By the Old Garmin and the New

Remember when I lost my RoadID?  I finally broke down and ordered a new one, and then found the old one the very same day that its replacement arrived.

It's a good thing I learned my lesson.  Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

 You see, I'd misplaced my Garmin at some point in the Summer, and it had gotten to the point where I was using that (as an admittedly weak) excuse for being even more sloppy in my training than usual.

Following the KidsPeace Orioles Trick-or-Trot 5K, Chris and I stopped at Charm City Run's McHenry Row store, and I purchased a new Garmin Forerunner 10.  Of course, one week later, I found my (somewhat) trusty Garmin Forerunner 201.

As you can see, the Forerunner 10 on the left is roughly half the size of the 201.  Indeed, it is only a little or no bigger than many non-GPS sports watches.  I've been wearing as a watch a little too often, since my Timex Ironman died in the Bahamas, which is a blog entry for another day.  Still, since you never know when a 5K might break out, I don't see the harm in that.

The Forerunner 10 also picks up satellites much faster than 201 did, and seems to connect with them a little more often to give a slightly more precise measurement.  I've meant to wear both of them on a run to compare their measurements, but A) that's really dorky and B) I have enough trouble remember to bring one GPS. The Forerunner 10 connects easily to upload run data to www.garminconnect.com, where run data and maps are displayed.

The Forerunner 10 isn't all pizza and beer, though. It does have a few disadvantages to the 201.  I prefer the 201's larger display, which lets me look at time, speed/pace, and distance all one screen to the 10s smaller screen that only displays two measurements at a time. In the photo above, time and distance are displayed are displayed on the 10 and time, speed, and distance on the 201.

That said, I chose the 10 for it's relatively low price point and the salesperson's advice that would provide features and functionality similar to the 201, which has been discontinued.  That is definitely true, even if the display is set up differently.  Since I only use speed, pace/distance, time, and occasionally the virtual training partner, the Forerunner 10 is certainly sufficient for me.

I've been warned that battery life on the Forerunner 10 is limited to about 4 hours.  I'm a long way from testing that, but if that proves to be the case I'll have to go back to the 201 for longer marathon training runs...but that's a long way off.

I should also mention that the band on my Forerunner 10 broke when the unit was less than two months old.  While that's a negative, I got excellent customer service from Garmin, which replaced the band very quickly at no cost.  Replacement bands are available when I need to replace it again, hopefully in a more normal timeframe.

More Trail, Less Fail

I spent the week silently seething with rage over my highly unsatisfactory -- No! -- disgraceful run on the York County Heritage Rail Trail last week.

So, desperate for revenge, I set out southward from Brillhart Station determined to avenge my death!

Well...ok, the above isn't really true. I was ok with my run last week, but was hoping to do a little both in terms of preparation and distance. And I didn't really die. If I did, you'd be spared further blog posts, obviously.

Anyway, the part about heading south from Brillhart Station is true. It was a relatively cool, overcast morning, and there was even a nice breeze -- which the tall trees around the trail completely blocked. It seemed much more humid on the trail than it did otherwise, and so I think on mornings like this, where clouds are keeping the sun from just beating down on me and the actual temperature isn't too bad, I should probably stay off the trail and just run on the roads here in Manchester.

My preparation was a little better than last week. I remembered to both bring and charge Garmin, which worked really well on this relatively straight course. Although it would lose signal quite often due to (I'm guessing here) weather and the thick vegatation (Geez, Brian, you're making it sound like you were running in the stinkin' Amazon Rain Forest.), it seemed like it would "catch up" when the signal came back. That doesn't work so well on my twisty neighborhood courses, since Garmin assumes a straight line from where it lost signal to where I am when it picks it back up.

Because running on the trail is A) safer than running on the road since I don't have to watch for cars and also B) more boring than running on the road since I don't have to watch for cars, I decided to bring my Shuffle. Here, I failed again. I'd forgotten to charge it, and even though I have a USB charger on my phone's power cord, apparently a Shuffle of this generation needs to be plugged into a computer to charge. D'oh.

Overall, though, this was a nice run. I ran for seven miles, going past Hanover Junction, last week's turnaround point, and turned around. This worked out nicely. Since I take a pit stop at this access point to refill my bottles and eat some Sports Beans before setting out again, it made the run back seem a little shorter than the run down.

Here's a picture of Hanover Junction. as seen from the south.
Abraham Lincoln's train changed tracks here on its way to Gettysburg for the Gettysburg Address.

