Garmin-less Run

It certainly wasn't on purpose, but tonight was my first run without my Garmin since I bought it. It was also the first run on a non-marked trail without some kind of watch to keep at least a rough idea of my distance and speed.

I started at Centennial Park and tried to purposely not take too many turns, although a group of 3 women running somewhere around mile #3 may have altered my course slightly :) At any rate after mapping my route on RunningAhead.com it came out to approximately 5.45 miles at a 9:11 pace which I was pretty happy with. It was a little farther than I was planning on going, but that just made it even better!

Tonight was also my first time running in sub-40 degree temps (not counting my first 5k 7 years ago) and I realized one thing; gloves are awesome! I would rather forget my Garmin again than forget gloves! Ok enough writing, time to ice!

Unofficial 5k

As planned I went for a 3 mile run after work today. My buddy started off at around an 8 minute pace, but I do that half the time anyways until I've settled into a slower pace. Well he didn't slow down much and kept it between 8 and 8:30 until we hit the llllllooooonnnnnngggg steady hill up Hillsboro Pike (even then we kept it under 9:00). But since we were only running 3 miles I figured what the hell, let's see what kind of 5k time I can get. So I kept running until I hit 3.1 miles and ended up with a time of 26:59.. 9 seconds away from beating my 5k PR!

Now anyone who has a Garmin knows that it usually takes a few seconds for it to auto-pause the time if you stop to wait for a light. So technically I think I really did beat my previous time if you take into account the 2 or 3 times we had to stop for a light/traffic, but regardless I'm happy with that time given the number of hills we ran up. My knee has been feeling better the past several days (since I took the insoles out) and it feels better post-run, but it actually hurt just a tad more than normal during the first .5 mile.

I'm planning on a 5 mile run on Wednesday, then my 5 mile race on Saturday followed by a celebratory beer :)

My Garmin Drawerings

Today was my 2nd day officially working downtown instead of in Cool Springs so I had a lot more options for running (and it's always nice to skip the traffic). I decided to head over to Centennial Park, but since I'm getting more and more bored with greenways/tracks I opted for the streets instead of just running around the park. Back at home I loaded up the Garmin to pull down the stats and realized I almost literally ran all the way around Vanderbilt University, plus partially around Centennial at the end! I think next time I'll try to purposely make a crazy drawing by running weird routes! See Shannan.. you can't do THAT on a treadmill :)

Oh and I ran 5 miles which makes me feel much better about my race in less than 2 weeks. Not only that, but 2 of the splits were negative with a 3rd being 2 seconds away from being negative (all under 10:00) and I can't remember the last time that happened! My knee whispered to me for about the first .5 miles and then it shut up until about the 4.5 mile mark. Post-run it feels about the same as it normally does after a shorter run.