Tag Archives: 910XT

Equipment, Training

Is it Backstroke, Backstroke or Backstroke?

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I went swimming today as it is half term break, so my lesson wasn’t on yesterday.

As I’m still (very grumpily) consigned not to run at the moment, and it is my cross-training day anyway, I took my Garmin to a man-sized 25m pool in London (well, more man-sized than the 15m one I use for my lessons on a Monday, but not quite as macho as the full 50m Olympic sized pools which are far and few between, but which I’ll have to try one day!)

Knowledge is power? Lol!

I’m not quite sure how the Garmin 910XT is supposed to work out the swimming strokes – I played around with it a little today, trying a combination of leaving it to run at the end of a length for a few lengths, pressing the ‘lap’ button at the end and start of a lap, to extract any rest that I had at the end of a length and also just pressing the lap at the end of a length to see if the watch could work out for itself if I was resting.

The result?

Well, not perfect, but not bad either – The real info is here on Garmin Connect, but in summary…… well, it is actually a little tricky to work it out as, according to the detail I did 18 lengths of backstroke, 4 lengths of breaststroke and 10 lengths of ‘unknown’ type. In reality I started on crawl and then continued with a breaststroke, backstroke and breaststroke sequence before repeating, finishing up after 30 minutes.

My crawl at the moment is a half glide half crawl, which Zelda is constraining me to while I learn, so honestly, I’m not surprised about that, but I’m a bit disappointed that my other strokes are (clearly) not that identifiable.

Ah, well. At least I’ll have plenty more time to practice.

Blogaday, Equipment, Technology, Training

Full Day

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Out for my second long run in sequence this morning.

It’s still January and yet already the Monday runs are getting to the stage where they take about an hour – mainly because of how slow I am, and not the distance I am running 🙂 Soon be getting up at 5:00am then; Liz is very thoughtfully doing that at the moment to get her run in, but we chatted yesterday evening and decided that setup wasn’t going to last long.

Temperature dropping to normal!

I forgot my head torch this morning (more paraphernalia), but rather than procrastinate further decided on a street-lit run as I didn’t really fancy slipping around the muddy trails I was on yesterday either, but in the dark. Darkness always adds another (or should that be takes away) another dimension.

There was actually a very (very) brief flurry of snow this morning; nothing came of it, but I guess that shows how cold it was.

So round the houses again I went. I am looking forward to the summer and some early morning and late evening runs now – just at the moment it can’t really come soon enough 😉

Lunchtime was a cycle and physio session – thought I’d just mix it up a bit by doing some physio today and then tomorrow I can do the same routine but with different exercises.

Tried the Garmin 910XT out at swimming in the evening and I’ll have to figure out all the stats and so on, on the Garmin Connect page!

So all in all quite a full day of training, and I’ll be glad of a bit of a break with just a cross-training session planned for tomorrow.

Blogaday, Equipment, Running, Technology, Training

Getting Complicated

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Ok – so sometime runs are simple, and sometimes they aren’t.

Today’s run didn’t seem simple at all.

With my new Garmin 910XT in the picture for it’s first run, I had to supplement the paraphernalia that I normally take on tour around Guildford with a heart-rate monitor and I realised that this was the first time I had worn one of these for a couple of years. The forecast for today was chilly and although it was overcast when I looked out the door, it still seemed colder than it had been recently so I decided on 2 long sleeved layers and long bottoms. My calves had been a bit tight over the last week or so, so I also decided to wear my long X-socks as well.

So the total inventory for my run this morning was

Garmin Run 20120129
  • Running top – 2 off, Long Sleeved
  • Compression Shorts
  • Long Bottoms
  • Injinji Socks
  • X-Socks Energiser, compression socks
  • Extra sock for right foot behind heel (shoe too big)
  • Vivo Barefoot Evo shoes
  • Fluorescent Beanie hat
  • Garmin 910XT
  • Heart-rate monitor
  • iPhone, arm-holder and earphones
  • Blistex Lip-Balm

 

How ridiculous is that for 11 miles! So much for running light.

The only other things I would need for longer runs would be packed into a backpack, but I may think about taking some energy drink with me at some point soon (1½ hours is about my limit for no-liquid/energy drink runs)

The run was not bad – I ran a little extra around the streets of Guildford again before picking up the trails to the eastern edge of town and round again to the north; It was one of those runs that felt bad from the start though, and didn’t really get much better at any point throughout – good training for the 100 milers 🙂

The new watch worked well – simple to operate and the alerts at the laps were easy to hear, and feel on my wrist (vibrate alert!) The display was easy to read while running and I did not feel the weight or size was an issue at all. I uploaded the run to the Garmin Connect site as usual with no problems. According to the ‘Training Effect‘ on the watch and the download, I was ‘Over-reaching’ on my run – i.e. going too hard, too fast or too far. I will be investigating this further as it is not good news.

I was glad to get home and my family, as ever, were glad to see me. Liz made some more yummy corn pancakes and we all gorged ourselves on these and were happy for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow – Swimming with the Garmin!

Equipment, Running, Technology

New Toy

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A bit distracted this morning as my new Garmin arrived 🙂

Garmin 910XT

A nice new Garmin 910XT which is the latest in the cross-training variety of Garmin fitness watches. It is slightly bigger than the 405 that I have had for the last few years, and heavier, but only slightly.  The big thing with this watch is that I can use it while swimming as well – I assume it has some sort of accelerometer sensors in it to analyse your stroke pattern, count and apply this to the lengths swum to work out efficiency. Of course it’s waterproof as well and to facilitate this they have moved from the touch sensitive bezel on the 405 back to conventional buttons. It has something called Training Effect and Energy Expenditure which I am going to have fun playing with when I figure out how to use it (with the FirstBeat website).

I had some problems getting the heart rate monitor to work initially which was a bit frustrating, but after changing the battery (the store we got it from were very apologetic) it worked fine.

So tomorrow I’ll be trying it out on a long run and will let you know how it goes. The first time out with new technology rarely goes smoothly so we shall see 😉

Took the little ones swimming at lunchtime and they both did very well – Savannah is practising her star floats and Luke is ramping up his distance and did several half lengths (from the deep end) without his ring. The most memorable part of the session was the fact that poor Zelda had lost her voice though, so the normal, loud and fast instructions, encouragement and critique of the young swimmers was today absent and the pool was eerily quiet because of it. Hopefully she will have recovered by Monday when I have my lesson.