I’ve been getting some love for pulpTunes, so I decided to pursue the project more seriously. About the running log website I mentioned before, I think I’ll pass that because it seems there are already very good alternatives out there.

So, there’s a new website just for pulpTunes at http://www.pulptunes.com . I’m also moving the project (source code, forums, lists, wiki) to Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pulptunes .

This blog will remain for my running “adventures” only.

Without realizing it, I have been sinking little by little into the over-training mistake. Thinking that if I don’t feel exquisitely exhausted after each work out, then I’m wasting my time, and getting farther from doing a marathon performance that my ego would get satisfied with, in this oh so little time I have left of youth. Pfftf.

This has served me well to improve my 10Ks, but the half marathon is far worse than what it should be. A lot of cross-training has help avoiding injuries, but I have this recurring little ache deep inside my left left bone. Can’t even tell if it’s above or below the knee, but it’s around that area. Another thing is the runner’s knee symptoms I was having, but I think I’ve been able to manage that through quad strengthening exercises after every weekday workout.

Many times I’ve tried to follow some training programs, but without a coach it’s hard to keep up with all the intricacies of intervals, repetitions, tempos, threshold training, etc. So after a lot of search around I think I found a great plan, not so complex but not minimalistic either, in the “Complete Book of Running” , from Rodale, the same company that produces the Runner’s World mag.  I’m picking up their “intermediate” program, Which starts at 26 miles per week and peaks at 51. Lucky me, the program is 18 weeks long, which is about the time I have left before the marathon I was planning on assisting. You can see the plan here.  I calculated the paces based on goal of a 4 hour marathon, which is pretty conservative, so I might twist it up a notch if things go well.

Finally!

pulpTunes is a software program I created to be able to access and share the music you have in iTunes, through the web by just using a web browser. You can grab the program from here. For more information and instructions, go here.

This runs on both Windows and Mac. Just make sure you have the latest Java installed. Also, this will only serve the files you have in mp3 format (not acc at the moment I’m afraid, which is the default iTunes format).

Although fully functional, this still is a beta release. So please report back any problem you encounter, or drop me a line if you need any help.

2:00:29 secs to be more precise. I did want to give the extra effort at the end to break the 2 hours barrier, but I just couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe for the last 5 K. My legs felt good, the shin-splint aches I was having before didn’t bother at all, but it looks like my cardiovascular condition is the one to blame this time. I still haven’t had that perfect half-marathon, but this was 17 minutes better than last year. So gotta be patient, “stay the course”, and be mindful of not over-training.

The doctor confirmed my fears. I’ve got shin splints on my left shin bone, with a little edema on the lower part. I had that two years ago on the other leg, which kinda burst badly on a half-marathon, resulting in a three month incapacity. This time it doesn’t hurt that much, and I still can run. The doctor prescribed some anti-inflammatory pills which seemed to have helped.  She’s the best sports doctor I’ve known, so if any of my readers around Medellin (yea right) need a good doctor let me give you her coordinates. She’s the kind that doesn’t rush, and takes the time to explain you all the biomechanics that gave you the injury and that kind of stuff.

So, I had to cut one day off my schedule, but I still could do today’s (Sunday) long run, and I barely felt anything, so I’m good. It also felt very refreshing to run long at an easy pace, with a nice hot weather. Medellin’s Half is two weeks away, so I’m trying to take it very easily now, and see if I can finally do that PR I’ve been dreaming about.

pulpTunes progress

Let’s say you’ve got a huge music collection in your iTunes at home. Wouldn’t it be great if you could access that music from the office, at a friend’s party, or let other people hear it from anywhere in the world?

iWunes is a piece of software I wrote that does exactly that. You can download it from the link to the right. It has the limitation though, that it only works for PCs. So I’m finishing rewriting it to have it work on Macs as well. I’m also changing the name to “pulpTunes”.

The rewrite is progressing well, and have the motivation to get it over with to start as soon as possible with my next new shiny project:

Website/online application to track your training

This combines my two biggest passions in life, running and programming, so I’m really looking forward to start with it.

The core will be a simple running log application, where you can track info about your training session like mileage, routes, comments, and that kind of basic stuff. Then I’ll start building on top of that, adding goodies like routes maps and ability to sync with devices. It also has to follow the social application model, letting you add friends and share as much information as possible.

