joining the Fitocracy

I’ve just started logging on Fitocracy. It looks like a useful tool, in that I can log all my exercise in a single place. I’ve been logging rowing / erging on the Concept II website, weight-lifting on a spreadsheet, and anything else nowhere. I do also kind of like the way they award points for everything, though I’m not so convinced about how they do it. What I like best, though, is that after only 2 days there, I’ve actually learned stuff.

I will keep logging rowing and erging on Concept II, for several reasons. For one thing, I have data on that site going back to 2000 (when I was only logging race-pace pieces and the Holiday Challenge; I began logging all my rowing in 2002). In fact, I started logging there even before 2001, but they weren’t saving historical information before that. I want to be able to compare current and past times. Second, I log as part of a team, and if I log less the team standings decline. Third, I want to participate in challenges there, most notably the Holiday Challenge that runs from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. And fourth, assuming I get crazy and decide to attempt a PR (or even a record-for-this-year) I can go to the rankings and see how I stack up against others. So I’ll be duplicate-logging my rowing there and at Fitocracy.

I will probably use Fitocracy in place of my weight-lifting spreadsheet. It has most lifts I do, and for those it misses I can log something similar and add an explanatory comment. My spreadsheet doesn’t go back enough for me to care about past data, and I don’t care anyway since I change up the workout a lot. Also, I lift in support of rowing, not as an end in itself, and depending on what else I’m doing I am always stopping and starting so I don’t progess much. I prefer having something online, anyway; typically we both work out at once. The computer in our exercise room is Ted’s, and if he’s on the erg, he’s using it to watch a movie, so I can’t log on it. With this I can log on my iPad. Of course, I suppose I could log on a spreadsheet on there too, but somehow I never think of it. Anyway, I like the idea of being able to access my data anywhere, and I don’t really care if other people can see it, though I think the site does let you control privacy. I also like being able to log extra activities that I haven’t been capturing, like cycling to work (or to rowing!) or hiking around a city or kayaking.

The premise of Fitocracy is that it awards points and lets you “level” up, thus adding a computer-game dimension and minor goals to exercising. Don’t know if it helps, can’t hurt. But the point system is strange. Wednesday night, we had a conference call with someone in the US. Ted was roasting a (tiny) chicken for dinner (seriously, the ones they have here are tasty but they make me feel like I’m eating Tweety Bird) and by the time our call was done the chicken was ready, so I never got a chance to work out. So I erged just one km after dinner, just to have done something. This being after dinner on a full-ish stomach and me being slow anyway, that took five and a half minutes. Yesterday I biked to and from work, 7.7 km each way, at a good pace – not trying to race, but enough to be sweating at the end. It took half an hour each way. Fitocracy gave me more points for the tiny row than for each leg of the bike ride, which seems a bit odd.

The best thing, though, is that I’ve actually learned a fair bit, poking around the site. I think I’m reasonably knowledgeable abuit the basics of lifting, but there’s lots of good info in the forums and elsewhere on the site. For instance, there’s a challenge to learn to do a Pendlay Row – of course the name made it sound like something useful to me, so I checked it out and tried a set last night. It definitely does work the back more than a standard bent-over row, which I feel mostly in my arms. For another example, the FAQ contains a list of bodyweight exercise progressions – how to work out harder without adding weights. I found the one for situps especially useful:

   Pushups -> Close Grip / Triangle Pushups -> One Armed Pushups
   Bodyweight Squats -> High Step Ups -> Pistols -> Jumping Pistols
   Pullups -> Uneven Pullups -> One Armed Pullups
   Situps -> Lying Straight Leg Raises -> Hanging Straight Leg Raises
   Pushups -> Pike Pushups -> Handstand Pushups

Also, did you know there is such a thing as exercise-induced itching? (A histamine reaction, basically.)

So I will probably keep on using the site, at least for a while, and see how it works out for me. So far I like it; it does what I need and seems to be intuitive to use. (And I’ve just done something I haven’t done, possibly, since my last English class: A properly structured essay, with introduction complete with topic sentences, a paragraph or two on each one, and a closing paragraph. Ms. Martyska would be proud.)

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.

where has all the editing gone?

