My Garmin 405 went a little haywire yesterday.  I knew something was up when I finished my standard Reeds Lake loop and my watch was reporting that the course had mysteriously gotten .15 mile shorter than the last time I ran it.  When I loaded the workout data on the computer, this is what I got.

Apparently, not only did I start from someone else’s house, but then I proceeded to cut through a few peoples’ yards rather than follow the road.  Then, rather than following the logical course around the lake, I took an angular route through more yards before getting back on the course.  Weird.  I don’t remember doing that.  The good thing is that SportTracks does a pretty good job of route error correction and fixed the route to show that I did the full 6 miles.

Maybe this is just a sign of things to come.

Anyway, I had a good 6 mile run yesterday, followed by a nice and easy 10 miler this morning.  It is very nice to be building up my running base again.  This will be my first week in a long time where I will surpass 30 running miles.  YAY!

Tomorrow is the Ludington Triathlon, so time to get all packed up and ready.

I used my heart rate monitor again for my run workout. I think I am starting to get addicted to it.  There is nothing like having more data to look at on pretty graphs.  Today, however, I actually used the heart rate monitor for feedback during my workout.  My run for the today was a 45 minute fartlek run with 8×30s bursts at zone 5.  So, I headed out on a 12 and half minute warmup ending up at the EGR track.  Once there, I basically did the speed bursts as 30 second intervals with 2 minute active recovery between bursts.  I stayed pretty consistent on each of the speed bursts with the 6th and 7th intervals being my slowest before picking it back up for the final one.  I finished with a 12:30 warm down back home.

For the workout, I programmed the steps into my Garmin with a threshold of zone 5 set for each of the intervals.  This way, during the workout, I could check in between intervals to make sure that I met my goal of zone 5 heart rate on the previous interval.  It is so cool to be able to focus on the workout without having to constantly keep an eye on the a timer.

As for the “brain” part of my workout, it was more a brainless part.  I did two bone headed things.  The first was that I forgot to bring water with me.  While it was a short workout, it was 80 degrees out and running on the track put me in constant sun.  The second thing was even more bone headed.  I put on my iPod, queued up my music and then never hit play. So, I did my entire workout wearing an iPod as purely a fashion statement.

My swim workout was slightly less eventful, however, much more congested.  It is getting pretty ridiculous up at the pool because two other local pools are closed for the summer which has really increased usage at EGR.  I’m going to look into possibly doing an OWS up at Reeds Lake or Millennium Park with a group of people.

I couldn’t find a video (Youtube you have failed me), but I leave you with this:

KRAMER: Got problems Jerry.

JERRY: What happened?

KRAMER: Well I had been swimming for three hours and I was in a real groove so I decided to keep going. But at ten they start the aquasize. Thirty-five geriatrics throwing elbows. It was like I was swimming through a flabby armed spanking machine.

JERRY: How long did that last?

KRAMER: A half hour. Then diving class started. Well, that got a little messy. I gotta find a new place to swim ’cause that pool can’t hold me, Jerry.

From http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheNap.html

Today, I used two new features of my Garmin Forerunner.  The first is the heart rate monitor which I haven’t used since I got the Garmin almost a year ago.  The second is the ability to program a workout.  My workout today was a bike ride with 7 power intervals of 20 seconds with 2 minutes of active recovery to total an hour and 10 minutes with the warm up and cool down.  That equates to basically a 27 minute warm up, the intervals, and then a 27 minute warm down.  I wasn’t quite sure how I would track time spent on each leg of the workout as it is more difficult to keep an eye on the clock while riding versus running.  So, I figured I would give the Garmin Workouts feature a try.  Basically, the workouts feature allows you to program a workout into the watch ahead of time.

As you should be able to see in the picture, this was a pretty easy workout to program.  I basically just set it up to notify me of the times I needed to go at each leg of the workout, however, there is the ability to program it based on distance, intensity, heart rate, etc.  Once programmed, I simply transferred the workout my watch.  From the watch I selected the workout as I headed out.

On the ride, it started with the warm up leg, so it basically just counted down from 27 minutes for me.  Five seconds before the warm up was done, the watch started beeping to let me know the next step was coming up.  I was able to gear up and push hard for 20 seconds before it beeped at me again to let me know I was the recovery part of the interval.  This continued for the next 6 intervals and was extremely helpful as I never had to actually look at my watch during the workout.  The most difficult part of the workout was making sure that I didn’t get held up by traffic or stop lights during the 20 seconds of power intervals.

The best part of the workout feature is when you complete the last leg of the workout, the watch plays a chime to signify you have finished and displays “Congratulations, Workout Completed”!  My only complaint is that it seems to stop tracking distance once you have completed the workout.  Because the workout was based on time, it was difficult to estimate exactly where I would be when the 27 minute warm down was finished.  It ended up that I was still about a mile away from home when I “completed” the workout, so I got short changed a mile on my total distance.

As for the heart rate monitor, I don’t know why it has taken me so long to use it.  When I first put it on, I thought it would be uncomfortable during the ride, but I actually forgot about it until I got home.  I am going to have to give it a try on my next long run.  Although, I don’t think I would want to wear for too long of a time, as I am sure that it just adds another possible chafing spot.

Here is my heart rate during the workout.  The vertical yellow lines represent the power intervals, which is why they the higher points on the chart.  You can also see where the hills where during the warm up and warm as they crank up the heart rate.

Tomorrow is my 2nd swim workout of the week along with my first run workout since the marathon.  My legs feel great today, but my hamstring could probably use one more day.