Resisting the cult of the new

About a year and a half ago, my wife gave me a Garmin Forerunner 220 for my birthday. Before that, I had just relied on Runkeeper on my smartphone (which necessitated getting a new smartphone when my Galaxy Nexus's GPS started to become erratic and unreliable). Once I experienced the advantages of a GPS watch -- much faster GPS lock, more accurate tracking -- I was sold. I've been super-satisfied with the 220.

Today, I took my dad to Road Runner Sports to look at GPS watches. For his purposes, Runkeeper would be perfectly adequate, but he doesn't want to run with a phone. We looked at the Forerunner 25, 230, and 235, and then I came home to do some research -- i.e., reading DC Rainmaker's reviews. It didn't take long to determine that the 25 would be the most cost-effective option for my dad. (He mostly runs laps at a non-standard track at the local elementary school.) I don't think he would use the fancier features on the 230/235.

However, as I read DC Rainmaker's review of those higher-end watches, I started thinking, hey, those sound like pretty cool features.... I use my Galaxy S5's step counting app, but it would be nice not to be tethered constantly to it, which the 230 or 235 would allow with their activity trackers. (That recent study about cellphones and cancer seems pretty questionable, as this column argues, but it wouldn't hurt to be cautious.) And the 235 has a heart rate monitor based on the wrist pulse, meaning no need for an uncomfortable chest strap.

I began to toy with the idea of offering my 220 to my dad (clearing all the settings, of course), and then getting a 235 for myself.

"Hey, wasn't that a present from Mommy?" my pre-teen son asked.

"Um, yeah," I answered sheepishly.

My wife was non-plussed. (She's so awesome!) "Go ahead and get it if you like," she said.

I got maybe 75 percent of the way toward pulling the trigger by ordering from Amazon, but I read some more reviews/comparisons. The third post in this thread from Let's Run included the following suggestion:

The GPS function of the 230 and 235 are both spot on, so tracking your run is fine. between the two I would get the 230. Less S*** to fail on you. better yet, save money, buy a Forerunner 220 (best running watch by Garmin currently in my opinion)

That threw some cold water on my idea. I did some more reading and it seems that the optical reader in the 235 is pretty new technology, and hence good but not great at picking up the HR. It would make more sense to wait for Garmin to work out all the kinks before adopting it.

The thrill of getting something new faded, and I told my dad that I thought the Forerunner 25 was the best choice for him. If/when my 220 dies, I'll upgrade, but until then, I'll stick with old reliable.

Racing sans GPS

I don't have a GPS watch (although I'm sort of eyeing the Garmin Forerunner 15), but I do run outside with my smartphone and RunKeeper for GPS tracking. I set RunKeeper to give audio cues for time/distance/average pace every 2 minutes. It's not as good as being able to look quickly for up-to-date average pacing, but even in a 5K race, I'm going to get 10 separate pace indicators.

Unfortunately, my smartphone's GPS decided to take a vacation during my Fourth of July 5K race. It was a clear, sunny day, so there shouldn't have been any obstruction to the satellites, and anyway, even on our often overcast days in the Pacific Northwest, I haven't had to wait too long. I suppose I could've started RunKeeper earlier, just to have it ready, but I didn't. And so when the race started, RunKeeper was still looking "searching" for the GPS satellites.

Now, the race was chip-timed, so I suppose I could've just stood there while a mass of people started around me, waiting waiting waiting . . . but my son was running with me. I guess I could've told him to get going, that I would catch up - after all, I was going to run at my own pace anyway. But this idea didn't occur to me at the time, and anyway, I think the public shame of just standing there, staring at my smartphone screen would've been too much to endure.

That is how I came to run my first race without GPS since a long time ago. Worse yet, because I was flustered at this turn of events, I didn't even start my digital watch timer, although I did manage shortly afterward to glance at the time, so I was able to estimate the approximate elapsed time of the race.

It wasn't terrible, and I felt like I paced myself fairly evenly, although of course I can't be too sure. I think I hit the halfway point around 10:30 or so, and I finished at 21:13, so if my estimates were right, I was a little slower in the second half. But the second half also had a slight elevation gain, compared to the elevation loss in the first half.

The major downside to not having those 2 minute pacing indicators was that I didn't have an accurate sense of whether I could meet my primary goal of finishing in under 21 minutes, which would require an average pace of just over 6:40 minutes/mile. If Ms. RunKeeper had been calling out, "Average pace six minutes forty-nine seconds per mile" at the 16 minute mark, I would've known that I needed to step it up. On the other hand, it's not like I was lollygagging the last half mile of the race. I had just caught up to the fastest female runner, and that was motivation enough to keep going.

I'm still having some issues with the smartphone GPS; looks like I might need to replace it when my upgrade period arrives.

