SIOR and I hit the Massapequa trail

Well Preserved this morning

Happy Bastille Day! Despite meeting my distance target for June (goal was 65 miles and I actually recorded 66.84, but who's counting?), this is the first post I've written in July. I now have more time to post and I'm running a lot more, but there isn't a lot to write about when every run is pretty much the same. Today I had the pleasure of running again with SIOR who accommodated my mediocre speed and actually had me pacing at a level I haven't seen in a number of months, More on that further below.

Back to the monthly mileage goal for a minute. I measure my runs using Gmaps to get a more accurate distance number than the Garmin records. This is because GPS watches have a technical limitation with the way they track vectors around corners and sometimes on straight roads. You can improve the accuracy by increasing the number of GPS "pings" per minute. It would be an easy fix, but battery life would be terrible. I've figured out that my watch generally under counts distance by about 2% so (technically) I probably ran 68.17 miles in June. But again, who's counting?

Today was not about distance or speed, although I ultimately covered 3.4 miles and paced better than my average. It was about getting in an easy run and having good old conversation. I haven't been able to keep up with the speedy Runsketeers in the past year, but SIOR made it easy for me.

We met at the Massapequa Preserve trail head at 7:30 AM with a plan to do a three mile out and back. After the usual game of Marco Polo (SIOR was in the big lot, I was in the small lot) we found each other. I had a big day Saturday up in Putnam County at Cold Spring and Bear Mountain and wasn't feeling great. I told SIOR that I'd understand if she wanted to run her pace but she was having none of that and we took off together.

This looks like a lot more than 3 miles

SIOR claimed she also wasn't feeling great and we stopped from time to time and walked. That may be true, but I think she may have done that because 12 minute paces hurt her knees. Whatever the reason, today was a throwback to the "early" Runsketeer days when I was better able to hold my own in these group runs. Some pretty funny conversations used to happen back then, with me and SIOR verbally jabbing and counter punching and TPP laughing and encouraging it all.

According to my Garmin, me and SIOR covered 2.6 miles actually running. Since we turned around at the 2 mile mark (SIOR correct me if I'm wrong) I suspect that we ran more than that. After looking at the GPS map that cut out a lot of our route and my step count on my Garmin, I'm sure we covered at least three, if not more. Here's one example of GPS malfeasance:

I don't remember running across the water

No matter the actual distance, we enjoyed it. We saw a big dog chilling in a stream and lots of other runners on the trail. I felt 100% better after my run than before it. Then there was only one thing left to do: coffee at Starbucks! You'd think after all that trail conversation we would have covered every  possible topic. But you don't know us. The thing that always amuses me when the Runsketeers get together is how little we actually talk about running. And that's just fine with me.

I wanted to record at least three miles today so I ran over to the nearby middle school and did 4 x 160 meter repeats and ran back home. That added another .8 miles to today's total and finished off my week with 16.5 miles. According to Garmin Connect, I'm at 36.26 miles for July which they say is 48% of of 70 miles. But my math (backed up by a calculator) says that's actually 51.8%. So what gives Garmin? Either way, I expect to reach 70, even with GPS under counting and Garmin Connect's "math problem."