running: the dawn

I have been having such a hard time getting myself out to go running.  Mostly its because my runs have been so miserable lately.  Living in a new area with a completely different climate is throwing me all out of whack.  Now, I’ve run my fair share in heat.  I hate heat, but I’ve found ways of coping with it and made my peace.

Humidity, on the other hand?  We are not friends.

Seriously, since I moved here I haven’t been able to complete one run without having to take walking breaks.  I feel my body overheating and my heart racing.  It’s not fun.  So, as I’m sitting in my air conditioned house, I find it very challenging to will myself to go out for a run.

Now, some have suggested that I run earlier.  And that does help temperature wise.  But I have found that the humidity is always higher in the morning which just makes me feel like I am having to cut my way through the tropical air.

I feel like I might have found a way to make it through the next few weeks though.  Today I went running without my garmin.  I wanted to see if not “recording” my run would help give me permission to run slow enough so that I wouldn’t have to stop and walk just so that I don’t pass out or throw up.  It worked!  I just kept telling myself to keep it slow and steady.

With my garmin lately I’ve been super depressed every time I glance down and see in numbers how slowly I’ve been running.  Which always makes me speed up.  Which always makes me overheat and need to stop to walk.  But without that constant feedback, I was freed to run at a sustainable pace and FINALLY finish the 4 mile loop without a walk break.

I’ve been trying to count on both my endurance and speed coming back to me at the same time.  Now, its time to accept that I’ve lost both.  I’m not where I was and I can’t expect to get there over night.  I am going to focus on regaining my endurance–adding on miles.  Then I will reintroduce the garmin.

For now, I just need to not dread running.  That is the goal.

So.  I’ve told you all about my Garmin Goodbye, right?  After my Garmin 405cx stopped holding a charge just a year after Mr. Dawn gifted her to me, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to stay true to the Garmin brand.  However, because of their outstanding customer support the last few weeks, I will be a Garmin Girl from now on!

Wanna know why?  So glad that you asked!!!

1. Warranty-Smoranty.  It was several weeks past the one-year warranty that I started to have problems with Gigi.  The charge would magically go from 100% to zero in just about 10 minutes.  I was terrified to even hope that I could get it fixed or replaced.  I decided to go ahead and email them.  Almost immediately I got an email back saying that they would definitely take care of it even though it was outside of the timeline covered by the warranty.
2. They have a plan B.  First, they had me update the software and “reboot” (not sure if you can do that on a watch, but whatever) my unit.  That seemed to fix the problem.  At least for two months it did.  Then I started having more problems and they were still willing to replace it!  By that time, it was a full three months past the end of the warranty.  Yay for plan B!
3. 10 to 14…equals 7?  I was told that it would take 10-14 days to get my new unit.  7 days later (5 business days) my new baby girl is in my arms!!!  And by arms, I mean wrist.
   
4. New strap!  So, I totally messed up.  I was supposed to “remove all accessories” before sending it in because I would be getting a completely different units.  I carefully removed the velcro strap.  But I forgot that there are actually “connector pieces that help the watch part hold on to the velcro part (if any of that makes sense…).  I’ve been kicking myself cause it meant that I was going to have to spend another $25 for just two little plastic pieces.  I emailed Garmin for like the 34th time asking if there is anyway to just buy the adapters without having to buy the entire strap kit.  And, they just emailed me back to let me know that they had some in stock and shipped it out to me today.  Free of charge!

So, day three of my 5 days of running and I’ve been getting it done.  Just barely.  Today was definitely the hottest of the hot.  I could make it about a mile before I needed to take a little break in the shade.  And I figured since I wasn’t going to get the miles run straight through I’d go ahead and run five.  But it was more like intervals.  Run a mile.  Hide under a tree and pour half my water on my face.  Run another mile.

Since I haven’t shown you my new running digs, check it out:

About a mile from my front door I can be at a nice little bike path.  The only flaw is that it does not have that much shade, so I feel like I’m baking under the sun.  Even in the early mornings.  I will say that I feel much much more safe running on the sidewalks and bike paths here than I did on the country roads without a shoulder up north.  Not sure the trade off for 100+ degrees is really worth it though….

