Hauling BOOTY!

So Taber got a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch for his birthday and on Saturday he was nice enough to let me try it out! HOLY SMOKES! That thing is dang awesome! Our old Garmin told you your speed and distance based on a foot pod, so it wasn't always 100% accurate. It also didn't show mile splits, maps, or overall average pace unless you calculated it yourself. So yeah, I was pretty pumped to run with real satellite tracking.

I decided to do the route that I trained for my half marathon on. It has a really nasty hill that goes up about 114 feet in elevation over a maybe a .2 mile distance. I've only been able to run the whole thing a couple times. Anyway, on Saturday I wanted to see how fast I could run 6 miles so I was going for speed and I vowed I wouldn't walk that hill.

I took off pretty fast and finished my first mile in 8:32 min. It was so cool having the watch beep and show me my average pace on each mile. Mile 2 was 8:24, and then I tackled mile 3 which included the nasty hill. I was huffing and puffing but I made it to the top without stopping and it felt so awesome!! I thought I was going super slow but my pace was 8:40 for that mile so not too bad. Mile 4 included coming back DOWN the hill and I did it in 7:58. Mile 5 was 8:21, Mile 6 was 8:31. My finishing time was 50 min 31 seconds for an overall average pace of 8:24 per mile!!

I felt pretty awesome the whole time and really think the cross training I've been doing has made a difference on my speed and ability to take on the hills. I've been running 3 days a week and doing an hour of strength training the other 3 days, (don't work out on Sundays) and it's making a difference. If I want to run a 25 minute 5k I need to average an 8:03 minute pace. That's pretty fast but I think I'm on the right track! I'm looking at a race in 2 weeks. We'll see how it goes!