Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: fitness

  • Why I Run

    Being into running is a lot like going to Harvard or being from Texas. You never have to ask somebody if they are any one of those things. They will make sure you know pretty much as soon as you get introduced to them. I feel like every self-indulgent asshat that runs has some profound story about how they got into it. I am no different.

    There were two specific moments that made me into a runner. The first one got me into running to begin with. The second one made me pursue distance running, by which I mean going beyond 10k races and ultimately running a marathon.

    The first instance was in May 2001. I was living in southern California at the time, which I did for a little over a year. Looking back, I feel like that year was definitely the worst one of my life.

    In my teens, my mother had quite a few physical and mental health issues which caused her and my dad to become estranged. They got back together and moved to a suburb of Los Angeles in 1996 but her overall health did not significantly improve. In 2000 I decided it would be a great idea to quit my job in Boston and move to California to help out. In my head I figured I’d move in with the folks for a couple months, get a nice job, and move into my own place somewhere close to them. The reality was nowhere near that.

    I left a pretty sweet job at Monsanto where I extracted DNA from plants all day. That was the whole job. Show up at 8am and cut leaves off plants. Grind them up with mortar and pestle, then breakdown the plant material and go to town on them with Qiagen kits. At around 3:45pm take all the different Eppendorfs full of DNA to the spectrophotometer and record the concentration in μg/mL. Easy peasy. My dumbass figured I could find another job like this someplace in Los Angeles.

    Truth was Los Angeles had basically zero biotech, and I wasn’t qualified to do much else. I couldn’t find a job quickly and a couple months became several months. I wallowed on the floor of my parents’ place and grew to resent them for no reason. They never told me to quit my job and move across the country, but if I didn’t blame them for my predicament then I would have to blame myself. This did irreparable harm to my relationship with my folks that never got undone. My mom and I only spoke about twice a year until she died in 2018. My father and I have barely spoken since her funeral.

    Being in this mental state obviously affected my physical state. I never really got fat but I got “skinny fat”. Not really doing anything just made me a doughy, pudgy, weak person. So that is where I was at come May 2001.

    Despite how horrible living in L.A. was, I did have two good friends from college who also lived out there. One of them was the poster boy for jocks. If they were casting Stan Gable from my stable of friends, this guy would be it. Tall, good looking, great at every sport the moment he picked it up. A Chad before the term Chad existed. To protect his identity, I’ll refer to him as Chad from here on out. The only joy I had in my life was when I would go to their place on the beach and get black out drunk. On Memorial Day weekend a mutual friend of ours from college came to Cali to hang out for the long weekend.

    The friend who was visiting was always our “fat friend”. He was the jolly, lovable dude with the big love handles on the side. I’ll call him Albert for the duration of this post. Well, since college he had been working hard on himself and lost the weight. He was looking svelte and trim and we were all genuinely happy for him. We did lots of partying and reminiscing on or near Hermosa Beach that weekend. Albert, Chad, and I went to a local park to play some basketball in between bouts of heavy drinking.

    So the three of us decide to play some 21 (which is like 1-v-1-v-1 basketball, first person to 21 wins). Chad obviously wins, but Albert and I keep it respectable. Something like 21-19-18. We decide to play again. This time the scores were 21-18 … to 6. Guess who was the 6?

    Early in that second game my everything gave out. Fuel level dropped to zero. My lungs were burning and my legs felt like they weighed 500 pounds. I could barely move and thought for sure I was seconds away from having a stroke or catching fire. After the second game I had to beg out and sit on the sidelines while Albert and Chad continued playing one-on-one.

    You know how they say you never remember the exact details of the most important moments of your life, but you never forget how you felt? Well, I don’t remember anything about who actually won that game or any of the particulars that happened. But I remember every single emotion that went through my head sitting there sucking down Gatorades and watching my “fat friend” and my “jock friend” living a life that was entirely beyond me. Shame, disgust, powerlessness, depression. I swore I would do everything in my power to change this.

    The very next day I started running. The first day I went about a half mile before I had to stop and walk back home. The next day I went a little farther. And the next, and the next, and the next. Soon I improved enough to get all the way to a local track over a mile away. Then before I knew it I could go to the track, do some laps, and then make it back home. I decided to sign up for a 5k in July. I ran that in about thirty minutes and then signed up for a 10k in August. That was around 57 minutes. Both were PRs at the time.

    My friends were nothing but supportive as I started running. Chad even gave me a $20 gift card for fogdog.com. For those of us who remember fogdog, it might be time to take our rheumatism medicine. They were an online sporting goods store in the late 90s dot-com boom when simply adding “.com” to your name made your stock price triple. Dot-com then was basically what AI is now.

