These together form a marathon cup with combined results.

The weather has been getting better, or what passes for better in the cold spell we’ve been in…

… the Traunstein mountain (which the Traunsee Bergmarathon will pass over) is hidden right in those clouds there.

Oh, there’ll also be the Wachau marathon, in 120 days.

Aaand, it just started to pour rain again. And stopped again. …

We revel in the speed and the possibilities, cover ever greater distances, hunt from one relaxing tropical paradise to the next wonder of nature, from  exotic experience to comfort of home, trying in vain to find a meaning in status updates from further-away places and headcam videos doing more extreme sports.

Meanwhile, there’s still a lot in the world, and there could be more, if only we filled it with wonder and meaning.

In the most basically human way of getting around, running and walking, the world becomes a bigger place again, the local becomes less well-known and more deeply experienced, and it becomes clear how much we are missing the human scale and the human pace in what we now consider normal, everyday – ironically, “pedestrian” – life.

In the most basically human way of dealing with our need for food, searching where it is to be found and growing it where we are, the world is more diverse, in spite of the simplifications we have allowed to occur all in the name of efficiency, and there is a world of flavors and aromas, colors and tastes awaiting us. There is work to do, too – in which we remember that we are a creating species, cultivating and with cultures.

Waiting for the next marathon, #2 of 5 this year, watching the weather develop, contemplating the clothes to wear, in the middle of a sudden cold spell, with plants I’m cultivating this year past the time they should be planted more properly, these thoughts come to mind.

They were also set in motion with this year’s visit to the annual May 1 plant sale at “Arche Noah” – Noah’s Ark – in Schiltern, Lower Austria. It used to be something of a tradition of mine to help out there, advising the people who came to shop for plants to grow on the best peppers for their intended use and home region, and I was looking to connect back with that now that I am back here again (after the time in China and Latvia).

This year, though, I went by train and on foot, using the distance from the closest train station to my destination for a hike, and a look around the area (which the family used to go to by car, driving past).

Nice impressions they were, too – and good reasons to think about all the ways we rush right past the impressions we seek with and for all our senses, the meaning we seek in moving ever faster, ever more blocked off from the places we actually pass through.

Not only that, we are rushing along so quickly, we don’t even seem to notice where we are going. We feel that the past was either all good, or all bad, and rush, rush, rush to get ahead, to create better – but what are we creating anymore? Reality TV stars, an obesity epidemic, and lives supposedly made rich by shopping? More entertainment, more speed, and ever less sensuality, covered as it is by the increasing onslaught of consumer goods that are really all the same, only louder and marketed more aggressively, hiding the real loss of diversity and purpose?

It’s time to stop that rush. To walk, and run, and enjoy the sunlight reflected off the water, the landscape experienced at our own pace. To grow food and develop breeds for our places, and enjoy the taste of a meal prepared with increasing skill, and growing hunger, and realize that life is simple. Simply rich.

“A first review” may sound a bit strange, but for this “GPS for Explorers,” that is exactly what it will be.
After all, the watch’s software is currently at version 1.0.7, which came out soon after the official release of the watch, but the next, v1.5, update “to be launched in [end of] May 2012” is already in the pipeline (see below). Plans are for a version 2.0 to come out in October of this year and bring yet another, even more in-depth, upgrade of the Ambit’s features.
In other words: a second and third review will likely be in order this year…

Success in a Sea of Suggestions

Right now, I like to joke that the Ambit is the most successful failure Suunto has yet produced.

When you look around at online opinions, there are a lot of complaints regarding all that it does not (yet) do, and even more suggestions of all that could or should become possible with future firmware updates:

• There is no display that gives time, weekday, date and seconds, all at once;
• time does not sync with GPS time, and
• there is no automatic time zone or daylight savings time adjustment,
• nor a database of sunrise/sunset times.
• There is no stopwatch in time mode, and
• the stopwatch that can be set up as an “exercise” display does not show tenths of a second.

The perennial favorite from Jeff_C, forum moderator at watchuseek.com – why does it still not make me an espresso? - nicely puts things into perspective, though.

After all, Suunto is not only listening and has established a dedicated email address (ambit@suunto.com) just for user opinions and suggestions regarding future updates. On the “success” side, there are both market responses – i.e., sales numbers (which have apparently been excellent) – and there is strong satisfaction with the Ambit as a timepiece as well as a GPS-enabled sports instrument, in particular for ultramarathoners, runners, and hikers.

High points include build quality and design, GPS, battery lifetime, and customizability / upgradability. Let’s look at the Ambit’s qualities in turn, in-depth, and in action, though.

The Suunto Ambit as a Watch

Many sports instruments and GPS watches have come on the market by now, but the Ambit is the one that can really be called a watch. There is some outdoorsyness to it, and someone with an eye for such details would notice the extension of the watch casing at the 6 o’clock (lower) position housing the GPS antenna. And yet, the looks are those of a serious watch.

It does not look like, nor is it, a plastic-y gimmick. The casing consists of only two parts, a lower section housing all the electronic innards and the display, and an upper section with the crystal watch face and bezel.

These two sections are (as is the band) attached by Torx screws and with too little of a gap for even just dust to settle in between. The bezel rises up in a triangular shape to protect the watch face, which is very scratch-resistant in and of itself already. (A little warning is in order: the bezel looks – and feels – a bit as if the designers took a cue from the “strike bezel” on Surefire flashlight’s “Defender” series. Hit someone with the watch, and it will hurt!)

