It’s About Time, or ‘I’m Pacing Myself, Sergeant.’

For me, running has never really been about time. Oh, sure, I have on occasion set a personal goal – finish the Bix faster than the previous year, complete my first half marathon in under 2 hours 40 minutes – but I don’t track my pace and I don’t push myself for speed, only distance. And me pushing distance means surpassing 4 or 5 miles. I do try to finish a race at a dash – at least my version of a dash. 

Well, last week I was given a Nike+ Sportwatch GPS by my co-worker Nick. He’d received two as gifts and didn’t like them, so he offered me one. Nice guy. My new favorite reporter. Just kidding. Well, my first attempt to use the watch last week was a fail. I didn’t stand still long enough for TomTom to pick up the satellite signal. After Nick explained that trick to me I stood like a stone this morning until signal acquisition, then I took off.

Let me tell you the thing is pretty cool and pretty distracting. And I can see where it can be either and inspiration, as it was for me today, or a real downer if you’re just not feeling it and a glance at the readout confirms your slowness and short distance.

As I said, though, my main interest in the watch was to have a quicker method of mapping my route and checking my distance. So I set out this morning on a known route to confirm the accuracy of the GPS. I knew immediately it was spot on. OK, it registered 4.6 miles even and MapMyRun puts it at 4.64, but that’s with me tracing the route on the map with my computer cursor, so it’s not exact.

The basic readout shows distance in big numbers and mile pace in smaller numbers above. I was satisfied with my pokey 10:30 pace until I hit the County 10 bridge and dropped to 9:46 at 2.7 miles. Then it was like, hey, can I get a little faster? That’s when I started glancing at the watch more and more. And my pace fluctuated back to the 10-minute mark and then down to 9:39 and back up and then down to 9:26 and eventually 9:03 and a flat 9:00. I was psyched!

But those numbers weren’t cumulative. I guess that should have been obvious, but I was a little high, ya know? My stride felt longer, steadier, more driven, so I thought maybe I’d really rocked it. Well, true to form, my 9:00-minute pace came at the 4.56 mile mark as I poured on the “speed” for the final yards. So I was a little disappointed to discover my overall pace was 10:16, which really isn’t bad, though I’ve done much better on several of my 5K races. But I’m getting older and slower.

That watch, though, is awesome. Post-run I plugged it into a USB port and uploaded the information to the Nike+ website, where, after a frustrating fight with the login screen, I was treated to a wealth of statistics: distance, elevation variance, total time, average pace, fastest mile, fastest kilometer, calories burned, longest run (time), farthest run and Nike Fuel (which I haven’t investigated yet). Another chart shows split times and change mile to mile.

And the kick-ass part is I got to watch it create the map, which is color-coded to show where you burned the most calories. Pretty sweet. And I just now discovered you can get a satellite view that overlays the map on, you guessed it, the actual satellite image of the territory. How flippin’ cool is that? Then, when all is said and done, I was able to share my accomplishment with the world via Facebook (or Twitter, if I was a tweeter, which I’m not).

I hope I don’t become addicted to pacing, but this thing is fun right now.

Today’s Stats (Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013)

Temp: 48 degrees F

Distance: 4.6 miles

Weekly Total: 4.6

Treasure: 1 ballpoint pen (Well Care)

iPod Playlist (Shuffle)

MariaMaria – Santana

Here, There and Everywhere – The Beatles

Any Time At All – The Beatles

With or Without You – U2

Mr. Bad Example (live) – Warren Zevon

I’llBelieve You When – Matchbox Twenty

Poor Poor Pitiful Me – Warren Zevon

Long May You Run – Neil Young

Lawyers, Guns and Money (live) – Warren Zevon

Anna Begins – Counting Crows

BornTo Run – Bruce Springsteen

Africa – Toto

GirlLike That – Matchbox Twenty