round today – barely. Today was an awful crap jogg. My legs felt so stiff and hard that it was really difficult to get any pace into the jogg at all. Really crappy day exercise wise. Did first 12 min running then 9 min running but my legs felt really tired and as if they were made of wood.

June 3: Today was a little better than last time. Still doing slow around my 4 km path but I am not too worried about that. I have actually gained some weight again which is more worrying really but I am still working out.

They have started work on my track where I run, lots of new loose gravel and stuff like that made the path tricky and slow to run. Today I ran it backwards actually to see if that would feel different and I believe that the track is a little easier to run this way actually it does not seem to be ending uphill as it does in the other direction.

May 31: Today was relly hard. Spent most of the day in the old public records building photographing, walking up and down the stairs and otherwise moving about, hard on the legs in some ways of course but I got some good photos, more to come. Home and had dinner and then went out to run. A bit too early on the food really and I really did not feel well at all. But I managed to do my two 10 min runs although it felt terrble. I finished my two laps in 29 minutes though so it was not really that bad actually compared to before.

I need to try this again in a couple of days though, not happy at all with how things felt condition wise. I did however not have any real problems with the legs or anything. And it was a bit too hot to be comfortable.

May 29: Two months of running! Who would have thought that for 8 weeks ago when I started this journey that I would be able to actually run continuously for 20 minutes? Today we are celebrating that a bit and eating out in the evening. Since I did not want to sacrifice my run today and I realized we might have a bit of wine with the dinner tonight my brain cracked the eminently insane solution to go running before work instead. So at 4.28 this morning I went out of bed, got my brekkie down and then slipped in to my trainers and off I went.

Intervals again, today I made 5-8-6-3 min intervals with walks between but at a slightly higher pace or at least I tried to push it. In total over 4 km I had a tempo of 7:30 min/km which is not that bad for me and then I was back home again at 6 am.

Now it is time to get to work and although it was a bit tough getting out this morning I think I enjoyed running at this hour. Hardly anybody out, fresh air, not so hot yet (this seems to become a rather nice summer actually).

Heart rate (avg/max): 156/171 bpm

May 27: Two days of rest for my tired legs and a new week. Low intensity walks morning and evening to and from work and the train station (about 30 minutes) last monday the legs felt stiff and tired, yesterday they felt much better and today I went running again. My good friend Jenny talked me into attempting a slow jog for 20 minutes rather than 2 intervals of 8 minutes each. I did not think that I could do that but bloody hell, it was possible!

I did it! And then I threw in another interval of 5 minutes for good measure – but 20 minutes of slow jogging is the most jogging I have ever done continuously since the military service!

And on top of it all, this is the first I did a full lap on the 2 km track without stopping! In total I went 4 km today in 30 minutes roughly, not a record breaking speed but I feel quite proud! This is my eight week in the c25k programme and I have completed level 5 workout 3!

Heart rate (avg/max): 160/181 bpm (really perfect actually)

May 24: Last run of the week! Legs felt really stiff and uncooperative in the beginning, the first few minutes are always terrible but after that and with a slightly lower pace than usual the running went alright and I got around to make two laps on the short track (around 2 km) with eight minutes of running on each and then some walking in between.

So now I have managed to integrate the 5-3-5-3 runs into two 8 minutes runs. I will be doing this for another couple of passes and then attempt to increase it to 12 minutes!

May 22: Today I decided to go biking in the slight drizzle for some reason. My idea was to do a longer low-tempo recovery pass but it ended up becoming much more than that, it was too fun to stop so I ended up biking close to 27 km spending 1:43 on the bike today. It was a very good tour and the legs felt great until the last 1/3 of the trip or so when I was really tired. Lowered the tempo a lot especially in the uphills, generally it was a good exercise, I tried to stay between 120-140 in pulse all the time but it was easy to go up in pulse uphills.

Today's biking trip - click for a larger picture.

May 21: Good run today, managed to do two laps of the shorter part of my normal routine. Attempted an 8 min jogging interval and succeeded. Followed up with 6:30 and then a couple of shorter high tempo bursts to complete the second round.

Total time was 29:49 for 4,6 km which is not half bad really considering…

May 19: Wonderful runs again today. Two of them actually. I set out together with my fiancee, she was doing a shorter track walking and I was going to run my 3 km track with all those bloody hills. I completed it one minute faster than last time but there was nothing to be seen of my better half.

Even though the last part of both our paths should be the same I did not see her and so I was worried she’d made a wrong turn somewhere so after waiting another ten minutes (and starting to get a little cold) I decided to follow her track around (2,3 km) to see where she was and my legs just kept running, jogging, walking more or less by themselves.