More wildlife sightings while running

Look closely: there's a deer in the middle of the picture!

One of the allures of running outside when you live in a part of the city/suburb with plenty of native forests is the possibility of coming across some semi-exotic wildlife (i.e., not just your typical chipmunks, squirrels, banana slugs).

My favorite encounter is still the coyote that I see on rare occasions (at least, I think it's the same one). More common are deer. In fact, more than once, we've had deer visit our backyard.

Anyway, on my long run today, I was chugging along, listening to Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star through Audible.com and enjoying the sunshine, when all of a sudden I had a quick rustling noise in front of me. I stopped to look around, pausing RunKeeper as well, and about ten feet away up on a little hill was a good-sized deer! Apparently I'd startled it and sent it scurrying away from me.

(It's interesting that the deer would be startled by a person; you'd think that living around here, it would be more or less used to people. This wasn't trail running. I was on a road, admittedly not a heavily trafficked one, but with homes on both sides.)

It stared at me as I called up the camera on my smartphone to take a picture. Don't run away, I thought to myself while waiting for the app to launch. It stayed still. Perhaps it was thinking of me as a T-rex: "if you don't move, it can't see you." (Not true, by the way.) Picture in hand, I resumed RunKeeper and got back to my running. Alas, no more wildlife for the rest of that run, other than some roadkill (three birds).

Coyote chasing

While going for an easy run this morning, I once again spotted a coyote* and once again was too far away and too slow in switching my smartphone to camera mode to get a picture. (This is just a stock photo, sadly.) The coyote was trotting ahead of me on the descending portion of my run, which was on a two-lane paved road alongside a preserved forest. Then he stopped and turned his head back when he sensed me, and stared at me for a long moment, giving me momentary hope that I could close the distance and take a picture.

* For all I know, it's the same coyote that I've seen before.

Having seen enough of me, he resumed his downhill trot with greater alacrity and then darted right down a steep trail into the forest. At this point, the wise thing to do probably would've been to keep running, but while I am in my mid-forties, I sometimes still have the reckless enthusiasm of a twentysomething, so I paused RunKeeper and ventured down the trail slowly.

Alas, the coyote was nowhere to be seen. The trees were dense enough that a small creature like a coyote could easily disappear like that.

Disappointed again with my lack of pictorial proof, I trudged back up the trail, got to the main road, resumed RunKeeper, and continued my run. I'm not sure why coyotes intrigue me so much. I've seen deer several times without feeling anywhere near the same sense of missed opportunity when I fail to get a picture.

Anyway, it's one of the cool things about living in the Pacific Northwest. Having grown up in Southern California, I obviously didn't see this kind of North America wildlife.

Long run motivation

Napping was at the top of the list of what I wanted to do this morning. Going for a long run was much farther down the list. I mean, I love being a runner, and I love the feeling of satisfaction that comes with a good running workout, but sometimes I have to motivate myself to go for a run.

This is apparently common for runners.

One way to get myself up for a long run is to go to the gym, get on the treadmill, start streaming my latest binge-watching obsession, and press "Start." However, while "The Wire" is good, it just hasn't been as compulsively addictive for me as, say, "The Shield" or "Justified." Plus, the weather outside looked divine for running: temperature in the low 60s, lots of cloud cover with isolated patches of blue sky, just a gentle breeze for circulation.

So I followed the suggestion of putting on running clothes: light blue Patagonia wool/polyester blend tech shirt, black tech shorts, and merino wool socks, SPF 50 sunblock.*

* I dislike putting on sunblock, because I've read that oxybenzone - the primary ingredient in many sunblocks - is pretty nasty stuff. I go out of my way to buy sunblocks that rely on physical barriers, as opposed to chemical ones, meaning either titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. Physical barrier sunblocks are apt to leave white streaks and they're not that easy to clean off, even in the shower; often I have to scrape a bunch of it off.

It did get me closer to the door, which got me close to my running shoes, which I put on. All that was left was headphones and firing up the Audible app on my smartphone (I'm about halfway through Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star right now) and then my trusty companion RunKeeper.

A good audiobook makes a big difference for me. When I run races, I don't listen to anything except RunKeeper's periodic audio cues about time, distance, and average pace. When I do speed workouts, I sometimes don't listen to anything. But when I go on long runs, I like to listen to audiobooks (or music, but I prefer audiobooks). I've discovered that some books I liked in print make not so good audiobooks, and other books I liked in print make really good audiobooks. I'm not sure why, exactly. It's tempting to blame (or credit) the narrator, but I don't think that's it. I like David Baldacci's thrillers, but when I listened to The Whole Truth, I found that a lot of the writing seemed corny in a way that didn't appear that way on the printed page. Pandora's Star, on the other hand, has been crackling good, even though I've already read it before and hence shouldn't be surprised about anything.

