Shorter distance to cover this week (42 miles), but a couple of quality sessions (finally) after the drudgery of running at easy pace for five weeks. I also have to work around business travel, which despite only taking a relatively small chunk out of the week, invariably interferes with my “flow”.

It’s important not to add too many intensive sessions straight away, so I’m sticking to two tempo runs and another Lyme Park hilly run on Saturday. My midweek long run will be tomorrow (not really midweek) and with these dark winter evenings, I’ll miss the early evening park runs with the dog. We’ll make up for it on Saturday, Buffy.

Last week was a complete wash out. Never been so disappointed with my complete lack of commitment to a training schedule! Granted, there were a couple of days where it was less convenient than others, but there was a time when if it meant getting up at 5:30 to make sure the week’s mileage was completed, that was what happened.

I have committed to knocking some serious minutes off the appalling GNR time in September, so it’s time to knuckle down. This week’s mileage target MUST be hit. Thus begins the final week of Block 1. Next week it’s time for some quality.

Last week was a huge disappointment. No lack of effort or intention, just ill health and business travel conspiring against my running schedule. This kind of thing happens and you just have to put it behind you and move on.

This week’s target is 60 miles and, as ever 25% of the weekly mileage needs to be in the form of Sunday’s long run. So today, I psyched myself up for a fifteen miler – albeit at a very comfortable pace. The weather was lovely. A chill in the air (enough to wear gloves and the gimlet) but bright with an occasional appearance from the sun.

This is the penultimate week of 100% slow running and it will be great to add some quality sessions (hills, tempo and fartlek) to the mix the week after next. Tomorrow I’ll download, complete and send my entry for the Brass Monkey 1/2 Marathon in January. That’ll be a good incentive.

Up until Thursday evening, I felt on top of the world. During my long run, I swallowed a fly (common hazard for runners and not very vegan) and since then I’ve been pretty sick. I guess, given the lifestyle habits of a fly, a connection between said ingestion and shaking legs, fever and general uuurggghiness is entirely plausible.

Anyway, the top and bottom of this is that Saturday’s run was cancelled (I was in bed) and right now today’s is looking unlikely. Just as well that this is a step-back week and I’m supposed to be cutting my mileage in half.

The other thing which will impact on the schedule this week is a trip to Brighton and London on Wednesday / Thursday, so I’m trying to work my mileage around those days.

Delighted with the first week’s running. Didn’t quite manage to keep the heart rate at the desired level, but only 5bpm over which isn’t so bad really. Felt very comfortable at 9:40 (and so it should). I think the target for this week is to try to maintain – or perhaps even slightly improve on the average pace – whilst bringing the heart rate down to the 154 target (easy pace).

I’m looking to increase the mileage by 10 per cent this week, before a step back week next week. Step-back weeks will happen every third week. During a step-back week, mileage from the previous week is cut in half before proceeding to the next 10 per cent increase. Here’s the plan for week commencing 4th October.

With seventeen weeks until my next race, I want to bring the much referenced FOCUS to my training, so starting today, I’m embarking on a very prescriptive plan.

BLOCK 1

The next five weeks will be FOUNDATION (base) training. Lots of slow easy pace running with almost no “quality” sessions (hills, tempo, intervals, fartlek). My target is a minimum of 50 miles per week during Block 1 (step-back weeks excepted).

BLOCK 2

This will be followed by a QUALITY phase – six weeks of majority slow running with two or three quality sessions per week. These will be mainly hills and tempo sessions but by weeks five and six of this block, I may look to add one interval session per week.

BLOCK 3

The final block will be QUALITY and TAPER – four more weeks of quality running and a taper down over the last 10-14 days to race day.

So, my plan is to schedule each week on Sunday and add a comment to the post to say whether or not the day’s session(s) have been completed and how they went. The advantage of blogging it this way is that my site doesn’t become too running focused. Only one post per week about running.

All runs to be at EASY PACE (154bpm or lower)

It’s the worst case of “too little, too late” that I can remember. I was reading some of my earlier running posts and I’m shocked at how frequently I fail to heed my own advice.

What’s absolutely clear is that this year’s Great North Run is a write off. I’m disregarding my time and I’ll be perfectly happy to get around in two hours. Given that my PB of 1:32 was two years ago and that I really wanted to break 1:30 this year, that is a huge disappointment.

My plan now is to get an entry into the Brass Monkey (Jan 2010) and work hard on pace between now and then. In reality, there’s still insufficient time to train for a sub 1:30, but I must improve on the time I’m about to log for a half marathon.

All of that said, GNR is a wonderful event and I’m really looking forward to next weekend!

Garmin Connect Log

6.5m | 56:39 | 8:42 | 166bpm | Marathon Pace

I’ve just completed a lovely six mile run. My heart rate was around 5bpm slower than two days ago despite warmer weather and a faster pace. The sun was shining, there was a cool breeze, my daughter accompanied me on her bike. All good, right? Wrong.

So how can I be so furious as I write this post? How can all the perceived benefits of that run have evaporated so quickly?

Let me explain.