I completed that part also in a pretty good tempo (for being me) and when I got back from the second run she was waiting for me. She did make a wrong turn and took a different path back to the starting point.

Today's runs!

But I got a really good workout today! The green track is the first run up and down those terrible slopes (equidistance is 5 meters here) so you can see the worst uphill is about 50 meters in 500 meters slope. The second run is the red path and both show speeds above 7 km/h (jogging/running) in lighter colour. I just looove my GPS…

May 16: I did a new round today, increasing the actual running part with about 500 meters and replacing the devils hill with the slope from hell itself.  A 500 meter long uphill monster that I have decided I must defeat running before I can go on. I have rested my legs a bit extra this week but the 5 min intervals does not feel that bad any more, as long as there is not too much uphill running in the interval I can do them pretty well.

I ran today in intervals of 3-5-3-5 with walking in between the length of walking decided by the pulse watch and it was a good trip. Earlier today I also walked the full track I am running to check it out properly before I did my evening run. Maximum pulse was 206 again and average 160. Working out harder now, longer runs, higher average pulse. I think the slope from hell forced my heart beats up to that ridiculous beat but I did feel great all the way.

May 13: Bike ride today, 23 km at a medium pace of about 18 km/h. The last 3 km was terribly tough but I managed to keep good pace to the end. Exercise time was 1:14 and it was a really good workout. The road is a bit hilly and the worst part was going home which is upwards most of the time both long easy inclines and steeper more pulse demanding slopes. But it did feel very good and it is a welcome rest for my knees who’s been a bit angry after the last running session I did so this is good cardio exercise but light on the knees while the legs still get to work out properly.

I find that there is a difference between biking and running exercise wise. I never get the pulse up on the bike the same way I do with running but on the other hand I am able to keep at it for much longer, and therefore I burn quite a lot more calories on the bike than on the jogging track, something I am sure will change as my jogs gets longer and more continuous.

The average heart rate is not too different between the both activities really but the maximum tops out at 10-15 bpm higher when running. I used the pulse watch not to stay in zone three, as soon as I slacked off the watch beeped and I could increase the speed a bit, as soon as I was over excerting myself it was also sounding so I could cut back on the pace a bit. Worked really well actually.

May 12: Yesterday my knees felt tired and a little bit angry again after the last jogging so tomorrow I have scheduled a bike ride instead in order to shift the load a bit. I am still hoping to get another 2 runs into this week following the same intervals as from May 10, but I will listen to my body and avoid over-excerting it.  So today is another resting day.

May 10: It was hard getting out today, got out late, a bit too late as the energy was not there, legs felt tired and stiff and I could not get much energy into it. But I didi the intervals according to my programme and therefore I did:

• 90 s
• 3 min
• 5 min
• 3 min
• 5 min

The last two minutes on the last 5 min pass was on my normal cooldown walk as the track is becoming a little to shoort for all these intervals with intermediary resting-walking. Instead of useing time I used my pulse watch to decide when it was time for another interval, that worked very well and I could keep the walking intermediates lower than the time said in all cases. It was definitely a good workout! Heart rate maximum / avg: 193 / 152 bpm

May 8: Today I decided to run using my pulse watch rather than the programme and its set intervals. To see if I could push myself a bit more without getting into problems. I did a bit of warmup jogging and walking and then I did a 2 min interval, then walked 90s, then a 4 min interval including the “devil’s hill” and after that I managed a full 5 min jogg.

It is a first for me to actually be able to run for a continuous 5 minutes and feel good about it. How is that compared to for 5 weeks ago when I barely managed to run 1 minute before falling over half dead? I am thinking that perhaps I will be ready for level 4 some time next week! Heart rate (max/avg):  186 / 152 bpm

May 5: Wonderful jogging trip today. Just after the rain, nice air and humidity and the legs felt fine. Did one extra 3 min interval today! Yay! Also managed to run up “the devil’s hill” and keep going another 30 seconds, a personal record. Gonna do 2 more runs like this one and then I think I might be ready for level 4! Heart rate (max/avg): 185/153 bpm

May 3: Woke up around 10 this morning and went running around noon. Then I realized I had not had breakfast, I just was not hungry today. But I could definitely feel that in the running since the energy was really low.

I managed to get around although I did cut one of the 3m intervals short with about 20s. Not too bad considering everything I believe. Not going to make that mistake of running without having some fuel in the body again I think, it was really tough to get going. My intervals today:

• Warmup walk
• 1 x 90s
• 3 x 3m
• Slowdown walk

Tempo 9:01 min/km. Heart rate max/avg: 191/147 bpm

May 1: A little more than one month has passed since I started with this project and today the running was better than ever. It has become a little harder to get out again for some reason. But I usually manage to get around to doing it in the evening, my best time is around 8 pm to go running. I love the woods at this time and most other people are staying in and at home this time. Today I did a 90s warmup jogg then a 90s walk, then I did three passes with a full 3m run in each of them and that took me around the track.

