Windy splits!

As I have mentioned in the past I am using the FIRST training plan, specifically a 10k plan, to build up my fitness from having had two months off. Unusually due to the requirement for only three runs a week I do not have the typical “Long run” at the weekend. Friday night is now my long tempo run; this is the longest run of the week. Most of the three runs have you either running overspeed; faster than race pace or over distance; longer than race distance. Tonight’s run was a prescribed 7m at Long Tempo pace, the goal range for this to reach my goal of a 3:00 marathon is 6:50 - 6:55, right now I am way off pace but that’s what I am aiming for.

I headed to my faux track; the beach path, got changed and started. The run was going well although I went out too fast. I was off pace (as expected) so my Garmin chimed at me every minute to “speed up”…hey give me a break is my usual response. I hit the three mile turnaround point and was hit in the face with a blast of wind; that’s the thing with a tail wind you only notice it when you turnaround!

Head down I ran the three miles back and then did a loop for the last mile to cool down jumped in my car and headed home. I had programmed my Garmin and when I synced with GTC I realized I had messed up the splits and was faced with the not so useful data readout of:

Not really useful if you want to analyze your splits! This is where Sportracks comes in handy as it will break out the mile splits. After I uploaded my data into SportTracks and could really see where I took the wind full frontal, around Mile 5, no negative splits for me;


Suffice to say I *heart* SportTracks, it’s feature rich, great for Garmin or non Garmin users and best of all free (or you can make a development donation)! For a great write up on some of the features on SportsTrack check out this post by DCRainmaker.

And so now with exception of a tomorrow’s ride here ends Week 2 so far so good; although my knee is a little sore. I tweaked my Buckeye Outdoors blog sidebar which also syncs to SportTracks and in fact to Twitter too, to show you my exact workouts and comments if you’re interested.

Good luck to all my friends running at CIM, Las Vegas or the North Face Endurance (or any I have missed) races this weekend!