Monday, March 19, 2007

Getting to Know Garmin

Thanks again to the wife for the Garmin. I'm a huge stat geek (during the season, ask me any Detroit Tiger batting average, HR, RBI and I'll spit it out at you). We just got a new laptop at home so I finally loaded up the Garmin software and imported the history training. Charts, graphs, stats...woo-wee, I love it.

I've been trying to figure out how to load the data onto the blog. It seems like you have to go through an intermediary of some sort to take it from your laptop into a training tool...something through MotionBased.com or TrainingPerks.com, etc. Not sure how to do this yet. So far, clip/paste doesn't seem to format correctly. I think I need the html code to plug in for the charts.

Also, I'm not sure what happens if Garmin runs into a signal interference? Anyone have that happen? Does it shut down...or pause and resume when a signal is relocated? During this time, does it ignore your run progress...or catch-up by calculating time and distance since the interference? I'm not sure I've ever had any problems with signal before...just wondering what would happen if I did.

Sunday's long run was a total blast. Probably my best run ever. Make no mistake, I'm paying for it a bit today in the form of sore hips and tight calves but, overall, not too bad. Again, I had no intention of pushing speed on a 15 mile weekly long run. Really, it just happened. I'll have to make sure I pull back a bit for the next few weeks to avoid burn-out. I'm really pleased and surprised at the pace I maintained. A BQ at Bayshore no longer seems completely out of the question. Still, not probable, but within the realm of possibility. Dare to dream.

15 miles
1:50:02 time
7:20 pace

If I break this down to 3 five mile groups, each group was progressively faster:

Mile 1-5: 7:27 pace
Mile 6-10: 7:21 pace
Mile 11-15: 7:12 pace

Mile 14 clocked in at 6:37!! If this is accurate and Garmin didn't have some sort of glitch, this would be my fastest mile for 2007.

It was just one of those days. I felt like I was going quicker than normal. Everything was working very smoothly and comfortably. Time to pull back a bit and finally run the relaxed pace I've been promising.

Fortunately, this is a step back week on the training plan. I think I'll need it.

3 comments:

Mike said...

my garmin signal once lept onto a passing car garmin (i think)

next thing new i was pacing at 1:30 a mile. Kenyan Mike whoppeee!!

The graph had me heading up to Washington twp by the time i shut the thing down. So weird things can happen.

if i stop to pee, it can lose the signal indoors, but seems to pick up again when i go outside.

L*I*S*A said...

I've never lost my Garmin signal yet, but I'm sure it will at some point.

Great splits, speed demon!

Mir said...

What an awesome workout!! Good for you. BQing at Bayshore would be incredible. I would love to but I'm not quite there yet. =)

I have a Garmin and I love it. It occasionally loses the signal, but it seems to "estimate" when it picks it back up, so you end up having a rough idea of total distance.