This week for the first time, I will fail to win, place or show in the Garmin Groups “Canada Top Runners” and “Downtown Toronto Running”. I have previously reached first place since joining those groups. They have both spontaneously changed to “distance run” which disqualifies me as I have a Vivofit 2 and not a Forerunner or Fenix or whatever their running watch is.
Interestingly enough, prior to my arrival both groups were step tracking groups dominated by the same person (no need to name names). This person was consistently second by a margin of 10% to 20% while I was a member. In any case, the person is now first again and I am at the bottom of their group, so I quit their groups. I can no longer participate on a fair and even playing field, my (entry level) watch only reports step tracking.
I continue to dominate the “Let’s Move Canada”, “Garmin UX Taiwan”, “Vivosmart China” and other groups I am a member of. I am currently first in the 150k Step Challenge this week as well.
Soon I will back down from step diary challenges and devote more time to the splits diary and wuji diary. After I accomplish those goals my long term plans are to ease into a more traditional routine, keeping the same hours but replacing walking and so forth with mainly jibengong, forms and single posture repetitions should come very naturally. I will touch more on this process in a future post on the topic of cross training different systems.
I’m a little disappointed in the way Canada Top Runners and DTR groups have handled my presence, but in the end I was not planning on being long term competitive. Just establishing a baseline amount of training time.