Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

Bullied By The Garmin

by Russell Turner - 13:00 on 14 August 2018

Marathon training, late-night gigging, and recovering from both have kept me busy for the last couple of weeks, hence a disinclination to blog. The next Chatterbox should also have been started; I’ll begin work tomorrow.

Today, with just under nine weeks until t’ Yorkshire Marathon, my task was to run/walk for two hours and cover 8-10 miles. I did the same last week, and on the face of it with identical results: 10 miles covered at an average pace of 11:33min/mile last week, 11:35 this week. But all is not as it appears.

Last week, on the flat Cromarty road, my effort varied wildly between too-fast runs and slow walks. Afterwards, I was chastised by the Garmin (even my watch tells me off) for an ‘overreaching’ training effort which saw 25% of the run in the threshold zone (fast) and 4% in the maximum zone (stupidly fast).

I can accept constructive criticism. Today, on a slightly hillier course because Newhall Bridge is being rebuilt and the Cromarty road out of reach, I did my best to keep to a less fluctuating pace. The results were impressive: 75% of the run was in the aerobic zone, where it should be; only 5% was in the threshold zone, and that at the lower end; none was in the maximum zone.

I’d like to report that after two hours I was fresh and eager for more, unlike last week, but fear of forecast wind and rain had led me to wear a heavier, long-sleeved top, so I finished tired and covered in sweat. At least the rain held off until I returned to The Rural Retreat.

T' Yorkshire Marathon – less than nine weeks to go.

The Garmin was still dissatisfied. It downgraded my training effort to ‘improving’ (I’d been ‘highly improving’ in most of the previous runs) and sneeringly dismissed my activity as being of merely ‘moderate intensity’, rather than the ‘vigorous intensity’ I’ve seen in the past.

However, it still has high hopes for me. The built-in Race Predictor (a function not available on my old Garmin) forecasts a marathon finish time of 4:01:14. I think either it’s working on insufficient data or its clockwork is wound too tight.

Add your comment

Your Name


Your Email (only if you are happy to have it on the site)


Your Comment - no HTML or weblinks


Enter this number in the box below and click Send - why?Unfortunately we have to do this to prevent the system being swamped by automated spam