This year I’m defending the my Fantasy Football title and yesterday we had the Live Draft. The computer picked the a random order in the draft and decided to put me on spot 8. To me the worst spot to pick… argh.

Overall I think I have a good team but I made some crucial mistakes with the Bye Weeks (weeks teams are not playing) Both my WR’s have bye week 8, so I had to pick 2 other WR’s to fill out the slots which then didn’t give me the option of drafting another DEF team. We’ll see how it all folds out…

Here is my draft:

QB - Tony Romo
WR - T.J. Houshmandzadeh
WR - Greg Jennings
RB - Jamal Lewis
RB - Earnest Graham
TE - Heath Miller
KI - Stephen Gostkowski
DEF - Seattle

BN - Philip Rivers (QB)
BN - DeSean Jackson (WR)
BN - Justin Fargas (RB)
BN - Reggie Williams (WR)
BN - Leonard Pope (TE)
BN - Denver (DEF)

Crash and burn… well, not totally but I missed the last 40 seconds of my second interval of 8 minutes. My legs couldn’t move anymore. I was toast. There area few reasons why I collapsed and in the back of my mind I knew this could happen:

• 3 hours before my workout I drank a beer (don’t ask).
• Temperature was 88F (31C) when I started my run.
• I was focused on the infamous W5D3, thinking W5D2 would be easy enough.
• My heart rate never dropped below 140 on the walking part in between the intervals. It just happened that I needed to go uphill. Once on top my second interval of 8 minutes started. Normally my heart rate drops to 120-127. Not this time.

I consider W5D2 as a little hick-up. I had all the odds against me. I’m even more motivated now to finish W5D3 on Saturday.

I kinda gave up on the search for podsafe music. Sure, there are a bunch of websites with podsafe music but I simply don’t like the tunes. Last thing I need is being annoyed by the music on my iPod. The podcasts I’m creating are for personal use only… sorry. I wish I could share it with you all but knowing the RIAA is on a witch hunt I’m trying not to end up with a fine or jail time…

However! I still can provide you with links to some excellent (free) music! Most of them are house/techno related (which I love) so if you’re interested keep on reading.

This week two links. One of my old friends is getting big in the house scene. I use to live above the record shop he was working at and had a fair share of beer and french fries runs during the weekends. Break 3000, the dutch part of the german based Dirt Crew kept me jumping in the early 2000’s. He’s offering some free downloads from their gigs worldwide. Check out Dirt Crew’s download section. If you feel the need to support their music head over to beatport.com and purchase some of their awesome tracks!

Second link are ‘the end club recommends’ series. 10 free songs every month with some big names (Carl Craig etc.). Volume 5 just came out but I advise to download all 5 sessions. It’s worth it!

After 5 days of no running I was kind of hesitant to start week 5 of the C25K. My initial thought was to run an extra day of week 4 but once on the track I decided to go for it. 3 intervals of 5 minutes each. It turned out to be an ‘easy’ one. I felt like superman on the track! I had so much energy left in my body I pushed out another 3 minute interval and a final sprint of 1 minute at the end. I was totally amazed by myself.

I guess the program is doing its job and my body is transforming. I feel so much better after each workout. The amount of energy you get after an intense training session is truly mind blowing. I’m hooked. I want more. I can’t stop now…

No doubt that music is a big motivator for me when running. I was thrilled to find some of my ‘lost’ mixes online. My hard drive crashed twice on me with the result of losing most of my music. Today I found a link with the DJ mixes most precious to me. It’s radio mix by dutch female DJ 100% Isis. She used to be big early 2000 and not sure how she’s doing right now. Most of my dutch friends are into the Dance and DJ scene and having Isis play at my friends house was a trip. Kinda like a private session since only 10 people were present.

The site has also all the Essential Mixes (1993 - 2000) from the UK. If you need to fill up your iPod or other mp3 player I strongly recommend lekkerlui.nl

I added some random quotes to the top right of this blog (go ahead and refresh!). Since I’m using Wordpress I decided to go with a PHP version instead of javascript. In a nutshell the differences between PHP and JS:

Anyone can use the JavaScript version. It will run on any blog that allows the use of scripts. It will also run on static, non-blog websites. For any blogging system that does not use PHP, like Blogger, it’s the only choice.

If you’re using a system like WordPress, there are advantages to the PHP version. The biggest of these is that PHP is server-side and JavaScript is not. The JavaScript version will download everything and a visitor’s web browser runs the script to determine what to display. Because of this, your visitor’s browser must be able to run JavaScript for anything to happen. Some devices, like mobile phones and other small-screen browsers, don’t support JavaScript at all.

PHP works differently. The PHP script runs on the web server, so only the output is sent to the web browser. In addition to saving you a marginal amount of bandwidth, this guarantees that all viewers will see the content properly.

