With every beat of the heart

As I was reading the newspaper, the above picture catches my interest. I do not really know the (football) player but what he is wearing is more important.

He is a German player, Mario Gomez, a striker i think, pictured while training for EURO 2008. And he is wearing a heart rate monitor. The HRM helps him to evaluate his physiological well being during training not unlike an electrocardiogram (by the way, the picture is of him after training, hence the position of the transmitter on the stomach. It should be located on the chest)

So, the bottom line is, he's an international football player, a professional at that, and he wears a HRM to let him (or his team) monitor his workout, with variables such as average heart rate over exercise period, time in a specific heart rate zone, calories burned, and detailed logging that can be downloaded to a computer.

Why is it too hard to get OUR athletes to wear heart rate monitors? Afraid that someone would know that you have not been training hard and smart enough?

And it goes up in smokes...

Do you guys have 'pet peeves'? Most of us do, right? Well for me, one of it has to be smokers. Especially if its at makan places. I just loath it if while I'm quietly enjoying my food, a whiff of second hand smoke pervades my nostrils. Its bad enough that smoking is bad for you, don't have to go and force everyone else to inhale your smoke.

I do have smoker friends, but they are kind enough not to light up in my presence, or if they must, they'd excuse themselves to go smoke at some corner somewhere. My three younger brother are smokers too, but they did not puff away at home out of respect for my parents.

I guess its all about respect. If you're brought up with enough respect of other people, you'd make an effort to respect other people's right to clean air, and in my case, uninterrupted peace during meal. I guess those who puffs away without any consideration of other people are just plain selfish. Period.

Am crawling it seems...

Another slow month inching by. My number's are not looking good at all. Its 93.7. Need to keep an eye on things very, very closely.