Hiking and stuff

This past week I didn't work on Monday because of a holiday, so I went hiking on Sunday to El Cerro de la Silla. I had not gone there in a long time, even though it's close to my house. The last times I wanted to go it was either cloudy or I didn't want to wake up early. This time the day was perfect, the temperature was chilly and the sky was clear, so I went to take the bus that leaves me near the cerro.

The first part of the trip is through a colonia, and I think it's one of the hardest parts because it's very steep road. After that you get to the entrance or the starting point of the cerro, and contrary to the places we went on Portland, this one isn't as cool. There is a main road that workers used to take, so there are parts where they made concrete steps or a bunch of rocks. The rocks kinda suck because they can be slippery, but other than that, it's OK.

There are two main parts, you either go up to a tower (don't know if it's tv or radio broadcast) that is at the peak, or you go to a platform that is like around the middle of the trip(the Teleférico). This time I only went to the Teleférico since I was still a little sore from my race the week before.

It took me around 50 minutes to get up there and I took a few pictures, I felt short of breath and like I was doing some hard work, and it felt amazing. After resting a few minutes at the Teleférico and eating some fruit, I went back since I had some things to do at home.

That week I finally received a new PSU that I bought for my desktop, so after hiking I came back and took apart my computer, cleaned it thoroughly and changed the PSU. I changed it because the last one was making my computer crash when I tried to overclock both CPU and GPU, so after I put it back together, I tried to overclock both, and so far, it has been working perfectly.

5k Race report

This past Sunday I finally ran the race I was training for and it was amazing. But a little correction first, I posted a few weeks ago that I was going to try to do this in 20 minutes, I screwed, I was gonna write 25 minutes, one day I'll try run it at 20 minutes, but that's a little too fast for me right now.

Officially I was the 89th in the race and 11th in my category (30-39 years old) out of more than 2000 runners, and my official time was 24:16 minutes.

So, to be able to run at this speed and this time I trained since August, just after I came back from vacations, in which I finished another training program I had (10k in 55 minutes). For the 10k program I was running 5 or 6 times a week, it was hard and tiring, but it was easier than this other program.

I read that the key to be able to run faster is to do some strength training, not just running, so instead of running 6 times and between 40 and 55 km per week, I got a program to run 5 times per week and started lifting weights and doing strength training 3 times a week.

I was never interested in that kind of workout, but now I kinda like it, I felt the change quickly and I feel that it is amazing for my back, it hurts less when I have long runs and I feel like I have a better posture now. The only downside is that I felt the burnout just two weeks before the race, so I had to rest a little, and now that I finished, I decided to take a week to rest and start fresher my next goal... which I'm still not sure what it is.

Right now I feel like going easy until January, try to build more strength and run for fun. But knowing me, I'll might start a new program next week... and I know I can't just take it easy... not on this season... at least I need to balance all the food I'll eat next time I go to Juarez and the posada at work... and the tamales I ate last week... and... whatever I decided to cook for myself on new years eve...

Same race on November 2013 (10k)

Gaming and binge watching...

So, two weeks ago Destiny 2 got released for PC (it had already been released for consoles like a month or two ago). The game was made from the same studio that made Halo: CE, and as the former, it is a first person shooter, although this one it's more like a looter game, so it has some elements from games like Diablo and MMOs, which  means that it can have a lot of replayability, specially if you play with friends.

I have been playing it a lot... or at least what I would consider a lot, lol. Or I was until this past weekend when I started watching Stranger Things season 2... and I watched the whole season between Friday and Saturday. Really loved the show, although I do feel weird watching a whole season in just a few days.

I wasn't going to watch it yet, I wanted to play some more this weekend, but since on Friday I had to go and check a device (that's part of my job), and it was in a ceiling and I had to have one arm up for like more than half an hour, it died, it was tingling and numb, like when you have anesthesia. I got home and it was still all dumb and numb, so I wasn't able to play or work on something else, and that's why I started watching Stranger Things... and cliffhanger after cliffhanger, I watched the whole season.

The device was up there

New job and new opportunities

So, I started a new job almost 2 months ago. I started to look for one since I wasn't doing much in my last one. I started there as a software developer, and by the start of this year I was only doing tech support and after 4 years, I only got one salary rise just before my boss quit (I felt like it was his parting gift to me).

