This kid is serious. I mean, look at his watch!

After a couple years of half-fast and half-serious marathon training/racing I find that it's time for a change in approach.

I've set some pretty ambitious goals for this year's Marine Corp. Marathon and in order to reach them, I will need to be whole-serious. I'm aiming to slice 51 minutes off of last year's time. Bringing me from a meh 4:36:and change to a solid 3:45. To reach these goals I find that I'm going to need some help (and a few more speed workouts!).

Keeping track of pace has been hit or miss with my current sports watch. I tend not to know the mile markers on my runs and ultimately just shoot for an accurate total run time then figure out the average after the fact. This really doesn't offer me the insight into my performance over time that I'm hoping for. And, the buttons on the watch have become a bit dodgy. They tend to only work if you press them at a funny angle with a hefty amount of pressure. I'd like to think that this makes my watch unique and special. But really it's just annoying.


After reading a couple of reviews, talking with fellow Fun Runners, and obsessively comparing models and pricing I opted to get a Garmin Forerunner 405 last week. *rapture*

Now I've only had a chance to take it with me on a couple of runs and bike rides. But in that short span it's been pretty enlightening.

I've never seen the big allure to GPS watches, until now. It's the right tool for the job.

Need For Speed

The unofficial training season for Marine Corps has begun which means I start including hills, 800s, and mile repeats on a weekly rotation. This week marks the end of the first series and I have concluded that all hurt like hell and make a world of difference. Already, I feel so much stronger and faster - plus I have the results to back it up.

Thanks to my incredibly awesome GPS watch (Garmin Forerunner 405) I have all the stats on my latest runs including average pace, elevation, calories, distance, max speed... the list goes on. Here is a link to my run on Tuesday, which was by far the fastest I've ever run this route. (**sidenote** Garmin Connect is the website that wirelessly collects the data from the GPS watch. The info and stats it collects is mind boggling to me and I just learned how to use it on Wednesday after having the watch since December. If you click on player at the top right you can actually watch how I ran this course). This is only one of a few runs where I've beaten my pr by a landslide. It's an awesome feeling. Plus, I really enjoy doing hills/speedwork. I had a coach who used to tell me before matches to love the hurt, to love the fight. It actually is beautiful in a way to struggle and then prevail. Think of all the sports movies in the world and the team or athlete always goes through that type of transformation.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day thank goodness since we've seen nothing but rain the past two days. I've got a 14 mile run on the Mount Vernon Trail and I'm excited to see what I can do in the next few months.