faster with age

My lovely wife got me a Garmin for my birthday this past weekend. Yippee! I ran with it for the first time this morning and I think I am going to love this thing. I am still learning new things about it.

I went for 11 miles this morning and kept it easy with most miles 8:30 to 8:40. I can't believe the temerature was 11 deg. this morning and May starts next week. It was actually nice though .The sun is coming up earlier and there was no wind.

 I was planning to run the half down at the Ogden marathon next month but just found out they are all filled up. It might be just as well. I wasn't going to be very ready anyway and just planned to use it as a training run. My hamstring tendonitis has taken longer than I expected to recover from and I've hardly done any tempo work or even MP miles. I may still sign up for the 5k anyway. My son really want's to do it.

PM Ran 1 mile with my son in 9:15 and then 1 more mile myself.

This mornings 25 deg. seemed nice after yesterdays 11. No wind. I went for a 20 mile mountain bike ride. Used the new Garmin on the ride. I really liked the biking mode to keep it seperate from running. I can see my pace in miles per hour rather than min. per mile. The new 405 doesn't have multi sport options from what I have read. The currant MPH seemed to be very acurate to me. Yeserday while running, the currant pace seemed to be off a lot of the time. I'll have to put it on my road bike and compare it to my bike computer which I know is quite accurate. It's nice to have something on my mt. bike because I much prefer riding the dirt roads around and rarely seeing a vehicle to riding the highway on my road bike. I started looking around at a lot of new routes I can now run. In the past I have usually just run 2 different routes because thats all I have measured out.

PM  My son and I ran 1 mi. in 9:52 and then I ran 3 more around 9:30

I did some hills this morning on a 1 mile 6% hill. the temp was in the fourties and a little wind to start with. I warmed up for 3 mi. at about 8:45 pace. then I began my hills. I had a little tailwind going down the hill and a little head wind till about 3/4 mile back up when the wind got bad. By the time I was headed up the second time the wind got terrible. It must have been 25 or 30 MPH. There were tumbleweeds blowing much faster than I was running downhill. The uphill going into that wind had to make it the hardest I have worked in a run in quite a while. Here are the splits on the hill portion.

Mi. 1 downhill     6:27

mi. 2 uphill          8:33  Headwind started to get bad 3/4 up

mi. 3 downhill     6:27

mi.4 uphill          9:15   The headwind was terrible

mi.5 downhill     6:24

mi. 6 uphill         9:23 The wind was even worse. I worked the hardest on this mile.

I can't imagine working this hard for a 9:23 mile. I had to just forget about pace and keep telling myself what a good workout I was getting. 1 mi. cooldown

 average pace on hills 7:46

 PM.   Ran 1 mi. with my wife then 1 more myself easy.

I was planning to ride my bike this morning but when I got up it was snowing hard a real wet snow. The dirt roads I ride on get very muddy and the highway didn't seem like a good idea with poor visability so I went for an easy recovery run instead. My hamstring felt great after yesterdays workout that was harder than I have been able to do for a while. I felt nothing at all from it last night or this morning or during yesterdays run. After 5 long months of babying it I hope I'm finally past it to where I can start doing a few harder runs now and then, and get ready to race again. I did 5 miles all over 9:00 min. pace.

PM  Ran 1 mile with my son then 1 more myself easy pace.

This morning I went for a ride on my road bike for the first time this year. The dirt roads I mountain bike on were too muddy. It was 27 deg. and calm when I left home but I started to get a slight tailwind just before the turnaround. which then became a headwind that got steadily stronger and slowed me way down. I don't mind headwinds to much as long as I get the benefit of the tailwind going the other way unlike this morning..

I mounted my Garmin to the handlebars and compared it to my bike computer. The current MPH was amazingly close. Usually the same. sometimes within  0.1 MPH and never more than 0.2. The average MPH at the end was identical at 16.5. The currant pace given by the Garmin while running dosen't seem very accurate. The extra speed on the bike must make the difference. As far as total distance, the Garmin read .09 shorter than the bike computer. I guess thats not to bad after 23 miles.

Total  time 1:23 ave. HR 144

PM  Ran 2 mi. with my son then 2 more myself.

This morning was nice. started out at 27 deg. but sunny and calm. Quickly warmed up.

Did 1 mile with my son. Then did 8 miles with miles 5,6,7 ave 7:30 pace. Mile 7 in 6:59. .25 in 1:30 overall ave. pace 8:13. Nothing from hamstring. We'll see how it does tonight and tommorrow.