Oh yeah I have a duathlon & the magic of my Garmin

Workout: Speed session consisting of 3 x (1 x 1200, 1 x 400).  Weather was perfect.  Shin splints were quiet.  They know their place.

I don't have much time to write this evening, seeing as I got home late and have to be up early to do a brick workout.  Yeah, it seems that I kind of forgot I have a duathlon on Sunday (3 mile run, 13 mile bike, 3 mile run), so I have to do some rearranging of the ol' workout schedule this week.  So instead of my week looking like this:

Tuesday : Speed
Wednesday : 6 miles easy
Thursday: 8.5 mile tempo (UGH)
Friday: Rest (Ha!  That's code for "weights" and "biking")
Saturday: Long run
Sunday: Cross training


It is now going to look like this:

Tuesday: Speed
Wednesday: 10 miles on the bike, 3 mile run (better not be farting around tomorrow morning, eh?)
Thursday: 5 mile tempo in the form  of a 4th of July race in downtown Rockford (7 miles with warm up and cool down before and after the race)
Friday: Long run
Saturday: Rest (OK, this really means "rest.")
Sunday: Duathon!

I just can't skip a long run.  Not during marathon training. I am a moron.  But a moron that loves dangling close to the edge of injury!

As long as we're talking about injuries, I thought I would get one this morning during my speed session because I was a) wearing new shoes and b) running fast and c) forgot to wear my calf sleeves.  But I didn't.  My legs felt rather nice afterwards, and I am digging those Saucony Shadow Genesis shoes for speed work. Light and bouncy, they are, and they don't feel like a ton of shoe.

But what I liked the most was what my Garmin was doing.  It was bossing me around, but in a much more assertive manner.  That's because I actually programmed it ahead of time with the speed workout I was going to do on Garmin Connect, and then sent the workout to my device. Now, I thought I would totally screw this up, but all I had to do this morning was hit "Do Workout" and I was off and running (literally).  My watch told me when to warm up, when to do my intervals, and when to cool down.  It also kept reminding me that I was running much faster than my pace zone, but I got good at ignoring that incessant little chime.

But what I realized after I uploaded the workout to Garmin Connect afterwards was that, if you program the workout ahead of time, you get split times you can actually use:

I walked my recoveries.  Don't judge me.

My Garmin.  It is magical.

This along with the 50 degree weather we had this morning almost made up for all of the times I ran in the snow and single-digit wind chills this winter.

Almost.