running: the dawn

Thanks to the magic of social networks, and my fabulous husband, I am the proud owner of a treadmill .  No, this is not going to replace all my outdoor running.  I see it as supplemental.  I am so excited to have the option of exercising at home when being outside is not safe (i.e. tomorrow’s predicted thunderstorm).

Mr. Dawn suggested that we make a day of it since the friends who were selling us the treadmill live in “town” 45 minutes away.  We went out for a late lunch, ran some errands, and loaded up our newest family member.  We got her all settled in her new home today.  I’m not totally sure when I’ll take her for a test drive, but I can’t wait!

If I lived on Sesame Street, today would have been brought to me by the letter “running.”  I woke up fully aware that today was the 114th Boston Marathon.  I worried about being able to watch it unfold.  I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied with seeing highlights or just the leader board updates, I wanted to see the action.  After some searching online I figured it out and had the live broadcast streaming to my Mac.

And what a race it was!  The women were so exciting with the winner breaking free from the pack at mile 11!?!  Unheard of.  Then, the 2nd place going from almost 2 minutes back at mile 24 to finish only 4 seconds behind the leader!  It was so fun to watch.  Then, my dear Ryan Hall….didn’t win, but man, what an amazing race!  Even though he finished 4th, he’s still had the fastest American finish EVER!  Besides, the guy who won demolished the course record by almost two minutes which is un-real!

Yes, my students may have suffered a little today with me being somewhat distracted by the race, but in my defense, I’m sure that there are mathematical equations going into all the calculations of paces and the timing, right?

Then, when I got home from work and walked into my kitchen I almost fell down.  This is what I saw:

WHA?!?!?!  Seriously?  My birthday is not until the day after San Diego!  I had no hopes or expectations for getting an early present.  But, I am married to the most amazing and supportive husband in the world, so I should have known he was going to hook me up…

I’ve literally been thinking, wishing, hoping to have a Garmin GPS since 2005!  I could just never bring myself to a) spend the money and/or b) figure out which one I wanted to spend the money on.

It killed me that the instructions very specifically state that you have to let it charge for 3 hours before you should take it out for a run.  I “patiently” waited and read the instruction manual through.  Then I found on Garmin’s website some videos of how to set up different features, so I watched those.  Finally the watch face said “100%” charged!

Ready for my run!  Gigit is all charged and ready to rock.

All thanks to this Guy!  Mr. Dawn.  I know, he looks a little frightening with the facial hair extravaganza…but I love him!

So, as if Boston+Garmin weren’t enough running excitement for one day, I did my run and realized that those 5 miles was going to push me into the next level on my nike+ account:

It says “You achieved blue level status by syncing 622 miles”

Yes, my mini has pigtails.  And hair falling in her face.  Just like me. 

Best. Monday. Ever!

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…