Happy Monday!
I decided to 1. try out a few things with my existing Garmin 2. order a new Garmin. My old Garmin was purchased in 2019 and is a model that originates from Nov. 2017. So basically, it's over 8 years old in the tech world. It doesn't look like a dinosaur but it is. I wore it all day after yesterday's walk, charged it overnight, put it on the moment I got out of bed, and started the GPS signal search pretty much right away. Unlike yesterday, it found the signal in less than a minute...meaning I "should" have gotten accurate data today.
Some fun little tidbits...assuming it's accurate.
1. My distance mapping using OnTheGo may have been shorting me by a few tenths of a mile. I went my standard route today and came in at 6.14 vs. 6.10.
2. There's a saying in the running world about the first mile being a liar. This seems to hold true for power walking as well. I felt reasonably speedy in mile 1 but my avg pace was clocked at 15:35. I pushed self doubt aside and figured it had to be the issue. Mile 2 was an improvement at 15:04. Mile 3, I jumped up to 13:49. By mile 5, my average pace was 12:25. I really need to test this out on the new watch, but if this is true...I am much speedier than I thought.
3. In the same vein, my average pace was 14:00 flat and my average moving pace was 13.58. I'm pretty good about promptly stopping my watch if I need to stop (traffic, etc.) but that short lag has to do with the little stoppages where I did not stop my watch. All in all, this is all faster than I thought I was.
4. Maybe it's a bit of a pacing cheat, but I do go into a sprint if I have to cross a busy street. It's such a small fraction of my time out there, but it's still funny to see my best pace being a 6:56 minute mile... for all of a few seconds!
5. If my old watch is functioning properly, I could just return the new one but I think I am better off passing it down to DD17. Not that running is her primary but I'm sure she could benefit from the pace data and other metrics. As a walker, where pacing could really mean being swept due to time overage, a reliable tool on my wrist would be best.
6. I pushed the entire time like this was a race effort. The time when I got home and the distance I know I traveled confirmed that I was legitimately "fast" today. So, whatever the watch had to say, I know my effort was more than it's been.
*Please also know that I understand that everyone goes at their own pace and we're all just doing what we can. I'm just sharing the numbers because the potential positive truth of this is kind of shocking myself. If you could see me from a year ago or when I was still recovering from cutting open my ankle/heel in 2024, you'd really get an appreciation for how far I've come.
I only took one pic for you guys this morning. I had to jump off the trail for a moment because of a flock of teenage cross country boys were dominating the path and I just did not feel like forcing them to yield. So, I took this while they flocked by...
