Fall Speedfest, Week 2 of 18: trendy strava ennui + workouts are hard

Happy Monday!

This week was my highest mileage week since Boston training at 48.5 miles. I did ramp things up fairly gradually but still definitely felt the increase towards the end of Sunday's long run--no pain or injuries or anything like that, but definitely some general fatigue in the legs in those last few miles. Which, hey, is the whole point, so.

Happily, this week tapers off a bit for Race to the End of Summer. I know I won't be able to taper for everything I run this fall, but I want to try to use RTTEOS as a kind of fitness gauge, so I'm trying to get there as fresh as possible.

Now. Let's talk about Strava for a moment.

You know how it's kind of trendy to every few months write a paragraph-long post about how Facebook is making you unhappy and ruining the world and you are officially taking a Hiatus "for the foreseeable future" and your "real friends" will know how to contact you?

It seems like recently something similar has begun to happen with Strava (or maybe it isn't new at all & I've just begun to notice it). People will post things about how they've gotten "disillusioned" with it or "just [aren't] motivated" by segment PRs or KOHs or whatever anymore & are just gonna "disconnect" for a while by unlinking their Strava account/running without GPS/running without any watch at all.

Which, hey! You do you. But honestly, how "illusioned" were you with Strava to begin with, and why? Like, what did you expect it to do for your life besides announce your every workout to the world? Creating profound and lasting satisfaction/deep and meaningful inner happiness out of your hobby is a lot to ask of an internet app, guys.

Ways to Screw Up Your Tempo Run, If You Must.

I learned two things last Wednesday, which were 1) I currently have a *terrible* sense of pacing and 2) maybe don't just jump straight back into squats after a week and a half off, at least not with the same amount of weight.

I knew things would have to get shuffled around this week due to work travel. Basically I had no time on Monday or Tuesday to do anything but fly to LA, work well into the evening, get my plane home delayed 4.5 HOURS but at least manage to get rebooked on a different flight only 1.5 hours later and fly home. Oh, and turn 35. (I did mention how I spent my 35th birthday alone at the Hampton Inn, right? Good times!) So even though I don’t normally run on Wednesdays because of karate, I planned to leave a little early to try to get in a run.

Leading up to the 10K a couple weeks back, I’d skipped my squats and deadlifts so that my legs would be fresh, and then just due to some travel stuff Wednesday was the first day I got back to them. Now, I cannot explain it, but for some reason my foggy 6am brain decided that a GREAT idea was to jump right back into doing THE SAME AMOUNT of squats at THE SAME WEIGHT after 1.5 weeks of doing none.

Lolololol no.

I am not kidding that I was getting up and down like an old person for the rest of the day.

But back to that run I had planned for between work and karate!

Logistically, I really needed to do either my tempo run or track workout that day. I would’ve preferred the track, but I just knew there was no freaking way in Hades I was busting out 200m repeats in my current state. The tempo workout, on the other hand, seemed pretty reasonable, just a 2 mile warm-up, 4 miles at 7:40 pace, & a 2 mile cool down. Even given my current level of fitness (not great), 7:40s should feel like work, but only a little work.

Lolololol no.

My quads felt like hamburger meat. Like, think last 6 miles of a marathon. I mean to be honest I was expecting worse, but it was still pretty bad.

On top of this, I was relying on my watch more than usual to keep the pace because I am so out of practice at doing it by feel. And since GPS in my area is apparently just shit now for reasons I don’t understand, I ended up running the four tempo miles significantly faster than I should have, which of course made them feel even harder.

Notice how none of those numbers is 7:40.

That first mile was particularly bad, because it was uphill. Taking this into consideration, I was shooting for 8:00ish instead of 7:40 and feeling pretty depressed when I felt like I was working pretty hard and my watch was showing 8:10-8:15. So yeah, I was pretty pissed when it auto-lapped and I saw 7:36. It wasn’t quite as bad with the other three, but still, it’s annoying to have your “instantaneous pace” field vacillating between 7:40 & 7:50 & then auto-lap 10+ seconds faster.

(This is why I really do prefer to do workouts by feel/effort rather than getting glued to the watch, but I’m really out of practice at that right now, so I don’t know what else there is to do.)

So, yeah. Hoping to get some less annoying, more encouraging pace workouts in next week!

The Night is Dark and Full of El Niño

At different points in my life I've taken planned or unplanned breaks from running, and it still never fails to shock me how quickly your body gets un-used to running. In July I did three 20+ mile runs in four weeks and never felt the least bit sore; 4.5 months later, my first three-miler without walk breaks post-stress fracture left me so sore the day after that I was actually laughing about it.

The good part is that because I've kept up my cardio on the elliptical reasonably well, running doesn't feel hard in that way. (I was actually a little surprised to see that my nice, easy, comfortable pace has been 15-30 seconds faster per mile than it was in the summer, though that may be a function of the temperature outside more than my fitness.) However, I can definitely tell I need to get back in the gym & back on my strength work (particularly all the hips & glutes stuff) ASAP so that I don't hurt myself again as I start to increase time on my feet.

In related news, last Thursday we got our first serious rain storm in like a year or something, and I took to the dark, soggy streets sporting three new pieces of hawt gear:

A (kinda) New GPS.

After some investigating, I kind of decided it was probably going to come down to buying another cheap Garmin or shelling out for a Suunto Ambit & just sucking it up & learning a new device. I have to say, I'm super intrigued by the Ambit & was pretty tempted to give it a try. But, it sounds like you can only have three data fields up at once, which is one of the things I dislike about the FR220 (I really want four; it's a mental thing), and that combined with the price tag kind of put a damper on my enthusiasm.