    In September I moved back to Boston and continued on with my life. I got a job and my own place like an actual adult. Running stayed a significant part of my fitness routine and I still ran the occasional road race (shoutout to the Somerville 5K and Gobble Gobble Gobble). I pretty much stayed around 3-5 miles a day until the second specific moment.

    Fast forward to summer 2008. My Army Reserve unit got put on orders in Boston to prepare for an imminent mobilization. To say we were excited would be an understatement. We trained in and around Boston, and went on extended trips to Fort Hunter-Liggett and Fort Irwin. Everything was trending towards the mobe into autumn. Then all of a suddenly the mobilization got cancelled right before Thanksgiving. They didn’t need us to win the war after all.

    This was devastating for most of us. Lots of folks in my unit worked for small local companies that did not have enough employees to qualify for USERRA protection. I was working for a start-up with 4 employees so I also became unemployed just before the holidays.

    The holidays are my worst time for binge eating. Even when everything is going great for me, it is really tough to avoid a few extra pounds. This particular year a few pounds turned into a lot of pounds. I sat around at home and ate and felt depressed. I felt ashamed and embarrassed having to explain to my friends and family that I was staying in the continental US. Like I was scared they would think I had lied about the whole thing.

    I did not realize how bad I let everything get until I got chosen to attend Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC, pronounced “bee-knock”) in February 2009. I had to do a preparatory physical fitness test in Boston and, while I passed everything, the numbers were down from my usual. Then when I got to Fort Dix for BNCOC I was over the limit on my weigh-in. Fortunately I made the body fat tape test on the number. I literally was at the highest body fat you could possibly be and still be able to complete the course.

    Once I graduated and got back home I knew I needed to do something to get my waistline and life back under control. I figured I could do worse than turning to running to achieve that again. This time I wanted to up the ante and decided to sign up for the Army Ten Miler in October.

    Army Ten Miler was a great experience, but my run that day made me feel like I left a lot of meat on the bone. I really tired out after about mile 8 and slogged my way to the finish. Once I got home I knew I needed to completely remake my stride if I wanted to do longer runs. And I wanted to do longer runs.

    In the winter of 2009-2010 I totally broke down my running style and became the most biomechanically efficient version of myself. In May 2010 I ran the Providence Half Marathon and then in October 2010 I did the Marine Corps Marathon. For me, running a marathon is a binary experience. Once you do one you never need to do another. That said, I continued distance running recreationally and have done several half marathons and ten milers since, but nothing that long since 2022.

    Running helped me improve my life and physical fitness. It is not a panacea. I am a firm believer that the most important workout you do everyday is in your kitchen. If you want to run to lose weight, be prepared to put in way more effort preparing meals than pounding pavement.

    When I ran the marathon I could look at a piece of chicken breast from the other side of a room and tell you everything there was to know about its calories and macronutrient content. I weighed 142 pounds on race day and felt like a strong crosswind would legitimately knock me over. That sort of shit isn’t for everybody and I never want to be that small again.

    I know a lot of people run for mental health reasons. More power to them. I have never used running for that. Lots of people talk about getting the “runner’s high”, but not me. The only time I feel joy about my run is as soon as I finish because I know it is the longest possible time until I need to run again. If I knew of something else that could give me the same aerobic and endurance benefits, with the advantage that it can be done anywhere, I’d switch as fast as possible. Pun intended.

    But anyway, those are the reasons why this self-indulgent asshat runs. Yours might be similar or they might be different. I’m certain whatever they are, they are just as important to you as mine are to me.

    Not the author. Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash

  • Workout Ideas

    Just wanted to take this occasion to share a workout tip I have been using for about a year now which lets me keep things fresh. I love to do this on months with 31 days, and since July and August both have 31, this is a chance to do this for consecutive months.

    I like to take a movement and progressively add to how many I do each day of the month. It is tough to explain the progression, so here is a calendar for the month of July that shows how many to do.

    For example, I’ll do 10 burpees on the 1st, 12 on the 2nd, etc. By the final day I’ll do 60. This is not in lieu of normal workouts, just an extra layer. In the beginning of the month, it is a nice little invigoration. By the last week or so it can become a slog, especially when also getting in 8000-10000 steps a day. Since this is in addition to your regular workout, you can spread it over the entire day. In May I forgot to do burpees one day when it was 22, so I just did 46 the following one. It isn’t that serious.

    Burpees are my go-to workout for this, so I think I’ll do that again for July. I know there are many ways to do burpees, but my preferred way is an eight-count like this.