The watch diameter is basically the same as that of Suunto’s Core line of outdoors watches, meaning it’s not small, but nicely fitting on an average wrist; the antenna extension hugs the wrist (although the watch band can sometimes get a bit painful there if tightening it too much or when not used to it, and the watch tends to ride up a bit towards the 12 o’clock – at least it does for me).

The thickness is quite a bit above normal – all the electronics, plus the battery, have to go somewhere, after all – but it still fits under the average loose sweater or jacket sleeve, and even under the typical dress shirt (it won’t be accessible without opening the cuff then, though). For real outdoors use, the Ambit ought to go over all but maybe the outermost layer of clothing, anyways – and the watch band will be long enough to make that possible, too.

The display is clear and crisp – enough so that one wonders if Suunto could, eventually, put something of a map view on there. It also holds one of the Ambit’s distinguishing little tricks, the ability to switch between the cooler, but oftentimes harder to read, negative display (white text on black background) and the more ordinary, but also rather more easily readable, positive display of black letters on light background.

Switching from the one to the other can be done in the menu, via Movescount, or more easily and quickly by holding the lower left (“view”) button for ~3 seconds (in any mode and even when the button lock is on).

(For those who look extra-closely: the negative display tends to show some slight discolorations. The spots visible in the image are just dust, though. These disappear when raising the display contrast, which one can do in the service menu, entered by holding both the two top buttons for 11 seconds. The service menu also serves to check firmware version, test the display, reset the GPS,…)

The buttons, by the way, are ridged so as to provide a nice grip and have a strong, smooth touchpoint, again adding to the (feeling of) build quality.

Standard displays in time mode show when an alarm is turned on, date (day and month), time, as well as the “view” (lowest line, changed by pressing the lower left “view” button) of weekday or seconds or second timezone.

A press on the central (right) “next” button leads to the altimeter or barometer view, showing barometric pressure or altitude, a graphic display of recent pressure/altitude change, and temperature or time or reference altitude (/pressure).
Mode can be set to altimeter or barometer either manually, or through auto-mode (as on Suunto’s Core watches; however, there is no storm alarm – yet?).

Another press on “next” leads to the compass, which shows an arrow towards the north, bearing, and the “view” of cardinal direction or time or an empty field. (As the Ambit-interested reader has probably heard already, Suunto is showing its know-how in outdoors instrumentation here very well, this being a “3D compass” that will show North/bearing without being disturbed if the watch is not held level, and with the ability to put in a declination setting if necessary.)

There is also a battery icon at the bottom of the screen (displaying charge status as full/not-quite-full/soon-empty in a way that is quite sufficient, but far from the best solution). When switching from one display to the next, the battery icon gets replaced (for 2 seconds) by circles indicating how many different screens there are in that mode and on which of these screens one is currently.

The backlight, given earlier unhappiness with some of Suunto’s training watches, is all the more of a pleasure: it lights the entire watch face up very nicely and evenly, can be set to the desired brightness (and can go to very high brightness levels), and does not flicker when using GPS and HR belt / PODs.

Another nice little trick of the Ambit (in time/ABC modes) is its automatic power-saving mode: When the inbuilt accelerometer senses no movement for 30 minutes, the watch turns off the display to conserve battery. Even just slight movement returns the display to its normal state. (Power saving mode can also be turned on in the service mode.)

The upper right “start stop” button is where the action really, well, gets started. Pushing that button leads into the menu offering to display the summary of the last previous exercise (earlier ones also get saved, as far as the memory allows, but are not shown on the watch itself), and switch to “navigation” or “exercise” modes.

Navigation/GPS

Navigation, surprisingly for the “GPS for Explorers“, is a weak point of the Ambit – so far.

That is not to mean that the GPS, using a SirfStarIV chipset, were any bad at all, though. GPS fixes are fast, in fact.

First fixes typically take around two minutes, which is long enough but not longer than the Samsung Galaxy SII using A-GPS data I compared it against.
Having used the GPS recently or connected the Ambit to Movescount, GPS assist data is stored and the Ambit typically takes only a few seconds to get a fix. Even with tree cover and indoors, and except for two seconds also in a short underpass, I have always gotten a fix.

However, one can only view the current location, set it as a waypoint, or navigate to a stored waypoint (which can either be stored on-location or set in Movescount using Google Maps and synchronized to the watch).

Navigation to a waypoint is as-the-crow-flies and there are no routes (sets of waypoints) – yet.

As usual, at low speeds, the compass is used for the bearing to the waypoint; at slightly higher speeds, GPS is used – that is, the Ambit shows the heading to the waypoint in relation to the direction in which the watch is facing when at low speeds, and in relation to the direction of travel when at least running, respectively).

Waypoints themselves are stored in a menu based on the date (day) of their creation only, at the moment, which is hardly the most intuitive when you try to find a waypoint (to navigate to) which you set up a while ago.

The next firmware update (which will be played in via the Ambit connection to Movescount on the user’s computer; no need to send it in), version 1.5, is scheduled for end of May (as I’ve just been told, May 30, in fact). It is already meant to address these shortcomings and said to bring:

• Route creation and navigation based on waypoints
• Improvements in how waypoints are named and listed
• Improvements in how compass and navigation can be used while exercising
• Manual adding of waypoints directly in Ambit
• Some additional local grids and datums

(As I was just recently informed, aside from bug fixes, that update is pretty much finished and will indeed bring a nice navigation mode guiding the user from one point to the next, the way it should be done, plus a kind of track-back. Stay tuned…)

Battery Life

As operating time is typically a problem with GPS devices, and a comparative high point of the Ambit, it’s worth addressing this right here.

Suunto promises 15 hours of operation with constant (1 second) GPS fix and also using HR belt/PODs; 50 hours with a GPS fix every 60 seconds, e.g. for trekking. And it delivers.