In the end, I bought another FR310XT (number 3) from a woman on Amazon Marketplace who said she got it as a gift and used it twice, but has since come to terms with the fact that she is just probably not going to use it ever again. It was basically new in the package with all the bits & pieces for $85 & seems to work just fine, so I felt like I made out okay.

Here's the funny part, though. Remember how the problem with my current FR310XT is that it wouldn't turn on or charge? Well, just for kicks I put it on the new charger, and it turned right on! So, either you could say I probably could have saved myself maybe $60 or so & just bought a new charger, or that I basically went from zero functional Garmins to two for just $42.50 each (on average). Yes, the 310XT still takes an annoying amount of time to find satellites (which is why my general strategy is to never turn it off & just stick it back on the charger after every run), but to be honest that's a problem I'm not really willing to shell out $150-250 to solve. (After all, I have races to sign up for, hopefully.)

Some Long-Overdue Safety Gear

It is now that time of year when more often than not, I end up running in the dark or almost-dark (ie, fearing for my life). In past winters I have tried to be a good pedestrian and be sure that I was wearing a white or bright-colored top if I was running at night, but I don't have tons and tons of those and also personally I have almost hit dumb pedestrians in my car on occasion even when they WERE wearing white/bright things. (Fun fact: The 2010 NYC Marathon shirt is the *exact* color of dusk. Thanks, random moron who jumped out in front of my car in the dark!!)

So, this year I finally bought myself a reflective vest, which means never having to think about this issue ever again. (Also, it will make my mom happy.)

One of my many, many favorite long sleeves
not suitable for night running (also the color of dusk)

Nifty New Puddle Jumpers!

Most of the time we don't get enough rain here to be worth worrying about, but there were a few weeks last winter when we got a bunch of rain storms serious enough that I finished a bunch of runs with my socks absolutely soaked. So, earlier this year when the Kinvara 6 was released and all the 5's went on clearance, I picked up a pair of Kinvara 5 RunShields, which is the water proof version.

We've had a super dry year, so up until Thursday they'd stayed in the box in the closet, so it was neat to finally open them up & take them out for a test drive:

Shock of shocks, they feel a lot like Kinvara 5's!

Like everyone else in California, I've still got my fingers crossed that the crazy El Niño everyone's been predicting will finally show up. Then again, with my luck, I probably jinxed the whole thing by buying waterproof shoes. (Sorry) :-/

Garmin Updates / Solicitation of Advice

In the very near future I am going to write a for-real blog post with, like, actual updates about running and stuff. BUT, I haven't done it yet, and the GPS thing is time-sensitive, so I thought I'd just get it out there.

GARMIN UPDATE

When last we spoke of GPS devices, I was feeling like the proverbial thirsty sailor lost at sea: Garmins, Garmins all around, but not a one that works (reliably). Although I am not a fan of the FR220 overall, that's what I had been using for most of my Santa Rosa training this summer because it's still perfectly fine when you just need to get a long run or easy run in & don't care about much more than pace and distance. For the last few months that hasn't been much of an issue since my cardio activity has been mostly limited to elliptical and walk/run intervals by time & effort, and I had also been wearing the FR220 for that because one of its good features is the programmable interval workout feature, which is perfect when all you need to do is jog comfortably for x minutes & then walk for 10-x minutes, wash/rinse/repeat.

Unfortunately, about a month ago I noticed that it was starting to seriously drop mileage. And I'm not talking about a couple of tens over ten miles or something. I'm talking about registering 2.1 miles when I know I've gone three. (You know how you know exactly where every mile marker is within 10 miles of your house.) I'm still using it for the interval timing feature, but reliably, the mileage is now consistently off by 20-40% every time. I suppose it's possible it's not the watch and my entire neighborhood has recently fallen into some kind of GPS black-hole/vortex, but as I don't have another reliable watch to compare it to, I can't be sure. (Phone apps for me have always been wildly inaccurate. Not as bad as the FR220 has been lately, but still too far off to be useful.)

Speaking of other watches, I've pretty much given up on my other two every being useful again either. My beloved FR305 only turns on reliably about half the time, usually won't charge, doesn't beep at laps anymore, and the wristband is broken in two places. My FR310XT had been the most reliable of the three for a while, but now it won't turn on at all.

THE MISSION

Like I said, this isn't a super critical issue right now in terms of my running. I'm still walk/running it up using the FR220 interval timer, so I'm not even looking at pace, and I don't expect to be training in a way where I really need a reliable GPS watch until at least January. But the time of year for ridiculous sales on electronics and other consumer goods is upon us, and I have a feeling that if I'm on top of things I could probably get a good deal at REI or amazon or similar. But the trick is knowing what I want to get, so I can properly stalk it.

So my question is, do you have a GPS watch that you're loving right now? (I know some of you love the FR220, but it is just not for me, so I'm looking for something different.) I've seen that some people like the FR620, but it kind of looks like it might be in the same mold as the FR220 so I'm afraid it will still have all the features I don't like about the 220. The 910XT sounds like it might be the closest thing to my old 310XT, and there may be some good deals coming up on it. (The 920XT sounds like overkill, I think.) Another option is to just by another refurbished 310XT, which has the pros of being something I'm familiar with and significantly cheaper.

On the other hand, I'm finding myself more and more open to non-Garmin options given all the trouble I've had with mine in the last few years, so I'd love to hear if anyone has had a better experience with another brand.