Hello readers!

There will be Nike Nationwide Sale from June 19-21 up to 70% in selected items. So visit the nearest Nike store in your area starting tomorrow! I’m really hopefull that they will extend Nike Nationwide Sale until end of this month just in time to get our salary

I wonder how much the Nike Air Max I’ve been drooling over for a month would cost now.

Nike stores location:

I remember the first time I joined a road race (Condura Race), I saw a couple of guys running in front of me with black straps peeking out at the back of their white shirts. I honestly thought these guys probably have man-boobs and they were just wearing a bra*laughs*. It was because my idea of a heart rate monitor is something that you would normally found in hospitals and tread mills. Yeah, that’ how naive I was then.

Five road races later, I decided to buy my own heart rate monitor watch. I wish I could just buy a GF 405, however, I  can’t do this as I’ve just shelled out a huge amount of money after a vehicular accident I encountered as detailed from my previous post. So I bought a heart rate monitor at 50% discount last Saturday with the aim of  testing it for Mizuno Infinity Run 2009. However, the heart rate monitor wasn’t working (..err..that’s why it was being sold for 50%?) when I tested it Saturday night and so I ended up just using the timer on the race day. My wife brought it back yesterday and the Timex guy replaced it with a new working one. I was able to test it this morning at Oval and I’m very happy with it.

How I’m going to use it to improve my performance is probably the next question in newbie runners mind. To use a heart monitor effectively, you will need to determine first your Maximum Heart Rate. I got this formula from Runner’s World website which will help you get an approximation of your maximum heart rate:

Men: 214 – (0.8 x age)
Women: 209 – (0.9 x age)

Now that you know your maximum heart rate (MHR), you can use this on your different training zones. Here’s mine:

Easy Run/Recovery Run (50%-60% of MHR)
Aerobic Training (70%-80% of MHR)
Tempo Training (80%-100% of MHR)

If you want to have a peak on how I’m going to use this on my weekly trainings, here it is:

Monday: Easy Run , ensure that my heart rate doesn’t go below 114
Wednesday: Tempo Run>Easy Run for 15 minutes, Tempo run for 30 minutes-ensure that heart rate doesn’t go below 152 and another easy run for 15 minutes
Friday:Tempo Run> Easy Run for 15 minutes, Tempo run for 30 minutes, ensure that heart rate doesn’t go below 152 and another easy run for 15 minutes
Sunday: Long Run, ensure my heart rate doesn’t go below 114 slowly increasing to 134.

As you can see from above, I’m focusing on Tempo runs after learning that Kenyans do tempo runs twice a week. While I cannot run as fast as them, at least I’ll be able to get the most out of my cheap heart rate monitor. My long run too is also of equal importance, making sure that my long run doesn’t go below 30km.

I hope this helps. Send in your comments and suggestions!

This post is all about my review of Phiten necklace which I’ve worn last Sunday for the Mizuno Infinity Race.

As mentioned from my previous post I’ve seen this Phiten necklace on all road races I’ve joined. After seeing these necklaces being worn by a ton of Major League Baseball players I decided to give one of these a try. Elite runners Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliff also uses one. My curiousity lead me to research more on this product and I was surprised to learn that Phiten not only applies titanium to the necklace but to other products as well like compression shorts, tapes, lotion, gloves via Phild Process .  According to their website, the thing works by stabilizing the flow of electrical energy through the body through balancing the body’s positive and negative ions. When they are balanced, body muscles are more relaxed.

For the sake of testing this product, I wore it only on the day of the race itself including application of Phiten tapes on my legs (you could check pictures over my post about Mizuno Infinity Post Race Report and notice tapes attached on my legs!) and lotion to identify any  noticeable difference on my body. The reason why I did this is because from my experience, my recovery period usually takes 3 to 4 days after the race day. I would usually encounter pains on my legs,back and knees. However, upon using this necklace, I realize that my muscles (especially the legs) were so relaxed that I was able to run for 10km at the oval the following day. I was honestly skeptical about this product at first as I haven’t seen any scientific research done by a reputable third party medical universities to check the claims of the product. However, my findings reveal that it works well for me for this particular test. While I cannot discount the fact that my mind might play a role on the result (placebo effect), I’m seriously considering another test. What if I just create a dummy necklace, coat it with Phiten logos, give two Phiten necklaces to a runner, one with the real product and the other the dummy one and wait for the result. Now that would be the ultimate test!

But for now, I’m happy to say it works fine on my test as it promises. Whether this is just a mental thing or reality is all for you to test. Any Phiten users out there? Please let us know your experience by commenting on this post.

Results are out! Please check the result here.

I was surprised that the outcome is 3 minutes off from what I was expecting. My 16km Earth Run 2 Sundays ago and my 15km at Mizuno last Sunday, both I finished at 1:42. A very disturbing performance of mine. I need to improve badly!

Update: Mizuno just changed the result and my official time is now 1:38:56