Tech Speak: Google Defines Conformist

I love how Google defines "conformist" on its dictionary page.

Interest(ing): Carbo Loading

This is an article I found on sgrunners.com about carbo loading. It's an issue which I have always wanted to know about since I started running a lot. Now I see that I have not been doing very correctly but still if Stanchart mention something about carbo loading for the entire week, I think there might be different versions of carbo loading. I shall find out more. For now, this will suffice. 

Carbo Loading for Marathon?

Posted on26 November 2007.

Introduction

Muscle glycogen provides a key fuel for training and racing a marathon. The term “hitting the wall” is really referring to the overwhelming fatigue that an athlete experiences at a later part of an event when muscle glycogen stores are depleted. Hence, carbohydrate (CHO) loading can enhance endurance/marathon performance by allowing the competitor to run at their optimal pace for a longer period before fatiguing. 
Classic VS Modified
- The classic model (Ahlborg, Bergtrom & Brohult, 1967) follows a 7-day process which involves 3 to 4 days of depletion phase of hard training and low CHO intake follow by a 3 to 4 days loading phase.
- This is not practical as it can result in more fatigue and hence over training.
- Modified model only requires simply 3 days of high CHO intake while tapering for your event w/o any prior depletion of glycogen (Sherman, Costill & Fink, 1981).

Guidelines to a successful CHO-loading
- A CHO loading regime will involve 72 hours or CHO intake between 8 to 10g/kg body weight while keeping fat intake low (20 to 30g daily) and protein to 1g/kg body weight.
- Avoid high fiber product such as wholemeal or wholegrain as it is difficult to consume a large quantity of it to meet the demands of the loading.
- Athletes who struggle to meet the loading demands can utilize refined CHO such as soft drinks, jelly, pudding, candy etc. to supplement their intake.
- It is important for the athlete to know that CHO loading is likely to be associated with a weight gain of about 2kg. This needs to be viewed as positive reinforcement that they have significantly increase glycogen stores.

End of text references
- Ahlborg, G., Bergtrom, J., & Brohult. J. (1967). Human muscle glycogen content and capacity for prolonged exercise after different diets. Forsvarsmedicin, 3, 85-99.
- Sherman, W.M., Costill, D.L., & Fink, W.J. (1981). Effects of exercise-diet manipulation on muscle glycogenand its subsequent utilisation during performance
- International Journal of Sports Medicine, 2,114-118.

Interest(ing): April's Fool Conclusion

Google forgive me, for I have missed out almost every single April's Fool jokes made by Google. I only saw it in a lifehacker article today. Nonetheless, I'll blog a few here, just for the fun of it.

1) Google Translate For Animals

Introducing Translate for Animals (beta): Bridging the gap between animals and humans

Making the world's information universally accessible is a key goal for Google. Language is one of our biggest challenges so we have targeted our efforts on removing language barriers between the species. We are excited to introduce Translate for Animals, an Android application which we hope will allow us to better understand our animal friends. We've always been a pet-friendly company at Google, and we hope that Translate for Animals encourages greater interaction and understanding between animal and human.

Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, we worked closely with many of the world's top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

2) Vowel Outage at Gmail

If you logged into Gmail over the last hour (or visited the Gmail homepage), you probably noticed that something looked a bit off: all the vowels are missing. We realize this makes things difficult for all of you who rely on Gmail — whether at home or at work — and we’re incredibly sorry. We take morphological issues like this extremely seriously, so we want to let you all know what happened and what we're doing about it.

Interest(ing): Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks

http://lifehacker.com/373817/top-10-harmless-geek-pranks

Take from lifehacker.

Configuring your friend's computer to show the Blue Screen Of Death as a screensaver, making your office printer (HP) show the words (insert coin) etc. Fabulous. I'll try it on my friends next time.

Interest(ing): Starbuck's April's Fool Day Joke

http://www.starbucks.com/blog/10113/starbucks-listens-to-customer-request-for-more-sizes.aspx

Way cool. 2 new sizes. I would love to drink green tea latte's from the big one.

Remember I post about Starbuck's April's Fool Day joke last year? They invented a usb device that allows Starbucks to transfer coffee over the internet.
http://infinitelyme.blogspot.com/2009/04/senseless-stuff-aprils-fool-day.html

Guide: How To Prepare For A Race

On 14th March, I went for the second race in my life. North East Run, as the name suggest, was organised by the North East Community Development Council (CDC) and was held at Pasir Ris Park in the morning. I participated in the 16km race and clocked 1 hour 31mins. It's not half bad, but not good either. Oh well. I took this race way too lightly, and paid for the consequences. A race, no matter the distance, needs ample preparation in order for one to run to the fullest of his potential, as well as with as much as comfort as possible. So here I put a guide, done by myself. This should be taken only as a non medical advice by a amateur-marathoner-wannabe.

Before the race,
1) Training - depending on the distance, you may need to start training one to three months in advance (based on a 4 times per week training schedule). always start with small distances. make sure you train for a certain distance a few times first before increasing the distance you run. for eg. run 2km 2 or 3 times before you increase to 4km. then run 4km a few times before increasing to 6km. do not try to double your training. instead, have a proper and realistic increment value, such as 1km or 2km. personally my increment is 2km and my starting pace is 5.5mins per km. if the distance is not very long, you may consider only training up till half of the total distance for the race you are participating. for races such as a full marathon, do consider training more.

Interest(ing): Duct Tape - Saviour Of All Soldiers

http://lifehacker.com/5478624/a-celebration-of-duct-tape-our-favorite-duct-tape-diys

Any soldier or ex-soldier will recognise this. It's all too familiar (though we aren't so hard core to use duct tape).

It's the ultimate item. It's on par with the final quest item you have to get at the end of a RPG (except we get it at the start) and it seems to have infinite ways of using it to deal with things.

Lo and behold, it is our black tape.

Admit it, we celebrate it, we're forced to use it, we can't live without it. The almighty power of the black tape allows us to use it for many different purposes, from taping blank attachments to taping loose ends of your backpack to taping the mouth of that faggot beside you who just can't stop blabbering nonsense. We love it so much that we restock it every so often.

I remember during BMT, my sergeants always say black tape can be used to solve everything. I didn't understand it, until one fine day. I realised that I had multiple cuts on my hands and legs due to outdoor training and I didn't bring plasters. You've guessed it, I used black tape. My commanders saw me and they were awed. I thought I did something wrong until they just kept laughing hysterically.

Black tape. The most powerful piece of item on the planet. When you're wearing green that is.