running: the dawn

I love information.  I love to ask questions and figure out how and why something works.    I enjoy finding cause-effect relationship and identifying emerging patterns.  This side of my personality really enjoys my job.  There is so much information that I can tap into in my classroom.  There’s the homework assignments that tell me if students are motivated and understand, the questions that the students ask (or don’t), the blank stares, the dialogue.  All of that information is collected, processed, and feeds into helping me become a more efficient teacher.

As this season of training continues, I can feel the thirst for information about my running increasing.  I want to know about my mile splits and my heart rate and the elevation of my runs.  I want to see how the different elements play into the efficiency of my runs.

Now, granted, I do have a nike+ system that does let me track my distances and my average pace.  However, I feel like I’m ready to take it to the next level and get some more in-depth data.

So, that brings me to what I’ve been drooling over online: the beautiful Garmin family of Forerunners.  I’m trying to decide between the top of the line 405 model or the middle of the road 205

Here’s a comparison chart from the Garmin webpage:

(I’ve only included the information that differs between the two watches.)
Routes.  This  is a feature that lets me store frequented routes on the watch and race against my previous times.  Could be fun, but I’m not sure it should be the deciding factor.

Heart Rate Monitor.  This is one that I go back and forth about.  I think it would be nice to get that information.  Also, the one that has the heart rate monitor included heart-rate based calorie consumption.  That means that I could track calories burned and compare the workouts in Jazzercise and/or my “home gym” to my running workouts.

Foot Pod.  The only benefit to this is being able to run indoors or on a treadmill and keep that mileage accounted for with all the other workouts I do.  Currently I don’t have a gym membership of any kind, so I don’t really have the option of running indoors.

Unit-to-unit transfer.  Not sure why I would care about this…I think it also means that I wouldn’t have to plug the unit into my computer, it could just transmit the information wirelessly…or at least I think so.

So, this is what I spend my spare time doing.  Lusting after beautiful running accessories…