Still Waiting.. :)

Dear Reader, 

It's maybe the fourth time I use the word "Wait" in a post title, but yes, we have been waiting for a long time now. We are week 38 and baby does not seems to show any sign that it wants to get out of Mama's belly. So, meanwhile, we are still preparing ourselves. 

Myrtille is growing and she entered a new phase in her mind, we gave her her first stickers program reward, a Vaude flashy red backpack! She loves it. The stickers program is something really simple for kids, she does good thing and she receives some stickers, she gets 30 stickers and can exchange for a gift, it can be bought in advance so she is fully aware of it and even chose it. Right now, we have 3 boxes of toys sitting in our glass shelves... just waiting for her to collect some extra stickers.

She lost appetite too... That's a shocking piece of news, but she started to show difficulty eating vegetables... at the end, I think we are going to have to live through that. 

Yukyin is still doing various training in order to get baby in the right orientation, we really pray that she can do a natural birth this time. Her due date is in 10 days, so please keep her in your prayers if you think about us.

My workouts have gotten faster, I switched skates, I went back to my old BONT Vaypor 5x84mm wheels (you can google that if you have time). They are a LOT lighter than my previous Seba High boots, so I can skate faster and don't feel to have a 100 pounds gorillas attached to each one of my feet. Now I have some more precise figures to share, I average my outings at 15-16km/h, average speed is 17-18 on a flat surface. A sprint will get me into the 27-28km/h. I would like to reach a steady 20km/h on flat road and break the 30km/h on a sprint, but there is still plenty of work to do. I need to boost my heart first and I think I am going to jog train at a low speed in order to do that. Need to find the right fitness plan.

So, That's all for this week end. 

We spent some time taking some pictures, so here they are:

Another one:

And a last one, our little monster:

That's all folks, thanks for reading :) 

Please keep us in our prayers :)

Heart Beat Monitor for Casual Workout: To Keep My Heart In Check!

Dear Reader,

As I said previously, I started to go out and workout. During my workout, one thing I could not get feedback on was my body. You often hear that we should listen to our body, but it's hard to really be able to tell myself if I am in a good shape or not. So, last week, I broke my wallet and went off buying a Heart Rate Monitor chest strap. It's a kind of elastic strap that goes around the chest with a electronic device that track your heart pulse. I suppose it's kinda like wearing a bra while doing sports... weird at first....

The model I use is this one, it's from Polar and it's bluetooth enabled, it works very well with my phone (a Galaxy S i9000), connect without an hitch, totally plug and play. I did my last workout with it and accurately gives a reading of my heart beat. People says that it does not work with the sensor in the back and I still need to try it, I'll update this page when I'll have more about that.
Edit: After using it for 2 weeks, it failed once, it disconnected when I pause my workout and needed a connection refresh, I don't think it's a big issue, I'll see if that happens more often. Also, I did try it with the phone on a beltpack placed on my back and it does work, so I can freely skates with my beltpack on the back.

Now, what's the purpose of it? simple, I try to not overpush myself, when you read the news, you can see stuff like that, a cyclist dying after probably pushing himself too much and in the past, I did overpush myself twice, the first time, I collapsed, the second time, I was nearly collapsing, I managed to call my colleagues to pick me up at the bus stop. I'll just try to control myself. Luckily, I can gradually train myself :). The purpose of having a HRM is to be able to know where you at during the effort, heart beat are separated into 5 zones of beat frequencies, the faster your heart beats, the higher the zone and obviously, you can't stay for a long period of time in the highest heart beat zone.

In my case, my smartphone will just give me a voiced indication about which zone I am evolving too, so if I was slowing down and the computer tells me "heart zone 3", I know an indication of the bpm my heart is beating at 150-159bpm.

That way, I can try to train myself into a specific zone, like going the fastest within a given zone.

At zone 5, I can do approx 30+ km/h I feel that I can go faster, but my body does not move faster to be able to increase speed... a funny feeling. An inline speed skating athlete can do a Marathon in just under 70-90 minutes... That's 30+ km/h average, I am only averaging 15km/h on my best day and I need a pause and I don't think they are constantly pumping 160 bpm during a race... So I am very far from World class athletes... but just being at half their performance is just disappointing (it's like thinking that you need 20 seconds to do a 100m... I know I can be faster than that)... I don't mean to race, but achieving 3/4 of it might be a good goal to start over let's say a 2 years period. I'll come back to that point in the near future. :)

That said, I hope to be able to keep my workouts when baby will be here and not lose this new habit.

Thanks for reading.

Start workout!

Dear Reader,

Having Myrtille, a pregnant Yukyin and a need to balance family/work/entertainment life is not easy. Lately, I found out that I put up some weight, on last Friday, I had a Mcdonnald's lunch with a KFC diner... Before you throw stones at me, Yukyin had the same... Now, you can throw even more stones at us :( Seriously, we are just two lazy eaters some time... It does not happen everyday, but yeah... that evening, I felt weird, I just felt all the bad grease running in my veins. I am not fat. I am 177 for 70 kg, which is not really fat, but Yukyin found me a bit on the overweight side, she would like me to be a bit slimmer and obviously healthier.

In terms of diet, my family background is not the healthiest either, in one hand, I might end up like my brother, whose diabetes activated a day in his thirties... :( and in the other hand, my mum's family side is what I would really call being on the overweight side, sorry folks, I don't want to hurt feelings, but I do think weight are on the high side.

As time flies, I got into my thirties myself and my brother's warning got into my head, I need to do some workout, one to lose some weight by reinforcing muscle mass and two, to improve my heart for my older days, three release some stress. :) I can't afford to have both Myrtille and Yukyin worrying about my health.

So, I seriously planed to take back my big butt on my skates and go eat some asphalt.

When Google had their 250M app sold or whatever the amount of sales, they got the Runtastic app on sales, a GPS tracking app... so I took it. 2HKD... A bargain. Last night I used it for the first time. A really good piece of software, not too complex, not too easy either, I needed to take some time to figure out how it worked as I never tried this kind of apps... I did not really know what to expect, but I was expecting the ability to track my route, track the speed, track the time and map it on Google Earth and I think that this app is spot on with all my requirements.
Use was simple, you turn it on, you turn the GPS, which take a insane amount of time to initialize on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S), and off you go, the app will follow your course.

So here it is, my first workout:
http://www.runtastic.com/en/users/valentin-leung/sport-sessions/29651827

Distance 11.91 km
Pace: 04:36 min/km
Calories: 517 kCal
Elevation: ↑ 119 m

Pretty neat isn't it?
12km for my second workout (I did not have the app ready for my first outing).

Actually, earlier this evening, I was eating this:

A very soft, cheesy, creamy mushroom penne, so I kind of needed the work out :)

To finish, I pray the Lord for our health, my family and mine and hope that you'll also find your way in keeping you healthy.

See you soon.