>Improvements

>Some of you may have already seen my post on Daily Mile about my great five-miler today. I have to say that I could not believe I ran that fast! I mean, I know I’ve been training hard, but by the way I was feeling as I was forcing myself to get out the door, I thought it would be a pace run or something.

I headed out with my new Garmin, which is AMAZING. The best money ever spent on an electronic device. I also got a heart rate monitor with it, and it fits much better than the Polar one I have. The watch itself is pretty big on my small wrist, but it’s solid. It came with a little USB drive that syncs wirelessly with the watch and uploads the data to connect.garmin.com.

Here are some snapshots of the data I have on my run…

 This has all the info on pace, elevation, etc. I can’t believe my best pace was 6:49.. I’ve never run that fast ever! At least, not that’s been recorded.

 This is a graph of my pace as it relates to time elapsed. You can see where I hit my peak.. right about the time I was sprinting to cross the street before the light turned.

 This is a graph of the elevation change. My normal route does have a few hills, so my pace would probably be better on flat ground.

 Here’s a graph of my heart rate as time elapsed. I love this because now I can track my SVT, if it happens while I run, and how long it lasts. My average HR was 171, which makes sense for how hard I was working!

This is one of my favorite features: splits. It seriously does not feel like I was running that fast, especially the last mile. I know that GPS is undoubtedly more accurate than the Nike+ iPod, which was just a fancy pedometer.

It also shows a map of the exact route and you can even play it back.

My final time was 47:30, which is just crazy. This summer I was running five miles in 55:00! My goal for the Shamrock Shuffle is 47:00, but I would have been stoked with my time today. Maybe the course will be more flat.

Let’s just say that it was totally worth it to get off my butt and out the door. I woke up at 6:30 this morning and laid in bed until 9:30… seriously. It seems that it’s always those reluctant times where I perform the best.

On a final note, the marathon is ONE MONTH from today and I feel total confidence in our ability to complete it, and complete it well! Tomorrow I run another five miles, and then rest/hydrate Friday in preparation for our last LDR (long distance run) of 20 miles.