January 2nd, 2011. The holidays provided an interesting and relaxed week. My ultra-endeavor is common knowledge in the family and I received some cool “theme” gifts. Chip & Simoni gifted me an armband to hold my ipod while running and a pair of top notch sport earphones to complete the mobile music package. Before all this running for the ultra-marathon started I had an ipod shuffle that was a constant companion, but it broke last spring and I haven’t replaced it. Even though I have a belt clip for my ipod, that certainly isn’t worthy as a holster for running, but armed with this terrific pair of accessories I’ll have to take the ipod out on the road!
Eric got me a Hydration Pack, a deluxe water bottle you wear as a backpack. While I believe my liquid concerns are accommodated so far as the marathon is concerned, the device has me thinking about that last giant step. The differences between training for a half marathon and a full marathon are mere nuances in comparison to the great leap to the ultra realm. But I’m not worried about that for the moment…one step at a time.
My wife gifted me a truly awesome device for the challenge – a Garmin Forerunner 405CX. This is a “GPS enabled sports watch” which traces your runs and provides an incredible amount of detail. After each run it is a snap to wirelessly download the wealth of information captured by the device. In addition to seeing a map of where you went, there is the expected overall distance and time, but the 405CX also displays elevation gain/loss, your heart rate across the entire run and even the pace for every mile you ran!
I am not an early adopter of technological gadgets, but thankful my wife keeps an eye on trends for me. There remains a learning curve as I am unable to access info while on the move, but I look forward to distilling the bounty of data provided and attempting to apply it to improved performance.
The down side of receiving accurate feedback is being confronted with the truth. Today’s run was a twelve-miler, which I was quite happy to have knocked off in just under an hour and 45 minutes. Of course when I downloaded the run it revealed I had only covered 11.8 miles…which may not seem like much but increased my per mile pace by ten seconds!
Regardless, the revealed pace for each mile was enlightening. Though I would have sworn I maintained a consistent pace throughout, the Garmin informs me I started out quickly…clocking the first mile below eight minutes, followed by steady erosion until mile nine (where I had retreated to 9:40!), but came on strong the final two miles to earn a sub-nine diploma for the entire course.
If I want to crack four hours for a full marathon, this feedback is hardly encouraging. Though appreciably improved over my half marathon pace, I can tell you that I was spent at the conclusion of this run and since this wasn’t even halfway for a marathon my prospects are discouraging. But I have still have two and a half months to train so we’ll keep on running and see how things progress
No comments:
Post a Comment