Running Chick

I talked to my PT the other week and she gave me the go-ahead to move all my runs outdoors. Yay! Just one week earlier, I renewed my gym membership for three months. Doh! Oh well, it'll be nice to fall back on the treadmill if the weather gets out of hand.

I’m also supposed to start slowly weaning myself off of the mp3 tickety-ticks to see if I can hold my cadence at 174.  I pondered how I could do that without my mp3, then decided to see if Garmin made a footpod to track cadence. Turns out they do! Say hello to the Garmin Footpod.

My first impression was that it was bigger than I thought it was going to be. According to the manual, it’s 42 mm x 10 mm (1.6 inches x .4 inches), so I guess that’s not all that big. It’s smaller than the face on the Garmin 305, for what it’s worth.

There’s a clip on the back that gets woven through the laces. The clip seemed fairly tight & secure, so I didn’t have any fears about it falling off once it got fastened on.

Here’s a side view. It does look rather large, doesn’t it?

Setup was easy - added it to my Forerunner 305, give it a minute to pair, then walk start walking around. Presto, cadence!

I took it for a spin last night, all anxious to see how accurate it was and I used my mp3 to I could make sure I was staying on pace. I’m supposed to keep my strides no lower than 87 (it measures strides on one foot, so half of 174), which is what the footpod recorded for the majority of my run. Sometimes, however, it seems like it’d lose it’s connection and the cadence would be reading in the low 50s (note the dips) even though I had not changed my stride. I’m not sure what that was all about. It also stayed in place and I didn’t even notice it on my shoe.

I’ll have to take it on a few more runs to see if I want to toss the mp3 in favor of the footpod so the jury’s still out.

In other news, HOLY COW IT’S HOT OUTSIDE. High 80s, 90s, 100s.  Did I move to Arizona and nobody told me? Sheesh.  This damn heat even forced me to get out of bed before work and go running. Can you imagine! Josh is working his way through the Couch to 5k running program, and he decided that there was no way in hell he was running in 90 degree weather after work, so we were on the Nara Trail at 06:00 on Tuesday morning working our way through his session (Wk 2, workout 1).  I believe it was 70 and muggy as heck outside. I’m glad we were only out for 30 minutes. After work, I had to get in my regular session, so we headed out to McLain Park in the hopes it would be cooler. It wasn’t. I ran through the park (holy quagmire of trailers and tents) and then jumped in the lake.

It was cold.

I could only go forward an inch or two at a time before I was finally deep enough for it to not matter any more.

It felt good though, I can’t remember the last time I was swimming in Lake Superior.