I’ve owned a Garmin Forerunner 305 watch for, I guess, a couple of years now. The 305 watch itself is fine. It’s quick to locate, lock on and retain connection to satellite signal and is extremely consistent in measuring the distance of a run. Despite looking like something from the 1970s with a screen the size of a small calculator or a wrist TV, it’s comfortable. The heart rate monitor is also accurate and I’ve had no problems with its connectivity to the watch.

What I have had MAJOR issues with is the websites which Garmin has half-heartedly developed and supported (despite a hefty subscription for access of around $100 per annum).

Garmin’s MotionBased (the predecessor to its Connect website) was, in my opinion, unbelievably poor. It was frequently unavailable, data transfers mysteriously failed and though support from the customer service team (Kathryn in particular) was well intentioned, it seemed clear that her obvious concern for customer experience was not one shared by Garmin’s CTO who allowed this to continue and continue.

A promised website replacement for all Forerunner 305 (and other Garmin customers) in Garmin Connect – which would offer many more features than MotionBased and much improved reliability – was delayed and delayed. It was finally launched around fifteen months late (for us), though customers of Garmin’s newer products such as the 405 were (understandably) given earlier access.

Rewind twelve months: Exasperated with Garmin’s MotionBased I finally accepted a refund and cancelled my subscription moving to the free iPhone application Runkeeper. Whilst not as accurate as Garmin, the developer (as I understand a sole trader at the time) managed to keep his site available and transferring run data was never an issue. The problem I had with Runkeeper was that I was reluctant to take my iPhone out in the rain and risk invalidating the warranty by getting rust on its connectors (something which the Apple Geniuses check for whenever you report a fault with an iPhone).

So, having checked and double checked for a go live date for Garmin Connect (and having not seeing one), I relented, trusting that after almost a year, Garmin would have fixed the availability and data transfer issues. I re-subscribed and the very first weekend, MotionBased fell over again. The site was not available. Kathryn kindly offered me a further full refund, but I gave Garmin the benefit of the doubt, hoping that I was just unlucky this time around.

Garmin Connect had still not been released at the time I re-subscribed and I waited patiently for it to arrive. When it finally did, I logged in anticipating that all my MotionBased horrors were finally at an end. How wrong could I be?

The Connect forums already seem to be filled with workarounds, trouble-shooting advice for users of Safari. “Delete Flip4Mac from your System Library Internet Plugins directory and try restarting Safari. Try using the manual upload instead of the automatic upload, etc etc.”

This from a company the size of Garmin with the developer resource it must have to hand! It is unforgivable. To deliver a site more than one year late with fundamental flaws is extremely sad.

What’s the problem, I mean specifically?

My issue is that despite downloading a new plugin for my hardware / software combination, despite subsequently following advice referred to above (delete this, restart that, etc) and quitting and restarting the watch, browsers (three different browsers – Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer), despite rebooting the computer and goodness knows what else, nine times out of ten, Garmin Connect insists that my MobileMe virtual drive is in fact my “Default Device”

On every occasion, the Forerunner 305 is clearly connected – again despite some very flaky brass or copper connectors on the back of the watch / cradle, which frequently don’t connect. This however appears to be unrelated since when these don’t work, the watch will not display the “Battery Charging in Progress” message. So it’s easy to see that the watch is docked. Just apparently not discoverable by Garmin Connect’s Communicator Plugin.

Garmin has now made it my mission to bring this to the attention of as many people as possible because I have finally lost all patience with its CTO and I don’t want others to share my experience. This is unacceptable. The features of Garmin Connect are hardly revolutionary. There are many free sites which allow me to upload data from a GPS device. It’s not rocket science.

It’s so disheartening to complete a 45 minute run and then spend as much time trying to upload the data. If it happened once or twice, it’d be forgivable. If I’d had to put up with it for a couple of months knowing that a fix was imminent, I’d be a little more relaxed. If it were free, well I’d try patiently to help the developers fix the bug. But this costs ~$100 per annum!

A year ago my Garmin forum posts were deleted. It seems my ranting was unjustified and my comments were unhelpful to other users. Moderating Twitter or Google’s search results will be a little more challenging:

Here’s a small selection from the last few days (updated 10 September 2009):

• @DianaRichter This @garminconnect software problem is killing my running high. Love garmin up 2 da point I can’t upload my runs. #Fail
• @Patmo and again the #garmin #forerunner doesn’t upload my recent activities. #fail
• @ScottAHamilton Unhappy that Garmin won’t repair my Forerunner 305 broken display. Instead offerred a replacement at above RRP. #garmin #fail
• @Coredumpster Garmin fail. Trying to download from 310. Slower than molasses. 22% complete, 40 minutes remaining. Really?! I’m glad they test this stuff.
• @johanvdk Garmin Connect is experiencing errors related to the recent upgrades and increased traffic. We apologize for the inconvenience. #fail
• @billdback Garmin connect is all screwed up. They make good hardware, but their software leaves something to be desired.
• @macmenco RT @garminconnect: Garmin Connect will be unavailable due to maintenance on Thursday, September 10, 2009 from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM CDT
• @billdback I’m annoyed right now. Garmin connect refuses to recognize the plug-in after installing 3x and my Iphone battery keeps draining. #fb

So @garminconnect, I guess somewhat antagonised by my public tweets, pointed me once again to customer service yesterday. Today, after another half hour trying to get the Connect site to transfer data from my connected Forerunner 305, I tried.