Still having a memory of the battery life of the X9, Suunto’s earlier (earliest, in fact) GPS watch, I very much wanted the Ambit fully charged before heading out for the Vienna City Marathon, for example – and it was absolutely unnecessary.
The battery level indicator is one of the things people like to complain about (because it is small and only shows full/half-empty/empty indications), but you can be sure that it’s still as ready as you are for a long romp through the woods or run  for miles even if a half-full battery is shown.

Suunto Ambit: Battery Indicator

Only before a true ultramarathon, it will be advisable to fully recharge and decide whether the 15 hours/1 sec. fix is going to suffice and be appropriate (or 50 hours/60 sec. are better for that). Recharging is performed when plugging the watch into the computer’s USB, and Moveslink 2 also displays the charge level as exact percentage.

Memory may be the problem on long tours, not battery, in fact: The Ambit “dies” after some 15 hours 30 minutes (or so it did on a long-term test I did), stores about that long a log (at 1 sec storage/fix interval; even if it shuts off completely) – and the memory is cyclical. Thus, if you record a “move” beyond the limits of what the memory can hold, the oldest data gets erased.

So, connecting the Ambit to a PC regularly is strongly advised (an internet connection is not required, though; the logs get stored locally when communication with the Movescount server is not possible). Otherwise, stored data not yet downloaded may simply get erased – but, other than on the t6/c/d, where you got to see how much of the memory is free but had to delete old logs to make space for new ones (and ended up without a recorded log if you forgot and ran out of memory while on the move), the Ambit thus makes sure that the latest activity does get recorded.
The assumption, apparently, is that the Moveslink/PC connection is necessary, anyways: It downloads logs, updates settings and waypoints (if changed), synchronizes time (if set up that way), downloads GPS assist data, and recharges the battery – so, it is definitely recommendable at regular intervals, or at least whenever activities are planned or were recently done.

(PC/Mac connection is via a USB data cable again. Given how long log transfers can take and how large a file they are, wireless transmission would presumably take far too long to make sense – and it would still be necessary to plug the device in somewhere to get it recharged.
On a computer, USB connection activates the button lock on the Ambit; but recharging and using the device at the same time is apparently possible with an external power pack for USB devices – and no buttons are covered by the USB cable. The Solio Bolt was advertised for that during the Outdoor Retailer trade show in early 2012; e.g. the Solar Joos is sure to work, too.)

“Exercise”

Exercise mode is, currently, where the Ambit really shows its strengths when it comes to its main functions, navigation and training; and it is also where the power of customization plays out.

Customization

What started with the t6c and was pushed forward in the Quest has become a strong feature of the Ambit: display customization.

Rather than giving the user a set combination of displays, the Ambit can be set up for different activities, all using different functions and showing different data sets, with up to eight different displays per mode/activity.

Just want a big display of your heart rate and nothing else? No problem.
Prefer to see a graphic showing your change in altitude and current ascent/descent, another graphic of recent heart rate (and the current HR in bpm or %max), and more? No problem either.

The variety of different combinations that it is possible to set up is, in fact, rather overwhelming – even before one gets to profiles for power shopping and Sasquatch hunting ;)

Ambit Customization in Movescount: Activities

Movescount, where this customization has to be done (unless one just sticks to the default modes/activities set up already), makes it rather easy, though – if still requiring quite some forethought: One can get a lot of useful data, but also has to find out what it is one wants and needs. And if you don’t set the displays up so that you are shown the time somewhere, you’d have to exit the entire exercise mode (stopping the recording of the “move” in session) in order to simply check what time it is…

Movescount: Setting up Activity Screens to Use in the Ambit

Except for the graphic displays, all possible data fields can (as far as I have seen) be chosen for every line of the different screens available within one “activity”.

Movescount: Data Fields That Can Be Used In "Activity Screens"

Activities that can be used as foundation are all those that Movescount has in its database (and they are automatically synced as such - as with the Quest – when uploading the data onto Movescount, not saved there as “undefined activity” until manually set). These also underlie some of the settings, especially whether FusedSpeed will be used in that mode or not (which is visible in the “Advanced Settings” submenu). The names for the modes can be chosen by the user and are the names displayed on the Ambit itself.

Movescount: "Advanced Settings" Sub-Menu (has to be expanded to be visible)

During Activity

To start (recording) an activity, you press “start/stop”, press “next” while “exercise” mode is highlighted (which it is when entering that menu), choose the activity/mode you intend to do/use, push “next” again to choose that…
The next screen shows the search for HR belt and/or PODs and/or GPS, one after the other, if set to be used in that activity/mode. HR belt/PODs are typically found within a few seconds, displayed as “searching” and then “found” before going to the next screen. The search for a GPS fix is displayed in % completion, sometimes going backwards a bit, but as mentioned before, with assist data downloaded/stored, typically jumps to 100% within just about 10 seconds. Acquisition of a GPS fix is also indicated by a “GPS found” display and an acoustic signal (if they are not completely turned off).

While on a search screen, one can also push the “start/stop” button, as indicated on the display, to “start without” that particular item. After the searches, the first display of the selected mode is shown and an arrow (again) indicates that “start/stop” should be pressed to actually start recording.

For a quick intro to this pattern – which is really much more simple than it sounds, check out this short video (which also goes through the stop of the recording):

From exercise start to stop and saving, just for illustration

While exercising, an indicator shows that the recording is running and that/when a GPS fix is locked or being sought (the HR indicator is shown at the beginning but replaced by the “stopwatch” indicator of a running recording). The various displays in that mode can be accessed, as usual, by pressing “next” (or the lower left “view” to change the view, i.e. the lowermost line on a display, if set to show more than one item).

