Yesterday we had to put down our oldest cat, Missen.
It was a great sadness to us and we miss her a lot. It was discovered at the vet that she had an internal hernia that was causing her respiratory distress and although possible to correct with surgery, Missen being 12 years old, our feeling was that the surgery was too complex to put her through at her advanced age.
Instead she could go to sleep in my arms.
Here is my 60 minutes podrunning Spotify link. This version includes also a warmup phase 6:03 and a cooldown phase that is 4:36 with softer music.
This is the list I currently keep in my android phone for a good outdoor run. The songs are a strange mix between soft and hard with a lot of love for Electronic Body Music of course.
(Yes the photo above was taken by me.)
All in one glorious running package!
Week got completely shot out the window with the schedule and there was really just one day of good training, monday.
Regard wk 17 as a recovery and rest week but now I am ready for wk 18 to keep running my 6 km both indoor and outdoor.
Tar (tape archiver) is an old Unix-command that has been largely forgotten among people who are not in touch with the unix world daily today. In several forums I hear people asking how to back up files in Linux in a simple and efficient way and what to use. Most seem to prefer a graphical solution but some are happy with a command line version as well.
Personally I generally distrust graphical backup softwares. It puts a layer between you and what is actually going on that is unnecessary and those that are not just graphical shells on top of programs such as tar are usually proprietary and you can’t rely on that there is something that can read the archives in even five years time.
Tar is a little different, it has been proven over time to be one of the most efficient and well functioning backup solutions. However, people today have generally forgot how to perform full archiving, incremental backups and differential backups using tar properly.
And, as always any backup solution that fails at restoring your data now or in the future is doomed from the start. Tar builds on a format that many archive handlers can read not to mention the source code is open source and freely distributable and not likely to disappear any time soon.
There are generally three type of backups that we will be discussing here.
The first and by far simplest one is a full archive. This means that everything is archived. This is generally a very time consuming and space consuming task and not something you would want to do every day. The full archive is however the simplest to restore and does not need any special considerations except that you might have to split it over several volumes depending on your media, be that tapes, CD-R/DVD-R or hard disk volumes.
Personally I prefer hard disk volumes as my backup media. A full archive for me is somewhere clodse to 700 GB so using CD-R is not really feasible (945 volumes ca) and DVD-R is not that much better (170 volumes). Tapes are probably scarce today and their capacity is usually even lower than the optical medias so harddisks is what I use. I get a Western Digital MyBook storage disk (USB2 connection) and just disconnects it between backups. This way data should not be eraseable unless you physically plug it in.
Then we have incremental backups. Incrementals work like this. First you dump a full archive with everything in it. Then periodically you back up everythin that has changed since the last time. This is a very efficient backup method if you want to make backups often to minimize data loss if there is an accident. The downside of it is that you will quickly come to have lots of files to keep track of and even more important, a restore operations means that you must restore all the files in the order they were created. This is very time consuming and more risky that something goes wrong.
However, incremental backups are incredibly popular also, they are usually fast. The more often you backup the faster the backup goes, at least in theory.
Then the last type we will be talking about are differential backup. They start out just like incrementals with a full archive copy of everything. Then everytime you backup you backup everything that has changed since the full archive was made. The difference here to incrementals is that you only have two active files at any time, the last full archive and the differential archive. A restore operation is therefore very efficient and a two-step operation only.
The downside with differentials is that over time the diff file will grow since more and more files have changed from the time of the last full archive, and therefore the efficiency over time is not great. When the differential has grown to the size of something like 50% of the full archive then it may be better to make a new full archive and start over with the differential.
Using tar to perform a full backup is done like this:
tar -c -v -f archive.tar /home/
Using tar in windows under the Cygwin package you would have to change the /home/ path to /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/ or something similar because that is where your personal data will be located on the computer (unless your ”My Documents” has been moved to a different location for some reason.
