Thanks USPS!

Last week my garmin 305 (runner's watch with GPS) broke for the second time. Enough is enough, so I ordered my new one from Amazon ($160 w/ free shipping). Sadly, if I could only take one personal item with me from a burning house, this would be second (family photos would come first).

This gadget tracks your running by satellite. Figures out your time, pace, distance, lap pace, heart rate and a whole bunch more. Then you can download all the data onto your computer and see your splits, a map and other cool features.

My training the last few weeks has consisted of how can I finish the Twin Cities Marathon and stay ahead of the 'sweeper bus' that picks up runners that can't finish the race in 6 hours or at a 13:44 pace.

Before my ankle issues I was hoping to finish in under 5 hours. Anytime beginning with 4 would due. Now, I'm just trying to avoid the bus.

My strategy is to keep my heart rate down and run/walk at a 12 minute pace for as many miles as I can. That way, I will gain 1 minute and 44 seconds each mile over the bus. If I can do this the first half of the race, I will be 22 1/2 minutes ahead of the bus after the half marathon. Then it's along the Mississippi river for the next 7 miles. The plan is to pick up at least a minute for each of those miles. With 29.5 minutes advantage, I will then get to tackle the St. Paul hill on Summit Drive. Someone had the wise idea to put downtown St. Paul on a rise above the Mississippi river. 3 miles and 160 feet in elevation climb. Not Mt. Everest, but I'll need that half hour cushion.

At around the 20 mile mark the baseball game starts. Twins vs. Royals. The Twins are the last team that has a chance to make the playoffs. It's the last game at the Metrodome and I have tickets. If the bus catches me, I'll just take a left towards downtown Minneapolis and go to the game. If I have the lead, then I'll take a right over the bridge (Is this the one that collapsed a few years back?) and continue on. I'll gladly give up the first 6 innings of the ball game to finish the marathon.

Now, back to my first training run with my new garmin. Here's the splits.

Intervals (GPS Interval)
Type Distance Time Total Time Pace Avg HR Max HR Notes
1.Interval 1 Mi 12:01.48 12:01.48 12:02 125 151 (Feeling good, but forgot to apply bodyglide)
2.Interval 1 Mi 12:17.09 24:18.57 12:18 135 150
3.Interval 1 Mi 12:01.36 36:19.93 12:02 141 151
4.Interval 1 Mi 12:18.46 48:38.39 12:19 144 154
5.Interval 1 Mi 12:29.75 1:01:08.14 12:30 140 151 (stopped in Circle K and bought vaseline.)
6.Interval 1 Mi 15:26.6 1:16:34.74 15:27 130 147 (helped a lady push her car into parking lot)
7.Interval 1 Mi 14:27.48 1:31:02.22 14:28 140 164 (vaseline doesn't help much after the chaffing has occurred)
8.Interval 1 Mi 14:07.07 1:45:09.29 14:08 136 151 (near home, chaffing hurts, not gonna do 15 miles as planned)
9.Interval 1 Mi 13:35.02 1:58:44.31 13:36 133 149 (picked up the pace some)
10.Interval 0.43 Mi 5:48.39 2:04:32.70 13:31 134 145

RunningAhead now has a Garmin Download

Today's run - click on it to enlarge
Today's Graph - click on it to enlarge.

First of all, I love RunningAhead, Garmin and Sporttracks. My routine was to run with my garmin and then download the info to sporttracks. Then I would manually enter my data into RunningAhead. Then I would blog about it.



Eric over at RunningAhead has been working for the last two years so that guys like me can download from garmin right to his software. If you are familiar with the Runner's World online training log, then you know RunningAhead. It's the same thing. RW uses Eric's stuff. Now I don't have to enter the data into RA. It does it with a click on a button and I get a cool graph like above, a map and my splits.



The graph above is my run tonight. Played softball at 7:30. We lost by one in the last inning. Yeah, I was the pitcher that gave up the winning run. Then I came home and ran my 3 miles.

Rock 'N' Roll Half Marathon Certificate

It's in the mail. I just got my completion certificate. It's official.

Lost Dutchman Photos

Hey, these are the official pictures of me.

Running a Rock N Roll event? Here's some discount codes.

Rock 'N' Roll San Diego 5/31/09 save $10 code: Rockon

Rock 'N' Roll phoenix 1/17/2010 save $15 code: Urock.

The Dane Patterson Marathon Apology

Reveille, the producer apologized for the short marathon.

I can't believe that they would pick him up for 3 miles and drop him off 6.2 miles from the finish line. I could believe that they would drop him off a mile from the finish line or less, but not that far. I'm not buying. Sorry, Reveille.

If I were in charge, I would have simply paid to keep the finish line open. Or I would have paid to have it set up in a parking lot, if there permit wouldn't let the first option happen. ARR could have used the money and I would rather fabricate a finish line than lie about the complete run.

Biggest Loser Prizes

I got two tees for winning the Biggest Loser Fantasy League. One from Jeff over at FormerlyFatRunningGuy and one from Emil (Bob) at In Pursuit of a Half Marathon. Both of these blogs are worth reading. Jeff's tee is from the Dazzle Dash race in Columbia, Maryland. Emil's tee is from his home town of Cadillac, Michigan.