Suunto Ambit: Exercise Screen

Having set “autolap” to on, total time, lap time and lap number is also displayed automatically as laps are completed.

Suunto Ambit: (Auto-)Lap Display

This is worth mentioning, in my opinion, because it makes it very useful to have the normal display show the graphical display of the heart rate, for example, so as to avoid overdoing it (unfortunately, a concern of mine…) while also getting a reminder of progress and pace (through lap number/kilometer, at the usual setting of one auto-lap every km, and lap time/pace per km) …

I have to admit, though, that I also set some manual laps – surprise: done with the “back/lap” button on the upper left – during the prior marathon, because the laps/kilometers were coming at rather different points from the km markers on the course. In the end, the distance recorded on the Ambit was still only “off” by 600 m (which is easily explained by all the weaving around other runners one had to do).

Navigation during Exercise

One can switch to navigation while exercising (to set a waypoint or navigate to a waypoint) by holding the “next” button, getting into a menu where HR limits can also be turned off and the “alti-baro” menu can be accessed (to set the used profile or enter a reference value).

For navigation, see above; but it is necessary to note here that switching back to the exercise mode means losing the navigation and having to go through the whole shebang for navigation to that particular waypoint again if having a need to do so (or, of course, staying in navigation mode but not seeing anything but that display during that time…)

It may prove helpful, it is a start, but it’s certainly something that can and should be improved (and was among the points that should be addressed by the 1.5 update of the firmware at the end of this month).

After an Exercise

The user-friendliness that is normally a hallmark of Suunto devices is seen again when stopping the exercise:

You “stop” (or actually, at first pause) the recording by pushing “start/stop”, and then you can re-start with “start/stop”, stop and save by longer pressing “start/stop”, or push “back/lap” (all as indicated by arrows shown on the display) to get to a menu asking first whether you want to stop the activity now, and then if you want to save it or not. (This can also be seen in the video just above.)

(The screen asking whether to save the log or not is especially useful if you want to customize one of the “exercise” modes for use just to display certain data, but not to have that data stored in the memory – e.g., for a simple stopwatch functionality or to observe but not -permanently- record your heart rate).

A nice side-effect of the way this is set up is that it is possible to stop/pause the recording at the end of an activity, stay within the exercise mode and see how well the heart rate goes down post-exertion, but not get that time recorded as part of the activity when stopping it.

After the final stopping/storage of the activity, a summary of the exercise is also shown. It is here that suggested recovery time is displayed, which is useful as an indication of how exhausting – and helpful in improving baseline endurance – the activity was overall.
(PTE – peak training effect – in contrast, can be shown during the activity and indicates the effect of the exercise on maximum aerobic performance.)

FusedSpeed

FusedSpeed, which combines data from the Ambit’s inbuilt accelerometer with the GPS data so as to “know” whether a change in pace is real or just an aberration in GPS signal reception, is meant to give a faster and more accurate display of pace.

Verdict on it is still out, including from me – and I honestly don’t “pace myself” that much other than by feeling, heart rate, and km (hence the mention of auto-laps above) time. It is clear that the display of pace does react quickly, and it does seem appropriate – but it is so sensitively tied to the arm swing during running, which it is mainly meant for, that even just looking at the display (and holding the watch steady for that) changes the indicated pace…

In combination with the lack of support for interval training and the (current) incompatibility with the FootPOD, that may reduce the usefulness of the Ambit for the fitness or interval training enthusiast. You’d have to mark intervals yourself, you wouldn’t get speed/distance data while doing indoors training (such as on a treadmill), and display of pace seems better than on other GPS devices, but is never their strong suit.

The main guidance for fitness training is through heart rate limits (set in Movescount, indicated on the Ambit when set to do so by visual and acoustic means), and by the calculated PTE (peak training effect) and recovery time.

It is, once again, all too easy to talk at length about those shortcomings or dubious impressions.

Verdict

Fact is, though, that the Ambit has been performing pretty flawlessly in doing what it can and should do right now.

Here, if you want to take the time, is a rather longer video showing the Ambit in action in “trekking” mode, with a first fix in a new location, fixes at 60 sec. intervals, data displays as set up in that mode from the start, and even quite a bit of the navigation function during an exercise (with a little bug in there)…

The major shortfalls in navigation will be rectified at the end of the month [this May 2012], and it already is a very valuable and trustworthy tool for the outdoors athletes who are its audience: people such as ultrarunners, trail runners, and hikers.

Suunto Ambit: Graphic Display of HR

The data displayed on the device and stored for display in Movescount looks correct enough and is very good to have – from heart rate, pace, altitude, ascent/descent to peak training effect, the recovery time suggested after the activity, and the track recording and storage/display of all the data in Movescount.

Add in the quick acquisition of GPS fix and the excellent battery life, and it is a great tool for guidance (in terms of HR and pace, and also training effects) as well as data and track recording, during ultramarathons or marathons, an excellent tracker for hikes, and useful for any other activity where a GPS location or track is nice to have, be that for using the data in geotagging photos or recording points of interest found during a city trip.

For me, certainly, it does what I expected and in a way that makes it a pleasure to use.

The data displays are as beautiful as they are useful; there would always be the possibility to store waypoints while on the move or to have them stored beforehand and to use them as a help in finding one’s way, and having tracks stored and downloaded makes rambles through the countryside (or for that matter, the city) all the more fun as they can be re-lived and re-checked on the map and in terms of physiological data.