Using tar to perform incremental backups requiers a two-step process. First you creat a full archive but with a separate date stamp file:
tar -g incremental.snar -c -v -f archive.0.tar /home/
The -g option is the same as –listed-incremental=incremental.snar option and allows the tar to store additional metadata outside the archive that can be used to perform increments later.
tar can also do without the external file, but since this put non-standard meta-data into the tar archive itself it is not recommended since it might break compatibility with non-gnu tools.
The next level or the first increment is thus performed such as:
tar -g incremental.snar -c -v -f archive.1.tar /home/
Since the incremental.snar file already exists only files newer than files referred in the meta-data file will be dumped. The meta-data file incremental.snar will be updated and you will have your first increment.
Keep going like this for each increment. When you want to perform a full restore again use a new incremental.snar file or delete the old one. The meta-data file is not necessary in order to restore the file system.
Restore is done with
tar -g /dev/null -x -v -f archive.0.tar
Repeat this for each increment you have done, i.e. archive.1.tar, archive.2.tar and so on. Remember that when using tar incrementally it will try to recreate the exact file system, i.e. it will delete files that did not exist when the archive was dumped. Therefore you will see the file system change until you have the last increment in place and it will be fully restored.
Differential files are simplest done by dumping files that have changed on or after the date of the full archive. In order to do this, create the full archive first. Then note the time stamp of the archive (I put it in the file name of the archive) thus:
tar -cvf full-archive-2010-05-01.tar /home/
Then to create a differential for all files that changed since the 1st of may 2010 you can perform the following:
tar -N 2010-05-01 -cvf diff-archive-2010-05-05.tar
The new archive will contain all the files that has changed on the date or later dates that you give to the -N option.
The next differential is created in the same way but at a later date. After that you may remove the old differential since it will be superseeded by the new one.
To restore simply untar the full-archive and then the latest differential. When those two operations have finished your file system is up to date again.
This version of the command will however NOT delete any files from the file system as the incremental version will do.
tar -xvf full-archive-2010-05-01.tar
tar -xvf diff-archive-2010-05-05.tar
That’s it for this time. Have fun with tar.
6k done! Now two more weeks trying to make that my standard distance and then another increase with about 1800 meters that will take me to 7k8 and then another couple of weeks on that distance before attempting 9k7 which will be very close to my 10k goal for August.
I think it is possible. I have increased training dose a bit but allow for rest in the weeks also. After a long run outdoors I generally schedule a short one on the treadmill, I have noticed that short runs (2 km or thereabout) increase the blood flow and lowers the recovery time after a long run. While in the gym I also do general strengthening exercises for stomach, back, arms, shoulders and upper back which seems to be helping also.
This week has seen a bit more rest than usual mostly depending on the really bad weather and I am going to make one more run tonight aiming at the 6k again.
The first photograph on modellbilder right now was taken by me. Model: Tola and the snake Bosse.
I have not written much here for a while, been to busy elsewhere. Training wise I have had a good week this week and I might still do yet another run today or tomorrow.
But I also got a great motivator this week, my new sports watch. A Suunto T6c runner’s watch with pulse belt and foot pod measuring heart rates as well as speed and distance. The best thing about it is that is has a very advanced way of measuring the heart rate, it does not just measure the number of beats in a minute, but it also measures the time variance between the beats. By sophisticated methods it is thereby able to calculate VO2 profiles as you work out and using them it can tell you the quality of the work out.
If you are working out too hard for a period it will tell you to schedule a few workouts with lower intensity. If you are slacking off and not developing your strength, endurance, speed or cardiovascular functions it will tell you to step it up.
It also has a really great interval timer which is great, you can set it for any kind of intervals and it will alarm you to start or stop your intervals based on time or distance.
It also has a very accurate barometric altimeter that shows you the terrain profile of the track you run, much more accurate than any GPS based measurement I have seen, in fact it is accurate to within a couple of meters providing the barometric pressure does not change too much.
