Running without Garmin

At the beginning of this month, my Garmin Forerunner broke. The company is fixing it for free, which is nice, and is also the least they can do considering I paid $100 for it only six months ago. Anyway, since then I’ve been running without the Forerunner and logging my distances by running routes that I’ve previously measured. I don’t really mind running without it. I’m not training for a specific race and don’t need to hit or hold a certain pace. The only thing I really miss about the Forerunner is not being able to freelance. Before, if I wanted to turn, I turned and didn’t worry about where I went. I knew the Forerunner would calculate my distance. Now, I feel that I need to only run routes that I’ve measured before, so I know how far I’ve run. I guess what I really need to do is cut the strings and just run where I want. I can figure my average pace on sections that I’ve measured before or just estimate based on effort and time. However, it’s tough to go back when you’ve had more advanced technology. I don’t really know what I’ll do once the Forerunner is back, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t use it for more than a couple of runs per week. It’s just not necessary for an easy run or a recovery run.

This week is off to a good start. I ran just over 11 miles on Sunday, 7.5 miles on Monday, and just over 5 miles on Tuesday. I’m easily on my way to reaching my goal of 50 miles this week. Next week, I’ll run a 15-mile long run on Sunday and climb over 60 for the week. I’m also going to move away from automatically taking a day off each week. I can easily run at lunch. We have locker rooms, showers and a nice path around the island (one loop is 1.3 miles). I’ll probably take a day off every two or three weeks and slowly get to were I’m running without a day off – unless my body needs one or my life gets in the way.