Lies, damn lies and Garmins

Look how fast I didn't run!

Today's run (street): 3.4 miles

I was in meetings all day on Tuesday and didn't get a chance to do a run. I did cover a lot of ground on foot, so that should count for something. Along the way I noticed many marathon tourists (after all these years I can easily spot them) enjoying the sights prior to running the race on Sunday. A couple of my meetings were held near Time Square, where sports demonstrations publicizing the Sochi Olympics were going on. It was a mob scene, but fun to watch.

I had no city meetings today, so I resumed my run schedule this morning. I've been running with my foot pod so that I can capture my cadence, but I still use the Garmin's GPS to measure my mileage. Due to that, I haven't bothered to calibrate the foot pod for distance. When I fire up the Garmin, it detects the foot pod and asks whether I'm running indoors. If I say yes, it will turn off the GPS radio and use the foot pod for measurement instead.

Today I went through the routine and when it looked like the signal had locked in, I was on my way. I hadn't gone half a mile before the Garmin chirped saying I'd reached my first mile. I figured that the GPS signal must not have actually acquired before I started and the watch was working off the (uncalibrated) foot pod. I didn't care much, because I always Gmap my run to get exact distance.

The watch did switch to GPS mode shortly after that, and my remaining splits were in line with my normal pacing. While I would have liked to meet the performance that the Garmin recorded for today's run, I must admit to a far less impressive pace in the mid-9:00 range. So the Garmin lied, but I'll forgive it. If I could run five minute first miles for real, I might actually break an 8:00 pace on my training runs.