First trip out with my new toy

aka Wizard, hmmm very original. I've seen people name their Garmins, I just thought it was a bit silly then when I was setting it all up on the computer it asked for a name, um, eek, I dunno .... wizard!

I still have some reading and playing to do - I thought I'd read the instructions quite well and knew what buttons to push to get it started, but for some reason got the virtual racer on the screen - I just wanted the time and pace really, so still some nutting out to do. It did work though - yay! It beeped every 1km so I could look then to see what our pace was.

Deirdre and I ran the Campbell Mill run, so it was never going to be consistent good pace, it is off road, muddy and rocky and hilly - a really good training run though :) I have to say I was impressed with the GPS ability, there are some parts of the run that are through quite dense bush and it was fine ... so definitely success there. The next big test for it will be next weekend when I run the Waitarere Half Marathon, its not called "The Great Forest" run for nothing!

Anyway, back to our run and my new mate "Wizard" - I couldn't help giggling when I noticed the tiny little person standing with his hands on knees "resting", while I waited for Deirdre to finish climbing a gate and stretching out her calf muscles, I thought that was pretty cute.

The biggest problem I had with it was when I got back, I noticed about half way through it had switched to "time" mode and thought maybe I'd lost the GPS signal, but it continued beeping each km so obviously not. But when we got back to the car I pressed "stop" and then tried the reset button (like I'd read to finish off that run) and it didn't seem to do anything. It obviously hadn't done anything because as I drove off it beeped another km done! I need to have another read and play to make sure I get that right.

I got home and downloaded the data and after a bit of playing around and reading the instructions, I finally got that right and managed to upload the run (yay me!) ... I love all that data, it is my sort of heaven! (poor Deirdre just rolled her eyes and laughed at me ;)). I can see me really enjoying being able to analyse everything (yeah, what a geek LOL).

Hmmm I was hoping I might be able to copy pictures over, but maybe not. Might just be too technical for me.

I do like the fact it gives you total running time, taking out the stops ... although I've always felt that is cheating a bit, in a race if you stop, its counted! But today we stopped a couple of times to climb gates, talk with Deirdre's friend who biked it (it is such an "out of the way" course, that the friend doesn't actually bike with us, but likes to know we're out there if anything happens).

So total time (including stretching afterwards by the car, talking and then hopping in the car before it beeped at me again!) was 1:45:18, total running time was 1:35:55. Total k's were 14.04 - although that was with the little drive before it beeped! LOL

Splits? It would take too long to type out, they're not great on paper - but if I could get the elevation map to copy somehow you'd see why, even the downhill is really steep (and really rocky), so slow going, you can't speed down - too dangerous!

Anyway, good test for the new wizard, and a good training run ... so all good (except one of my nice new sparkling white shoes is covered in mud :( )