Friday Five – How Does a Distance Runner Do a 5k, Garmin, Magellan and More!

Happy Friday! As I noted, this has been a busy week and frankly between all the crazy stuff going on I am very much ready for the weekend! Everyone seems to be on the mend, AP tests are done, and the can begin the home stretch to the end of the school year (and hopefully get summer jobs soon!).

Cat Calls Need to Stop – On the picture above – I posted this to Instagram & Facebook yesterday, noting that in the warm weather I wore my compression shorts and got a comment from a couple of slightly younger women (~40) who were walking a dog ‘nice shorts’. Given my history I took it as a fun playful compliment, but had my boys said that to a woman runner I would have been REALLY annoyed.

And on Facebook in a local running group, a woman went on a rant about getting comments the other night when it was 80+ for wearing short-shorts and a running bra. There was a healthy discussion, then she revealed the worst comments came from … women. Regardless of source, this judgment and objectification needs to STOP. Now.

Ok, enough of THAT for today, on to the rest of the story …

1. Garmin FR-15 Arrives!

As I posted to Instagram yesterday, Garmin sent me a review sample of their new Forerunner 15 GPS watch. I have been very happy with the FR-10 for more than a year and a half, but there were a couple of limitations:
– Limited battery life (<5 hours GPS time)
– No wireless accessories (no foot pod or heart-rate monitor.

The FR-15 addresses all of this – and more! They sent me the package that includes the ANT+ (no Bluetooth) heart rate monitor, and also comes with the USB charge & sync cable. In my test run, the heart rate monitor paired instantly and tracked wonderfully.

There are a couple of great new features – better battery life and fitness tracking. The FR-15 now touts more than 8 hours of GPS battery life, and I can't wait to put it to the test. The other new feature is fitness tracking – as I write this the FR-15 is displaying the number of steps I've walked today, and by pressing one of the side buttons I can step through date, steps, goal steps, calories, and total distance. If you are sedentary for a while the tracker will beep and display 'Move!'

So what is lacking so far? Wireless sync. I understand that because this is their entry level device there are compromises, and for the price the FR-15 delivers tremendous value … but I would rather never have to use a computer for syncing my GPS again.

You can pre-order the FR-15 through Amazon with an expected ship-date of May 30th. I will have a full review in the coming weeks.

2. Magellan Echo Update

If you recall, I gushed about the Magellan Echo in my review, and it has been my primary running watch all winter. Then a couple of weeks ago there was a major update that changed the watch display and added a stopwatch for non-GPS activity tracking among other updates.

Upon installing the updates my display began acting weird, switching off, rebooting, and so on. Eventually it just stopped displaying or responding.

I set it aside and just used my Garmin FR-10 … but it bothered me because (a) I really liked it (b) it forced me to carry my phone on my runs and (c) I had recommended it so heartily.

So this week I started trying to dig deeper, including how to do a hard reset … and the procedure was to just remove the battery, give it a couple of minutes and then replace it.

Hmmm … replace the battery.

So yeah, I figured why not just CHANGE the battery?!? Of course first I did just take and put back the same battery and confirmed that nothing happened. New battery? BAM – everything was back.

So the ‘at least one year’ battery lasted less than 5 months – but the good news is that everything is back and functioning fine!

3. Garmin VivoFit First Thoughts

One thing I got Lisa for Mother’s Day was a Garmin Vivofit, which you can get from Amazon for $129.99. The Vivofit is similar to the Polar Loop (Megan had a review of the Loop), Jawbone Up, and so on – they are meant to be worn all the time to track your daily activity. Given how much I have loved my Garmin, I decided to give the Vivofit a chance.

Cool stuff:
– Tracks activities such as steps, etc.
– Sleep tracker
– Customize goals, challenges, etc.
– ‘Nag’ reminders to move
– Wireless sync

After a couple of days of continuous wear Lisa had a small reaction on her wrist (to the surprise of no one who knows her – she reacts to the ‘Livestrong’ style bands as well), so she only tracks alternate nights sleeping.

We have used the Vivofit along with Runkeeper (and last night also the FR-15) and they are all great for tracking steps and approximate distance. The Vivofit is also

4. Beware of Online Pace Calculators

As I get ready to run shorter races this year, naturally I start thinking about times – the last time I ran anything less than a half marathon, I still weighed over 200lbs and was really just starting my running journey. So I need to find a basis for comparison – and started looking online. What I found was an article at Active.com about why I shouldn’t be so quick to trust those pace calculators:

Using a half-marathon time to predict a 5K time becomes problematic because the race-specific training for these distances is so different. For instance, when you prepare for a half marathon, your training should include long runs and threshold runs, which are key workouts to improve fitness, but they’re not the 6 x 1,000m with 400m recovery workouts you should complete to get ready for a 5K. This type of workout does two things. First, it gets you grooving at race pace, and, for many runners, 5K race pace feels frenetic because it’s faster than their easy, long run and threshold pace.

I totally get what they are saying, which brings me to my last topic …

5. How Do I Run a 5k?

I have been dancing around it a little bit, but in the spirit of honesty and directness I talked about earlier this week I have to say – I am more scared about running a 5K than I am about running a marathon!

Ugh – I know that sounds ridiculous and stupid, especially since I haven’t run fewer than 4 miles on a normal run since April 2012, but let me explain.

So here is the thing – I have no desire to hit the track, do sprints and other things like that. Maybe I will, but my core desire is still to just go out every morning for my run, and to work on the 5K strategy ‘on the side’. I know things like tapering, fueling and so on don’t play into it … but I really don’t know how to approach pre-race fueling either.

I have an 8k and 5k coming up – and while I am honestly not worried about getting a PR in either, I have no idea on what I should set for a target time, how I should approach them (just go out fast and try to hand on, start slowly and build, even-pace?) … just no clues.

Any thoughts for me as I start to get ready for these races?

What are your weekend plans? What race distance scares you?

New Run Gear is Fun Gear

While taking a few days off and seeming to be running around at least as much as on normal days with various things the kids have going, I have still managed to get my runs in every day except for Thanksgiving. Every day this week – except for Monday, but that is a different subject for another post – has been ~25 – 30F with 5-10MPH winds, which is really pretty nice weather for a winter run.

This week has also brought me some cool new running gear. These will all be reviewed for Gear Diary, but I will get into detail here as well. Here is what is in the picture:

Magellan Echo: basically this just acts as a display for an iPhone app like MapMyRun. You pair up with your iPhone (Android coming later) over Bluetooth Smart and then when you go for a run the watch displays your stats just like a normal GPS watch, and your phone will chime in with your stats based on settings you establish with the running app.

Polar RC3 GPS: Polar is best known for heart-rate training monitors, and this is their first GPS watch. They call it a fitness tracking computer, and that is pretty accurate – it very quickly links up to the heart rate monitor and internal GPS is solid. And it displays tons of information. This is a complex device, and it outputs everything to Polarpersonaltrainer.com so you can keep track of things.

Polar H2 Heart Rate Monitor: you strap this to your chest (pre-moistened for best signal) and get your device to pair up over bluetooth, and you are good to go!

I have only done a few runs with the Polar GPS and heart rate monitor, and found that it works pretty well – I had to moisten the H2 sensor more after the first run as I found the signal was erratic until I got past a mile (in other words, until I was sweaty enough). Today was my first run with the Echo – and I think it is a really smart move. It offloads the GPS to the phone, the tracking to the app, and simply acts as a smart monitor. I didn’t look at it too much because I had gloves and long-sleeves on, but when I did it was easy to read the display.

Do you have any fun new tech you’re playing with?