Days 87-93

Let's see how the week shaped up. Overall, I missed 9 miles of running this week - I went to LA for work for 2 days and couldn't make those miles up. But I did run 6 last Sunday and tried out a new route which I probably won't do again because there were just too many cars nearby. None of the run was relaxing and peaceful but I did it and now I know better. Stats: 6.01 miles in 1:02:17 at an average of 10:22. There was one big hill at the beginning and end of the run. Then on Thursday I was out on the trails with my 4 legged buddy and we did 5.11 in 1:07:03 at an average pace of 13:06. And today was my first 9 mile run in a long long time. The stats are 9:07 miles in 1:34:25 with an average pace of 10:25. I ran from home to the open space which is my route for when I run with the pup so it was weird to not have him by my side.

But the most exciting part of this week in running is the arrival of my Garmin 610 gps watch! I used it for the first time today and it was fantastic. I initially wanted to get the gorgeous new Nike GPS running watch but decided to go with the new Garmin watch when I saw some negative reviews about Nike's GPS functionality. I have had a Garmin before (Forerunner) and it performed very well so I trusted that the GPS would perform well. The new watch is much better looking then the big boxy red Garmin that I have just put into retirement. I also like that it vibrates every mile and shows my average pace for that mile. Photo from it's maiden voyage. By the way, I still used the Nike + GPS running App because I was curious to know how close the results would be from the new watch and I would say that the distance started out very close but the watch and the App started to disagree on the distance about 4 miles in. I think the watch is more accurate because it was tracking exactly to the mile markers that the App has shown in the past. But it wasn't a huge difference. There are two reasons I felt that I really needed to get a new watch: 1. I want the convenience of being able to stop/start the watch without having to take the phone out of my pocket, swipe to start up, enter my security code and then stop/start. This is mostly relevant for waiting for green lights at crossings. I just let the App timer keep going but with the watch, I can pause and start it again easily. The next reason is that I like being able to look down at any time to see my pace - and I need to figure out how to do it but I will be able to set a pace goal in the watch and it will alert me when I get out of the target range. Pretty cool. Oh yeah, I also use a different App for cycling. It's called iMapMyRun. It's a running App that allows you to also track other sports. The Nike + GPS App doesn't let you do that.