Week 2: Five miles

1:22 hours, 1:2 minute run/walk ratio

Today was one of those days... I was grumpy and tired and really, really didn't want to run. I fiddled around with my schedule for a while, trying to figure out if I could get away with a shorter run, finally decided I really had to do five miles today, put it off until after 10 am, and finally shoved myself out the door to run 47 laps around the house. Then, after two laps, decided that it was too hot to wear my long running pants and came inside to change. Stopped my watch while I did it, but I didn't want to start all over again so I still counted those first two laps.

I was also trying out my new Gymboss interval timer, which I got from jeffgalloway.com. It's a clip-on timer with two programmable intervals that can be set to beep or vibrate or both. That took a bit of fiddling with: I tried it first set to vibrate only, clipped to my waistband, but I couldn't feel the vibration through my thick sweats, plus the clip began to irritate my waist after only a few laps. I reset it to beep and vibrate and carried it in my hand for a bit, then decided to clip it to the back of my compression gauntlet. That worked perfectly! I could easily glance at the timer to see where I was (and the display shows both timers, so I can always tell if I'm in a running or walking interval), and I could feel the vibration on my wrist. So I think that's going to work well. The vibration will work even if I'm running on a noisy road or in a race with a whole bunch of other people using watch beeps to time intervals, and I'll be able to use headphones if I want to on my weekend runs. So that was a success.

I'm still trying to work out what to do when I'm at BAScon in two weeks. I'm scheduled for seven miles that week. Ordinarily, I'd drive into SF and run in Golden Gate Park, but I'll be riding up from Monterey with my friend and won't have a car of my own at the con. I suppose I'll just try to run around the con hotel.