    1. Drop into a squat with hands on the floor
    2. Kick legs out behind you into a plank
    3. Down portion of a push-up
    4. Up portion of a push-up
    5. Bring legs back under you into squat position
    6. Stand back up
    7. First half of a jumping jack
    8. Second half of a jumping jack

    For August, I’ll probably do explosive squats. Depending on your fitness level, you can choose any workout for this. Some suggestions:

    Here is a calendar for August as well. Give ’em hell!

    If this doesn’t float your boat I have one more thing to consider. I am not a Crossfit person, but I recently got into a specific Crossfit named workout called Cindy. It consists of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 air squats. I know Crossfit people do those weird looking pull-ups, but you can do regular pull-ups for this instead. You do those exercises in order for one round. A full Cindy is as many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in twenty minutes. A great full body workout in a short time with no equipment needed other than pull-up bars.

    If that also does not float your boat, maybe you should stay on dry land.

  • Around ACC Highland

    As those of you who are frequent readers of this blog already know (both of you), I am a proponent and aficionado of free, public, outdoor fitness areas. I cannot pass up an opportunity to highlight the area around ACC Highland because it not only includes two such locations but also a short trail that dovetails into a longer trail for anyone interested. There is a lot in the area for anyone looking for a nice quick workout or hike during a lunch break or lazy weekend morning.

    ACC Highland is one of the campuses of Austin Community College. This particular one is housed in what used to be Highland Mall. The region used to be one of the higher parts of the city so there are a lot of place and street names that play on it. Crestview neighborhood, Twin Crest and Eastcrest Drives nearby. Highland Mall opened in 1971 and served the community for over forty years before closing in 2015. From there the building was scooped up by ACC and transformed into the shiny collegiate location of today.

    With as overwhelmingly hot as it gets in Austin pretty much all the time between March and November, you really need to fumble the bag to screw up an air conditioned, indoor shopping mall. That place should have printed money forever and ever.

    Shockingly, racism was one of the big reasons it failed. Highland Mall was in a … what’s the euphemism … “racially diverse” part of Austin and somehow hated the fact that people other than rich whites wanted to shop there. During the Texas Relays (a yearly event around Easter that brings together the best amateur and professional track and field athletes in the state) even more, uh … “urban” youth wanted to shop there. And the pearl clutching began in earnest. Highland Mall faded into irrelevance years before the doors closed for good.

    ACC Highland is shiny and new and all that stuff. A different kind of blog would continue to talk about how great the interior looks and all the wonderful things you can do there. This is not that kind of blog; we are staying outside.

    We begin on campus about a block from Airport Boulevard at the corner of Highland Mall Boulevard and Highland Campus Drive. So named in case you ever happen to forget that you are near ACC Highland for some reason. Here in front of a new apartment building complex is the first outdoor fitness station. This one is robust and includes pullup bars, step platforms of varying heights, dip station, pushup bar, an ab exercise spot, and a lower back extension. I can also proudly report that the water fountain works as well.

    If you are looking for something else to do at this location instead of workout, there is also an outdoor ping pong table. Unlock your inner Marty Supreme if you dare to bring paddles and a ball.

    A couple blocks east along Highland Mall Blvd you’ll reach the beginning of the 1.25 mile Highland Trail. It goes roughly along the perimeter of the ACC Highland footprint. It goes along behind some buildings and passes by a large and open parking lot.

    The parking lot looks like it would be a great place to get sprinting work in. I used to do a lot of sprinting way back before I became old and decrepit. My go-to sprint workout didn’t have a cool name but it always got me tuckered out. All you need to do it is a large open spot (like a parking lot or soccer field) and a way to roughly measure off distances. Go as hard as you can and try not to rest more than a couple minutes between any two sprints.

    • 1/4 to 1/2 mile warmup
    • ten 100-yard sprints
    • eight 80-yard sprints
    • six 60-yard sprints
    • four 40-yard sprints
    • 1/4 to 1/2 mile cooldown

    Just past the parking lot is the second outdoor fitness station. This one is older and has fewer spots in which to workout. It has some pullup bars and pushup bars with a couple of inclined benches for abdominal work. The water fountain here works too. However, I also need to mention that there is zero shade over either fitness area so don’t even think about using them this time of year except for right after dawn or before sunset.

    Highland Trail continues behind another apartment complex (you see, nothing gets built in Austin except apartment buildings and things owned by Elon Musk and the occasional restaurant) and meets up with the Red Line Parkway along Airport Boulevard. The Red Line Parkway is still in development but it is hoped to ultimately become a 32 mile stretch going all the way from Leander to downtown Austin. Anyone in the local area that is interested in hearing more should come to the State of the Parkway presentation at the Central Library on August 26th. Tell them Gene sent you.

