Tuesday, January 6, 2015

I'm in love...

I'm in love with my new Garmin watch. It's a relatively recent love affair (I've only had it since Sunday) but we had our first running "date" this morning and my heart was racing the entire time ;)

I love how it looks with its predominantly purple sleek physique. I love how it sends me sweet chirps & beeps when I reach a running milestone. It's honest with me...giving me instant feedback on my running sessions. It doesn't judge me. I think this is the start of an amazing whirlwind romance...


Today I used both my Garmin watch and my Runtastic app to track my mileage. Runtastic has always been a bit more generous with mileage totals and average pace than Garmin has (based on previous comparisons with friends) so I wanted to see how big the difference would be.

I started off with my usual warm up walk around my complex and added a few of the "dynamic" warm up techniques I did tried to do at the plyometric training session last week. And by "a few" I mean two (baby steps).

Then I ran my "miracle mile" (taken from the Jeff Galloway training program...a miracle mile is a non-stop one mile run completed as fast as you can).

My Miracle Mile according to Runtastic...
My Miracle Mile according to Garmin...

After the miracle mile run I did a cool down walk (approximately 1/2 a mile). The view as I cooled down...

Then I ran a 2.5 mile session with (very unstructured) intervals.

My second session breakdown (& summary below) according to Runtastic...

My second session breakdown & summary according to Garmin....

As you can see there is a difference in the GPS mileage tracking which accounts for the difference in the average pace and total time duration between the two devices. What confuses me the most is the big difference between the results for mile 2 (during my second running session). Runtastic reports my pace at 11:22 min/mi and Garmin reports my average pace as 12:27. That's a difference of 65 seconds! There is also a big difference between what's reported for the last 0.5 miles :(

Because Garmin is generally more conservative I'm going to proceed under the assumption that it's more accurate (although I'm still confused about why it's off by so much). I hope that the conservative nature of "my new love" will help me push myself even more.

Post run selfie...

I still have to figure out how to set up the intervals on my watch. I thought I had done it correctly before, but it didn't alarm this morning during my run so clearly I did something wrong (it's probably time to actually read the instruction booklet that came with the device).

My recovery workout session this morning (and when I got home from work) included yoga, stretching and foam rolling. I spent a lot of time trying to master the tree pose and dancer pose to help me work on my balance and flexibility...both need a lot of work...

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to swim. It's been a loooong time since I've been able to go to the gym and swim so I'm excited about it. Even though I need to ramp up my swimming in order to prepare for Swim Miami in April, tomorrow I want to have a relaxing session and swim for a time duration (instead of focusing too much on distance/how many laps I've completed).

Is anyone participating in Swim Miami this year? I know most of the blog readers are runners, but swimming is a great cross training option! Check out details about Swim Miami here.

Happy Tuesday!

2 comments:

  1. I have been meaning to start swimming know for two years and I think this is the year that I am actually going to follow through with it. I just get nervous about being in a swimming suit that is really tight, but I will get over it I am sure. I love my Garmin once you get in sync with it and get really comfortable using it, it is an amazing addition to your workout.

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    1. I feel self conscious about the whole swimsuit thing too. I don't know if I'll ever get over it :(
      I run again tomorrow so I can't wait to try the watch again. For tomorrow's run I'm not going to use Runtastic...it will just be me and my Garmin flying solo :)

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