Day 196, 169 To Go

July 15, 2013

All this week, or at least most of it, I am going to be without my GPS.  I suppose I will survive without it and I do have the phone app MapMyRun, but I still feel naked without it.  Its not like I haven't gone for a run without any equipment, but it has been a long time and I am completely addicted to using it now.

I remember when I got my first GPS many, many years ago.  Of course at first I was completely in love with it.  You get instant feedback on what you are doing.  No longer do you have to guess what pace you are running or how far you have run.  No longer do you have to stop and take your heart rate.  Your handy, dandy watch now does it all for you.  There was, of course, a few downsides.

The worst part was the reception.  The newer watches are much stronger and don't suffer from this as much, but the first Garmin GPS watch I got would lose the signal the minute a leaf from a tree obscured the direct connection between the sky and the watch.  You may end up running for an hour and only have signal for about 20 minutes of that hour, at best, if you were running in a woody area.  Forget it if you were running in a city.  The tall buildings were even worse.

Then, there was the initial addiction.  I dare you to not look at your new GPS every 5 seconds when you first get it.  I'm surprised I even survived running back then since my eyes were glued to the stupid thing.  I probably caused a slew of car and bicycle accidents in my wake that I wasn't even aware of.  Even today, sometimes, I get carried away and I spend too much time staring at it.  Then, when I get home, I spend some more time analyzing the numbers.  What I haven't gotten into the habit of doing (again) is uploading the data to the computer and REALLY getting into the numbers.  The software that comes with it allows you to review every second of your run if you want.

Alas, today I will be using my phone which has no HR (although you can get a Bluetooth HR monitor) and it is just inconvenient to use (when compared to the watch, at least).

Here are our numbers:

Time: 25:00

Distance: 2.05 miles

Pace: 12:13/m

Max Pace: 10:37/m

Calories:253*
Avg HR: xxx

Max HR: xxx

I put an asterisk next to the calorie count because the app just estimates what your calories burned and I don't know how it derives it or if it can be trusted.  It seems reasonable though.

Honey ran with me today, as you can tell.  I could barely run anyway.  I kicked my ass yesterday with that brick workout.  Not only that, my sore left toe is back.  I don't feel it when I run, but sometimes when I walk or stand, I get a shooting pain in my foot!  I have no idea what I did, but I suspect something is inflamed or bruised.  My right knee was barking at me a bit too.  I think I may have overdone it yesterday.  Oops!  Guess I should take it a little easy this week and maybe even next weekend.  We'll see how I feel as I get closer to Sunday.

Run for Life!!