How to Save a Long Run from an Unruly Garmin

I had grand plans for my long run this weekend. Plans that involved proving to myself that I don’t need fast boys or race day adrenaline to knock out a good long run. Plans that included starting 30-60 seconds slower than my Marathon Goal Pace (MGP) (something I’m not so hot at thanks to my excited legs), and then picking up the last 3-4 miles at MGP.

Little did I know, my Garmin had a plan of its own, and that plan was all about trying to derail my plans. Thanks Garmin, love you too.  But in spite of its best efforts to ruin my run, I managed to salvage my LR and have an even better day than I’d originally planned. Nice try, G, better luck next time.

I like to call what happened next my“How to salvage a long run from an unruly garmin without really trying” foolproof plan. Personally, I think it’s got mad Broadway potential.

Step one: Embrace Denial.

I knew from about 18 strides in (1:01 pace? Thanks for the confidence booster, G, but last I checked I hadn’t developed the ability to move faster than humanly possible), and confirmed another 26 strides in (32:08 pace? I can crawl faster than that), that my garmin was not going to be playing fair.

More often than not, I will let a broken, dead, or finicky garmin delay or even ruin my run, especially when I have pace goals in mind (as I did this weekend). I’ll see that blank screen or impossible paces beeping at me and turn right back inside to try again later. I may be the least Type A runner alive, but I’m still 100 percent data dependent.

But after finally getting out the door and braving the terrifying gusts of wind and flakes of snow (yup, flakes of snow. 73 degrees one day and snowing the next? This “winter” is something else) I was not willing to abandon the run, so I trusted that my garmin would get it’s shit together and start behaving soon.  Denial? Check.

If you squint really hard you can see fat flakes of the white stuff. Promise.

Step Two: Accidentally Choose an Out and Back Route

I don’t know about where you people live, but here in DC, there were beastly winds whipping through the region all day. I thought about my normal long run route, which involves a few bridges, and quickly abandoned that plan in favor of a wooded trail through Rock Creek Park, one of my favorite triathlon training spots, that I actually had not set foot nor tire in since IMLP training last summer.

My logic pretty much went as follows: in the park there are trees, trees are big, maybe they’ll block wind, bridges definitely won’t block wind, trees win.

So I set out for RCP, maintaining an 8:05ish pace, which was exactly within the 30-60 seconds over MGP range I wanted at at the start of my run. My garmin kept doing its best to prove it had gone off the deep end, 20 minute mile pace for one tenth of a mile, followed by 2 minutes per mile the next. My legs were still dragging a bit after my less than stellar week, and I started to think about scrapping my plan for MGP miles and just running long and slow. If I couldn’t know for sure how fast I was running, why bother trying to run fast. (PS how did we function before the advent of garmins and how can we ensure that we never revert to such a dark time?)

And then I reached my turnaround spot, 7.2 miles into the run and my Garmin stopped working completely. Satellites totally lost. Sweet.

Step Three: Revise Plan, In another accidental move: uncover motivation and a fresh pair of legs

I stood there for a few minutes. Raining some F bombs on my watch and the stupid satellites that were playing hide and seek in the middle of my run. After a few minutes of expletive heavy waiting, it was clear that the satellites were going to best my pathetic garmin in this match. So, I looked at my watch, realized I was equipped with a total time, a distance, and a back of an out and back. These are things I can work with. So, instead of 3-4 miles at MGP, I decided to go for a negative split and figure out my approximate pace when I got home. Game on.

This is when my legs decided to join the party. I don’t know if it was a momentary lapse in the killer head wind (emphasis on “momentary”, this wind was the magic wind that defied all rules of blowing in just one direction), the slightly downhill back portion of the out and back that I’d totally forgotten about in my months away from Rock Creek, or my need to prove that Yes Emily, You Can Finish a Long Run Strong on Your Own, but all of a sudden, my legs were my friend again.

The 7.2 miles back to my house were everything I’ve been missing in the last week of subpar running. As much as I will never in a million trillion billion years be willing to ditch my garmin, sometimes it feels so good and so much more natural to run with a naked wrist.

The best (/worst) part about trying to negative split with no garmin to help you along the way, is that you can’t let yourself give up with a mile or two to go. You know how sometimes you’ll be out on a tempo run, and maybe you’re supposed to do 5 miles, but you’re not really feeling it, so you stop at 4 and warm down for the last mile? And this all works out just fine and dandy if you’re wearing your trusty garmin because you’ve still got 4 splits confirming your tempo effort. Well, when you’re relying on a stopwatch and not a garmin, you don’t have this option. And I was feeling so good, I did not want to end the run and not have at least some kind of slightly accurate idea for what I did on my return trip. So in the last couple of miles, when I may have been otherwise tempted to cool down, I held the pace, and pushed to finish strong.

Out: 7.2 miles in 58:12 (8:05 pace)

Back: 7.2 miles in 52:35 (7:18 pace)

Negative Split success. Run not ruined, and arguably enhanced, by an unruly garmin.

I finished the run with a .5 mile cool down jog to my pilates studio where I proceeded to do an hour of very frigid and very hungry core work. While the idea of finishing my run with 60 minutes of stretchy, burn-so-good pilates seemed great at the time, my inability to leave myself a few minutes to go home and change into dry clothes and my refusal to wear anything but shorts for the rest of the winter made for some rather chilly pilates.

Couple that with post-long run hunger and I was counting down the minutes until the end of class. Note to self: next time, leave snacks and dry clothes at studio.

Happy Monday, friends! Let’s kick off the start of the work(out) week with some extra juicy sweating.