Saturday, May 10, 2008

toys and accidents

I boughts myself a new toy yesterday. Something I've been wanting for a long time. Something that I found onsale for about $100 less than I'd previously seen it on amazon. I bought myself a Garmin Forerunner 305 at REI. At $164.99, I couldn't pass it up. Before buying it, I did my research to figure out whether it was worth it to upgrade to the brand new Forerunner 405. While the 405 looks great, I decided to stick with the 305 for the price. The main upgrades for the 405 (which is about $200 more expensive for the model with a heartrate monitor) are its size and the fact that it connects to your laptop wirelessly. Now, as a girl with a pretty small wrist, the size difference really doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to be wearing either one as my "everyday" watch like some guys might. As far as weight goes, the 305 is less than an ounce heavier.

I love it. I've tracked two workouts so far (a 2.75 mile walk and a 3.39 mile run). I love being able to see exactly what my pace is. I love being able to see my heart rate. I love having an easy tracking system with motion based. I'm particularly proud to see that even with walk breaks my average moving speed (stopped at 2 lights) was 12:09 minute miles. That's awesome for me with the walk breaks. I'm super excited about the purchase and being able to just run and find out later what the distance was - especially with the multiple moves coming up. Its going to be great since I won't know the running route distances like I've known (well, been guessing, but guessing almost exactly right) my current favorite routes. I feel like the garmin gives me a lot more freedom.

On the accidents side - don't worry I wasn't involved - just watched in happen. As I approached a stop light in the park, I slowed down and was going to wait for the light to change. The runner on the other side of the street ran across to the median. The car that was on my side saw this other runner (I assume it was the other runner cause it was pretty clear I was stopping at the light) and stopped her car even though she had the green light. BAM - a bicyclist ran into the back of her car. Now, the biker was pretty pissed (he had some right to be - the car had the green light and stopped), but still, if the biker had been paying attention, he wouldn't have hit her. The car didn't really have many options; it could: (1) keep driving and hit the stupid runner who was crossing against the light, or (2) stop and let the runner go by. Clearly, stopping was the better option. If only the biker had been paying attention. As I ran off (after the light had changed), the driver and the biker were still engaged in an argument about how stupid the driver was. Fun stuff...

Guess now I know why bikers hate runners.

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