You still have to know what data you want displayed – let alone where you are or how to handle a map. Not to forget that you still have to run yourself. No tool will – or should – do that for you, but the Ambit gives data that is helpful, makes recordings that are fun to have, and does it all in style.

To see more as it happens, you are welcome to follow my blog, or follow me on Movescount…
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In particular, this plays out in two arenas:

1. the social interaction between brand representatives and interested potential customers in real life, and
2. the interaction that is invited when people publicly express their interest in a brand/product, not least by/in blogs.

The problem is this: if you are Target  and you can track the purchases of your customers in order to data-mine them and tailor your offers, then you may be in the position that social media marketers wanted to achieve. You have insight into your customers’ behaviors and you can “speak” to them in just the ways they are susceptible to – even if those cases require rather more *in*direct approaches so as not to scare everyone off.

As another – more common – kind of company with (hitherto) less direct interaction, you can continue to use advertising. It can work well enough if your target group is well-defined and reachable, but otherwise just spreads information widely and hopes enough of it will stick somewhere it results in sales – meaning that even companies who pay millions for Superbowl ads still get ~70% of their (new) sales from word-of-mouth (as is the number often peddled but seemingly not very well corroborated).
Or, you can go onto social media and get more direct interaction that will (supposedly) result in a deeper relationship, direct feedback, word-of-mouth marketing driving sales, ponies and rainbows.

Looking at the statistics on what effect companies are achieving via social media, though, there is quite the disconnect between corporate and customer expectations:

What customers want from the companies, apart from the basic information about their products and (maybe) help in deciding about a purchase or if there are problems post-sale, is nothing much more than rebates. Special offers. Many, if not most, company updates are just noise.

The number of “likes” thus doesn’t mean a thing, it’s a marketing “one night stand“.

Just consider where you’d look for detailed reviews and reports on the actual usage of a product you are interested in. Probably, it would be on retail/review websites or personal blogs on which people actively and deeply describe their experiences, not on any site, let alone social media profile, under the company’s direct control.

There’s the rub.

Such portals to user’s minds, especially in the case of blogs that allow commenting, would be invitations to connect. An entry on a company’s Facebook wall or a tag in a public status update are admonishments to get in touch.

So, when there are questions, comments, or complaints done like that, company representatives are welcome – if not outright expected – to provide answers and participate in the discussion; and giving at least the impression that customer complaints and suggestions are proactively sought out would raise the company profile tremendously – if done right.

It would have to be as one discussion partner among others, though (even if with – hopefully – good/better answers from the inside), not as a marketer.

Companies, however, all too often prefer sticking to the social media platforms where they can control the discussion, stick to marketing speak and the corporate communications line, rather than get into the more open ways of actual conversations – and thus they miss a chance to interact with users who are really engaged, to help along the word-of-mouth marketing they are supposedly on the Web 2.0 to promote, to gain valuable feedback and show that the company is listening (and that they are not “a company” but actual people who make a product they themselves care about).

The problems go deeper, though, as the real social aspects of business appear to be getting lost more and more. Especially as companies get bigger, and social media promise more chances of talking to customers and letting them amplify “the message,” there is more of a search to reach “the greatest audience” rather than influence actual, individual, people.

The hope is that there will be more and more “likes” and “followers,” an advertisement will go viral – but meanwhile, quality of products and enthusiasm of gatekeepers would be the real driver.

”New authors traditionally are nurtured by bookstore personnel, especially in independent bookstores. These people literally hand sell books to their customers, by saying, “I’ve read this. I think you’re going to love it.” Not to mention the fact that a bookstore is a small cultural center in a community. That’s definitely a loss.” ~Scott Turow, Why We Should Fear Amazon

The situation with books (see the quote) applies to most products that are available in a wide range of choices and require quite some deliberation: The best “social medium” to help a customer decide what to get is an experienced friend, a knowledgeable reviewer, or an enthusiastic salesperson. People who know the product well, are excited about it, and are able and willing to listen and help…

There’s a reason why the highest luxury and quality is not found off-the-rack, but in the skillful customization for the individual done in bespoke production, after all. With the higher number of hardly-distinct products and the higher options for customization, the real social interaction behind sales, based on competent advice and real conversation as well as obvious enthusiasm about the product and care about the customer becomes ever more important.

We are not just “likers” and “followers,” let alone mere customers, after all – we are human beings.

First things first: My time was … enjoyable and well-spent, quickly passed and yet full of impressions. And especially so because this run already went with some experimentation.

“Barefoot”

Race attire was rather the usual: trusty, if new, CW-X Revolution tights (no compression socks for me, but rather the full “support web” ;) ) and a Mammut PowerDry top I’ve had for a while.

Vienna City Marathon, 1 hour before the start

For shoes, however, I did – after quite some deliberation – decide to run in the minimalist/”barefoot” Merrell Embark Gloves, after all.

Zero-drop, no cushion… it wasn’t entirely clear if that would work out well, but after having used shoes of that series all the time since last fall, I didn’t want to get back to more-standard running shoes. People I talked to fell into different camps just like that, with some saying it would not likely be a good idea, others loving the idea, some convinced of “barefoot” shoes, others having tried them and run into problems…

Well, my legs got sore the way they would anyways, one blister developed as it would in any shoes, one area at the ball of my right foot got rubbed loose unexpectedly, but did not get really problematic. Chances are, I’ll continue to use such shoes during the other events…

Contributing to Medical Science

Something like experimentation also applied in another respect, because I’d asked for a doctor’s clearance for the race (having just been getting over a cold), and then decided to also join in the medical study that team was doing. Results are yet to come in, but they will come.

