Three Things Thursday: Streak, Stats, Wind

1. Run Streak: My run streak is back. Through Wednesday I'd run every day of the year, which means my streak is at 15 and going strong. I plan on running Thursday (just how long remains to be seen) as well as short runs on Friday and Saturday before running 20 on Sunday. Even though it's only been two weeks I can already feel the benefits of having run every day. My legs feel sharp, ready to run, and I can hit my faster paces quicker and seemingly without as much effort. Now, I can't quite stay at those faster paces for long stretches yet but that's the next step. I'm confident though that as the streak grows longer I'll be able to do that.

2. Playtime With the 405: I finally got two things working on my new toy, the Garmin Forerunner 405. I uploaded the software and can now see my runs online. There's some cool data available, such as elevation, paces, etc. This is the elevation for my 18-mile run on Jan 6.

Pretty nifty stuff. I was able to see things like that before when I was using the MiCoach app on my iPhone but lately it had been giving me problems, and the iPhone never had enough juice to get through runs of 12 or more (well, at least this phone I have now which is a bit older). I like having to just look at my wrist to see things and I like that it has three screens set to things that I want to see. For instance, one screen shows me my distance, time and current pace, the other shows me the time, overall pace and distance and the third shows me my current pace, heart rate and overall time. Each screen has the first item I listed in a big display and the other two smaller. But there are so many other options I can have and I might test more out now that I have it all up and running. So excited now to go on these longer runs to see and analyze my data.

3. Wind: It's been so windy out here lately. I ran in it, well, the last few days. Monday was the worst. I ran six miles and the first three were with the wind at my back. The last three were into the wind. So guess what? The first three miles were all under 10 minutes and the last three were all over 10 minutes. Hmmm... I even tried to avoid that by trying to run harder on the last three miles and I still wasn't able to get under 10 minutes. I wasn't necessarily trying for a speed workout, my legs weren't ready for it, but still. I will take rain over the wind, I will take heat (within reason) over the wind, I will take cold over the wind. I've never run in really cold weather before (like in 20 degree weather) but the wind just ruins everything. You can't get into a rhythm, you can't accurately gauge your paces, you can't get comfortable, you can't protect yourself against it. The wind will just do with you as it pleases. It's still windy today but hopefully I can do my best to minimize the damage. Probably not but I can hope.