On Sunday, the (fabulous) Striders hosted the first of the 2008 Houston Marathon Warmup Series, the Houston Half Marathon & Relay. Since the Half was 7 days before the New York Marathon (auugh!!), I thought I’d start tapering that weekend - so, I decided to volunteer instead of run. As it turns out, though, I may have been one of the only NYCers who didn’t do the Half as a last training run. Oops! But it was alright, because volunteering at the Half was a lot of fun.

I had great volunteer assignments: ride in the lead police car, and help announce names at the finish line. Sweet! Race day morning, I got to Sam Houston Park at 5:50am. It was chilly and dark, but I could already see the crowds gathering. Almost immediately, I ran into Peter, my partner for the lead police car. Peter had done police car duties for several races already, so he knew the full drill. We headed to the Strider Tent where Steeeeve was debriefing fellow volunteers, and picked up the list of registered runners organized by bib number (with Strider names highlighted in yellow). The purpose of the list was to help us identify the race leaders and call out encouragements to runners (especially fellow Striders)….as it turns out, that list was VERY useful during the race.

(more…)

So, I normally find myself at ease with most forms of electronic gear, but not when it comes to my Garmin.  I love it and all the minute, super-detailed information it records during every run (elevation gain? total time vs moving time?), but I'm still fumbling around with it most of the time.  This becomes painfully obvious after examining the three weeks' worth of workout data I just uploaded from the watch.

Example 1:  Turn off device when not in use. 

According to Garmin, I did 157.34 miles on September 11th.  It's true I covered that distance….on Continental Flight 1841.  I was heading to Austin, and the Garmin must have gotten turned on inside my bag and recorded the flight.  Ok, maybe this example isn't really about me not being at ease with the Garmin….but it's just one of a collection of weird workout entries Garmin is reporting.  

What doesn't make sense is that it took me 12:12 hours (moving time) to get to Austin at a 4:39 pace.  Huh?  And shouldn't the pace be waaay faster in a plane?  It's also reporting an average heart rate of 94 bpm.  I definitely wasn't wearing my heart rate monitor on the plane, so where did the hr data come from? 

Example 2: Lap vs Start/Stop

I keep mixing up the "Lap" and "Start/Stop" buttons. If I want to mark a lap during a run, I tend to hit "Start/Stop" instead of "Lap" - which means the Garmin stops recording.   I usually turn the Garmin back on, but this on/off creates multiple portions of my runs that get recorded as separate workouts.  Great.

The squiggly lines in the map above illustrates my button confusion.  It's from Sept 22nd, when I ran the Cross Country Relay (race report to come).  The squiggly lines are me wandering around the Strider Tent, starting line and relay hand-off BEFORE I do my relay portion. ha.

Example 3: Start/Stop vs stop vs Reset

Let's take things another step forward (or backwards, I suppose).  This map looks like a single long run, but it's actually half of my Cross Country Relay run combined with half of a SMARTie workout.  Great. 

The green bubble shows where I started my leg of the Relay (yes, I hit "Start" again).  You can see where I followed the trail (red line) to the 1 mile turnaround at Studemont…..then it looks like I made a really sharp turn and ran the 2nd mile in a straight line.  What actually happened was that I wanted to hit "Lap" at the turnaround…..but I hit "Stop" instead and the Garmin stopped recording.  I didn't realize it until just before the 1.5 mile mark, when I glanced down at the Garmin and noticed that the mileage wasn't changing.  Yeah, I know I'm slow but not THAT slow.   That's when I realized I had hit STOP at the turnaround.  I hit START, but the Garmin wouldn't start up again.    So, the straight line back to the green bubble is just the GPS connecting the two points.  

The red line between the green and red bubbles show that turning OFF the unit isn't enough.  You have to reset the timer before the next workout….otherwise, Garmin will think you're continuing the workout 3 days later.  

There were more examples in my Garmin log, but I thought these were the funniest.  What would be really funny is if I wore the Garmin and heart rate monitor for a day to see what kind of mileage I put in over a 24 hour period.  What would be my average pace walking through the office?  Would it show my heart rate dropping as I fall asleep during endless meetings?  Would the maps show me trying to avoid annoying people and Council members?   I'd just have to remember to hit START at the right time.  