    Eventually you come upon Fontaine Plaza on Airport. It is like a super miniature version of Central Park. The plaza and the street that runs next to it are both named for Jacob Fontaine. He was a former slave who became an influential pastor, merchant, and journalist in Austin during Reconstruction. He also played a large part in helping to get UT established in Austin. Hook ’em.

    Those purple poles on the plaza are part of a light art project that is supposed to resemble bats in flight. I should mention here for those of you that are unaware, ACC teams are called the Riverbats in honor of the bats that live downtown.

    From Fontaine Plaza you can walk a short distance back to the first fitness station or complete the 1.25 mile loop of Highland Trail. Like I said at the start, this is a great area to kill an hour or so and get a good sweat on. You really don’t need to bring anything with you except a desire to explore. And your house keys, don’t forget those or you’ll have trouble getting inside when you get home.

  • Unwanted Pedometer Reviews

    I’ve made a real commitment to walking everywhere I possibly can to improve my endurance. In order to quantify how successful I am being I decided to download a pedometer app to count my steps. I was originally counting them without an app, but I started looking stupid whispering my current number every place I went. Therefore I deigned to test several pedometer apps and post reviews of them here.

    When looking for a pedometer I had a few hard and fast rules in mind for what I had to have:

    1. The pedometer had to be free. I was willing to accept some small, constant ads or infrequent, large ads in exchange for keeping my wallet closed.
    2. It had to work on an Android device. It is possible that the world’s greatest free pedometer app is on the iPhone (it’s not). If so, wouldn’t do me any good because I couldn’t download it.
    3. It had to specifically work on the Android 9.0 version. I know this is not the latest and greatest, but I am not upgrading my phone just for a step counting app. I downloaded a few apps that I couldn’t get to work and I think that compatibility might have been the reason.
    4. It had to work using only my physical activity data. That is the only permission anything was allowed to have. I was not giving my location data to any rando that uploads an app to the Play Store. I know for a fact that some apps I tried would not work correctly because I would not pony up my location and/or biometric data.

    Other than those above, I just wanted an app that could count steps accurately and generally leave me alone 95% of the time unless I wanted to see my daily step number. As I downloaded these apps to test them I immediately noticed one annoyance. All of these apps had names so similar it was nearly impossible to differentiate them. For that reason I will include the name, developer, and Play Store link for each app I discuss so there is minimal confusion.

    Without further ado, here are my thoughts on six different pedometer apps.

    Step Counter – Pedometer
    Leap Fitness Group

    This app requested my age, gender, height, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 104 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. There were a fair amount of full screen ads, and most of them were the annoying kind of ad like “oh no, you just downloaded a virus” that try to scare you into clicking on it instead of telling you about a product or service that may interest you. There was also a constant small banner ad on the bottom of the screen. It would have cost $11 / year to remove all the ads.

    This app made it easy to set custom daily and weekly goals and it counted calories as well as steps (provided you entered your gender and weight info). It also allowed me to see my daily step total right from the lock screen without having to unlock my phone. One cool feature with this app was that it included a lot of HIIT mini-workouts of 2-5 minutes for when you are in a hurry. For example, there was a 2 minute chest workout you could pull up that cycled through different easy chest exercises like wall pushups that could be done at home or in a hotel or wherever.

    A very solid app that did lots of things I liked. The only real drawback here was the scary ads that were a little too frequent but the bonus mini-workouts were a solid bonus. Four out of five stars.

    Pedometer – Step Counter
    ITO Technologies

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 105 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. The ads were largely TikTok ads that you could skip through after it played for 5-10 seconds. There was no premium or ad-free version that I could see.

    The app let you customize theme and colors in a bajillion ways. I never gave that a second thought because I don’t want that sort of feature. It also counted not just steps but also calories, distance, and time walked. The big negative was the battery draw the app required to work. When you downloaded it there was a warning page about how quickly it drains your battery. And then while I used it I noticed my battery getting sucked dry in real time. It had a sleep mode you could use to minimize that, but then you needed to remember to un-sleep the app every time you went somewhere in order for those steps to get counted.

    While accurate, this app lacked the ability to see your steps directly on the lock screen. That is the second most important feature I found across all the apps. The huge inefficiencies in battery life also made this a less than ideal app. Two out of five stars.