Anyway, 11.25 miles later, I was done running. It had been a mild day, mostly cloudy with isolated patches of blue skies, and temperatures in the low 60s. Really a perfect day for running. Long run of the week in the books. Glad I got out there, even if napping is so awesome.

Making the most of opportunities

There were plenty of running races in town this weekend, including a big half marathon. I'd strongly considered running the 10K race that was part of the half marathon, but Mr. Mom duties kept me from doing so. In the early afternoon, it alternately poured rain or streamed sunshine through the clouds. Then it was time to go to the airport to pick my wife up, and when we got home, I had a small window of time to go running before dinner. Yea!

The gym that I belong to has a lot of good things, but the hours of operation are not one of those. Sunday hours are noon to 6 p.m. Still, I knew I could get in a 3-4 mile run before closing. Five miles would've been ideal, since I could watch an entire episode of "Justified" in that distance, but my window wasn't that long.

On the other hand, the skies looked like they were clearing. Sort of. Running outside would also save me about 10 minutes of round-trip transit time (driving up the hill to the gym, parking, walking in, and the reverse).

Outside it was. Because of the clouds or maybe because my smartphone is getting old, it took a while to get a GPS lock for RunKeeper. (Yes, sometimes I feel like a dork standing outside, dressed in running clothes, holding my smartphone up to the sky in a vain attempt to speed up the GPS satellitel acquisition....)

For entertainment, I was listening to the audiobook of Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star, which is the first giant book in a space opera series. (I've read the entire series but that was a while ago, and listening is a different experience.)

I started with a comfortable but fast pace, basically between 7:30 to 8:00 depending on the slope of the hills. (I live in a hilly part of town, so unless I run on the track, it's impossible to have a flat run; hence, even pacing is also near impossible, and instead, it's more of even effort.) The early part of the out-and-back route was what I'd call rolling hills. At the 1.15 mile mark, I began the sharpest downslope, a drop of almost 200 feet in altitude over about 2/3 of a mile.

You want to know what running downhill does for your speed? That 2/3 of a mile was entirely sub-7:00, with parts registering (per RunKeeper) as fast as sub-6:20, which is faster than my current 5K pace, but it wasn't more than a 3 on a 1-5 effort scale.

Of course, just before 2 miles, the bill came due for that downhill section, as I had to head back up the same hill. Apart from one tough segment where I slowed to a near 9:00 pace, I managed to keep my pace under 8:00 even while ascending.

The mile splits ended looking like this:

mile 1: 7:38 with -33 feet climb

mile 2: 7:01 with -133 feet climb

mile 3: 7:43 with 157 feet climb

I got home and figured I had maybe 10 more minutes of workout time (factoring in showering time, etc.) before dinner, and I considered tacking on an easy mile or so. But laziness won out, and I headed inside.

I had just enough time to take off my running shoes and get a big glass of ice water before it started to pour outside. Not the usual kind of misty drizzle we get in the Pacific Northwest eight months of the year, but really hard stuff that's usually accompanied by crashing thunder and dazzling lightning. Whew!

Note to self: next time, no how matter how short of a planned run, if it looks at all like there might be rain, bring a ziplock bag to protect smartphone, just in case.

Smartphones versus fitness wearables?

I have a running watch that's waterproof and can track up to 40 different intervals, but it doesn't have GPS. I've periodically thought about getting a Garmin, but inevitably, I ask myself, why? If I run on a treadmill, I know exactly how far and how long I went, and if I run on a track, I don't need GPS. On all other road runs, I carry my smartphone and use RunKeeper.

So I guess it's not surprising at all to read about the impending demise of Nike's Fuelband and the troubles ahead for other fitness wearables. I mean, I'm not exactly in the vanguard of tech gadget adoption, but I am one of those semi-obsessed runners who has about as much running clothing as non-running clothing. To the extent I'm somewhat representative of a swath of fairly dedicated runners, the fact that I'm not rushing to get any of these devices is not a good sign.

To be sure, I'm not saying that the smartphone/RunKeeper combination is a perfect substitute for a GPS watch or a fitness tracker. I have RunKeeper set up to give the most frequent audio cues about time/distance/average pace, which is every 1/4 mile and every 5 minutes. In a 5K race, that means I get 12 updates from the mileage and (at my pace) four more from the time. That's not bad, but if I want to check my average pace at some other point, I'd have to get pass my screen lock, which isn't trivial when you're running at near maxVO2. I could see how a watch or fitness tracker would offer some incremental advantage there.

But enough to be worth buying one . . . when that money could be used toward more race entry fees, or tech shirts, or shoes?