If you can use PHP, there’s not really any reason at all to use the JavaScript version.

Here is the code but just like with the JavaScript version, the script generates no HTML, so you’ll need to wrap the script in whatever tags are appropriate for your situation:

PHP Version:

<?php
$myRandomQuotes=array(
'quote 1 goes here.',
'quote 2 goes here.',
'quote 3 goes here.',
'quote 4 goes here.'
);
echo $myRandomQuotes[rand(0,sizeof($myRandomQuotes)-1)];
?>

note: To prevent the apostrophes in “You’re” and “Don’t” etc. from screwing up everything, I added in a backslash to tell the JavaScript interpreter to treat the next character as text rather than a command.

It’s this time of year again: Fantasy Football(FF)! After winning last year’s league as a rookie I need to proof this years players I’m not a one-hit-wonder (although I think I am). Football is and never will be big in Europe so I had no clue who to pick last year. Maybe I should follow the same strategy and see what it will bring this year.

Live draft will be this Thursday and we have to pick 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DEF and 6 bench. Last year ’sleeper’ Derek Anderson racked in a lot of points for me but he doesn’t look good in the pre-draft reports. We’ll see…

Just a quick update and a picture of our camping weekend and the celebration of Jason’s birthday. My body is feeling sore from hauling the camping gear into our camp site. Me and Aleisha started hiking in on Friday morning, Jason and Cindy would join us later that evening and our friends would arrive on Saturday. Here is a snapshot of one of our sunsets:

I’m not sure when to start week 5 of the C25K program. My initial thought was sunday night but the camping trip took all the energy out of me. This morning I still felt sore and skipped the morning run. Since I still have to prepare my podcasts I think week 5 will have to start on Tuesday night. This means my continuos 20 minute run will be on Saturday.

Update: It’s funny how similar the two pictures are in these last two posts. Don’t mix ‘em up! The first is Spring Lake, the second Lake Sonoma. Just so you know…

Last night I finished week 4 which means I’m almost half way through the program! I ran in a different setting as well. Last week I discovered this new part of Santa Rosa and it has this beautiful lake. Around the lake is a 2 mile track but with some side tracks and trails you can stretch it up to 12 miles! Take a look at the Santa Rosa Creek reservoir on google maps. More information at the Sonoma County Regional parks website. Best thing is that it’s only 5 minutes from where I live.

The running session went pretty okay and I thought it was a better run then day 1 and 2. Turns out I was slightly slower. The reason for this is that I’m using a Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) on my runs now. Yesterday I bought a standard HRM at REI which helps me control my pace. I’m reading a lot about target heart rate zone training and during the runs on my C25K program I’m running at a 60-75% of my max heart rate.

RunnersWeb.com has a great Heart rate Training Zone Calculator. Another one can be found on the Polar website. Using the HRM does help me maximizing my workouts without feeling totally exhausted. Give it a try. There are tons of websites dedicated to the Heart Rate Zone Training.

The numbers for W4D3

Distance: 2.39 mi
Duration: 31′’10″″
Pace: 13′00″

Not sure when I will start week 5. we off camping tomorrow (or tonight even) and we won’t be back until Sunday. Maybe if I’m feeling strong enough (there will be some serious hiking this weekend) I’ll start on Sunday night. We’ll see…

So I changed the plan a bit as far as my running days concerns. I started week 4 on Saturday and yesterday was day 2 of week 4. Since the sun is coming up later this year I decided to run an afternoon session. Temperature was mid 80’s and it was much harder then my regular morning session. To my surprise I had a (slightly) better run then day 1.

I never thought running could be this addictive. I’m eager to each day to put on my running shoes and go out and run. I’m aware I need to give my body some rest every other day but resting days are boring… I guess over time I will appreciate these days but for now I’m too pumped up to go running.

Another motivator emerged yesterday, a comment of my long time friend Jan, currently the managing director of CY Marketing. Apparently he ran the NYC Marathon and it is of no surprise to me he finished it. Jan was a former colleague bartender in Maastricht and had a passion for soccer. I remember meeting him in Finland for a vacation trip and one day we were swimming at this lake. The lake was also equipped with a diving platform and we decided to give it a try.

The diving platform was a standard 10M (32 foot) and once up on the platform we both had second thoughts. Not sure how long we stared into the deep but at the end we both jumped just because we didn’t want to be classified as wimps…

Anyway… thanks for reading my blog Jan!

Here are the numbers of Day 1 and 2 of week 4:

W4D1
Distance: 2.42 mi
Duration: 31′00″
Pace: 12′47″

W4D2
Distance: 2.45 mi
Duration: 31′05″
Pace: 12′39″