Running
Mercy, another week gone by already? Time for another update.
In a word, miles, lots. 39 to be precise.
Monday through Thursday were my previous daily driver route. Friday, I added another 1.3 miles to the daily driver. Saturday was my old long run.
Sunday was supposed to be a new long run, but I found myself out in the sticks with no street lights and pulled an abort maneuver. There was also a ton of debris in the road from the storm last night. Oh, yeah, that was also a monster hill. I turned around at the peak on this chart:
Things have been going pretty well. My back is mostly back to normal except for the odd twinge now and again. My feet are pretty tired and my toes are sore at the end of the run, but I think that’s from my shoes being half a size too big (I should have remembered that Saucony’s run big.)
The big problem this week was chaffing. There, I said it. The day it rained it bit during the run, my shirt ground up my nipples. That’s always fun when you get into the shower. The other days, its been skin on skin as my thighs duke it out. Hoping some new running shorts should sort that problem out.
Gear Review
The last few weeks I’ve been running with a Garmin Forerunner 10. Yeah, its kinda chunky (its actually bigger than the iPod shuffle I use for music when running) and not particularly feature packed. But for $80, it does everything I need and is super easy to use. 2 button presses to start a run, and 3 when the run is done.
The start up time is pretty quick most of the time, but once or twice its taken a few minutes to find out where it is. I haven’t had any incidents where it loses its place in the middle of a run though. I don’t have a gauge on how accurate it is out on the run; it seems to have trouble around big buildings (output looks like I’m running a little drunk.) Out in the open though, it seems to line up with Google maps pretty well.
The computer side is pretty straightforward. Install a driver, plug the watch into its charger, and plug the charger into a USB port. The daily part is just the last 2 steps, everything else is automatic. Your data ends up on the Garmin Connect website. I haven’t messed around with it all that much, but it seems to have all the pretty charts that I like. Check out my profile page.
At one time, it would have also been possible to upload directly dailymile.com (where I tracked my stats up to now.) But it needs a browser plugin that’s no longer supported on the Google Chrome browser. I tried to get it work with Safari instead. It doesn’t give any errors, but can’t seem to find runs on my watch either. I’ve been doing manual entries on dailymile after downloading from the watch. Eventually, I’ll give up on that and just use the Garmin equivalent for sharing.
Wrap Up
Looking forward to more miles this coming week. Even though its been really wet the last few days in the Bay Area, I’ve lucked out that it wasn’t raining (outside of a little drizzle) during my runs. Fingers crossed it stays that way.
Let’s do this thang.
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