Tuesday, January 8, 2008

A Real Run

Today, for the first time since November 13th of last year, I ran outdoors on the roads. We had an early start to snow and ice on the roads this year. When you combine that with the lack of daylight, I do most of my winter mileage on a treadmill.

But, it was warm yesterday. It was 42F at my house when I got up at 5:30 this morning. I heard on the radio that it was 55F in Montpelier. So, I found my reflective vest, my lights and my outdoor clothes and hit the road. Regretfully, it was below freezing in town where I chose to run, but I stayed vertical for the full 8 miles.

I used my Garmin 305 for the first time this morning. I discovered that the "3 mile" loop I use by the hospital is only 2.92 miles long. I use that loop for tempo workouts a lot, and I've apparently been thinking I'm faster than I really am for quite a while. At a 7:00 pace, the difference of 0.08 miles is about 11 seconds per mile. Oh well - I'm not going back and changing my training logs for prior years.

I have been deliberately running at an easy pace on the treadmill recently, and it was nice to run outside where my pace just "happens", rather than being dictated by electronics. I was happy to average a much faster pace outside today than I've been doing inside.

I'll run on the treadmill for another hour tonight.

I got my new MP3 player yesterday - a second generation iRiver Clix. The user interface is really amazingly simple - the whole unit can be "clicked" on any of the four edges. It took fewer than 5 minutes to master the whole thing.

The downside is that it didn't come with a case or an armband or an AC charger. I don't want the video screen to get scratched up and I don't want sweat dripping into it, so I ordered a silicon case this morning. Paired with Sennheisers LX-70 sport headphones, I was very impressed with the sound quality - way better than my previous player.

Too many toys, perhaps, but they make training more interesting at times.

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