Still on track!

I managed to haul myself out of bed for a thirty minute run. Nothing much to mention. It was a good run. I listened to a 157bpm (I think) Podrunner podcast called Native Suns. It's an old favorite. I set my Virtual Partner on the Garmin Forerunner 305 to 30 minutes at 11:10 min/mile and beat him (her? it?) by 109ft. I think the screen said 2.71 miles. I'm always behind for the first several minutes. This is probably because I don't warm up beforehand. I only did a few body weight squats, then I headed out the door.

4k on the Fourth

I just got back from my second 4k race. The first one was when I was about 4 weeks into the C25K program. This time I cut around 4.5 minutes off that first time. It was rainy and (of course) overcast. The rain was light, however, and it was rather cool for a July day. It was a cool 64F (18C) with about a 10mph (16kph) breeze.

This year, the course was an out and back. During the first mile, we spread out and I was again pretty much running by myself. Although, there were people within a few yards ahead of me to keep me going. Afterward, I'm always thinking I could have run faster, but looking back at my heart rate record, it's rather clear that I couldn't have pushed it much harder without burning out. After the first mile, my heart rate got above 180 and stayed there for the rest of the race. During my final 0.1 mile when I kicked it up a notch to almost a 7min/mile pace, my heart rate got up to 193. My overall average pace was 10min/mile.

It took me 10-15 seconds to cross the starting line (it's a medium sized race with a wide starting line, so I was relatively close to the start), so my official time will be a bit slower. My Garmin shows 24:32 and 2.45 miles. That's pretty accurate, since 4k is 2.49 miles. I'd say 0.04miles is within the margin of error, considering it depends on which side of the path you run on! I set my Virtual Partner to my last 4k time. That didn't help, since I was so much faster this time. At about 0.5 miles, I checked and was 345ft ahead of my VP. So, I forgot about VP and switched to a different screen, one with time, speed, and distance.

I ran with an old favorite Podrunner podcast, Definitive at 154bpm.

Overall, I'm glad I got up and out of the door today, despite the rain. Now, on to the July 4th festivities!

Biking, but not going anywhere

Not much to say about today's workout. Per the PT's suggestion, I rode the stationary bike today for 30 minutes. Not my favorite thing in the world, but I had too much pizza last night! And some of a berry milkshake. I told myself then that I would have to work out this morning, so I fought against talking myself out of it this morning and I actually won!

I would rather ride my own bike. But, I'm not sure about riding on the streets when it's still dark out and the people on the road are still half asleep and more concerned about downing their coffee. Also, the area around here isn't very challenging for bikes. Riding around the neighborhood sounds pretty boring. Maybe I'll try it some time for kicks. At least then I could use the GPS on my Garmin!

I set the bike to a "cross-country" course. There were some VERY steep hills. I definitely was sweating a lot. The nice thing is I could read a book. I actually was reading a book on speech writing. Not a bad book, but probably not what most people read while on the stationary bike! Ha!

I wore my padded bike shorts today. Probably a good choice. I don't like the seat on the bike, though. It's a big seat, like those you see on "comfort bikes." I'd prefer a normal narrower seat, not the super narrow kind some of the really serious bikers use, but a run-of-the-mill regular seat.

More intervals and sailing

This morning I did the intervals from New Rules. The intervals are 1 minute hard, 2 minutes recovery for four times. I got up around 8 min/mi for the hard sections, which is pretty fast for me. After the fourth hard section, I had to walk for two minutes before jogging again. Looking at the heart rate track, I think the HRM had problems at times. I know I got over 180bpm. When I finished the fourth hard run, I looked down and it read 160bpm! No way! I was basically sprinting. (It's all relative, right? Some people can run distances at that speed or faster!) I'll have to wear the strap tighter next time. After the first interval I realized that I had messed up the workout setup on the Garmin, so I walked a bit fiddling. Then I just said "heck with it" and continued. It worked fine timing the intervals using the lap button.

I've been having a hard time using the Garmin Fitness plugin for SportTracks to load workouts onto the Garmin. Luckily, right now, only the intervals are special for me, and the Garmin has a way to really easily enter intervals. I thought I had done this, but then I noticed it was on bicycling, so I switched to running. I guess that switch reset the workout. Oh well. I'm learning!

Heart rate and pace for the interval run

Later on in the morning, my husband and I took the kids out on the sailboat. It was a beautiful day for a sail. We knew it was going to get too windy, so we made sure we got off the lake before that happens. It's no fun to be out in high winds with the kids. Scary. So, I wore the Garmin for the sail. Toward the end, the GPS must have been a bit off because it has us ending on the shore, but we were definitely returning to the dock! It was interesting to see how fast we were going, something we don't normally get to know. We were out for about an hour and covered about 4.4 miles. The kids had a great time.

Sailing

Nice run(s) today

Today was a beautiful day to run. I got out the door at around 5am. The sun was just starting to rise, so it was actually light for my whole run. I like that. Temp was a lovely 50F.

