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Saturday run in San Pedro with a side trip to the Korean Friendship Bell

After 5 miles along the coast I was tired so a running buddy and I took a walk up the hill from our route to catch the view from the bluff. The site originally housed a big canon (WWII) to protect the L.A. Harbor. Now it's the home of the gorgeous Korean Friendship Bell at Angel's Gate.

Pt. Fermin in San Pedro, CA

                         

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The Inciting Incident of Our Lives—Why My 12 km or 7.5 mile run this morning is the sweetest! | Misheel's Views & News

Half Marathon

Unexpected Benefits of Running Daily | Misheel's Views & News

Running & Thinking

This is a short essay.

When I run, I listen to music. While this is filling up my head, running is clearing it (or so it feels). This is why, besides the health aspects, that running is filed under good.

My reasoning for this is because in my day to day life I keep my brain under lock and key. What gets in gets in because I allow it (most of the time). But it seems when I'm running, I'm so focused on moving my feet and regulating my breathing that my brain's own gates open. This is why the music is good. It inspires me, and words form, and if I'm quick enough I get home and have something to write down.

This is why running = good.

Dublin marathon 2009 at the start...

Before things got tough, here's Mrs. S and I setting out on the 30th Dublin marathon, running along Fitzwilliam Pl.

Thoughts on Running, Weekend Update, Reading List

My friend and I had a long chat (on Sunday) about why she runs and what it does for her body.  She has only missed 3 consecutive days of running for the last five years.  This means that after 3 days of not running, she always picks it back up and starts again.  She has good days and bad days.  Mostly she doesn't push herself.  She averages and tries to do 15 miles a week minimum, more often than not doing 3-4 a day.  If she has taken the end of the week off, she does longer runs on the weekend.  Running 11 minutes/mile, she doesn't consider herself a runner.  WHAT?!  She is the epitome of a runner in my eyes, something I strive to be. 

Talking to her about how hard it is for her to run after more than 3 days was eye opening.  She feels weaker, can't run as far or as fast, and has to build herself back to her normal pace.  I get discouraged when I feel this way and it makes me stop all together.  So the not-so-secret to running is just to keep running.  A HA moment.  *yes I'm aware this is dumbfoundingly obvious to most people.  It is okay to feel like crap after taking days off, but a few days of running will undo this damage.  It's the best thing I can do for my body. 

My friend is intune with her body, her digestive system, mental ability and strength.  She knows how she's feeling compared to her best at every moment in the day.  If she eats something disruptive (lately, red meat) she knows to go easy on that next time.  Like me, her biggest weakness is cheese.  Don't get me wrong, she used to eat all kinds of junk, but as she's settled into a running routine she has found that her body just won't tolerate it.  So she doesn't do it.  *why didn't I think of that?. 

On to my eating log, my horrendous eating log. I'm taking the lessons I learned from her Sunday to heart and will strive to do the same, for myself.  However, previous to our discussion, I nearly killed my body.

Oh, the insanity that what this weekend.  I more than paid for what I did to my body.  I can definitely feel the side effects of the metformin if I eat too much sugar or white bread.  My digestive system was not happy.  I've learned my lesson.  Maybe, having to taking this three times a day I will eat more well balanced meals.  As for this weekend, here's the damage.  Let me tell you, it kills me to admit this.

Friday:
Kolache (ham & cheese, took off most of the bread)
apple
2 hot dogs with sauerkraut & chili
sushi with friends which consisted of sharing a kobe beef appetizer (to die for), 2 rolls, sashimi (no rice), banana tempura (1/4 of a banana) and green tea ice cream (1/4 of a cup), glass of hot sake & 2 vodka tonics

Needless to say, I was sick sick sick Friday night.  I attribute this to lunch & alcohol.  Sugar/starch overload.  Did I learn my lesson?  Nope.

Saturday (at an air show all day):
matzo brei
corn dog
4 beer
8 pieces of mini candy (throughout the day)
thin crust pepperoni pizza (3 slices)

Again, sick as can be that night. 

Sunday:
1.5 of the following: egg on Ezekiel toast with half slice of LF colby cheese and venison sausage
6 pieces of candy throughout the day (yes, I took this to work to get it out of the house)
small cupcake, no icing
homemade venison chili with a handful of Fritos scoops and a sprinkling of cheese

Took whole pill in the morning and whole pill in the evening, with no side effects.  I'm hoping to start taking a half during lunch starting next Sunday, and be up to my final dosage (1500 mg) by mid- to late next week.

Monday (so far):
oatmeal with flax and cranberries
handful of almond, dried berry mixture (it has tiny white chocolate chips but I pick most off)
leftover venison chili with sprinkling of cheese and handful of Fritos scoops
small bowl of berries
one mini almond joy (I caved but it was in moderation)

I'm sure I won't need a snack and dinner will be something leftover in the fridge (healthy).

Lessons to take away:

• Consistancy is key to running, awareness is a close second.  You will always get worse if you stop, and it will always get easier the more often you do it.
• If you know your body won't tolerate it STOP DOING IT.  Are you really going to let your fickle taste buds and swaying emotions dictate how your entire body feels?  Absolutely not.

