Running With A New Toy
I haven't blogged in a while. I didn't think there was anything too interesting to share over the last couple of weeks. Last week was a cut back week for me, so I only ran 14 miles total and none of them were quality workouts. This week it is back to the grindstone.
I convinced my darling husband that he should buy me the only thing I really wanted for Christmas and nothing else. Maybe he conceded because I bought him what he really wanted. Or maybe it was because I was nagging a little too much. So last Saturday my Garmin Forerunner 305 came in the mail. We got an awesome price on it with rebates etc so it ended up costing $113. Not bad in comparison to the suggested retail price of over 300 or even the average retail of around 200.
So I was able to go for my first run with my Garmin today ( no wise cracks about it not being Christmas yet- Christmas is about the birth of Christ not gifts, so I am sure that God doesn't care one bit if I opened it early!) I had a tempo run planned for this morning. I was thinking about going to the indoor track at MSU because the weather has been brutal the last couple of days, but I didn't want to get up early enough to do that and David was home this morning, so I slept in until 6:30 and was on the road by 7.
My run was a 6 miler. Four miles in the middle are supposed to be at tempo. My head math screwed everything up. I thought I would run a 2 mile warm up and 1 mile cool down. Now any 1st grader could tell you that adds up to 7 miles, not 6. But I couldn't seem to comprehend that until about 4.5 miles into my run. My bad math put me doing the end of my tempo section UP A VERY LARGE HILL! So here i am trying to maintain my fast pace going up this hill when the wind kicks in. I thought my nose and lips were going to fall off right there. But after that hill it was easy. And it was an awesome run.
The Garmin is awesome too. I set it to alert me at every mile so I wouldn't have to keep track of how far I had gone. When I look at the screen it shows me time, mileage, pace and heartrate all at once. I also set it up with auto pause. That way when I stop at a street light or to let the dog do his business it automatically pauses the time and distance...now that is handy. When I got back home I plugged it into my computer and it uploaded all the information from my run. The next time I run I am going to program it to do automatic splits at every mile. That way I will get average pace for every mile. I love technology!
Total Miles Today = 6 Approximate Miles Since Beginning = 681
Posted in: on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at at 4:30 PM