The walking zone between each pass was 2-3 minutes but I think that soon I won’t need more than half that time between the intervals. My tempo has become a full minute better per km since I started. That’s because I can run further distances now of course, not that I exactly run faster but I am walking less and running more and that shows. When I started I had a tempo on 10 min / km and now I am down just below 8:30 min/km.

The legs feel fine and I am already waiting for the next round! Heart rate maximum/average: 193/151 bpm

April 28: This morning I almost missed my train to work. And since I had an important meeting in Kista I ran all the way to the train station with my backpack and all. The walk to the train is usually around 7 minutes in the morning (walking slowly, enjoying the morning, listening to the radio) but I did it in a bit less than 3 minuters this morning and caught the train. Would not have been able to do that without dying five weeks ago.

Tonight I felt like having no energy and I had to force myself to get off the couch and onto the track running. But once there everything went really well. My legs felt a little more tired than usual and the small muscles giving the knee joints stability are a little angry with me right now. But the running went really well and I had a wonderful time actually.

Instead of intervals of jog/walk of 90s/90s I now did 120s/90s and that worked well. I could runt for the full two minutes without too much problems (except for upwards the devil’s hill which is always a tough cookie) and my last interval lasted 3m05s instead which was tough but not deadly tough! I am getting better at this. I hope my knees are feeling okay tomorrow or I will have to take the bike on thursday instead of running but that is of course an option as well. I should really put in some bike rides in the middle of the week even if the knees are okay to keep working out and increasing my oxygenation capabilities. Oh, and today I again had my mean before running. That was yet the best thing to do. Eat and drink well, rest 30 minutes and then run. Love the energy that puts into the legs. Personal best time again! 32:51 for the whole 3,63 km!

Heart rate max/avg: 190/152 bpm

It is time to get to the next level! The next exercises will be an interval of first 90/90 then 180/90 then another 90/90 and finishing with another 180/90.

April 26: This week has been a pretty good week although I have been eating far too many calories so the next step, starting tomorrow is to limit the calories intake to something that matches my life style and exercise a bit better.

My aim is to eat around 2 500 kcal a day and keep it that way for the coming months and see what that will do to my weight and hope that improves the running. I will also try to get more bike rounds into the exercise schedule now that the running is coming together more and more. My legs feels stronger and more used to the running now but I will keep to the level I am on for another week to make sure they are ready before moving on to level three in the C25k programme.

My run last night was rather good as well, it was a little bit more difficult to get started but after a few intervals I had the steam going pretty well. Uphill still gets the best of me very quickly but on level ground or slight downhill I can now run far more than the 90s intervals I have set out to do this week as well. In fact the last interval I did close to three minutes continuous running and although I would not call it effortless it was still not that bad!

My average pulse seems to go keep going down, my maximum pulse is steady around 188 bpm so I think that is a sign of my VO2 improving and my condition improving quite a bit compared to the first runs. It is now very difficult to get my heard rate up to over 190 bpm but that was not so the first week. With the toughest parts of my lap I generally max out on 185-188 and then the breathing is the problem – so there is still a lot to improve.

Once I get my weight down I am sure many things will improve automatically. To boost that I am aiming at getting a couple of bike exercises into the week as well increasing that metabolism and being much more careful with what I eat.

April 22: Today I was thinking going biking rather than running to rest my knees and legs but the legs where really fine so I decided on running instead. I did my normal interval of 90s jogging and 90s powerwalking and did the round on 33m58s which is a personal best. This time it wasn’t the power in the legs that gave up but my condition so it seems this are going in steps, first you improve condition and then the legs need to keep up, then the legs seems to be able to go on but I cant oxygenate enough to keep going. Good stuff.

I did another thing different today as well – I had my meal before running something I normally do afterwards because I was under the impression that if you eat within an hour before strainous exercise you might get all sorts of problems. Not true, I had no problems at all, I had my meal then three large glasses of water slowly and after half an hour I was ready to go running. Which went beautiful Psychologically this was my best run so far. I had no music or anything, just listened to the woods wispering around me as my regular breathing and my pulse monitor told me when it was time to slow down and walk for a minute and half. I feel great.

