First things first, I want to say thank you for all of you that have supported the cause thus far. I am nearly at my fundraising goal and frankly, may have to adjust that upward if things keep going the way they have been. This is simply amazing and I'm growing more motivated by the day.
To that end, I've been tinkering with the best ways to get the most out of my workouts. Fairly soon, I'm going to be spending a significant amount of time learning Urdu, and I want to make sure that I have at least a broad stroke game plan with a few audibles to call. So I ended up ordering one of these babies:
Runmeter has been great, but it's terrible for easy reference while I'm running. I really wanted something to help me track my pace because if I don't, I'll easily slip into my "drink a latte while I run" pace and go into zombie mode. That usually comes out to a 10 min mile and while I can do that nearly all day long, it's not going to help me beat Oprah.
I also became a huge fan of heart rate monitoring last fall while I was trying to drop some love handles. Making sure your heart is in the right place is not only good for your marriage, it's awesome for targeting fat/endurance/speed. I'm so clever.
Bad puns aside, the Garmin Forerunner 305 is a nifty little device that does both. I was pleased to discover that it found satellites faster than my kids find ice cream trucks in the neighborhood and was equally stoked to find out that my resting heart rate is somewhere in the vicinity of 52-56, which I guess qualifies me as nearly athletic. Yay me.
One disadvantage: the information isn't easily imported into Google Maps. Runmeter is much easier. Which is fine I suppose, given that I won't be taking the iphone on each and every run; but it's information was quite bloggable, and I like that. It was also easy to track on the calendar but I plan on doing that manually as well, so at the end of the day it's a fairly minor quibble.
I fully intend on posting some of the results here, and I would hope that some of the know-more-than-me's out there would chime in and give me their two cents.
Speaking of chiming in, I've finally put the finishing touches on the game plan :
Click here to check it out.
Here's my logic. The first two weeks you see are essentially what I run anyway, and have been doing that, albeit slowly, for quite some time. The real issue I have is speed. The issue being, I don't have any. I can tippity tap for miles in my Vibrams but when it comes to hitting top gear, I never even go near it. When I do, I can keep up with it longer than I would have thought, but it's a mental challenge to get myself there. As such, I'm really going to try and throw my heart into these speed workouts. We'll see how long I can sustain it.
As for today's run, I was attempting to hit about a 6/10 on the exertion scale for about 4 miles. I think that's about what it ended up being as I really felt like I had a whole bunch left in the tank. I think it's also fair to not that the first two miles are almost entirely uphill, so I'm pleased with the result. Although how Runmeter figures that I burned 0 calories remains a mystery. :/
View Larger Map
Started: Jun 19, 2010 7:27:56 AM Run Time: 37:55 Stopped Time: 0:00 Distance: 4.44 miles Average: 8:33 /mile Fastest Pace: 5:53 /mile Climb: 630 feet Calories: 0
2 comments:
I just checked out your game plan. I was wondering how far you plan on running on September 10th.
I don't know, how far is Zales?
Post a Comment