GEAR!!

Did I mention that I got a Garmin Forerunner 305 for Christmas? I didn't? Well, I did!

I ran with it on Monday, but I hadn't taken the time to set it up with the heart rate monitor or any of the other bells and whistles. I was mainly concerned about getting it to find the GPS satellites, getting used to the weight (who thought 2.72 oz could feel so heavy?), and making sure I knew where to look for my pace, distance, and time.

So, yesterday, I took the time to go through and set it up. I put in my current weight for calorie counting, my current age for max heart rate monitoring, and alarm chirps for mile increments, slower than set pace, and faster than set pace. It was quite the workout!

Anyways, I took off on my intended 1.5 mile run and just had to test out the limits right away. I slowed down to >14 minute miles and was rewarded with a beep! I then sped up to <10 minute miles and was chastised with another beep! Yay, the limits worked.

When I resume regular training, I'll set those limits tighter, but for yesterday's run, they were perfect. At the one mile mark, I received the congratulatory beep. I need a sign: Will run for beeps.

The only thing that I had trouble with were the mile splits. I realized this when I uploaded my information to the computer, and it wasn't separated out by miles. After looking over the Garmin program thoroughly (and updating it), I decided that I had some how missed that part of the setup.

Sure enough, after mucking around in the menus for quite some time, I finally figured out that I had to set the lap time to "on" and the default lap to "1.00 Mile." I haven't tested it yet, but I'm fairly certain that my run on Friday should be broken down into mile splits.

Speaking of Friday, the weatherman is calling for highs in the 50's! Yesterday, I ran in shorts, under armor shirt, long sleeve tech shirt, gloves, and headband. Tomorrow, I might be able to get away with shorts and a short sleeve tech shirt! Here's hoping!