April 20: Felt pretty good. All day today I worried about my knees but after a long day at work they still seemed fine so I went ahead and ran my usual path around the old Slammertorp cottage. This time I also brought the GPS as a comparison to my first run. My condition has improved from the last run even though I have been resting my legs quite a bit  — but I held back to see how my legs will feel tomorrow. So far tonight it feels really good, time for some stretchning and a shower and something to eat! Heart rate avg./max.: 149 / 188 bpm.

Blue areas are walking or running slow and white are running above 7 km/h. The runs are now longer than when I started if you scroll down to compare with the first log from the first run.

Week 3 summary: Not enough exercise this week due to knee problems. Trouble with the knees are much better now and I managed to do some walking and a rather straneous bike ride after sorting out several bike problems with stole another couple of days from me this week. The bike ride was close to 9 km through the hilly route around Översjön and I found out that even with strained knees biking works really well as a complement. I will try to work in a bike ride between runs now and then in the future or replacing runs with biking when necessary for the legs to recover from the extra strain of running.

Next week it is time to run seriously again – the knees are actually fine now although I have an exercise pain from hell in my right calf from the bike ride – but I will remain on level/week 2 of the programme, I don’t feel ready yet for level three so I am doing this one more week and re-evaluating things by the end of next week to feel how things are. This means three times of running (if the body allows it) and the alternation between running and walking should be 90s/120s but I will go for 90s/90-120s depending on what feels best. This is back on my old round again, the 2,5 km track not far from where I live. With the bit connecting my home to the track it is 3,2 km in total.

This is my normal run logged the first time I actually ran in the Couch-to-5km programme! The white areas are the running passes (>8 km/h) and the blue are walking passes. There is a broken pass on the right hand side of the curve where I fell on a very slippery piece of ice on my first run here. Must have looked hilarious!

April 17: Finally! Bike in good working condition. New bike pump purchased and used, tires fine and up and away for the first ride. I had forgotten how painful a bike saddle can be when you are not used to it. I did a round around the Översjön lake close to where I live, a 25 minute round usually but today it was 30 minutes. It was really hard as well going uphills and I realized once again that when you ride a bike you use completely different muscles from when you are running!

But the positive thing is that the knees did really well and I got a really really good workout on the 30 minutes I spent biking. And it was of course fun all the way even if I was dying going up the steepest of the hills. I expect that the key here as with the running is to just keep doing it. So I can really keep doing this to improve my overall condition and strengthen the legs until the knees can heal up properly for taking up the running again! Heart rate avg/max: 156/173 bpm

The trip around Översjön. Start and finish is at the blue area leftmost in the picture. The various colours represent different speeds in intervals of 5 km/h where blue is the slowest and white means over 30 km/h.

April 15: I have now rested my legs for two days and things are definitely improving. Yesterday was the hardest day having to walk to work with several small aches everywhere but today after a good night rest everything seems well again. I can still feel two small muscles on the inside of the legs just below the knee joint that are sore.

Therefore I won’t be running just yet, instead I will go for a bike ride tonight, that’s the goal anyway if I can find the bike pump. I visited the bike yesterday and found that the tires were pretty flat. I enjoy biking, especially this time of year when things are not so hot yet and the weather is still really nice. By the end of the week I will see if it is time to repeat the week 2 of the programme but I think that from now I will need more than one day recovery between runs, better make it two days even if that means that I can’t keep to the programme completely.

Therefore I will revise my schedule and work in two days of recovery after each run and if necessary alternate a run for a bike ride instead. I have some lovely gravel roads that are closed for motorists around where I live where it is fun and good exercise to ride bikes. To discover that you are over training when you are enthusiastic about something is not really easy but I am happy I did discover it before I actually got injured in a way that I would not be able to recover from so easily.

April 12: This time I felt that the legs was not yet ready for another lap, going to fast forward will only lead to injury so I will have to take a break from the running for a few days and instead I plan to do some cyckling which should be nicer on the knees and other parts that get most of the workout during running. So my plan is that next week I will do three bike exercise passes instead of running to allow my legs to adjust and hopefully after that I can take up the programme again. But I will not move forward to week three in the programme, instead I will stay on week 2.

Today on the track I felt that my condition had improved but my muscles were sore and was lacking the energy necessary to do a good workout. I therefore resorted to walking the last 1/4 of the track to avoid pushing too far and receiving an injury as a result. I could definitely feel the knees again, they feel tired and a little tender so better they get to rest a bit next week instead. I will instead focus more on cardio and are planning three bike trips that are a little longer than the running that I do, perhaps around an hour rather than 30 minutes. Since I am not sure how fast I can keep cycling that will also be an experiment but I will report here of course after each pass how well I am doing.

