Open Thinkering

Experimenting with the MAF method

Posted on August 11, 2020August 11, 2020 by Doug Belshaw

I’m really enjoying discovering new blogs and reading other people’s posts tagged with the #100DaysToOffload. One I came across jist over a month ago has had a big impact on my approach to exercise.

In this post, Graham Williams (who goes by the handle ‘gray’) talks about experimenting with a month of using the MAF approach to his training.

There’s no need for a lot of waffle here. We’re looking to train in a low HR zone – I need to know my targets. This is how you get that:
Subtract your age from 180, then modify from one of the categories listed. For me this worked out to be 180 – 34 = 146 (Training consistently for ~ 2 years without injury).
Graham Williams

I’m five years older than Graham, so my target should be 141. By way of context, my heart rate has often been around 160-165bpm when finishing exercise.

The creator of this system, Phil Maffetone, suggests that you may add 5 to your target heart rate “if you are a competitive athlete training for more than a year without issues”. I’m not a competitive athlete, but I’ve been doing regular exercise ever since I can remember, so I decided that I’d aim to stay in the 141-146 range during exercise.

I have an Amazfit Bip smartwatch which allows me to see my heart rate in realtime while I run. While it’s not as accurate as a chest strap, I’ll not be buying or wearing one of those anytime soon, so it’s the best I’ve got for now.

It’s been almost a month since trying this approach and, looking at my data (11 runs) I can see that I’m running slower, sometimes much slower, as heart rate depends on multiple factors. For example, when we were on holiday in Devon, it was hotter and I was drinking more alcohol.

On average, this approach has slowed down my average pace by ~20 seconds per kilometre, which is significant. I can feel it while running, wanting to go a bit faster, as this method doesn’t really get the endorphins flowing.

What it does do, however, is ensure that I’m not exhausted after running first thing in the morning. I tend to be hard on myself, so the MAF approach looks like a simple way to have a more sustainable approach to my exercise regime.

This post is Day 28 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Want to get involved? Find out more at 100daystooffload.com

Keeping it simple

Posted on August 10, 2020August 11, 2020 by Doug Belshaw

Some people have jobs that mean they need to be contacted immediately. They have occupations that require them to act quickly in critical situations.

I’d like to think what I do makes the world a slightly better place, but I can’t really think of what a true emergency would look like in my line of work.

Over the years, more and more work-related apps have crept onto my phone. It’s only when I go on holiday with a strict ‘no work’ policy that I reflect on the impact this has on my leisure time.

I’ve worked from home for the last eight years and, for the last six, in a house with a separate home office. I have the ability to literally shut the door on my work at the end of the day and go ‘home’.

Instead, work tends to follow me home through the apps on my phone; despite being relatively disciplined with notifications, I’ve slipped into an unhealthy elision of work and leisure time that diminishes both.

For the last 10 days, while I’ve been on holiday, I uninstalled or disabled all work-related apps on my phone. It’s what I usually do when I’m on holiday: all or nothing.

So far, the only work-related app I’ve re-enabled is my calendar. I’m thinking of keeping it that way.

This evening, I scrolled through the list of apps I had installed and deleted about half of them. The main things I want to use my phone for are communication, music, and short-form reading and writing. Occasionally I use it for navigation, or a contactless payment if I forget my wallet.

I do sometimes wonder what ancient Stoic philosophers would do if they were alive today. What would Marcus Aurelius do? Epictetus? Seneca? Keep it simple, I guess.

This post is Day 27 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Want to get involved? Find out more at 100daystooffload.com

Weeknote 32/2020

Posted on August 8, 2020August 9, 2020 by Doug Belshaw

This week, and most of last week, I’ve been on holiday. Ideally, I like to have three weeks off in a row, as it’s only then that I find I can truly unwind. However, given I’m now (by choice) no longer employed, holidays have the double hit of both costing money and getting in the way of me making more. As the main earner in our family, the responsible thing to do is to only take much as I need.

Usually when we go to Devon, we stop off at a hotel to prevent it being a full day of driving. The pandemic, though, means that not only do we want to avoid hotels, but there’s less traffic on the roads, making our journey quicker. That means we got to my wife’s parents’ house by mid-afternoon.

We stayed in a place we’ve been before, a hand-built holiday cottage constructed by by friends of my in-laws. They bought a smallholding 25 years ago when they were about my age. They’ve turned it into such a welcoming and restful place that I was able to relax immediately.

We spent our time in Devon visiting family, going on walks, and generally relaxing. I had prepared for the trip by uninstalling or disabling every work-related app on my phone. The only screens we took for the kids were on their e-readers and MP3 players. For it to a be a qualitatively different experience to the last few months at home it was important not to just take the same screens with us.

On the way back from Devon, we stopped off for a couple of nights in Shropshire at a self-catering cottage we’d booked. It’s not a county I’ve spent much time in, so we visited Ironbridge, which is somewhere I only know about due to teaching it as part of the Industrial Revolution. While we were there we had our first meal out for months thanks to the government’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme, dining on outside tables.

The accommodation we stayed at in Shropshire wasn’t the best. In fact, for only the second time ever, I left a negative review on Booking.com. I feel a bit bad for doing so, but the place wasn’t as clean as it should have been, especially in the middle of a pandemic. Also, the photos of the property managed to skilfully omit the huge power lines right overhead.

Since we’ve been back, we’ve inevitably been talking about what would happen if we bought a smallholding. Our circumstances are different, though. Unlike our hosts in Devon, we’ve got children, houses and land is no longer so cheap, and there’s the small matter of the pandemic. The sensible thing to do is to try and pay off our mortgage in the next decade or so…

Despite that disappointment, we did manage to have a good walk up The Wrekin, which I think technically qualifies as a mountain. There was an Iron Age hill fort on the site, but there’s not much evidence of that now. Still, the panoramic views were superb and our children will climb and jump off any and all rocks.

Next week, I’m back to work. I genuinely have not looked at my inbox or calendar since turning on my out-of-office before going away. So I guess my Monday morning is going to be spent wading through messages before getting started with anything more productive!

Photo of Ironbridge run through the Game Boy camera filter of the Retroboy Android app, reducing it to 59.39kb. The Roy Lichtenstein filter looked slightly better, but resulted in a filesize 2.5x larger!