Some ranting about GPS watches and gratuitous animal pictures.

I felt pretty good this morning after my 15 miler yesterday, better than I've felt after running that type of distance in a long time.  This resulted in less mental whining than normally happens when I clean the house on Sunday and I was a little more motivated to do my upper body weight workout than I normally am.  It also helped that I had on my awesome tie-dye head scarfy thing and that large dog saw fit to horn in on my post-workout selfie.

It's not love for me.  It's love for my sweat.

And then small dog got in on the act.

Kids.  They never stay still for pictures.

Anyway, I did a three-fer today for a workout: Cathe's Chest, Triceps, and Shoulders and her Back, Biceps, and Shoulders workouts from her Ripped with HiiT series.  This was so I could get a complete upper-body workout and to generally torture my upper body since I tortured my lower body yesterday.  These days I record my strength workouts (along with every other type of workout I do) on my Garmin Vivoactive HR because, you know, if you don't record it you can't blog about it because it never really happened.  But I remember way back when I started working out, there were no watches that could do that.  I had to, like, do math and stuff to figure out how many calories I burned.

And we all know doing math when you don't have to is a big fat no-no.  At least it is in my world.

So when GPS sports watches started to be able to record things that weren't outdoor running, cycling, or swimming, I was all in.  Heck, I was all in from the whole "GPS" thing so I didn't have to manually map out a route before every run.  However, I've come to see that while these sports watches have a lot going for them, there are some drawbacks:

1) Sometimes I look at my GPS watch to check my pace during a run more than I actually look at the road.
2) Waiting for satellite signal.....complete bummer.
3) The time it takes to find that "just right" watch face to express my individuality and uniqueness.
4) When you finally get a satellite signal, hear the beep, and then take off on your run--completely forgetting to actually start the run on your watch.
5) The fact that nothing else contains nickel in the watch except for the watch band clasp, making it nearly impossible for me to actually wear a watch without huge red blisters on my wrists because, you know nickel allergy.

I'll spare you pictures of that last one, but it's the one that ticks me off the most about these fitness watches.  I pay all that money for this awesome little piece of technology that I pay more attention to than my loved ones at times, and, like some of my less-loved ones, it returns that attention with a big oozing red rash. 

Buh.  I'm about 3 seconds away from just super-gluing the actual device to my wrist and dispensing of wrist-bands altogether.  And small dog is 1 second away from telling me to suck it up, buttercup, and end this post:

Please make this post stop.

Bummed out wrist-rash learning time:

• Cathe's upper-body workouts from her Ripped with HiiT series are fast becoming my faves again.  All my muscles are feeling that workout right now.
• If you're ever running in downtown Chicago by the mag mile and all it's tall, tall buildings, your GPS watch is also completely useless.
• These nickel-induced wrist rashes suck, and must stop.
• Female cat is too busy being crazy to care about this post at all.

Too busy with crazy to care.

Tomorrow's workout:  Speed is here!  A nice weird little ladder is on tap.