April 10: At the parents in law this week over easter. Luckily they have a runners track almost across their front lawn which means that I have great access to a good path to run on. Went for a 3 km run today with the same tempo as last time 90 seconds running 90 seconds walking and alternating. 500 m brisk walk for warmup and about 250 m slow walk after and some stretching. I am starting to feel things in my legs. Not pains or anything serious but I feel that things are going on in my knees and calves primarily but also the front side of my thighs. I hope it means I am building more and stronger muscles, cartilage and tendons and not that I am breaking down. It would be a shame if my knees would give in at this point when I am almost done with my second week and I am growing to like running more and more.

Today’s pass was definitely tough. It was a new track and although not so hilly it was winding back and forth quite a bit and for some reason I felt it was tougher than my usual track. Maybe because I ran a larger part of the track this time since the walking start and winding down was shorter. Anyway, things are progressing in a timely fashion. But perhaps I have to stay on this level for one more week to not push things too far too fast. I’ll see how it feels after the third run the day after tomorrow.

Heart rate avg/max: 157 / 187 bpm

April 7: Week II of the programme. I am supposed to do 90 seconds running then 120 seconds of walking and alternate between them for 20 minutes. I could not really be bothered to get the stopwatch set for two different times so instead I did 90/90 of slow jogging and brisk walking. It went pretty well, but I feel the intensity has gone up.

A little bit like the first jog last week, I feel things are stepping up. At this point I feel really good about it, I just hope I won’t injure myself in some way, knees or something but the legs actually feels fine and the condition is improving every day.

Next run on thursday will have to happen in Linköping since we are going there over easter, suddently there are loads of things to get done before the summer…

Heart rate avg/max: 152 / 182 bpm.

April 6: Maybe not such a good idea after all to go running last night. My pulse stayed high even when I was sleeping around 100-120 bpm line and I have a bit of a headache today. Feel tired and not well rested at all. It is actually as if I was out dancing the whole night, exactly the same fieeling and a bit of a hangover lingering though I have not touched a drop since last Saturday.

April 5: Last run of the first week! I hardly thought that I would get through the first week when I started this madness. Today’s run was pretty simple, I did not look at the watch too much, I just ran until I needed to slow down, then walked for 1-2 minutes then ran again. Something is happening because even with bronchitis I managed to get around my 3 km lap with 3 minutes less compared to last time and I was hardly in top shape today.

Today I also measured the total incline/decline that I run using a barometric altimeter. In total from my home door and back again to the same starting point the inclination is 47 meters and the same for declination of course which is 1.56% of the track length.

Perhaps I am ready for week 2 of the Couch-to-5k programme after all — I always find it scary to take things to the next level, what if I won’t make it? Heart rate avg/max: 156 / 188 bpm

April 4: Unfortunately I have gotten bronchitis from my recent cold and thus not been able to run for the last couple of days. I am hoping that things are looking better tomorrow so that I can go for another run then and complete the three runs I had on my schedule for the Week 1 in the Couch to five km programme.

April 1: No april joke this time. Woke up this morning with a sore throat. My first thought was “oh no” but then I decided that even if I would just walk around the track at slow pace I would go out and do it anyway. Got home from work today and did a few chores for an hour or so and made sure I drank a couple of glasses of water this time. Got the shoes on and went off into the 3 km track. Walked 500 meters and started jogging. Something has happened it was still hard but not suicidally so any more.

I still did the running 1 min walking 2 mins – repeat but after a while I increased the running a little bit since it was just feeling good to do so. I still held back a little because I had the cold, did not want to excert myself completely with a cold inside. Beautiful day, sunshine, around 8 degrees in the air, lovely smells, patches of snow here and there and it was actually a great run!

This time I did not feel like dying after 1 km, instead it was pretty nice. Afterwords I feel the exercise in my legs and actually in my arms as well. Never thought about how much you used your arms when running!

Heart rate avg/max: 159/188 bpm

March 30: Right, my first pass today. It was terrible. I got my new nice shoes and something to run in and I set off on a 3 km route. First it was okay but then it got harder, a really tough headache and difficult to maintain speed. Just like the programme I tried running 1 min then walking 2 min but it was difficult to maintain the scheme the full time. In the end I walked three or even four minutes then ran one minute. But I made it around and that’s not too bad I think!

Heart rate avg/max: 157/206 bpm

March 24: So I have decided to get started with some jogging. I got tipped off to this really great programme called “Couch to 5 km” by my good friend Jenny who’s done that programme herself with good results. My first task is to get a good pair of running shoes and some training clothes.

