I decided to finally play around with the Garmin, and see what it can offer me other than just my pace. I knew there were all kinds of features on there, but I had not tried any of them out yet.
Last week I was feeling saucy and set the Garmin so that it would give me pace alerts. Alert me when I go slower and a 10:00/pace (I am a 10:30 girl most of the time, so this alert was not well thought out), and alert me if I am going faster than a 9:00/mile pace (yeah, unlikely).
I started out across the pedestrian bridge and the Garmin was blowing up. It sounded like a song bird attached to my wrist. The first half of the bridge is uphill (as bridges go), so I ran faster. Garmin still yelling at me. Other people on the bridge were staring. Mothers pulled their children close when I passed them.
I got to the end of the bridge, which is about a half mile, and I finally looked at the watch (can you tell where this is going?). My pace was 8:25. So my Dick Tracy/Max Smart-esque watch was actually telling me to slow down. Hmm, that is not what I expected. I slowed down, but I kept getting the warning from Garmin. It must have evened out somewhere along the way - I finished the four miles in 39:02. So about a 9:44 pace for the whole run. That, for me, is pretty good.
What was surprising really, was how good I felt during the run. I wasn't really ever overly tired. Have my treadmill fartlek (giggle giggle) workouts actually made me faster? Or was it one of those runs where the stars are all aligned just so, and the runner feels like a supa-star (I believe Vanilla refers to this as an "Even the Russian Judge Likes It" run).
Oh, and I don't think I ever set up the Virtual Running Partner function correctly. This post should really be titled something like "My Pace Alerts are Such Nags."
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2 comments:
Hey...just found your blog. Pretty cool stuff. Anyway, I have the same garmin problem. I tried using the pace alarm function but it goes off like crazy whenever you go up or down hills. So now, I'm back to using just the regular stuff. Anyway, sounds like your run was pretty fast. Sweet!
Ha ha! I've only ever made the virtual partner work on routes I've run before - so it's just a "you ran this faster last time slow poke" alarm. And I've never been brave enough to try the pace alarms. Can't wait to hear about your next workout with your VP!
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