2020 Summary

 

2,020 miles for 2020!

Shittiest run of the year and it has to be the one that crossed the 2,020-mile mark for the year. 2 long fricking hours of nonstop rain, and I was already burned out so my pace was crap. At least I made it back in one piece. 

"Leak free" my ass

If the hydration pack bladder is leak free, why the hell did I have to line the edges with gorilla tape and have to wrap the damn thing with a zip loc bag? Of course, the bag is 6 months old, and it has been used 6 days a week, but it's always been kept inside of the hydration pack, no sharp edges to poke at it, and I never let it go dry, so where did the side leaks come from? 

That said, kudos on whoever came with the design for the hose hook up, you can actually unhook the hose without emptying the bag, which is handy as hell. 

Sort of like a blood sacrifice run, except it's a tiny boo boo and the only bruises were on my pride

Landed on my ass on wet mulch, sort of a tiny little detour at a paved trail junction. Didn't hurt, all I got was a tiny scratch on my left knee, but it was unsettling to find myself sitting on the wet ground, in the dark since the headlight fell off my cap. Also a nice second adrenaline shot near Reston Hospital, courtesy of Karen. Not even us runners are safe from Karen nowadays. 

When your Memorial day run decides that it wants a blood sacrifice

Sigh.

Yesterday I tripped on a tiny clump of asphalt on an otherwise pristine stretch of road. Skinned my right knee and elbow, and bruised the pad of my left hand. Ran another 6+ miles with no pain except stinging from the scratches. I'm taking a precautionary day off, but I'm grateful that all I got was some road rash. 

As to why I tripped? I suspect that I either looked away courtesy of road hypnosis, or I was distracted thinking about the next stop to switch music. 

Another blood sacrifice run

I am sure some may have noticed that every few months I'll title one of my runs with "Blood Sacrifice Run." What that actually means is that I tripped/slipped and fell on my face/ass/whatever. I am part of a group of superstitious runners that believe that the gods demand blood to be spilled as a sacrifice, that these periodic accidents are what keep us "safe" on the long haul. Or something.And yea, that's EXACTLY what I look like whenever I trip and fall. It isn't pretty.

Today I had one of these falls where I actually rolled properly, so my hands/arms did not take the brunt of the impact. No blood was spilled but the bruised ego qualifies as a blood sacrifice. 

AND... I discovered something cool that I had forgotten.

My current GPS watch is the Garmin Forerunner 645, the non-music version. The damn thing detected that I fell down, and immediately sent Ivette Vera an email telling her that I had an "incident," and the time and location. It even sent her a map pin to locate me. All of this was achieved in a split-second, and it even asked me if I wanted to cancel it and report I was OK. I need reading glasses, so I missed that prompt. By the time I was able to fish out my travel reading glasses (I keep a pair of ThinOptics in a keychain case) it showed me a new prompt to allow me to report that I was OK.

It's a handy feature, which is offered at no charge, it just uses your phone to forward the emergency notification. You can even use it as a panic button, there's a way to trigger it by holding the light button for at least three seconds.

Good night, sweet prince

I noticed that my Garmin Forerunner 235 had been out of extended warranty/drops and spills coverage for over 6 months. This of course made me paranoid enough that I went ahead and replaced it with a Garmin Forerunner 645, the non-music version. There is no chance in hell I'll step out of the door without my phone, so there's no need to pay another $50 for the "M" version of the 645.

My 235 was a complete rock star. It kept me safe and measured my performance through more than 9,000 miles. It never had a charge failure, never lost a tracked activity, and whatever dings it took were all absorbed by the glass shield, which I removed before I took this picture. The back looks like shit, it's obvious that 2.5 years of extended wear were more than what the paint in the back of the case could stand, but the optical reader was still pristine, and the watch itself was 100% functional. I did change the strap when the locking loop fell off the old one (later I found that the strap was starting to dry rot, so it was going to need replacement anyway) and I had to replace its charge/sync cable since one of the spring-loaded contact pins wasn't doing its job. Except for those two, and maybe sync delays from Strava every six months, it was absolutely trouble-free.

Pairing my current Garmin foot pod, and my new Wahoo speed/cadence sensors for the indoor bike was painless. I probably spent more time trying to figure out how to update its firmware than what it took to set up everything else. Even if this is not the model with on-board music it still has a phone media widget*, something I couldn't get to work on my old 235. I even got to try Garmin Pay today, it worked perfectly.

I also appreciate how little was changed in how the devices operate. Sure, there are new menus, and a at least one new button command, but everything just "works" the same.

I *was* going to post a link to the eBay auction to the old 235, but the damn thing sold as I was typing this post.

* The music control widget is broken as of firmware 6.4, it stops your run whenever you try to skip a song. Sigh.