As I got some extra money coming my way this month I will go shopping and get an expert to pick out the proper shoes for me and then it is off on the 5 km round. I have will modify the programme a little when I run from home because I have found this beautiful track close where I live and I think that after doing each workout pass I can walk the rest of the 5 km winding down until I am ready to run the full monty. So here is my plan to 5 km of running. My training days will be Saturday or Sunday depending on which one fits best, Tuesday and Thirsday.

Couch to 5 km

I am starting this tuesday next week if all goes well

And while you are at it, download and install Mapsend Lite if you have not done so already. Great software for planning your trips on the computer before you go outdoors.

Example of a Geocache

Do you have a difficult time to get inspiration for going on a phot walk or hike away in nature to take some pictures? Are you low on ideas of what to photograph? Do you have a GPS receiver suiteable for trekking/hiking (most car navigation systems are not, you want a smaller handheld device)?

Then this is an interesting hobby that you might want to check out! It’s called Geocaching and I will explain a little about what it is.

Basically geocaching is a treasure hunt. What happens here is that someone hides a “treasure” for you to find. There is usually not anything valuable in it, it is just the location actually that’s the whole point of it. These treasures are referred to as geocaches and when they are hidden they are also published with GPS coordinates on this homepage.

Hunters go to the home page and find some caches nearby where they live – or where they wish to go hunting, then they download the coordinates, descriptions and perhaps also the hints – called “spoilers” (they may spoil the fun of searching). Equipped with a GPS receiver, the coordinates, a pen they set out to try to locate the cache.

A usual cache is a container that contains a log book and some trinkets for trading. When you find a Geocache you write your date and name in the logg book (sometimes it is just a strip of paper) and then when you are back home again you log on to the webpage, look up the caches you have visited (and logged) and then let the cache owner know you have “logged” their hidden treasures.

The trinkets inside are just for trading, if you take something you should leave something (and then report the trade on the cache webpage).

Now, what has this got to do with photography?

Magellan eXplorist 100 GPS receiver

Well it is a brilliant way of getting “out there” to discover some interesting places you never knew existed even in your neighbourhood! I hafe found many interesting places just around the corner from where I live by hunting for these caches.

So, dig out the GPS receiver, load you camera up, packa picnic lunch and off you go. There are caches almost everywhere in the world for people to find. And if you do not have a GPS receiver you can get a cheap one like the Magellan eXplorist 100 for almost nothing used on Ebay or similar places!

Caches can vary in size, there are some that are called micro caches and consist of an old 35mm film canister, some are old US Army ammo boxes, some are just small microwave plastic containers and similar ov varying sizes.

Once cache I visited was built like a bird’s nest on a tree.

There are also some special caches that are called mystery caches. In order to find the cache you need to solve some kind of mystery. Usually a clue is given but the coordinates shown on the webpage is wrong. The clue and some thinking could lead you right and you have to really think in order to solve some of them.

There are also geocaches where the cache is a location on the globe somewhere, could be a mountain peak or something like that. Some caches are multi-stage and requires you to go to the coordinates, find a clue or solve a puzzle that will take you to the next step and eventually you find the final cache.

If you happen to be a dog owner then you can geocache, walk the dog and take interesting photographs at the same time, isn’t that efficency for you?

Here are some interesting places I have found and photographed!

A memory stone over a horse Iller that died on this spot. It is all in Swedish but he fell and broke his leg in the 1956 olympics. It har rained a lot the night before and the field was very slippery. Iller jumped well but at jump #22 he fell and broke his leg. They could not do much for him so Iller was shot dead on this place and his owner had this stone made in his memory. I had no idea this stone existed untill I found the geocache nearby...

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A strange mosaic set as an eye on a stone nearby the castle Görväln. This is in a part of the grounds where I would never have found this mosaic had I not gone treasure hunting for geocaches.

The Brauta Rune Stone. It is one of the best preserved rune stones from this age that I have ever seen. A thousand years old writings, plain for anyone to see...

A geodesy disc. Used when they survey the land.

Hammersta stronghold. Ruins from a 14th century castle...

The resons for geotagging

It is a way of organising your photographs that is pretty new actually. Never before has it been so easy to know where a certain photograph was taken and it is a great way of finding other people’s photographs from a certain location.

My good friend Torbjörn hacking in the tent

It also means that if you use your GPSr when you are on holiday you know exactly on which spot you were when you took that picture and it is a great way of sharing information about good photographic spots, not to mention that it sort of becomes a photographic diary, tracking your movements around with your camera and GPSr.

There many be also personal reasons for geotagging, for me it started because I am a map freak. I love maps in all sorts of ways and I spend half a fortune on them. These days I mostly use electronic maps because they are more versatile but when I go hiking I always have a paper map as a backup – you never know when electronic will fail you.

There are two kinds of photographers, those who has experienced equipment failure and those who will.