In SAD news.  My Garmin seems to have died.  At the beginning of the summer she was loosing her charge at an alarming rate and I was afraid that she was done for.  So I contacted Garmin Support and they walked me through a reset/software update which temporarily fixed the problem.  But on yesterday’s run she quit after a mile and today (after being fully charged overnight) she beeped her last at 1.5 miles.

So, I’m sending her in.  Its actually a little bit past the one year warranty, but because Garmin is an AWESOME company they are taking care of me and sending me a replacement without charge.  But I am sad.  She has served me so well!

her first day as a part of our family

Getting me to my sub-four hour marathon:

San Diego RnR 2010

Qualifying me for Boston:

Grand Rapids 2010

Running the world’s best race with me:

And now.  She’s gone.

Sure, I’ll get another device.  I’m sure that it will work perfectly.  I may even learn to love the replacement.  But it won’t understand where I’ve been.  It hasn’t been through the fight with me.  I am sad.

I have had my eye on a Garmin running accessory for several years now.  Over that time many new Forerunners have been added to the family and I’ve often wondered which one I would enjoy most.  Of course the temptation that one has when making a purchase like this is to buy the most expensive one because it’s obviously the best, without ever really deciding what he or she needs and expects from the device.  I did not want to be one of those people.  I wanted to know the different features and choose the one that was the best fit for my needs.  I wrote one post about comparing the Garmin options and you can read that here.

Since then I’ve read a lot of reviews of the different models, and honestly they almost scared me away from the 405.  I must say though, now that I have experienced the greatness that is 405 I am THRILLED with it.

Here are some of the complaints that I heard and now wholeheartedly disagree with:

Wrist strap doesn’t fit women’s smaller wrists. False.  I mean, yes the strap that came attached to it was definitely too big for me, but there were two other options included.  In no time Mr. Dawn had switched out the traditional watch strap with the awesome velcro one.  And I LOVE the velcro cause it’s super easy to adjust mid run.

Display is small/hard to read. Again, I disagree.  There are multiple screens that you can set up with whatever data is most important to you.  And seriously there are so many options!  I mean for pace alone, you can see your current pace, average pace, average pace of your current lap, or average pace during your last lap.  I’m amazed that you could actually set up a screen that tells you the grade of the hill that you’re running up/down!  I mean really!  So, yes if you choose to set up all 4 screens with the maximum fields (3) you might have a hard time reading the fine print.  But you can set it up so that it only displays one piece of information on each screen and then auto scroll through.  I’m still working on finding my favorite configuration of screens.  So many options!

Calorie counting is based on distance, so it doesn’t work indoors. Nope.  The calorie tracking is based off of heart rate.  I love that!  It means that I can wear the heartrate monitor and watch during Jazzercise (my other form of exercise) and finally be able to compare it to my running with not just one, but two units of measure (calories and heart rate).  I’ve come to learn that while running I sustain a higher average heart rate, but in Jazzercise I can actually get a localized higher heart rate (which explains the crazy amount of sweat) than I do when climbing some beastly hills!  So fun!

“Bezel” is hard to use. I completely disagree.  I actually think that it’s much like the first time I picked up a friend ipod.  I remember thinking, how in the world do you get to the music and listen to what you actually want?  But a few scroll and clicks later I had the system all figured out and could navigate anywhere.  The organization is so similar to that of an ipod and it’s nested menus.  Click on a word and it opens all the options for that particular category.  Its actually really easy to use and I’ve had no problems with it at all.

All-in-all, it’s an amazing product.  I LOVE it.  Besides just using it while I’m running, I love Garmin Connect, the online place that shows me all my stats and information.  In the past three days, I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time on that site than I have on Facebook.

I always knew that my life would change once I got a garmin.  I knew that my running would be enhanced by all the information I would then have access to.  However, I didn’t know how much little Gigit would tell me and how much I could learn.

Thank you Mr. Dawn!!!  You are the best EVER!