Already, it was quite interesting to see skin surface temperature readings after the marathon: at the forehead and around the stomach, they were normal (~36C), on the upper arm, more like 30C … and my hands only read 24C (palm) and 20C (back). Yeah, it was rather cool and windy…

My heart rate went rather high, but as usual, without any other indication of any problems – and the Suunto Ambit performed flawlessly in delivering all the data. Not just current heart rate readings, also the graph of recent heart rate, time and distance, laps at each kilometer point… More on that to come in a first review, though.

Through the City

Running through Vienna on the roads was quite fun – and it’s even more fun now to come past some points and remember that, not so long ago, I had been running on just that road which is now, once again, heavily populated by cars…

Ca. km 23, four days later...

The race was a very mixed bag of impressions, nonetheless.

The organization was not too bad, but the starting blocks were really mixed (people just went into the block for whichever time they thought they’d like to run, and those running the marathon, the half-marathon, and the relay version were all starting together) and the first 20 km were quite an obstacle for it. Some people were going fast, some people were going slow, and it took quite some weaving around others, making it even more difficult than it can, anyways, be to find your own pace.

(Not incidentally, my fastest 5 km were those from 20 to 25 km, finally having gotten rid of the half-marathon crowd.)

On the first kilometer of the Vienna City Marathon

The refreshment stations were also not stocked too well: water, then also Powerade, later on also bananas, and some Coca-Cola towards the very end.

And the plastic cups! I had noticed the praise that was heaped on the unit of the Vienna city administration that is responsible for keeping the city clean – and getting the roads cleaned after the marathon – but I’d totally forgotten just how much trash such a big crowd would produce. After the aid stations, it was like running through a veritable minefield of plastic cups, drifting over the road worse than the snow did before.

Methinks that, too, is a reason to prefer smaller trail events, and to bring one’s own running pack of water and nutrition, with your own water reservoir/cup/whatever. Better to have some additional exertion and slower times, but show greater care for the places we run in!

On the Wienzeile road, headed towards Schönbrunn

Views and Impressions, Good and Bad

Impressions of Vienna one gets on the run are still nice, and it’s something different to be running in such a large crowd. Something that makes running appear less extraordinary, rather as it should be, but also shows yet more problematic sides.

I loved the diversity of people who joined in – but not so much when an ambulance had to push its way through the crowds every 10 km, lights flashing, sirens blaring, to get to someone who had collapsed. At km 32, I even came past a man who was getting CPR, lying on the ground next to what looked to be his young teenage son who was on the phone, calling for an ambulance , clearly shocked… It was a good reason to listen to the heart rate again and walk for a bit!

Not so few people, unfortunately, gave the impression that they could profit a lot more from conscious eating and daily walks – everyday fitness – rather than being proud of themselves for huffing and puffing through one marathon. But of course, it helps to have an aim…

Next

… My next marathon, one that gets into a bit more mountain-like a terrain, is 27 days from the time of this writing; at the beginning of April (this month), there were only 16 people on the starter list for the marathon distance there… So, it will provide quite the study in contrasts, and an excellent comparison.

So far, I’m thinking that small events and more hilly terrain will actually make things more enjoyable.

Let’s see what I’ll be saying then ;-)

While picking up the bib number, getting a doctor’s opinion regarding my participation (as I’ve only just gotten over a cold), I decided to participate in a medical study on a new indicator for a body’s reaction to the stress of a marathon – and the question that I had to think of the longest before I could answer was “How old are you?”

Well, perfect context for sharing this bit from Billy Collins’ TED talk, lyrically talking of age and accomplishment, and intensely (de)motivating…

[youtube width="600" height="365" video_id="4ZSIYQeF7FE"]

Chances are, you are older – like me. So, isn’t it time we started living more fully, sensibly?

Reactions have certainly been widely divergent, reflecting just that divergence of interest…

Some people heard of a 58-year-old guy dying while running in the Mexican wilderness, and suggested that having a beer on your couch will keep you from that fate.
Many people who comment have at least read a little of the background story, and conclude that True died well, doing what he loved – and finding inspiration, more importantly, in the truly authentic way he lived.

As much as I tend to dislike it when people are put on a pedestal, adulated as great examples, elevated to a status so far above the adoring crowd, all their equally-human faults are seen as their perfections, and so many of the adoring people seem to just conclude – same as the distractors – that they could never get to living so well, True’s is an example that is great to think about.

By conventional standards of success in business and/or family life, he was a failure. He seems to have been quite the  drifter, searching for something to throw himself into, a purpose to live, live for, and feel alive about – and it happened to be running and the Tarahumara (actually: Raramuri) way that found him.

Compare his example to that of the other, universally acclaimed great example, Steve Jobs: He also lived pretty much on his own terms, he came from a dysfunctional social background, and went to make Apple great… and so on. You’ve heard the story.

What strikes me is this: Jobs has been venerated, he was successful in some of the usual (business) terms, and I think he rather liked how and what he was doing with his life. You could also go and say that he changed business, gave people the i-things that made them happier, and all that.

Still, it was his way or no way. If the design and business sense hadn’t come together with the opportunity to make them count (and don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that it was all luck), they would just have been part of a headstrong character with a bad attitude who didn’t fit into the company (or even the business world at large).

We often celebrate companies and individuals once they’ve achieved undeniable success, but shun their disruptive thinking before reaching such a pinnacle. Before Oprah was Oprah, before Jobs was Jobs, they were labeled as misguided dreamers rather than future captains of industry.