Dan from Obrats sent me a reward for having the winning team in the Fantasy Biggest Loser League. TastyKakes from the east coast. These Philly treats can be very addicting. If you haven't been to Dan's blog, you should check it out. It has an all new look to it. I googled Obrats and his info was in the first 9 found items. My blog was the tenth one. He, also stuffed the box with sports pages. I do love to read out town newspapers. I didn't know that high school bowling was such a big deal back east.

Garmin 405!

Coming soon to a store near you is the new garmin. Does anyone want to buy a used garmin 305?

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Running Schedule:

January 26th: Run for the Islands 5k

February 17: Lost Dutchman Half Marathon
March 1: Ostrich Festival 5k
March 9: Valley of the Sun Half Marathon
March 29: Laughlin Half Marathon

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Obrats Asked

Obrats asked how my HR readings from my polar compared to the same on my garmin. Remember I wore both at the same time.

I turned my polar on several minutes before the garmin, while I was still in the house. For 29 minutes it gave me a reading of 131 average and a high of 165.

My garmin was activated in my driveway as I started my run. For about 24 minutes it gave me a reading of 144 average, with a high of 159.

I can understand that the 5 minutes my polar was on at the beginning my heart rate was probably in the 50-70 BPM range and that would lower the average. My only guess as to why I got a higher reading is at the end of my run. I turn my garmin off as I am running, then I probably turned my polar off during the cooldown walk. The last minute of my run my heart rate went up 7 BPM. It probably went up some more after I hit stop on the garmin.

My guess is that they are fairly accurate. Since I have found out how to enlarge the HR reading on my garmin, I won't be wearing both any longer.

***

By the way, if you haven't visited Obrats blog, you should. Read it from the earliest posts to the present. He is inspiring. Lost lots of weight and he's really built up his running. I wish I could do the under 30 minute 5k's he regularly posts.

Anyone else have an interesting question about my posts or running in general, ask me. I'll give you my take on it.

Garmin Update

A short easy run tonight. It was 104 fahrenheit, so I just wanted a nice consistant pace without my heart rate going thru the roof. I ran with my ipod for the first time since I got my garmin. In addition to my Ipod I had my garmin and my polar HR monitor. Which means I had on two, count them two chest straps. I wore my polar, because I can read it. On my garmin, the HR reading is very small and hard to read. Especially in the dark. But, I wanted my HR graphed above.

activity: Run

Miles: 2.07

time: 23.49

Pace: 11.30

Weather: 104

Days: 43 Consecutive.

I decided to read my owner's manual again. They had to have a solution for the HR reading. On page 43 it talks about changing data fields. Now one of my screens looks like the above. Time of run in top left, pace in top right, distance in bottom left and HEART RATE in bottom right. I love my garmin.

The Distance Debate

Just thought you might want to see this part of my run. Courtesy of my Garmin, you can see me zig zagging on my way out. I am about 3/4 of a mile into my run as I head west (right to left). The straight line is me heading back home. No games here, as I'm about 3 miles into the run.

I did it for fun a couple weeks back, but it did add some distance to my run. I've been thinking about running and making designs at the same time. Like a Garmin crop circle.

I do like to have fun when I run.

I found a new gadget I want. It's only $399 and every runner has sunglasses. The reason it would be cool, is that I want to run, map and photo my experience and stopping to take out my cell phone to snap a picture doesn't always work with the running part.

Quote of the Day: "We all can't be heroes, someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by" - Will Rogers

The UPS man came today

And he brought me my new Garmin 305. I was going to go the the gym and run on the treadmill since it was so hot today. But, since I got my garmin I decided I could weather the 104 degree temps.

With a slight breeze and the sun falling in the western sky I strapped on my garmin and left my ipod at home. I ran west toward Desert Breeze Lake, one loop around the lake and ball fields and then back home for a 3 mile run. Still doing too much walking, but hey. . . it beats sitting at home in front of the tube.

Here's a picture, non running related of my wife Amy, me and my son Tyler. My daughter Emily was manning the camera. Notice the sign. We always park in the airport long term parking called - Roadrunner. How appropriate for a runner, even a runner like me.

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The Gym: I got a postcard in the mail yesterday offering 6 weeks of membership for $19. So, today I marched on down to Pure Fitness and signed up. I had to go through the sales pitch. I don't think he liked it when I said I wasn't interested in a personal trainer and won't use the weight machines all that much. I just wanted the treadmill when it is hot and the pool to try some swimming.

9 Days

For the past 9 days I've done some kind of exercise. Ran, stationary bike, water jog or softball.

Garmin 305 and Softball

Amazon.com and Costco have the Garmin 305's for $219.00. And I just learned that you can get a $50 rebate too. That makes it $169. Unbelievable.

Someone said that they are clearing them out because of a new model, but I haven't seen anything in print about it.


Softball: Last nite we lost our first game in the summer softball tournament. We were short several of our good players and we still kept it close. We lost 9-8. I didn't hit well, but did fine pitching and made several plays in the field. Softball will start again in September and we plan of fielding a coed team and a men's doubleheader team. If you live in the Phoenix area and would like to play, let me know.

You thought running was hard? This young lady does this barrel thing every fourth of July. My mother in law's street has a bike parade for the kids every independence day. I wonder if she could do this in a 5k?