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What a fantastic achievement! A combined total of $1500 was raised from 15 people attending our 6 week running program – an awesome result.

With one training session left leading up to the Melbourne Marathon, Michael Bellofiore from Moonee Ponds and Joel Mautner from Richmond/Elwood have done an amazing job.  They’ve very kindly donated their time and energy to help generate enough interest to raise funds for Beyond Blue, a great organisation dedicated to supporting those affected by depression. Beyond Blue will also hold a national mental health week from the 9th to 15 October.

Michael was recently featured in a local Melbourne newspaper promoting our special running group and building awareness of this fantastic cause.

Thank you also to the generosity of EZ Facility who allowed us to use  their scheduling and billing software at no charge.

Written by Andrew Talati

With an overnight temperature of 17.9°, summer has come early to our notoriously fickle Melbourne weather with more record-breaking temperatures being set.

The last 2 days have given rise to the warmest temperatures on record for the start of August. Yesterday reached a sweltering 23.1° and with a forecast top of 21° today, no doubt more records may still be broken.

It’s hard to believe that only a week ago we were seeing maximum temperatures in the low teens. Today people are down the beach in shorts and T-shirts. Funnily, a friend of mine came back from watching the Tour de France and commented how much warmer it was in Melbourne compared to the summer he had experienced in Paris.

The Mercury didn’t dip below 17.9° from midnight, smashing a previous record of 16° set on 20th August, 1885. However, it was only last Winter (2010) that we had a balmy 14° at boot camp, so I guess nothing about the weather is really surprising anymore.

But rest assured, Melbourne will still live up to its reputation for 4 seasons in one day. Maximum temperatures will be back to the usual 13 to 15° by the weekend.

Written by Andrew Talati

Crazy weather in Melbourne saw a massive storm over Victoria go to sunshine a few hours later then back to rain and hail all within eight hours.

Storm over Victoria at 3.00am

Well Melbourne is well and truly living up to its reputation for having four seasons in one day. At 3am in the morning an unusually large storm covered most of Victoria with squally winds gusting at over 50 knots and heavy rain. I usually sleep through anything but the ferocity and intensity of this one must have woken most of Melbourne.

Clar skies over Melbourne

But amazingly, within six hours we had the most beautiful blue skies, sunshine and absolutely no reminder of the treacherous weather that had passed over.

Hail and rain over Melbourne

Well the blue skies didn’t last long. Just as quickly as we had magnificent weather the dark clouds started rolling in and the wintery weather returned. At first the skies looked dark and ominous but not threatening, so Anthony from our office thought it was a good time to move his car to avoid being booked by parking inspectors. Within the 10 minutes it took to move the car the rain started and gradually deteriorated to hail as the temperature plummeted.

However on a positive note it gave Anthony the opportunity to get a quick 400 m sprint back to the office to avoid being soaked. Nothing like a quick work out to get you warm and minimise the drenching

With a cold 3.5 degrees at boot camp this morning, I always say that the hardest part of getting yourself to an exercise class is putting your feet on ground from your bed.

The distance may only be 3 to 4 feet however this can present many challenges at 5.30am in the morning when hitting that snooze button for an additional 10 minutes sleep is very hard to resist.

Yet once you are all the rest is easy as at some point need to venture out into the cooler weather to either go to work or to a gym, fitness studio or outdoors if you’re doing a boot camp. The funny thing is that once your warm find that very quickly you’ll be down to a T-shirt entering a smart and it’s when you’re grabbing a drink you will find steam rising from your body.

One thing that you’ll experience is absolutely amazing sunrises and iridescent blue skies following the previous clear nights skies and cool mornings. Whilst most people are snoozing and oblivious to the most absolutely magnificent sunrises.

We’re very fortunate in Australia went by our morning temperatures rarely get below 4° unlike other countries around the world. For instance in Scandinavia if you go training outdoors you need to keep moving as your perspiration quickly freezes if you stay stationary for any given time.

While there were predictions of above average rainfall for this winter, this has been revised to average rainfall. Luckily this week has been rain free for our boot camp training so we have enjoyed being outdoors.

Also remember to stay hydrated as you are still perspiring and will need to replenish the lost fluid.

With the development of smart apparel clothing with an inbuilt heart rate monitor, even clothing can’t escape the advances in technology.

Thanks to the advancement of are stretchable silicon, MC10, a company based in Cambridge Massachusetts has developed this silicon device that enables microchips and electrodes to be implanted within the silicon.

Sportswear company Reebok is working with MC10 in development of this new style of apparel, or smart clothing that could be in the marketplace within the next couple of years. The devices can be used in stretchy material such as spandex to monitor a person’s heart rate during exercise and would be less obtrusive than the current heart rate monitor belts you wear around your chest.

Ultimately they could find their way into everyday garments and could prove to be an amazing way to monitor people’s energy expenditure during the day when tethered to a mobile device such as a smart mobile phone.

The great thing about this new type of heart rate monitoring is it’s application into garments that would be much more comfortable compared to the current hard case pressing against the body.

Once the technology is refined the possibilities are infinite with measuring a persons blood pressure, an athletes gait, strains on the joints and even measuring metabolism can be incorporated into the technology.

This could have wider reaching benefits to the general community to monitor people’s general health and well-being

I think this is an absolutely an awesome technology as it would allow people to truly manage their energy expenditure based on precisely what they heart is doing.
Once tethered to a receiving device the user could determine the calories burned in a day based on their age, height, weight and fitness level.

While the pedometers are a great way of setting daily goals of the number of steps one must achieve her day, having a person know exactly how many calories they burn using real-time monitoring allows the user or their medical practitioner to set calorie expenditure goals while keeping their heart rate within safe levels.