Fast Company: The Dirty Little Secret of Overnight Success

Moreover, there was little concern for wider impacts. Not that intention and results have to fit – the best of intentions can lead to the worst of outcomes – but true greatness, in my “ecology of happiness”-concerned view, does not and must not come from creating new products everyone suddenly feels they need to have, and then to  constantly replace with their newest iteration. The better technologies we need are techniques of better living; the greatest inventions will not be products to buy, but ways of making a living creating a social and ecological benefit.

In that respect, Micah True’s “bad” example is much better. He just lived looking for something good to do with his life, a way to get by, the way so many of us do, now that the former shackles and certainties of clear-cut career and life paths have been giving way to more freedom as well as more uncertainty.

He, unlike a Steve Jobs, lived – and lived for and in a way – that the vast majority of people could follow and make the world better for themselves and others. No, not necessarily by going running all the time and moving to live with an indigenous group – but living on your own, and a community’s, and the world’s, terms. Not looking for happiness in fame and fortune, or a clear career and the amassing of stuff, but in doing something good that you love. Leading not by knowing better than all the others what they need, but by listening and learning, and leading your life well.

That, from all the little I’ve heard of Micah True, might be something he’d have approved of: Not remembering him reverentially, but living inspirationally yourself.

The contrast made the heating come to prominence as both necessity and quite a luxury, and working on the ecology of happiness and writing here made such everyday action – turning on central heating, heating with the woodstove – receive all the more attention.

It is this which has led me to the observation that the tools we constantly use, and the habits that are created by and with their use, are of tremendous influence – and all the more so because they disappear into the background.

Here’s how it is:

Central heating is comfortable and convenient.
It is also, once you stop to think about it, amazingly dependent on certain conditions, and therefore really fickle.
Yes, when it all works as it should, you just set up the timer as you want it, et voilá, heated rooms.
It takes the gas that the boiler uses to get hot water, the electricity to run the whole system that controls it all, though – and that’s just after all the materials have been used to produce the equipment and after it’s all been set up.

The convenience also makes it only too easy to just heat every room, and heat them all to a temperature that makes it unnecessary to dress in clothing appropriate for the season. The skill and attention required is close to nil: how much do you need to know to turn something on?

Heating up the woodstove also requires you to have one, first of all, and then to have wood, and to know how to handle it all – but trees and the tools to chop them, as well as the knowledge of how to make and handle it all, are rather less fickle than “more developed” technology.
Admittedly, I’ve seen enough people fire up such a stove using a ton of paper and thinking they are doing good because it did start burning, and the creativity and knowledge that goes into constructing and setting up different kinds of stoves is even more underrated than the skill it takes to heat with it.

It is a knowledge of technology and technique that’s been around for centuries, however, and that a child can learn.

Making the kindling, chopping the wood, building the firewood up in the oven so that it catches nicely, without a need for paper to use as kindling, without a need to even blow and fan the flames, perhaps … it’s all a more resilient, skill-building, and connecting activity. The stove I have in my living room may be relatively new, or it could be a hundred years old – and if need be, I could even cook on it.

Preparing the wood, doing all that has to be done – of course it requires time, but it also builds a relationship and shows the activity and personal influence that living really is, even in these times of consumerist activity and attitude making it look as if life were nothing but a series of commercial transactions in which we had just about no influence and power.

I’d had the idea of this post running around my head for a long time, and a Facebook status update by Chelsea Green Publishing I just saw today made it finally move to pixels…

Chelsea Green Publishing

“My woodstove is my sanctuary lamp. As it burns, it symbolizes the presence of the life force of nature keeping my family alive through the cold death of winter, keeping us safe – or as safe as life can be, despite civilization’s determination to destroy itself. By keeping my sanctuary lamp burning, I celebrate the possibility of everlasting life right here on earth.” Gene Logsdon: http://ow.ly/91Q3p

A Sanctuary of Trees by Gene Logsdon – Chelsea Green [this link changed to point to amazon.com]

A philosophical look at woodlands, forest gardening, and what humans can learn from wood.

Now, not everyone could heat, let alone cook, on a woodstove, and the pollution would get us right back to Victorian London’s “fog.” (In fact, the smoke from wood, or often enough dung, cooking fires is one of the greatest health threats affecting the lives of many of the world’s poor people -and one that could be mitigated.)

Around here, though, seeing stacks of firewood around many houses is a sign that we are not only dependent on the industrial machinery, but could still draw on at least some of the older ways that have been more dependent on nature’s bounty, but also rather more resilient, working with nature’s ways. (The very word “sustainability” – or at least it’s German antecedent “Nachhaltigkeit” – in fact came from the context of forestry.)

It’s an observation, reading ever more about the potential for a collapse of civilization, that gives me at least some hope in these blingy but darkening times.

Convenience. It is our time’s great guideline. And it’s what makes us live ever more on this world, like tourists just visiting, rather than truly at home in this world.

Even “lifehackers,” who seem the best example of people who still want to learn more when they are out of school (or given the state of today’s schooling, maybe especially then), for personal development and to get better, tend to look for the hacks that their moniker comes from: ways of learning and getting things done more easily and more quickly.

Whether lifehacker or run-of-the-mill, what has the greatest hidden effect in guiding our lives along certain lines are all the routine habits we just have to perform for the maintenance work of life – sleeping, being clothed, working, eating, learning.

Some of those are amenable to “hacking.” For example, you can eat more consciously by keeping a photographic food diary, or move more in your everyday life by making a game out of the number of steps you take per day.

And still, the vast machine of appliances designed to make life easier and keep the consumerist lifestyle going is all around us. Even as our tool use finds ever more attention when it is about smartphones and implanted devices (to the point of establishing cyberanthropology – again), we overlook the negative habits and lessons that our everyday technology imparts us with.