European support was closed by 5:30pm so I tried the North American number.

Seems I’m not alone. Either the support line is now as under-resourced as the technical department or lots of people are having “issues”. My estimated hold time: 35 minutes!

Right now, I have no option but to continue to post about my experiences here on the blog and on Twitter. It’ll take little time for the search engines to pick this up, I’m sure.

Running is great. Period. Pounding urban pavements is a fantastic release after a stressful day. Lyme Park runs at the weekend are better still, but you just can’t beat a rural setting, sunshine and hills to remind you why you lace up the trainers and sweat for an hour.

Today was wonderful. A quick jog with Elisa before breakfast followed by a 10k this afternoon (albeit a very slow one!). I never tire of the scenery here. And the challenge of the hills – which clearly impact on the average heart rate. That said, I wouldn’t describe my current level as peak fitness (!!)

Garmin Connect Log

6.1m | 54:03 | 8:52 | 174bpm | 10k Zone

Wanted to control today’s run and add the first quality session. Decided on 6.5m with a nice long warm up (15 minutes at easy pace) followed by 20 minutes at tempo and the remaining distance at easy pace.

We managed the warm up and tempo sections properly – although I miscalculated and we did an extra two and a half minutes in the threshold zone. What didn’t happen was a proper cool down. We slowed a little but didn’t get the heart rate back to 150 beats per minute.

6.5m | 57:02 | 8:45 | 164bpm | Tempo Pace

Garmin Connect Log

My silly fault. I decided to take up Danny’s challenge yesterday and give him a piggy back up one of the hills in Lyme Park (the gauntlet of “no way Dad” had been thrown down, so what could I do?). That, just before the eleven miler and after Peter’s Hill on Saturday meant my legs were somewhat “shot” today!

It doesn’t matter how many times I intend to do a recovery run, whenever I have a running partner, the pace is always quicker. I’m not assigning any blame here. It just happens. So, instead of 150bpm (easy pace), today’s run was at 161bpm (marathon pace).

But apart from the legs, it felt great and my return to normal breathing at the finish was almost instant. Despite the stats, my body’s telling me that I’m making good progress – and that’s what I’m listening to.

4m | 33:39 | 8:26 | 161bpm | Marathon Pace

Garmin Connect Log

Today’s run was similar to yesterday’s in so many ways. I felt like I was running at least 10 per cent faster than last week, that my heart rate was lower and that I’d made significant progress over the last seven days.

Now the facts: At other times in my life I may have found very it depressing that I ran today a few seconds slower than last week, despite cooler weather and a breeze. I’ll take a little consolation in the fact that my heart rate was lower at 157bpm.

One difference between this week and last week is that I didn’t take a drink with me today. Nor did I really hydrate during the day at all. Anyway, despite the harsh statistics, today felt fantastic – and that’s what counts.

11m | 1:39:32 | 9:08 | 157bpm | 82.0kg

Garmin Connect Log

Saturday means Lyme Park – or at least that’s my plan now. I want to try to do this hilly run each Saturday before Sunday’s long run.

My newly clipped running partner clearly felt much better for shedding so much extra weight and left me standing at every turn, climb, descent – in fact just about everywhere. I’d calculate that she covers twice the distance that I do and every run’s a fartlek for her. Impressive.

Very exhilarating run today. I felt completely energised when we got back to the car. The weather was fantastic, the scenery as beautiful as ever and the pace, perfect.

6m | 1:00:47 | 10:19 | 165bpm | Hilly Run

Garmin Connect Log

Still nowhere near tempo pace (7:12), but much quicker than yesterday’s recovery run (intentionally) and just hit the low end of tempo zone for heart rate. Warmer today and no rain. Less humid than it has been, but still a little heavy and close.

It was nice to lift the feet a little more than usual and push ahead. A quick recovery to normal conversation and fully recovered breathing by 2nd flight of stairs in the office all point to progress – however modest. Still a long way to go to get to 7:11 at 166bpm, but I’ve made a start and that counts for a lot!

Tomorrow it’s a midweek long run. Will aim to get 11 miles in – child minding and dog-walking duties permitting.

4m | 32:37 | 8:11 | 166bpm | Tempo Zone

Garmin Connect Log

Hooray for the rain! So much cooler today. Seems like an age since I’ve got wet on a run, but today it rained all the way round. I was determined to make today a proper recovery run and though I didn’t quite get the heart rate down to 150bpm, it certainly felt very comfortable.

Pleased that I managed to shed 2.5kg last week, but it should have been 3, so work to do. I think that was a question of diet. I wasn’t as diligent with intake as I need to be, even succumbing to a bag of chips on Friday night with the kids. Aaagh! This week I’ll be watching what I eat much more carefully and I’m aiming to lose 3.5kg to make up for the shortfall over the last seven days.

4m | 36:17 | 9:02 | 151bpm | Easy Zone

Garmin Connect Log