8 Miles!

So, I took a deep breath and bought a Garmin Forerunner 610!   Oooooh!

I have to say it's been a little complicated to set up, but it's done now and the link at the bottom shows you my 8 MILE RUN!

Runkeeper vs Garmin - opinion so far.

I took them both out for the run, with Runkeeper on silent, just tracking the run.  Sod's Law dictated that Runkeeper worked fine yesterday.  I did 12.98 km according to Garmin and 12.97 on Runkeeper.

Things I like / dislike about each.  I did miss Mrs. Runkeeper's voice telling me how far I'd gone, but Garmin 610 has a vibration alert, so you can set it for every 500m, or whatever you fancy, so that was fine.

I went mad with all the fields available on the Garmin and I'd got FAR too much information being thrown at me during the run.  All I need when I'm running is, the time, how long I've been running for, my speed, and my average speed.  I had calories, direction, accuracy of the GPS to within so many feet, lap times, and a few other things going on on 4 scrolling screens.  It was too difficult to see them all. Will pare right back for next run.  You can see everything else later on on the computer.

I'd like to get to grips with the Virtual running partner, I need to read up on it a bit.  I think that will be a really useful tool.

Annoyingly, I forgot to put on the Heart Rate monitor before I went out.  I've never used one before so I was quite keen to see what my heart rate would be like.  I'll remember it next time.

I'll still take my iPhone out with me because a) I use it as an iPod, and b) when I run, usually on my own, I need a phone for safety, so Garmin is another bit of kit to remember.

I've bought the Garmin for reliability as Runkeeper has been very unreliable of late, so until I've taken it out a few more times I can't tell if it's going to do the same thing. (I hope not).

The Garmin was quite complicated to set up on the computer.  The manual is not brilliant.  However I've done it and the more I use it the easier it'll be.

Garmin uses Bing maps, not Google, and I don't think they're so good.  You can however, look at your run on Google Earth once you've downloaded it, so that solves that problem.

Overall, Runkeeper is great and easy to use, but the reliability issue is a problem for me now.
Garmin is more complicated, and for the price, I do not expect any problems with the GPS, if I do get any I'll be very disappointed.


So, apart from all that, how was the 8 mile run??  Really Good!!

I am absolutely amazed at myself.  It's exactly 2 years ago this weekend that I did my first 5k, I'd gone from 48 years of couch to 5k in 4 months, and now look at me.  Nearly ready for a HM! The 8 miles was just not a problem. I was doing Jeff's recommendation of 15 mins running and 5 mins walking.  Funnily though after about an hour, when I would have expected to be flagging, I was actually finding it easier and could have managed without the 5mins walk breaks.

I had Lucozade Sport diluted by half with water in my bottle, and I also had a couple of Peppermint Creams after about 45 mins.

The new place I've found to run is lovely, all off-road and really pretty.  Husband is a bit worried in case "strange men" jump out of the bushes, but there are a lot of dog walkers about and some bike people and judging by the piles of poo, there must be quite a few horse riders using the route as well.

When I started Venice or Bust, at the beginning of Juneathon, my goal was to get to 9st 7lbs before we go to Venice, which is next Tursday. Well......I've done it!  After my run yesterday I was 9st 6lbs, and this morning I woke up at 9st. 7lbs!!!!  That's 10 lbs lost in 7.5 weeks.

I'll probably put the lot back on in 5 days on the Orient Express and in Venice   ☺☺

8 miles! by kimivory at Garmin Connect - Details

July so far

Well since the tyranny discipline of Juneathon ended I've completely stopped blogging.  It felt  like being on school holidays when I didn't have to do that every day! However, I have not stopped the running, and am following Jeff Galloway's Half Marathon training scheme.  I'm tweaking it a little bit as I don't HAVE to do the long run on a Sunday because my time is my own, and so I prefer to do it on Monday or Tuesday, but overall I'm doing what Jeff says and feeling a little bit more confident about the HM in September.

So far in July I've run 10k again for the first time since April 2010, I've gone out with a Running Club (Leighton Fun runners) , I've done my first Parkrun, at Milton Keynes, in the pouring rain, but it was still quite fun, and today I've run my furthest ever distance.  Unfortunately, it wasn't as far as I had planned.

I use Runkeeper with my iPhone and I love it.  I've used it since I started running and  wouldn't have got this far (literally) without it, I owe the Runkeeper people a lot.   I love looking at where I've been and checking my stats.  HOWEVER, I hate to say, but Runkeeper has been letting me down a lot lately.  It cut off during my 5k at Woburn Abbey, it cut off during my first ever Club run, and today it went mental and decided that I'd run 18k, which I knew I hadn't, but I didn't know how far I had run, and my estimate was well out.  I was supposed to do 8 miles according to Jeff, but I ended up only doing 7.1.  More annoying is that I could have gone on, I wasn't dying at the end of it and if I'd known that I needed another mile I'd have done it.

SO, I've decided to invest in a Garmin.  Bit of a price difference between £5.99 Runkeeper, and £300 Garmin, but if I'm going to keep this running lark going, for me, my distances and statistics are really important.

Venice in a week and a bit!!  V. excited.  Not going to run in Venice because it'll be too hot but a few days off won't hurt!

BTW - No blisters!!! 1000 mile socks are brilliant!!!!!!