    Pedometer App – Step Counter
    AceTools Team

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 105 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. There were banner ads at the bottom of the screen as well as full screen unskippable ads, and also ads where the X to close it would be purposely hidden to make you unlikely to close the ad without accidentally clicking on it and opening the sponsor’s website. Their Pro plan with no ads cost $30 / year.

    The app counted steps and calories and showed them straight from the lock screen. Which was great because this app took an exceedingly long time to load. Not counting the extra time it took for the ads to get out of the way. It included a sleep logger so you could enter how much sleep you were getting and an AI “Health Pal” that I am not really sure what its actual use was. It absolutely was not able to help me with my property tax questions though.

    Ultimately the long load times and nefarious ads undercut the other quality features of this app. Two and a half out of five stars.

    StepUp Pedometer Step Counter
    StepUp Inc

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had no way to adjust my step length. That was really unfortunate because this counter registered 80 steps for every 100 steps I took. It didn’t matter if I said I was 5′ tall or 7′ tall it never got any more accurate than that. It also had a serious lag on counting steps. Like, I could walk from one end of a block to the other and the number wouldn’t change. Then after I stopped it would slowly count up until it got everything counted.

    The app itself was very minimalist and bare bones, which I liked because there was no fluff and no battery overuse. It also had very minimal ads to the point that I cannot even remember any negatives from that perspective. The one thing this app would not shut up about was wanting me to go online. It constantly asked me to join a chat group and message my friends — about how much fun it is to walk, I guess.

    One cool feature was that it had “bots” that race you throughout the day. For example, if your goal is 6000 steps there is a bot that slowly counts up to 6000 during the day and a leaderboard with you and another lazy bot that goes almost nowhere, and a busy bot that exceeds your daily goals to motivate you.

    I liked the “bots” idea and the minimalist design. However, the most important feature for me is accuracy and counting only 80 steps per 100 I take was a major negative. Three out of five stars.

    Before I continue with more reviews I need to talk about two things that I saw in almost every app I tested which annoyed the shit out of me. One, so many of them counted my weight in tenths of a pound. Why do this? Who accurately keeps track of their weight to the tenth of a pound? This is the same sort of meaningless hyper-accuracy as you see in rainfall totals to the hundredth of an inch.

    Two, nearly every app I downloaded served me ad upon ad for other pedometer apps. Wait, what? Why does one step counter app try to pitch me a different step counter app? Do they think I need to run two pedometer apps simultaneously? Don’t they realize they are supposed to compete for my business? It makes as much sense to me as if I bought a six pack of Pepsi and inside there was a coupon for a free Coke.

    Pedometer King – Step Counter
    Kingbrain

    This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had no way to adjust my step length. Despite that fact this app was so accurate it counted 99 steps for every 100 steps I took. This was easily the most accurate of all the apps I tried. Weirdly, this was also the only app that counted in discrete intervals of 9 steps. Every other app I used would count individual steps and I could conceivably end on any number on any day. 4512, sure. 5398, absolutely. But this app only counted in increments of 9. If I started walking I had to go 9 steps before it would count all 9 at the same time. While this annoyed the ever living shit out of me at the beginning, I wound up accepting it since the app was so damn accurate.

    This app had a banner ad on the top and video ads for Temu on startup. It had a premium plan that removed the ads for $5.49 / month. There were lots of notifications, if you didn’t turn them off it could get excessive. The app also showed your steps and calories on the lock screen.

    In spite of the weird counting method and overzealous notifications, the fact that it was amazingly accurate and let me see my steps from my lock screen more than made up for it. Four out of five stars.

    StepsApp – Step Counter
    StepsApp

    This app requested my age, gender, height, and weight. It also had minimal ads with a premium option without ads for $19.99 / year. However none of that mattered at all.

    This app had adjustable step length but I was not able to dial it in anywhere close to my walking stride. No matter what height I used, no matter what step length I used, it remained wildly far off from my actual steps. The closest I could get it was 220 steps registered for every 100 steps I took. I wasted an entire afternoon just walking back and forth in my apartment parking lot trying every possible setting to get it sort of close to almost accurate-ish. Never got anywhere close. One out of five stars.

    Those are my reviews of the six different free pedometer apps for Android 9.0 and earlier devices that I happened to try. I valued accuracy and lock screen step visibility more than anything else, then intrusiveness of ads and battery usage. Least important to me were customization of colors and themes and online features or anything that tried to create the feeling of a “team”. If those sorts of things are important to you, you’ll probably rate these apps differently.

    Even though I had two apps both finish with four stars, the one I decided to continue using was Pedometer King because of those most important features. I reserve the right to delete this app if it starts serving too many ads or gets annoying in some other way.