Gadgets at the ready

Every good project needs a gadget. "Sharp minds need sharp tools", I once heard someone (Rockoff) say.

So, I've fired up the Timex Ironman watch I bought on a whim while on my recent holiday to the US. I can hear Pete groaning as I type this ;). Here we go:



The time is wrong. That's because it seems to use the GPS to establish the time and at 11pm I'm too lazy to go outside and try to establish a GPS connection. This watch is *way* too complicated ;). I messed about with the buttons but I barely figured out anything. I'm going to need to RTFM.

I did manage to get one additional fitness data point from it: resting heart rate = 78 bpm. One the one hand, that seems high to me, but on the other hand I recently had an episode of tachycardia after my nose surgery and so I'm happier with 78 for now. It's a starting point.

I've scoured the neighbourhood and mapped out a couple of paths near home. One is conveniently precisely 1km from outside my door and back and it's fairly flat. Well, it's a bit of a downhill for the first 500m, then I turn and come back uphill, but the hill is quite slight.

The other goes from near my door and makes a full circle around the neighbourhood and measures at about 800m. It starts with a much steeper hill (quite steep), then goes down a small hill, up about the same and then all downhill for the rest.

I'm going to figure out how to use these paths in my training. First step is tomorrow: the training plan suggests I run an easy 1km, so I can use the first path for that purpose. I've not really figured out enough of the Timex yet to make good use of it, but I'll do the 1km anyway.