A Journey to My First Marathon Part 11

I have been using Runmeter as my apps on my IPhone 4S to track my distance, time and pace. But carrying an IPhone around is really not a convenient thing to do. You have to either wear it on a armband or you have to put in a pocket. Both ways are not convenient to keep looking at it. However, I was using the Runmeter for a couple of months and have been looking at the Garmin Forerunner 610, the touch screen GPS watch.

So I look it up from the internet but it cost more than RM1,200 which I am not willing to fork out at this time. Just too big an investment. Until one day, I received the Rewards Catalogue from Citibank for 2012 and I saw that one of the item is the Garmin Forerunner 610. I have to fastrack and pay about RM500 to redeem it as I do not have enough points. The watch came a few days later together with a heart rate monitor and it was a right decision to purchase the GPS watch. It is much convenient to track your pace and distance as compared to the IPhone apps. And when it rains carrying an IPhone can be pretty inconvenient.

The other main convenience of the Garmin GPS watch is that you can easily start and stop the watch which is an important feature. There are a lot of features for this watch which I have not fully explore like virtual partner, interval training..and many more. It is great watch for running. And it has Garmin Connect which will store your run data on the internet.

Screen capture of the Garmin Connect on my run

I have once done a comparison of the reading of my Garmin watch and the Runmeter to see the discrepancies.  There is a slight discrepancies between the distance and the the pace. 

Currently, I uses both the Garmin watch for the running and the Runmeter to keep my running log. The running log is useful for me to review my runs over a period of time. My personal opinion is that the GPS watch is really a useful piece of equipment if you are doing long distance running.

My next discovery...the new earbuds for running...To be continued.....

A Journey to My First Marathon Part 5

Coming to the next problem..how to track my running distance on the road? I know there are those Garmin watches. The GPS watch which can track your distance and your pace which I have seen in magazines before. But I do not intend to get one at the moment because they are kind of pricey. What happen if I gave up running after two months. Another white elephant !

Since I got an IPhone, the logical thing is look for an app on that. There is an app for everything even to track your constipation or diarrhea. (Wonder if there is one?) ITunes store again...and there are actually a few and some are free. One commonly used and it is free is MapMyRun. I read through a few reviews and decided on Runmeter which cost USD2.99. It is really a comprehensive app which can track your route, time and distances. You can create multiple route and key them in manually if you want to. For treadmill runs I have to key them manually so I can track my run time and distance. The website for Runmeter is http://www.abvio.com/runmeter.

Screen Capture of the Runmeter

A great piece of app and I am ready for my run on Sunday. But I have to carry my IPhone for my run. The good part is the IPhone is like a Swiss army knife who has everything. The problem is that it is not small and light. It is not comfortable running with a normal waist pouch because it will bounce up and down. This will drive me crazy. The good thing about the IPhone is all my running songs are also there. Then I started to look at my running shorts and at last I found one who has a pocket right at the centre near the spine area and big enough for an IPhone. So I am ready to run !

Got my first long distance run logged in at 1:20mins for a 9.3km run with an average pace of 8.36mins/km. Pretty happy with the first long run and tracking the distance. The next long run has to be 11km and will be more than 1:20 mins. Drinking water become an issue !! It is difficult to run long distance without drinking water. You run the risk of dehydration.

Next...Have to consult my friend on this...Or Just dig through the Internet again...

To be continued....