My new toy arrived this week but I have not been able to have a good play with it as by the time I managed to get a chance to use it, the weather had turned too Baltic to go out and do anything at -6C after dark at the end of the week and then the snow came. Taking a leaf out of Pini's book I have acquired a GPS watch to track my runs and monitor my fitness and training. Up till now I have been using the Runkeeper app on my iPhone to record my runs. I think that Runkeeper is a cracking website and fitness tracking product, however the tracking on my iPhone is absolute pants.
According to the iPhone's sensors, if I cycle in to Basingstoke I will have done either less than a mile or more than 70 as the GPRS does not seem to work with anything resembling accuracy and it plots a route on straight lines from the waypoints it randomly selects, so according to the recorded route I have zig-zagged here and there between points several miles apart. As a consequence I have tended to enter the routes manually and reconciled them with the time from that recorded by the iPhone. The other problem with the Runkeeper - and any other GPRS enabled app on the phone, it saps the battery of life very quickly, to the point I doubt whether it would be able to last a full marathon.
What I have gone for is a Garmin Forerunner 405CX which doesn't seem too chunky. I've changed the strap on it for the fabric velcro one already for greater comfort and ease of use, plus I think it looks better that way. Hopefully this will give me far greater accuracy in recording routes, and the added benefit is Runkeeper accepts data from Garmin GPS devices, so my training can be downloaded straight in to Runkeeper.
As mentioned, this week has been pretty flat for getting out and swimming or cycling with the weather although I did manage to get out and do the 'Lasham Loop' again and without punctures this time. Whilst it was pretty chilly, this time I wore a beanie and an extra top so my head and core remained warm, although there's not much you can do to keep your feet warm!
Having said that, in the swimming i managed to get through 10 laps before a minute's rest... Once I build-up to managing a straight-through 20 lap swim then I can work on my breathing & technique. The way I see it, as soon as I am sure of comfortably swimming the 400m needed for a sprint, then I will refine how I do it, even if this is against the perceived wisdom and coaching from those at Fleet Triathlon club!
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