My workouts

Thursday, August 17, 2006

The one-man race

Sunday morning I was prepped and ready for the Garlic Festival 10K run. The butterflies were flittering though my stomach and I think I woke up about an hour before I planned. I donned my race gear and header over to North Planes, which is about 15 minutes or so from my place near the Hillsboro Airport. I was worried about finding a decent place to part, as always. When I approached the race area though… something was amiss. There was no one. No hoard of cars… no runners warming up… nothing. At first I thought… maybe it is just a small race… maybe there isn’t going to be a hoard of runners… but alas… the race was on Saturday.

What to do with all that adrenalin? I had already decided that I would run 8:30 miles for race… so I headed back to the Hillsboro Airport, and parked. I decided to try a new feature of my Forerunner 201… the training assistant or something like that. You set the pace and the distance, and the watch tells you if you are ahead or behind your goal. It worked… well… awesome. I was really surprised. I hit my pace target exactly, and I always knew how I was doing. I am definitely going to keep using that setting. I have new faith in my Forerunner now. I also realized it does autolaps… but you’d have to be looking at the watch when you hit a lap to know what the last time was. I think it beeps… but for someone with a hearing loss like me… it doesn’t do any good. I wish it would show you your last lap time. Ah well. I still like the watch though.

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