The software for this training partner is among the best I have seen. It is great for a stats buff like myself who loves, and finds motivation from, statistics on how I am doing. I love running the same track over and over and note if I am doing the first or second lap faster than last time and so on. Really great stuff that.
The watch also changes your parameters over time, it just recently told me my condition was a step better than I thought when I entered the initial parameters so it has automatically notched it up meaning that to achieve the same training effect as before I have to run longer or faster. Depressing stuff but probably true. In the process I have also lost another couple of kg of excess weight.
Above is the heart rate curve for my last 5 km run. It shows also clearly the intervals that I was doing (6 speed intervals with jogging between) and that my heart rate was varying quite a bit at the start, this happens if I have not been sleeping well the night before and then does workout.
The next is the speed/distance curve where ther intervals are even more pronouced. The first little plateay is a warmup walk before starting to run. The pace is very even as well which indicates that I am running on a treadmill, outdoors the speed varies much more with the ascent of the track.
EPOC is the Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption graph. This is an interesting graph. By measuring the heart rate, speed and distance, time and the variance between the heart beats (the harder you work out the more even the heart beats) the system can calculate how much stress you put on the system and graph how well your workout was in terms of cardiovascular stress.
This was a level 4,8 workout which is a highly improving level. After such a work out it is recommended to make a more low profile workout as a recovery, keeping to an EPOC level of 2-3 rather. If you go as high as level 5 you need several days of rest before training again.
Level 1 is very low intensity training building a base but not stressing the cardio-vascular system really.
Level 2 is a maintaining level, you will maintain what you got but not improve your endurance much. However you are still improving muscles and building up to be able to take more stressing workouts.
Level 3 is improving rate, you are now improving your cardio and endurance quite a bit.
Level 4 is greatly improving (doing intervals for example) but you should not work out at this level for more than 2-3 times a week and make sure to rest or have low-intensity workouts between.
This is a late update on the last week of running. Monday was a really great intervall workout and my 5 km was all done in 38:40 and then on wednesday I managed a short recoup workout bare foot for 2,7 km.
On Thursday night we went for beers so the workout on friday was definitely tougher than usual but I did a short 2,45 km and felt okay with that.
Now the snow is melting and the asphalt is becoming runnable again so I will be going for a run on the roads around here soon. My condition is improving and my speed, especially on the treadmill, has been climbing rapidly. I have now done 5 k in 38 minutes a personal best.
Fantastic application. Connect your mobile with the USB cable to your laptop, install driver and EasyTether program on your mobile and use your mobile as a mobile broadband internet connection while you are charging your phone!
This is a fantastic development, when I got my Android phone I missed that kind of application and there was some hacks that could be used but nothing that worked this good.
It does not require a root:ed phone, it just works. The software will soon cost a few bucks but it is well worth it if you want to be able to use your phone as a gateway to the internet.
It also uses the phones built-in firewalling capabilities protecting your laptop from attacks from the outside by filtering various protocols. You might even filter UDP ports (except DNS requests) if you like.
(links are coming)
Good week actually. Personal best on friday doing sub-40 minutes on 5 k run (treadmill) and it feels really good. Legs are great, knees holding, condition improving fast and I have started to feel that I might actually be able to get to the 10 k run sooner than I expected. The whole week was great.
I also discovered how fun it is to run intervals on the tredmill. Can’t say it’s much fun just running but when you do intervals the extra strain takes your mind completely away from the dullness of running on the thing.
I am doing intervals of 2/3 minutes with 2 min jogging in a tougher tempo and 3 min of slow jogg-down to get the heart rate down. Then repeating over and over again. Easy since treadmill keeps track of the time and you can manually alter between the speeds. So basically on minutes 0 and 1 and 5 and 6 hard running and then the rest a more easy-paced jogg.
Results immediately. Personal best on 5 km. So in the future I think that two interval runs and one slower paced long-distance run will be the recipe for me in the coming weeks.