Tools of the Trade

In the good ol' days people would just throw on a pair of techni-colored running shoes and run until it hurt, then keep running some more. Movies such as "Chariots of Fire" and "Prefontaine" are always good for inspiration. But the world today is different, full of gizmos and gadgets to help optimize every facet of our lives. And running hasn't escaped this trend.

Introducing the Garmin 405 GPS and heart rate monitor. Yeah, I'm a little bit of a technoholic and when I saw that this device could map out my runs, track my heart rate and output everything in a cool little graph for analysis I just couldn't resist.

I was very impressed when trying it out for the first time on my run today. It gave me that chart above detailing pace, heart rate, and even an elevation profile (it was a pretty flat run). It also allows you to plot out your run on Google Earth and the accuracy is pretty amazing, I can see all the way down to where I crossed streets. Which means I can post maps of some my favorite runs, at least the ones that don't give step by step directions ot my house...


The image at the top gives a pretty good picture of the shape I'm in right now and we can use this to judge improvements in the future. I averaged an 8:07 over 6.6 miles which comes out to about 1/4 of the 26.2 miles in a marathon. As can be seen from my heart-rate, it wasn't necessarily the easiest run for me either. Those two dips in the heart rate line show where I stopped to tie my shoe for the first one and where I stopped to stretch at the halfway point for the second. In order to get a C on my previous grading scale I'm going to need to average better than 7:15 per mile for four times as long. Clearly there's a lot of work to do over the next 14 weeks.