If I make this a Facebook app I would get a jump start on all the “social” functionality. But I hate Facebook. So much clutter, and most apps there are garbage. I want something really focused.

I remember reading something about the Google Social Graph API, revolving around the concept of having your contact list and interactions be independent of the application where you have them, so that you can carry them over to other apps. I certainly won’t have to deal with something this advanced during the early stages of the project, but it makes the case against having to tie up the app to something like Facebook.

I’m starting this for fun and to satisfy my own needs, and I’m not worried about monetizing it right just yet. I know this will relieve a lot of pressure and let me keep the motivation for the long term. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wanna hear about what you’d like the app to do for you, because I really really much do!!

I’ve left Newedge, where I worked as the lead dev/architect for more than three years, and I’m joining a European startup. It still is kinda in stealth mode, so I’ll be giving more details later. For now all I can say is that it’s a social website/online app revolving around open source communities. I get to build it from scratch, which is such a blessing :) And we’ve got two terrific graphical designers on board already, so I can concentrate on purely technical stuff. What else can I ask for?

It’ll be a PHP app, built on top of the Zend Framework, using as much as possible the facilities provided by the framework: its MVC framework, authentication and authorization libraries, etc. The only thing I’m having second thoughts about is Zend_View, the template engine, because it’s too basic, and we’ll be needing something with caching out of the box. I’m not sure Smarty will be a good alternative. On the client side, we’ll be using YUI’s libraries. We chose YUI because it’s well documented, it provides all the javascript widgets you can think of, even some nice CSS facilities, and all its parts were designed to fit nicely together.

We’re also thinking about providing some rich-client and offline capabilities in the desktop through C# Mono apps.

So, if you’re familiar with any of the technologies mentioned above, and are looking for an exciting new job, drop me a line!

You can get it here.

Since the ongoing project is to replace the iWunes Server with a better cross-platform version written in Java called “pulpTunes”, I dropped the iwunes.com domain name. But iWunes was communicating with a script in that domain to retrieve the server’s IP, so this caused an error right after the server is started. This release should fix that problem.

Please comment if you’re having trouble and need some help.

I’m hoping this is the last release before launching pulpTunes.

After the last 10K’s great performance I had high hopes for today’s half marathon. 45k runners, all released in two different (but tiny) streets, except for the elites that started like three blocks ahead. Big mess. And it starts at 10am, which will give you a nice “bronceado sabanero” (nasty high altitude insolation) later on . Lots of cheering all along, and a lot of cheap and evident patriotic shouting both by expectators and some over-excited runners. But certainly I’m exagerating the bad parts because I did terrible. I probably started too fast, and was a few minutes ahead of the 1:45 pacer till the 10th K or so. And then my bowels, that have been a bit upset since got I here last week, started killing me, to the point of difficulting breathing. So I ended up walking a big chunck of the course. Not sure how the maybe too fast start would have played out later under normal conditions, but I’d better be a little more conservative on the next one, back in Medellín on September 14th. Now I’m gonna order a big pizza just for myself. That usually fixes my stomach problems.

Yesterday’s 10K was fantastic. It poured hard earlier at dawn, so the weather was cool, perfect for the race. The start whistle caught me off guard, so I had to step out to try turning on the pedometer, but I was so stressed I couldn’t even manage to turn on the darn thing. So no course stats this time :(  Anyway, besides this little inconvenient, it went pretty good. I killed myself from start to finish, and ended at 46 minutes, like 10 minutes better than I was expecting. I’m still not sure how to dose the start. This time I started fast and was already short of breath after the first few kms, but I felt better later, without having diminished the pace. So I’ll be keeping this strategy for the next time; we’ll see how that works out for the half marathon in two weeks. The real thing that worries me is my lower back which is getting worse and worse specially after long runs. Will have to get some serious therapy for that.

I’ll be running this tomorrow, a new race event my gym has organized. The first part till “vegas” is generally a bit uphilly, but just a little. The second part uses the “Avenida los industriales”, also used in the Half Marathon, but the other way. I’ll be updating tomorrow with the altitude profile.

UPDATE: Here’s the altitude profile: