Meet the Garmin

Looking ahead at the next race and the training plan I've drawn up, I thought a little bit of training help would be appropriate. I thought about it all day Thursday and decided on my run that it was time to buy the Garmin Forerunner 305 I've been eying for several months. Right after the run I placed the order with Amazon and it arrived Friday afternoon.

This morning I went 10 miles. The sky was overcast, the clouds sprinkled on me a little bit, the humidity was a little high, but really not too bad a day for a run. I donned the heart monitor and punched in a 10-mile run on the Forerunner with a 10-minute/mile pace and headed out. I quickly discovered some pros and cons of this handy little device.

First of all, last night the wife was asking about a 10-mile course and I explained to her what route I was going to be running this morning. With the built-in GPS I discovered I was off a little bit. When I finished the Garmin rang up 10.02 miles. Nice to know my runs have been accurate up to this point.

Next I soon discovered that it would be so easy to be a slave to the numbers. On a long run like today's, I normally start sloooooow and when warmed up run at a little faster pace. My first couple of miles was at a pace of about 11 minutes/mile, way off what I was shooting for overall. If I'd sped up to match the pace I wanted I would have gone out too fast. I've already told myself that I need to run by how I'm feeling, not by what the number on the display tells me. I'm sure I will have to repeat this over and over, and no doubt there will be times when I forget this lesson. Happily my overall time was right at the pace I wanted. Thanks to the law of averaging for that.

Another thing I learned is that I speed up hills. Well, I already knew this, but the Garmin confirmed it for me big-time. My normal tempo was near ten minutes, but as I checked going up some of the hills on the route I could see I had sped up by thirty seconds to over a minute per mile in some cases. I'm not going to change the way I run up hills, but I thought it was interesting.

Coming home and plugging in the device and then being able to see my route, pace, heart rate, and elevation totally geeked me out. I remember I told myself when I started running several years ago that I wouldn't be one of those runners with all the expensive gadgets. Some promises were made to be broken, because this is totally cool. As I learn more about heart rate this feature will really help. I can also set up runs and have the Garmin cue me when to speed up or slow down. I have plenty to learn about this thing, but my first impression is that it will be money well spent and if I manage it correctly will help me with my training.