Making coffee? Just start the coffee maker.
Baking bread? You need a ready-made mix and a bread maker.
Pizza? Ready-made frozen, just to heat up, or delivery?
Shaving? Safety razor or electric?
Entertainment and work? Just sit at your computer and trust that it all works. If not, blame the stupid programmers.

And so it goes. Everything is convenient, provided, easy.
You are powerful in all you can do, just feel the power. You are the master of your things, just see what they do for you.
And when it doesn’t all work as planned, it’s not your fault. Blame the companies just after your money, and fall for the promise of the next great thing anyways.

Keep it up. Don’t stop.

A good cooking knife, for example, replacement for so many kitchen gadgets (more on ChiliCult - click image for article; picture from Güde)

You stop and think, you may actually notice how shallow it all is. You may get up and take note of what you get, and what you want: a life that is comfortable numbness punctuated by the empty promise of “great experiences” that are also just conveniently provided, all-inclusive but hardly real? Or a life that really warrants the label, that had its natural ups and downs, its deep engagement and lasting excitement, the meaning and purpose you gave it in they way you shaped it?

So, it may be time for deeply, really, living again – and for tools and technologies that are used in such a way as to support the better lives of less consumption and more personal growth. Skills and habits alike.

There are a few areas and tools of simple/simply better living I have recently been experimenting with – cooking, real eating, and heating, everyday fitness, and yes, straight-razor shaving for the men,… – that we will have a look at in coming posts.

It is easily the ugliest modern attitude that gets expressed by this phrase. As an attempt at coolness and aloofness that does not result in any of the freedom that a certain distance from the humdrum world could provide, it is nothing but proving that you are not really engaged in this world, at home.

Life, and especially in these times, is amazing.

We have modern technology making things possible that people have, for the longest time, hardly even dreamed about. We still have so much diversity on this planet, both natural and cultural. We can do so many things, learn about so much, and so easily.

But then, that may be just the problem.

We have seen it all. TV brings news we can’t really care about; documentaries show far-away places that don’t have much to do with our lives, and wouldn’t even look as exciting if we traveled there ourselves; fiction presents worlds that are so much more interesting than the mundane drudgery of our everyday lives.

We have not really seen. We travel through landscapes, ensconced in metal artifices that insulate us from them; we journey through the city supposedly plugged into our own soundtrack, but really shutting out what impressions we would be getting from it, being there with all our senses.

Delving into virtual worlds, becoming someone (or even something) else by immersing ourselves into a book, learning more about this our world through careful study should not be underrated (and also, whether that is through a musty old volume or a digitally-enhanced iBook). We are the only species on Earth who can live and learn like that, through stories.

Learn another language, learn what we know of some aspect of this world, and a whole other way of seeing the world may open up to you.

There is also another side that needs to be considered, though.

When you only consume stories and experiences, it doesn’t matter if they are in books, movies, or even in your own travel to far-away places. They’ll leave some memory, but not really an impression. “Yeah, I’ve seen that, too. Been there, done that,” may be all. And a sad state of affairs.

A deeper engagement makes for a difference

One side of that lies with our being bodies. We are physical beings, experiencing everything through – indeed, as  – a body. Heat or cold, a soft touch or an overpowering smell, a faint aroma and a strong taste – we only really experience it when we feel it and pay attention to what we are sensing. A lot of learning is going wrong on that point, because (especially in school) we learn in our heads, but not with our hands…

It makes a world of difference when you don’t just look at a place from out the windows of a car (or sightseeing bus, or whatever), but measure it in your own steps. Run the same circle, and it will not be the same. Notice not just how a place looks (same as on postcards or in the documentary series, if not more boring, probably), but touch and smell and hear it, and you develop a whole other relationship to it.

This is one of the reasons why, to get at home in a location, I like to run there. With a heart rate monitor, used not too much but being there, some attention is directed to my physicality. I measure the place in heartbeats and steps.

The other side of deeper engagement is locality. We, as physical, experiencing bodies, always find ourselves in a particular place. Take a side road, get off your usual paths, get lost, and even the most familiar places may suddenly capture your attention. There are probably some streets a few corners from where you live that would get you thinking “Whoa, I’ve never been here before.”

Learn something more, something to do or something about the place, and even the familiar may look different yet again. Check where you’ve been on a map, or using a GPS, and the place becomes a focal point of deeper engagement, looking at the distances you passed, and the world that surrounds you.

Both physicality and locality of one individual are brought together in an outdoors and sports instrument like the Suunto Ambit, which is why – after having used some of their training and GPS devices before, concurrently – I’m rather excited about this tool/toy.

What makes for the deepest engagement, however, is to bring body and place together not through mindful existence or motion alone, nor just through technology helping to realize and record their relation, but by connecting the two through a purpose.

Experiencing a route, not on the map but in real life, proving that it is possible to run all around an entire city in one go, seeking the most efficient and elegant way to get from point A to point B – all those can already be purposes for you.

Going to a place to learn and experience something that is typical of it, documenting your experiences to tell others of them (or just have a personal reminder), gives it yet further meaning. Using what you have learned for better, for yourself, other people, and the world at large, is better yet again.

Going out to find the new and exciting in familiar surroundings and situations can fashion an adventure in a place called home, same as the adventurous starts feeling more like home when it is more deeply and purposefully engaged with.

Life at home itself can be explored by experimenting with it. New recipes, new experiences, any relationships, they all really are adventures – if only we challenge ourselves to get out of the overly comfortable.

Just don’t say you are not impressed as long as you haven’t impressed yourself.