Currently reading for inspiration:
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Recently read:
The New Glucose Revolution Guide to Living Well with PCOS
Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
Michael Pollen, In Defense of Food

Maven + Hibernate + Spring + HSQLDB = your tests running fast and out-of-the-box

I want to keep Trapo environment as simple as possible. I want that people just fire a command and all tests can run immediately: no setups, no database creation, no sql to run. Just one single command and trapo should do everything for you. Because of that, I start to isolate the test environment from the production one in order to use a different database instance (or even a different database vendor). To integrate the combo, I just call HSQLDB to the party. To avoid describe exactly what is HSQLDB, here is a quote from its homepage:

HSQLDB (HyperSQL DataBase) is the leading SQL relational database engine written in Java. It has a JDBC driver and supports a rich subset of ANSI-92 SQL (BNF tree format) plus many SQL:2008 enhancements. It offers a small, fast database engine which offers both in-memory and disk-based tables and supports embedded and server modes. Additionally, it includes tools such as a minimal web server, in-memory query and management tools (can be run as applets) and a number of demonstration examples.

FIRST, CONFIGURE MAVEN...

The simplest part: just add hsqldb as a maven dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hsqldb</groupId>
    <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
    <version>1.8.0.10</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

I decide to scope it as test because I'm not intent to use it in production, but you can use a different scope.

SECOND, ADD TEST RESOURCES...

Then, I just create two files inside src/test/resources directory. You can create files here to replace src/main/resources while running tests. But I want to reduce the amount of work to maintain both test and production enviroment, so, I'm replacing just what need to be replace: the database configuration. The two files are:

src/test/resources/hibernate.tests.properties

hibernate.connection.driver_class = org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:hsqldb:mem:trapo
hibernate.connection.username = sa
hibernate.connection.password =
hibernate.c3p0.min_size=5
hibernate.c3p0.max_size=20
hibernate.c3p0.timeout=1800
hibernate.c3p0.max_statements=50
hibernate.dialect = org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect

hibernate.show_sql=true
hibernate.format_sql=true
hibernate.default_batch_fetch_size=5
hibernate.generate_statistics=true
hibernate.use_sql_comments=true
hibernate.jdbc.batch_size=10

hibernate.cache.use_second_level_cache=true
hibernate.cache.use_query_cache=true
hibernate.cache.provider_class=net.sf.ehcache.hibernate.EhCacheProvider
hibernate.cache.use_structured_entries=true

hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto=create-drop

Note the url property, it is pointing to an in memory database. Moreover, this files contains cache and some other optional configurations to mimic the production configurations. The other file is the Spring context to configure the SessionFactory for tests:

src/test/resources/applicationContextTest.xml

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/util
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.5.xsd">
  <bean id="testSessionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean"
        p:annotatedClasses-ref="annotatedClasses"
        p:annotatedPackages="com.google.code.trapo.domain"
        p:hibernateProperties-ref="hibernateProperties" />
  <util:list id="annotatedClasses">
    <value>com.google.code.trapo.domain.Forum</value>
    <value>com.google.code.trapo.domain.Topic</value>
  </util:list>
  <util:properties id="hibernateProperties" location="classpath:hibernate.test.properties" />
</beans>

I'm not fully confortable with that because I need to copy and past mapped classes here. But, this is a start, so I prefer to have sub-optimal solution over don't have any solution at all.

THIRD, REFACTOR YOUR TESTS...

Your tests should use SpringJUnit4Runner instead of the default one. So you have to put the following annotation in the test class:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
public class MyRepositoryTests {
    ...
}

You also need to say to Spring where it should find the configuration files using @ContextConfiguration annotation:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {
    "classpath:/trapo-servlet.xml",
    "classpath:/applicationContextTest.xml"
})
public class MyRepositoryTests {
    ...
}

And, because your tests are using the database, is a good call configure them to be transactional. In order to do that, you need both @Transactional and @TransactionConfiguration annotations:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {
    "classpath:/trapo-servlet.xml",
    "classpath:/applicationContextTest.xml"
})
@Transactional
@TransactionConfiguration(transactionManager = "txManager")
public class MyRepositoryTests {
    ...
}

And then inject the testSessionFactory configure in applicationContextTests.xml in your tests:

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {
    "classpath:/trapo-servlet.xml",
    "classpath:/applicationContextTest.xml"
})
@Transactional
@TransactionConfiguration(transactionManager = "txManager")
public class MyRepositoryTests {

    @Autowired private SessionFactory testSessionFactory;

}

FINALLY, JUST RUN YOUR TESTS...

And now the grand finale, just open a command prompt, go to trapo directory and type:

mvn clean test

If you want to see cobertura report, type:

mvn clean cobertura:cobertura

Hope that helps.

Raised £105 for The Cure Parkinson's Trust from my London Triathlon!

http://www.justgiving.com/ian-london-tri-2009/

Untitled

Burning List: running Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-01 | AZ …: Sunday, November 1, 2009 VoIP by Ass.. http://tinyurl.com/yh29wqd