RIP Garmin

My Garmin 305 running watch died last week. I was pretty upset that it was no longer in working order. I had my 305 for almost 4 years and we had run lots of miles together. It got my through my first marathon when I got my BQ, numerous 1/2 marathons, training runs that were awesome and some not so awesome, through the 2010 Boston Marathon, and more recently it saw me running some of the fastest times I have ever run before.

My parents bought me the 305 for Christmas when I first started to get back into serious running after college. It was one of the best and most practical gifts I have received. At this point, I don't know how I have ever trained without a Garmin. When I first realized my watch wasn't working on Friday, I freaked! I had a 5 mi tempo run to complete that morning and I literally had a melt down- how was I to know my pace or where my mile markers were at???!!!

To back track, my 305 was fine on Sunday when I ran the Newman Lake 25K. It was also fine on Monday when I went for a 3.25 mile run down to SAC for bootcamp and went for a 2 mile "wog" with Cam. On Thursday after work Cam and I went to Greenbluff to "wog" the 4 mile Cherry Pickers Trot and I realized then that my 305 was dead. I thought maybe I had left it on after our "wog" on Monday so I didn't think much of it until we got home. I plugged it into the charger and nothing happened. I waited for an hour and nothing happened. I waited over night because I wanted to run my 5 mile tempo before work and nothing. It was dead (you can insert my meltdown here).

I took the watch with me to work and started to make frantic phone calls. I remembered that my mom had purchased the watch for me at Costco. Luckily, Costco has a fabulous return policy. I was able to call our local warehouse with her Costco card number and have them print her receipt so that I could return my 305. You can probably guess where I went when I got off from work....Costco! After returning my 305 I went straight to REI and purchased the new Garmin 210. I had been researching watches all day and making my list of pros & cons between the Garmin 110, 210 and the new Nike Sportwatch, I knew that the 210 would be just the right purchase.

On Sunday I took my 210 out for a 7 mile spin. I was amazed at how user friendly it was and how much easier it was to read both my pace and distance while running. It sat much more comfortable on my freakishly small wrists too (it no longer looks like my watch weighs more than me Angie). When I got home I uploaded the Garmin training log to my computer and plugged in the watch to download my run. It instantly downloaded my run into my online training log. It showed the elevation of my run, my mile splits, my calories burned, what my fastest pace was during the 7 miles, and my route. You can make each workout private or public and you can edit each run individually. By showing my workout as public I can email Amy my workouts instead of typing them out for her. I can also print a monthly calendar that includes my runs with weekly mileage.

You can check out my very first run recorded by my new 210 here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/101559563#.Ti4qB5W0DMQ.gmail

I miss my 305 because we had covered a lot of asphalt together, but I am looking forward to seeing where my 210 takes me. I have high aspirations that my new 210 will get me back to Boston for 2013. :-)

--Tasha

Newman Lake 25K Recap

This last weekend was a complete blur. To recap, I found out about 4:00 pm that my mom was in the hospital and was scheduled to have emergency surgery on Saturday. Obviously I was more than worried about it, but being 8 hours away there wasn't much I could do. At that point they weren't sure if the surgery would take place Saturday night or Sunday morning. I was very tempted to get in my car and drive to Oregon and not run Newman, but after talking to both of my parents I decided to stay home. My mom ended up going into surgery around 7:00 pm on Saturday. My dad called me about 9:30 and said that everything had gone good and that she was in recovery. I was relieved, but at that point I could not sleep at all. Not the best way to begin preparing for a race the next morning.

I literally drug myself out of bed at 4:30 am. I was exhausted as I fumbled my way through the kitchen to down my put of coffee and eat my oatmeal. Since I had never actually been to Newman Lake before I wasn't 100% sure how long it would take me to get there or where exactly I was supposed to go. At the last minute I decided to put Newman Lake into Allie's navigation just in case I happened to take a wrong turn and was late. I know, I like to be prepared and having a race start at 6:30 am takes a little bit of my "A" game outta me. I finally had everything and myself ready to go at 5:15. In the end I didn't really need the navigation and I pulled into the parking lot a little before the 6:00 am early start. I sat in my car for about 10 minutes to drain the last of my coffee and ask myself the same question repeatedly, "what in the heck are you doing???!!!! It's 6:00 am!!!!!" I finally peeled myself out of my car to do a quick 10 minute warm up and a stretch. By 6:25 I was ready to get the show on the road (I was mostly thinking of the pancakes at the finish line).

My goal for the race I stated before was to run my projected marathon pace for December. That would mean I would need to run a pace between 7:30-7:45/mile. I was pretty sure I could achieve this, but not knowing the course and hearing the horror stories of all the hills I was a little concerned of my lofty goal. I figured based on previous times I could potentially finish between 1 hour 58 minutes and 2 hours.

As the race started I zoned out into my own little world and my own pace. The race was fairly small so I found myself running by myself most of the way. The first 4 miles were fairly flat and then the course drastically changed with hills all the way to about mile 12. Miles 12-14 were flat with small rolling hills until mile 14 were there was the monster of all hills. Not what you want to see towards the end of the race! The whole race I just kept on repeating "what goes up, must come down." Even if I slowed down a bit on the uphill I knew I could utilize the downhills to try and regain my pace. My other mental tactic was to pretend each hill was part of a hill repeat workout. Granted these were a bit longer & steeper hills than I do my hill repeats on, I think the mind trick worked. The only hill I really felt tired on was the last one, but I knew I was almost to the finish line and I was determined to finish a strong race (and eat lots of pancakes!). I crossed the finish line in 1:56:47, ahead of my projected finish time and at a pace of 7:32/mile. Exactly on my projected marathon pace for December. Well, that might be my old projected marathon pace. I am shooting for closer to 7:00/mile now. :-) Considering I ran Portland in 8:15/mile in 2008 I would say that is a HUGE improvement!

I felt great the entire race and I didn't feel like I went out too fast. I kept a really consistent pace throughout. My knee felt good and even though I had just ran a hard 10K a week before my legs felt fairly fresh. The only problem I had (probably due to my large consumption of coffee) was that I got a tummy ache about mile 4 that lasted off an on for about 20 minutes. It concerned me because I wasn't sure if I was going to have to stop because of it, but I just tried to not think about it and eventually it went away. Whew!

I loved the distance of the 25K, I thought it was perfect. Only a running nerd would say this, but I was sad when it was all over. I remember passing mile 5 and thinking, "bummer, I only have 10 miles left." Who says that?! Haha.

Oh, did I mention I got 1st?

The BRRC reuses race numbers from previous races. Nice.

Its a tile! Maybe I should run this every year and eventually we could tile something in our house! :-)

--Tasha

Newman Lake 25K

This weekend I am running the Newman Lake 25K. The course looks daunting. I have heard through the grapevine that the hills are insane and that my aspiration of running my marathon pace might be a long shot. The race starts at 6:30 am because I have been told that it gets HOT out on the course. What in the heck was I thinking when I signed up?!

Last year first place was 1hr 54 min and second place was 2hr 9min. Figuring I have never beat the first place finisher before I figure that I should be done right around the 2 hr mark. I really just want to have fun and run a good and smart race. I got my 5 mile tempo down 8 seconds per mile this week to a pace of 6:57 per mile. I have never ran 5 miles at the pace before so I was really excited about it, especially considering my hamstrings & quads are still feeling the burn from Go Girl. The best thing to look forward to is being done with the race at a decent hour on Sunday and they serve breakfast at the finish line. I am going to eat a HUGE stack of pancakes. :-)


--Tasha