Until about mile 12, when my legs started saying "Hey Brian, we don't want to do this any more." I had sweating buckets for the whole run, but I was drinking water and (at that point) watered-down gatorade, and I'd taken a salt tablet before the run and at my pit stop, so I didn't think I was dehydrated or in danger of heat-related injury. I told my whiny legs to shut the hell up, and made i back to Brillhart and the safety of my car. In doing so, I abandoned a crazy plan, hatched at mile 10 when I briefly felt like I could run forever, to head a bit past Brillhart and turn around to add a 15th mile.

(This is what the rail trail normally looks like.)

(And here's what it looked like after I sweated my way back to my car.)

I'm really happy with this run. 14.13 miles in 2 hours and 19 minutes, for a 9:50/mile pace. It's my longest run of the summer (by .13 miles), but my pace for my only other 14-mile run of the summer, on July 15, was 10:00/mile, so this is a pretty nice improvement.

Time to eat the donuts.

People are Still (sort of) Jerks
Like last week, I said "hi" to everyone I passed. However, for some reason I got more responses today. I have several theories:

1. People who were on the trail last Saturday read my blog entry and realized that they are, in fact, jerks.

2. I appeared less creepy than last week. I didn't wear the visor today. Maybe the visor is creepy.

3. People saw how much I was sweating and didn't want to make me angry.

Further testing is needed.

Rise of the Machines: Betrayed by Garmin

I've mentioned on this blog several times my frustrations stemming from the use of my Garmin GPS watch.

At last year's Broad Street Run, a ten mile race run in excessive heat, my Garmin Forerunner 201 recorded a distance of over 11 miles. I was on the verge of casting it into the Delaware, when a fellow Garmin owner reminded me that if I'd zig-zagged to hit a lot of water stops or fire hydrants, that it could add up to considerable extra running over a 10-mile race. Since I weaved back and forth to hit EVERY fire hydrant, this made sense, and Garmin was forgiven.

At the Shamrock Marathon, Garmin was showing about a third of mile ahead of the mile markers for most of the race, and then over the course of the last five miles its accuracy seemed to decrease at it showed about 26.75 miles at the end of the race. This seemed weird, and was increasingly frustrating as I died on the wall, but my inappropriate rage at Garmin was forgotten in my relief to have finished the ordeal of the marathon. It also seems to have a lot of trouble finding satellites when I'm away from York, PA, and it completely turned into a brick when I was out of the country.

Most of the time, though, Garmin seems to work ok. Most 5Ks show up as 3.1, and its measurements usually seem consistent when I've used it on courses that I'd previously mapped out on the USATF site, mapmyrun.com, or dailymile. It's helped have at least a pretty good idea of how far I'm running on courses that I haven't previously mapped out, and it's virtual training partner feature helped me break the 24-minute mark on a 5K and will hopefully help me pace myself to a PR in the Harrisburg Mile in July.

Today, however, Garmy let me down in a new and exciting way. After my 10-mile night run on Thursday night, I was trying for 10 again today. It was a pleasant morning, but with bright sun I felt very warm, and I had the "power outage" feeling in my legs that has plagued me on and off over the last several weeks. Even so, though, I ground out the miles and was coming up to the finish, when at about 9.8 miles, as I made the final turn toward my car, Garmin started subtracting mileage.

(I don't care what you say, Garmin. I ran 10 miles today.)

I will admit, I received the Forerunner 201 as a Christmas gift from my parents, and I requested one of the lower-priced models with the thought that my parents could then afford to get one as a gift for my wife, too. I chose the 201 because I liked how the display looked and I was certain that it had the Virtual Training Partner. In hindsight, I should have gone with the 205, which promised a high-sensitivity receiver at a similar price point at the time. Or, maybe I should have realized that it was the cheapest model for a reason.

I suppose I could have gone too far the other way; a friend has one of the newer touch-screen models, and not only does it seem like a PhD in astrophysics is required to use it, he's h had trouble in cold weather when a sleeve brushes up against the touch screen. Locking it makes it tough to see the screen he wants when he wants it.

I'm not terribly surprised to see that the Forerunner 201 is a discontinued model. I'll likely milk at least a couple more years out of Garmy, but I think that when I do need a new GPS watch, I'd be wise to pay less attention to the size of the screen and more attention to the sensitivity of the receiver.