This is very true.

These are the steps

There are a number of steps involved, many of these you probably already do in your post processing but there are some new one here that I will go through later on. But this should give you a general overview on how geotaging works.

1. Synchronize the time of your camera with the time in the GPS receiver.
2. Make sure you are logging your movements to a track-log in the GPS receiver.
3. Photograph away, move, shoot some more…
4. Save the tracklog in the GPS.
5. Transfer the tracklog to your computer.
6. If not already in GPX format convert to GPX format using GPSBabel software.
7. Transfer the photographs to your computer.
8. Convert your pictures to JPG if necessary (if you shoot in RAW)
9. Use GPSPicSync from Google to syncronise time and write lat/long info to your pictures.
10. Upload the finished pictures to the web service of your choice.

Choice of GPS receiver (GPSr)

Magellan eXplorist XL, one of the most advanced GPSr for outdoor use there is.

There are today many brands available but two of them stands out in terms of quality and popularity and they are Magellan and Garmin. Magellan has a whole range of suiteable outdoor GPSr that fits most budgets, they are called the “eXplorist” series. Garmin has similarly ranges of outdoor GPS receivers. If you are looking for a GPS receiver they are all quite similar, some comes with mapping software, others have Geocaching functionality built-in which is nice but none of this is required for this purpose.

What is required is that the GPS receiver can save a track log that can later be downloaded into your computer for post-processing. The various makers of GPS receivers have different internal formats but most can save in a format called GPX which is an interchangeable format used to make it possible to transfer data from one brand GPSr to another.

I am personally using a Magellan eXplorist XL and it is a great outdoor GPSr. Not only has it got the biggest screen on any GPSr but it has accessories to attach it to a bike, car windscreen, it runs a full day on its batteries and when attached to a computer it behaves like any other Mass Storage Device making it easy to extract the TrackLog files after being out with it.

Which receiver you chose is irrelevant really but talk to the sales people and explain that you want to eventually convert track logs to GPX format and you should not go wrong.

Setting up GPSr and Camera

Once you got the GPSr of choice familiarise yourself with the manual. Make sure you understand how to start a tracklog going, how to save it once finished and start a new one. Check that you may actually transfer it to your computer. If the GPSr software that comes with it does not allow you to save/convert to GPX format directly then check out this software which speaks most GPSr dialects and should help you convert from your native format to GPX.

GPSBabel: Convert, Upload, Download Data from GPS and Map programs

The next step is to set up the camera. The only thing you need to do is sychronize your camera time setting with the GPSr time, this can be done manually, it’s not a problem if you are a few seconds off, but you should not be off with more than a minute if you are walking around taking pictures, or more than 10 seconds if you are biking or driving around to take pictures.

Take your GPSr outdoors and let it find satellites and get a fix on your location. All receivers are capable of displaying satellite time, so switch to the screen where you can see the satellite time. Next turn on your camera and find in the menu where you can set time and date. Set the date to match the GPSr reported date. Set the time to match the GPS displayed time.

Now you are set to go.

Take pictures, move, take more pictures…

Start the GPSr tracklog feature if needed, most start logging immediately when they have a fix on the satellites. Now you my put your GPSr away if you wish and concentrate on moving around taking pictures with you camera. Each picture you take will then have a time stamp. And in the position tracklog of the GPSr there will also be time stamps and positions. This means that later we may match the time stamps in your pictures with the time stamps in the GPSr log and figure out your exact location when you pressed that shutter release button.

Move to a new location take pictures. If you go indoor you can even turn off your GPS, once you are outdoor again you may turn it on. Allow it to find satellites and get a fix on your position before you start snapping away if you want more exactness.

When you are finished on your photo excursion go to the menu in the GPSr and save your tracklog. I generally save it with a name that indicated the date and a running number. So my first log today when I am writing this would be called 080721-1.LOG and the next one today would be 080721-2.LOG and so on. (I live by the date format of YYMMDD but you can use whatever makes sense to you). It is however wise to name the logs in a way that they sort on name by date taken it makes it easier in post-processing to find which log was correct for each picture.

Get the data from the camera and GPSr

First of all download the pictures from your camera. If you are shooting in JPEG format then you are set to go immediately. If you are shooting in RAW format you need first post-process your photos into JPEG and make sure that the EXIF-information stays intact because here is where the time and date of your pictures when they were taken are located.

The next step is to transfer the track-log from your GPSr device. Consult your manual on how to do it, some require special softwares, others can just be attached by USB cable and you can copy the files as if they were from an external harddisk (USB Mass Storage Device). Whatever way you do it you should end up with a tracklog file somewhere on your PC.

