New present to myself....

I bought myself a new present yesterday at REI- a foot pod for my Garmin watch. It is something I should have invested in months/years ago. I decided to purchase one because I am finding myself having to utilize the treadmill more frequently for my marathon training. With my work schedule it is better for me to run in the morning before work, rather than after work. It is too dark in the morning to get my workout completed by 6:30 am and now it will start to get too dark to run at 5:00 pm...that leaves one option- treadmill! I probably could run outside in the morning, but it freaks me out. I have been chased by someone in the past when I was running outside in the morning and it was SCARY times one million!

Now that I am stuck on the treadmill I am realizing how off the distance and paces are on a lot of them. You will see in my week 2 marathon recap how frustrated I got on Wednesday with my workout. It is really important for me to be hitting my workout times and if the treadmill calibration is off then it messes up everything. Makes me a little cranky too!

According to Garmin, the foot pod is ideal for indoor tracks, treadmills and anywhere you can't get GPS satellite signals. You can also start a run outside without having a satellite signal and the foot pod will still accurately record the distance you ran. This will be nice to have since it takes a life time for my Garmin to connect with a satellite signal at my house.

After I got home, I couldn't wait to try out my new gadget. Unfortunately, I was super busy last night getting ready for my parents to come so I had to wait until this morning. I had a 7 mile tempo run with the first mile being easy, 5 miles at 7:00/mile, followed with 1 mile easy. The foot pod worked like a genius and I killed my workout. I don't know my official pace because I haven't uploaded my watch to Garmin Connect yet, but I am pretty sure that I ran a sub 7:00/mile. I was absolutely correct in my assumption that the treadmill calibration is a touch off so it was great to be able to use my Garmin and know exactly what my pace was. I felt awesome when I was finished because I know that I killed my workout. What a GREAT way to start my Friday! My only complaint about the foot pod, and this is minor, is that it takes a while to calculate your pace. When I first started my run it took about 6 minutes for it to work its way done from a 15:00/mile to a 8:30/mile. I am hoping that once I actually calibrate the pod to my stride this will be a non issue.

I highly, highly recommend anyone with a Garmin watch to purchase the foot pod also. I know that it will allow me to get a lot more use out of my Garmin- especially during the winter months.

It is tiny- I hope I don't lose it!

You can barley see it on my shoe

--Tasha