Sorry about the temporary pause in blogging.  I've still been running, though.   And now that it's only TWENTY SEVEN DAYS LEFT [begin panic mode] till New York, I'm back to my regular blogging schedule.   I'm sure this comes as great news to the entire escapevelocity.org audience (all five of you).  

Chances are you've heard about this morning's Chicago Marathon.  Because of the record high 90 degree heat, the race was shut down after three hours, and runners not yet at the halfway point were forced to turn back.  But it doesn't stop there - they ran out of water and Gatorade (!!!!), 300 people sent to hospitals, and a 35 yr old man died just before mile 19.   Read reports from runners and spectators at the Runner's World forum and the Chicago Tribune.  

I think it was the right decision to close the race.  Whether the failure was mostly due to the heat or bad planning by race officials (heat advisory = bring more water/gatorade, no??), clearly lots of runners needed medical attention.  But I can imagine the huge disappointment it would be after months and months of training.  People are reporting on the forums that they were anywhere between mile 21 and the finish when cops told them to stop.   If I'm past mile 21, and someone tells me to stop after months of training with bootcamps, TLTs, Yassos, bat guano-scented runs and other forms of voluntary torture….well, let's just say there'd be trouble.   Sure, I'll probably be in pain and shuffling along at that point….but that's what makes crossing the finish line so important.  

Update:  Randi, fellow Memorial Park SMARTie, finished her first marathon at 4:43:15!!!!! 

First, the bad news.

At the end of July, my trusty Polar S210 stopped working.  I was hoping it was just a dead battery, so I shipped the watch to one of the Polar Service Centers.   Two weeks ago, a Polar tech called with the diagnosis: water had gotten into the watch through a crack in the casing, which made it completely unrecoverable. 

Now, the good news. 

Yup - I gots me a Garmin Forerunner 305, with heart rate monitor and GPS goodness.  I started using it at this weekend's Yasso 800s, and I love it.  Lots of cool bells & whistles, but the GPS functions are what make it awesome.  I'm still figuring it out, but so far it's been great.  I love seeing my mileage during a run - somehow, it makes it easier.  And I'm totally going to get addicted to uploading my workouts, seeing maps of my routes, and all kinds of overly-detailed data that appeal to my inner geek.  Love. This. Toy. 

• The Tuesday night SMART run was canceled because of lightning and thunderstorms. Instead of putting my miles in at the gym, I stayed in and caught up on stuff around the house.
• This morning (Wed), I woke up at 4:30am for some reason, and couldn’t go back to sleep. At 6am, I headed over to the gym for some quick strength training.
• Doing things like the seated row or lat pulls, I can still feel a big difference in strength between my right and left shoulders. I know it’s partly because I stopped going to physical therapy 2 months earlier than I was supposed to (heh heh)….my impatience got the better of me, and I started going to dragon boat practices to prepare for our Long Beach competition. But, the physical therapy was costing me $60 a week, and I was looking at another $480. I figured getting back into paddling and other activities is a much cheaper solution.
• Afterwards, I did a 20 min cooldown on the stationary bike.
• It’s 2:15pm, and the sky is pitch black. The forecast is saying more thunderstorms and flooding tonight. I hope the Strider Club Run isn’t rained out tonight - it’ll suck doing 4 miles on the dreadmill instead.

In what may be filed under "Bad Decisions of the Year," I've decided to give up coffee until after the NYC Marathon.  I can't articulate the reasons clearly right now because, well, I haven't had any coffee this morning. 

But since I don't completely hate myself, I've decided to abstain from coffee, but not caffeine.  So, it's all about tea from now till November.  I made a batch of green tea last night, and put it in the fridge for some nice chilled green tea.  I've had four cups so far.  

TLT (totally long torture), originally uploaded by escapevelocity.

The temperature after finishing my first Track-Long-Track workout. Recap to come later. Must nap.