Now it is simplest to keep the tracklog file and the photos in the same location, I generally put them in a folder with a name that tells me what I was doing, shooting or the date. Then put the tracklog and JPEG pictures in this location. If you were not already getting the tracklog file in GPX format then now is the time to use the GPSBabel tool and convert it into GPX format.

Once converted you need another tool which is the whole secret to the automatisation of coding the geolocation on your pictures.

GPicSync

This is a great software that you can download here. GPicSync is a Google Software and you may use it under their licence free of charge.

Once installed and started you should see a screen like this:

This is a screenshot from the GPicSync program, a free tool from Google that can be used to automatically geotag photographs.

Click on the “Pictures folder” and browse to where you saved your pictures.

Click on the “GPS file” and browse to the location of your GPX file.

It is optional if you wish to create a Google earth file, if you have this software this is a great way of checking that it went alright.

You may also export to a Google Maps export, this means it will generate files that you can put on a web server to show your entire journey through Google Maps for anyone in the world. Really cool stuff!

Select “Create a log file” and “Dates must match”. Select “interpolation” if parts of your journey was faster than walking or jogging speed. Backup pictures creates backups before GPicSync tries to change your JPEG files. You should already have backed up your files now!

UTC Offset: This is important. In Sweden this is +1 in the winter time and +2 in the summer time. If you are not sure you may have to test with different values and see if it matches the location you think you were in!

“Geocode picture only if time different … is below” this means that any pictures in the folder that is not within this interval will not be geocoded (have their location information written to them). You can try it out with various settings here since it will tell you if some pictures are not coded properly. In your first run you may want to keep this at something like 3000 seconds. If you do that then you will see lots of pictures missed out if you get your UTC offset wrong!

Once done press the button “Synchronise!” and watch the log. You should see message appearing that it is writing geocode information latitude and longitude to your pictures in the folder. Once it is done you may press “View in Google Earth” if you have this software installed. Then GE will be launched and your track and pictures can be investigated here. When you are happy with your result press Quite or Quite and Save (so your settings will be the same next time you start).

Check it out in Google Earth

If you have not installed Google Earth already, then by all means go and do so now. This software is great for exploring the world. It is also a great way of checking that your UTC offset in the previous step is set properly. When GPicSync is finished you will have a Google Earth doc file to click on. If GE is installed then it will open the file and display your photographs.

If you find that your time offset is not right, that your photos are one our early or late or more, then correct the UTC offset in the GPicSync program, run again and then check again in GE. Sometimes this is a little counter-intuitive but it is usually a good way of checking before uploading the pictures.

Uploading your pictures

The last step is to upload your pictures to an online repository where they automatically add your pictures to a geolocation database. Several such places exists, I use Flickr so I will describe how this works. The procedure is similar on most of these services.

Before you do anything, the first time, you must check if your Flickr account is set up to accept geographical information on your pictures when uploaded.

This can be done from your Flickr Account page that you can access after you are logged on. From the Flickr meny chose “You -> Your Account”. Click on the tab called “Privacy & Permissions” and then check what comes up. You are looking for one settings here that you may need to change:

Defaults for New Uploads: Import EXIF location data -> Set to “YES”

That should be all that is necessary. After this you may use your normal Flickr Tool to upload the pictures from the folder where they were geotagged. Once done you should be able to find the photos on Flickr and now the option “map” should be enabled on the right hand side on the photo page.

Click that link and your photo should display on Flickr’s map.

You have now successfully uploaded geotagged photographs to Flickr!

Some terms and definitions

I have collected some of the new terms and definitions here to make it easier to look them up. Let me know if something is unclear, leave a comment on the article and I will try to expand.

GPS

Global Positioning System – a system of satellites in orbit above the earth that are regularly transmitting signals to the surface of the earth. These signals can be received with a GPSr (GPS Receiver) which can then use these signals to calculate the exact location on earth.

GPSr

This is the GPS receiver unit. There are mainly two types of consumer GPSr that you can buy in any electronic store these days. The first one is the autorouting receiver used to navigate to street addresses when you drive a car or similar. This GPS unit may not have the tracking function required for this article. The second type is the outdoor sports GPS receiver unit that we will be assuming you have. This is also known as a “hunter’s GPS” or “Trekking GPS”.

Tracklog

A track log is a file written by a GPS logger. It generally contains information about the time, longitude, latitude and altitude that the GPS receiver logged at the given time. With this file it is possible to construct how the GPSr moved over time.

GPicSync

A software from Google that will check the date and time on a photograph in JPEG format, match it against a position in a GPS track-log and then write the latitude and longitude coordinates back into the photograph allowing geo-aware sites take advantage of this information.