Friday, April 23, 2010

Temperamental Girlfriends and Garmins


What a manic week it's been. It's been work, work and more work and interspersed with the work there's been all the emotional fallout of my middle son and his rocky relationship with his girlfriend.

Honestly, when I decided 21 years ago to have another child I did not realise I should have gone back to uni to get a degree in psychology. Counseling is not something that I've trained for and it's not something that I'm particularly good at. I've decided that even if I feel inadequate, all I have to really do is listen and do things to take some of his other loads off his shoulders - things like making his lunch or tidying up his room or even taking him out for breakfast like I did today.

Our breakfast out came after my long run this morning. It was a fairly good run, I think. I've got no proper stats from my Garmin because it started to rain in the last 3 k's and my Garmin gets a bit precious when it's raining. The bezel seems to be over-sensitive and it flicks from one screen to another and won't let me stop the timer. Of course this all could be avoided if I locked the bezel but I always forget and by the time I remember it's too late.

The Garmin was not the only thing that played up because of the rain. I wasn't wearing my cap (because it wasn't supposed to rain. I'd checked the weather radar before I left home) so the rain got in my eyes. I suffer from dry eye and when water gets in them they sting and I can't keep them open. I tried to keep running for a bit but I had to have one fully shut and the other only partially open and when I couldn't keep the open one open any more I had to swap eyes. Then I couldn't keep either eye open - it's hard to run in a straight line with both eyes shut. So I gave up and walked a bit, trying to wipe my tears with my sodden singlet. I would have paused my Garmin at this point had it not been so temperamental so all my stats after 18k are wrong. What I do know is that I ran 21.5k at an average of 5.30/k for the first 18k and I'm happy with that.

I've experimented with wearing my compression tights after some of my runs this week. (I'm wearing them ATM and feeling like a sausage) It's made a huge difference to my recovery. My legs feel so much fresher for the next run. I've only got capri length ones so I'm now in the market for some long ones so my calves get the same benefit as my hamstrings and quads.

4 comments:

  1. My Garmin completely pooped on me after the Redding marathon. SUPER ANNOYING.

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  2. Before I had to replace my 305 Garmin I did a lot of soul searching. I loved the looks of 405 but finally decided on 310xt because it does not have that annoying bezel and is waterproof. But boy, it is one big brick. No way one can use it as a watch.

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  3. Garmin is always a good help. Garmin and i-pod together are a terrible "weapon". However I like to run under the rain, don't you?

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  4. Great job on the run! Sounds like you made a smart call cutting it short ... not safe to be running when you can barely see!

    Go figure... I DID wear my cap today because it was supposed to rain, but it didn't end up raining. I hate wearing it but it does help keep the rain off my face.

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