Week 3: Five miles

20:40 sec run/walk ratio
5.39 miles (6.22 miles counting laps)
18.3 min/mile (15.9 min/mile)

I did my run around the house with the GPS, but I also counted laps to check the distance, and sure enough, the GPS was about .1 mile off per mile. I did a total of 54 laps—about 58.5 if you count the 3 minute warm up/cool down walks—which is closer to 5.7 miles. Over 6 miles for the full 58.5 laps. So, 5.39 miles x 18.3 minutes/mile = 98.6 minutes total, which, divided by the more accurate 6.22 miles, gives me a pace of 15.9 minutes/mile. Whew! Much better.

Counting laps required some concentration, but I was able to keep track by counting out each ten laps on my fingers, then switching direction every 20 laps. I suppose if I want to use the GPS, I'm going to have to start running in town. Or keep counting laps. Or just know I'm actually running farther than the app is telling me. I'm not going to be able to use GPS on the longer runs anyway—just in six miles, I used nearly half my phone battery. No way it's going to last 26 miles. Not even sure the phone battery will last with the app running the whole time. I plan to get one of those thumb-drive-sized battery sticks to take with me on the longer runs, to keep my phone charged.

I was finally able to figure out how to turn off the music shuffle, so it would play my albums in order. I emailed lolofit support to ask them how to do it, and the response was to turn off BeatSync to stop it shuffling. Well, I already had BeatSync turned off (don't want it speeding up and slowing down my music to match my BPM, it's not that kind of music), but I turned it on, and then the Smart Shuffle option came up—it was hidden while BeatSync was off. So I was able to turn off Smart Shuffle, then turn off BeatSync again, and then my music played in order. Ah! So much nicer! It was really bugging me to have my songs shuffled. Today, I played Horslips' Book of Invasions and Duran Duran's Rio. Nice! I'm ripping some more CDs to load up my iPhone. Turns out some of the albums I bought from iTunes have DRM that won't let them be used by other apps, so I can't play them with the Marathon app. So I won't buy music from them any more, I'll just buy CDs and rip them.

Weather was decent today. I got out around 8:30 AM, with the temperature just under 60 F. It was 65 F by the time I was done—not very hot, but still hot enough to make me feel it.

I'm feeling more and more inclined to try doing the Long Beach Marathon. If I can keep up the 16 minute mile pace, I'll be able to finish it in around 7 hours, well under the 7.5 hour time limit.