This weekend I bought some compression shorts so my thunder thighs (thanks genetics) don't rub together. Today was my first run with them. Very helpful. They only had men's shorts, but they worked just fine. Don't tell any one, okay?

My run was split in two today. I started out by setting my Virtual Partner to a 11:10 min/mi pace for 30 minutes. That was a little faster than previous. Since I didn't do much of a warm-up, I blew by him. However, about 10 minutes into the run, a not-so-good thing happened. I had to "go". Frustrating. So, I looped back around to home and took care of business.

Since the first 14:39 went well, decided to up the ante and set VP for a 10:00 min/mi pace for 15 minutes. I almost got there. I ended up with an average pace of 10:05min/mi. I think VP won by around 150ft. Maybe next time! My average pace for the first run was 10:46 min/mi, so speeding the VP up seemed to help! I went 1.35 mi first and 1.49 mi second for a total of 2.84 miles.

Holy Body Weight Matrix, Batman!

After talking myself out of running yesterday, I wasn't going to take "NO" for an answer this morning. When the alarm rang at 4:10 this morning, I was sure protesting, though. I told myself I would soooo regret it if I didn't go do it, though.

Today was Stage 3 workout A1 of the New Rules of Lifting for Women. Wow.
Most of the workouts were new, so I had some adjusting to do. Balancing was in full force today. The single arm overhead squats were much harder than I had expected. That arm overhead changes things so much.

The real killers were the three (!!) sets of 90 second (!!!) planks and then the dreaded Body Weight Matrix (BWM). In case you don't know, you time yourself doing 24 squats plus 12 stationary lunges on each leg (alternating legs as you go) then 12 jumping lunges each leg (alternating again) THEN 24 (!!!) jumping squats. (HOLY COW!) THEN you wait twice as long as it took you and you REPEAT THAT!!! I finished the first set in 4:13. That meant waiting 8:26. That was a loooong wait, but I did it, knowing how difficult the second round was going to be. Before I started the 24 squat jumps, it hit me that I was going to have to repeat all of this. Not a happy thought. The second round was over in 4:08. I kept telling myself that it was almost over and I didn't need to hold back for anything. My legs were jelly when I was done. My right leg started getting stiff afterward, but things calmed down enough to drive home.

After I was at the gym a while, a guy came into the weight area and was using the Smith machine and some of the cable machines like the leg press. He looked pretty fit, so it was interesting that he was using those things. He was hacking and coughing the whole time, so I was glad he was using those machines and not the freeweights, so we didn't share any equipment! My kids give me enough sicknesses, I don't need them from the gym, too.

I wore my Garmin and my HRM, but I'm not sure how to use the HRM recording. I'd like to see that graphed even without the GPS data. I can't figure out how to extract that data, or if I even can. I turned off the GPS since I was inside. It was nicer to have the stopwatch to time rests and the planks and the BWM.

Edit: Figured it out. Here is my HR for the workout... notice the to large hills towards the end. That's the BWM!! This image is courtesy SportTracks.

Heart rate info vs. time

I beat my Virtual Partner!

When I was reading up on the Garmin Forerunner 305, I thought the idea of a Virtual Partner sounded a bit silly. But, today I thought I'd give it a try.

I haven't been able to run much lately, so I set a 30 minute goal at a 11:30minute/mile pace. I figured that was a nice attainable pace for me at this time. Starting off, I was still warming up, so VP zoomed ahead of me. I was behind him for the first 25 minutes, then caught up and overtook him, ending at an average 11:18 min/mi pace. Those points in the run when I started to feel sluggish, a look at how far behind VP I was, helped me regain my concentration and pick up the pace a bit. It really worked!

Sometimes, I would see how far ahead VP was and focus my attention on a spot about that far out. I think it was a lot easier for me to use that as a motivator than average pace or some other metric. I will certainly give those a try in upcoming workouts, though. I don't think VP is available for my intervals that I download as "advanced workouts" but I'll have to see. Sometimes I did get a little miffed that VP got to run a flat course and I had to deal with the hills!

Today's run was a nice 62F, only a very mild breeze, the sun was rising, but there were clouds to keep it from getting too warm. It was rather humid, but that's to be expected. In the 30 minutes, I went 2.65 miles.

Yesterday, for the fun of it, I wore the Garmin while mowing the back lawn. It was funny to see all the lines back and forth.

So far, I'm liking SportTracks the best as far as software is concerned. I'm not all the interested in uploading to the internet, although there are plugins for that.

Mowing my back and side yards

My new Garmin Forerunner 305

Well, today was my first run with the new Garmin. Unfortunately, I played around with it enough that I can't write much now.

2.5 miles
5x1min/2min intervals

I downloaded an advanced workout with the intervals, which worked great. For some reason, I can't figure out to see the splits (laps) for the intervals in SportTracks. Can't see graphs, either.

Both Garmin Training Center and SportsTracks are showing a nice graph of my run. They even show when I used the opposite side of the street.