By last year someone convinced my boss to invest in a ERPI stayed there because there was the possibility of starting a new project, but after half a year I decided to look for a new job and started sending my resume. In one of the places that I sent my resume was a guy that knows my ex boss and asked him about me, and by the time it just happens that someone working with him quit, so he offered me a job.

At this job the pay wasn't that much higher, although it had better benefits and I would have the opportunity to learn a lot of new things. So far, I have been looking into proximity marketing, I'll need to learn to program in C and how WiFi and Bluetooth works, beacons, I'll need to learn how to modify routers and access points (through OpenWrt), I'll probably need to learn a few things of Android Development... and who knows what else. Those are only the things I have in mind right now.

When my boss told me about this opportunity, I didn't hesitate to say yes, it was either work on what I have been working for the past 4 years or the opportunity to learn new things. It was an easy choice. Although the pay on the other jobs I found was very attractive, but since I have no other responsibilities other than myself, I decided to learn instead of more money (which I hope learning all that will give me more money in the future, lol).

The only thing I don't like is that I need to take the bus and commute for like an hour, but I might look for another place soon.

Getting in shape

So, everyone knows me from before I started to run, how fat I used to be, and that I have been trying, succeeding and failing at dropping weight. At my highest I used to weight more than 125kg. That was more than 5 years ago, before I started running and stopped drinking coke regularly.

Between then and last May I have been dropping and gaining weight even though I haven't stopped running. Before May I never tracked my weight, as long as I was running it was OK... but last December I weighted myself and I was back at 100kg, I didn't like it... it made me feel like I wasn't doing anything even though I was able to run half a marathon (21km).

After a few months of running harder I weighted myself again... and I only dropped like 5kg, I was still at 95kg, so that day I decided to stop fooling myself and bought a scale, and started to track my food and weight myself daily. I also started to follow a running program, not just go out and run.

I put myself a few short and long term goals. Short term, I wanted to be able to run 10km in 55 minutes by August (my best time was around 60 minuts). I also needed to drop at least to 87kg by that time, and by the end of the year to 82kg. By August I was pretty much on track, but as it happens when one loses too much weight too quickly and doesn't work their muscles... I had a lot of loose skin...

After I came back from vacations on August, I put myself more goals, the first goal was that I want to run 5km in 20 minutes. That training ends in November, and so far I'm on track. The other goal is that I want to lose some of the loose skin, so I have been working out at home, doing some deadlifts, squats with weights, push ups, and some other exercises. It has been pretty hard, but after I started I have noted that I'm increasing my speed while running.

The bad part is that I barely have some free time for myself to either play video games or work on other projects, but I feel pretty good about my progress, and that I can eat a lot now and not feel guilty, these past weeks I have been eating chips and cookies almost daily since I started my new job.

Physically I still don't feel like I'm where I want to, but maybe in a few months I'll upload some before and after pics of my progress. Other than that, I feel pretty good, even if I hate myself every morning I wake up to run.

That's how much I have been running in the last months

I have been tracking my weight every week (at first it was daily) to motive myself.

The endless wait...

Since this past weeks I have been spending less money than I had planned, I bought some things through Amazon to be delivered to Monterrey, that and because the shipping was low and because I was planning on buying them anyway.

So... for the last few days I have been religiously refreshing my orders to see where they are according to the tracker... yesterday one got to Monterrey and now I'm just waiting for it to get delivered, and the wait is killing me :P

Almost there...

So yesterday after I went to run I was correcting my running app since it has a little problem when I adjust a record, sometimes it duplicates the record I correct, one with the original data and the other with the modified data.

I had been doing this for the last month or so, and not syncing it so it doesn't say that I have run more than I have done. Yesterday I was at 930km ran since I started using the app last year... but it wasn't counting all my runs... after I corrected all of them I synced the app again and restarted it so it would update my record...

This is it...

I'm 450 meters away from running 1000km... that's almost the distance from my house here in Monterrey to my parents house :P

Also... this week I got my passport, and I hope to get my visa soon, this is the comparison from 3 years ago :P