I have complained before about you pesky kids running on my lawn a noticeable lack of editing in some recent books, including not only self-published ones but also some from bigger publishing houses (to be fair, I have also seen self-published books whose editing I didn’t notice at all, which as far as I can tell is the sign that it’s been done right). Now apparently news media are having the same problem, as witness this piece of evidence: an article about rowing in my old stomping grounds, written by a junior (high school-aged) rower.

I want to make it clear up front, I think the young writer did a good job. He debunked some commonly-held ideas about rowing, got quotes form several local rowers, did some research, and provided information about several of the local programs. The kid also writes fairly well. But there’s a reason that even professional writers need editors. So that I don’t have to repeat myself, please assume that any issue I mention is the sort of thing I think any writer could do. The thing is, in the byline the kid is listed as an “independent correspondent”, but the editor’s note says that he is participating in the Independent Newsmedia’s intern program. In a program like that, I’d expect there to be some professional journalists/editors working closely with the kid to teach him about good journalism.

I’m not going to do a close reading and pick apart the article; that’s not fair to the writer and wouldn’t be much fun for me either. I’ll just provide a few examples. The first thing I noticed was the odd and awkward use of punctuation: nothing really wrong, just minor infelicities. The second and third paragraphs are:

Each year, since the lake opened in 1999, more and more athletes of all ages from all over the Valley have come to participate in the sport.

Traditionally, rowing has been a mainstay in cities “like Boston or Seattle when the entire city will turn out for regattas (rowing competitions) like the Head of the Charles or the Windermere Cup,” said Phoenix resident Trevor Day.

Like I said, nothing really wrong with it, but it would flow better without that initial comma and would be easier to grasp at first glance without starting the quote in the middle of a sentence. Fine, no big problem, and those are arguable. However, misspelling the name of the Rio Salado Rowing Club (as Rio Solado) is more than slightly careless, given that the club is named after a major landmark of the area, the dry river that flows through Tempe. (If you’re wondering how anyone can row on a dry river, the Salt River has water only seasonally. Tempe Town Lake was formed by placing two inflatable (yes, really) dams in the riverbed, then using the local canal system to fill up the river between the dams. The hope was originally to end up with something like San Antonio’s Riverwalk, though it didn’t quite end up that way.)

And then there’s the writing – again, I can imagine anyone writing this in a first draft, but the article begins “The sport of rowing has come from the waters of Charles River and the draperies lining Ivy League hallways to Tempe Town Lake.” Um, I went to one-a them Ivy schools, and I can tell you that not too many people row in the hallways there. The oars would get caught in the draperies, at least if the hallways tended to have any.

The article’s arrangement could be better, and it would help to tell us who the people are who are being quoted, and why we should assume they know anything about rowing. (I don’t recognize any of the names, but then I’ve been away 6 years. I’d guess they’re just other junior rowers, but it would be unfair to make that assumption.)

I’ll give the writer credit for mentioning the existence of programs for people beyond college-age – that probably did come from the writer, because rowers there all know that but newspapers are too likely to want to focus only on junior programs. I’d like to have seen contact information for people who’d like to try rowing: a news site trying to serve the local community should certainly provide that.

The research isn’t actually wrong anywhere that I can spot, but “The sport has begun to really take hold, as rowers have represented Arizona in both national and international competition,” certainly gives the impression that those things are recent. The lake opened in 1999; rowers in local programs competed at across the US from the beginning. There might be earlier examples, but I know I was in a women’s eight that competed in the Head of the Charles, the biggest rowing event in the US, in 2001. Individuals have gone to international events for a long time too; several of us (OK, not me, but Ted and others) competed in the World Masters Games in 2005. At least one local rower, a former Olympian, has been going to the FISA Masters every year for a long time. (The FISA Masters is essentially the world cup for masters rowers; World Masters is kind of like an old people’s Olympics – it has lots of different sports for masters athletes. In rowing, “masters” are rowers above 27, and there are handicaps for age. I’ve seen rowers in their 90s competing. They win a lot.) However, that’s actually the kind of misimpression that is common in newspaper articles on any very specialized topic, so maybe that’s not evidence of especially bad editing here.

It just bothers me, because I think this kid is already a decent writer, with potential to become a lot better. I hope someone along the way helps him reach his potential and get better than “decent”.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.