Geeky Garmin Girl

Well, ok - that might be a bit of an exageration but I have joined the ranks of runners with a GPS tracking my every move and after two runs with it I am very much in love with my new toy! Until now all my training has been done based on time goals rather than distance goals and even with my shiny new Garmin I think I am going to keep it that way. I found last winter when I first moved to Banff I decidely did NOT want to know how far I was running when I was adjusting to the altitude, slogging through snow and skirting slowly over ice patches. I was happy to come home knowing I had logged X many hours and that time on my feet and effort was more important than precise miles.

That said, it has been fun to already do two of my fairly regular training routes and find out how far I am running. Fortunately the distance has been a pleasant suprise, I half imagined I would think I was running further than I actually was but in fact it is the opposite :) I'm also looking forward to the element of I will now track my mileage with zero effort. At the start of the year I started a training log with all my workouts but that lasted all of a few weeks until I would forget to do it and then try to remember my workouts weeks later. With my Garmin all I have to do is put it on and then once in a while plug it into my computer and hey presto - lovely maps and stats of my runs!

Being a bit of a techno phobe I opted for the pretty basic model - Forerunner 110, and I have so far managed to use it with no problems which shows how user friendly it is. Ok, it might not have all the bells and whistles of some of the other models and it might 'only' have 8hrs battery life, but I will be honest here - I never log 8hr training runs so the battery life will be no problem! And for any races longer than 8hrs, well there are usually some mile markers along the way so I'm not going to obsess about splits.

So all in all, I think it's going to be lots of fun and I think that's as good a reason as any to use a GPS. Got to go, I'm off to analyse my splits and pace of todays run.....