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)

Another fantastic weekend in the North East!

The weather was fabulous (again) and the event was as colourful as ever – though I have to say, the atmosphere was not as warm as it has been in the past. Not quite the camaraderie of previous years somehow. But I don’t want to overstate that, it was still a brilliant day.

Although it’s painful to read, I shouldn’t be disappointed with my recorded time of 1:58:33 (1:59:23 official GNR time). I could say that I didn’t train enough, but that would be misleading. I didn’t really train at all. There’s plenty of evidence of how unfit I’ve become in the Forerunner race data. My HRM statistics are screaming at me. Apparently I was running at Heart Rate Max (for my age, height and weight) for two hours. It seems to make little sense, but my resting heart rate (normally quite low at around 47bpm) and exercising heart rate (generally very high) appear completely unconnected.

Anyway, those BPMs and min/mile averages are going to tumble between now and next September. I’m not performing like that again. Period.

So why was my half marathon performance so poor?

I recorded the following training mileage over the three months leading up to the event (though I acknowledge that problems with the Forerunner 305 mean that August is definitely understated):

June: 19 runs / 85 miles
July: 13 runs / 87 miles
August: 2 runs / 8.5 miles
September: 8 runs / 40 miles

To put those monthly distances into context, when I was training for the Himalaya 100 Mile Stage Race, I was putting in 260-300 miles a month. Don’t be impressed by the Himalayas. I had to cancel after a year’s training due to work commitments clashing with the even. The £800 lost deposit was nothing compared to the disappointment of dropping out so close to the event. I do want to get that back in the diary again. Maybe in two to three years time.

I’ve said it so many times on this blog and it disappoints me to re-read it, but I really need to FOCUS. I have a long standing target of 1:30 for the Great North Run and it’s absolutely within my ability to achieve it. This year I placed 10,914 in a field of around 52,000 runners. My best position was 1,058 with a time of 1:32. So I’ve slipped from top 2% to top 20%. Whoops!

I now have the Brass Monkey in my sights (24th January) and I must be the right side of 1:45 (or even 1:40) for that race. So, it’s feet up today and back to it in earnest tomorrow. NO EXCUSES.

Garmin Connect Log

13.1m | 1:58:33 | 9:04 | 182bpm

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

5.95m | 59:43 | 10:09 | 165bpm

Another lovely afternoon in Lyme Park – really enjoyable (but hard work!). That climb up to Peter’s just doesn’t get any easier. I never pay any attention to pace on this run. The hills are challenge enough, so I’m not concerned about how fast (or slow) I’m running.

I think Lyme Park is one of my favourite places. Get half a mile from the house and car park and it really is a place of tranquility and escapism (and so close to such a huge conurbation of South Manchester.

MotionBased – bad news is that Garmin hasn’t got any better since I last gave up on them. They should have launched Garmin Connect for Forerunner 305 (subscription paying) customers over a year ago and it’s still not live. Worse still, I’ve tried three times today to upload my data and the site keeps kicking me out. (Server overloaded.)

4m | 34:51 | 8:41 | 159bpm

Still running very slowly – well barely running at all really. More of a moderate shuffle along the pavements of Cheshire. Anyway, I need to be patient. Regaining fitness after being granted freedom of the city of Slothville is going to take a little time. Maybe some earlier nights would help.

If the weather brightens up a little, I might get myself around Lyme Park with the hound later today, but at the moment it’s raining again (ah, good old Manchester weather).

Can’t believe it’s only April. Felt like a glorious summer’s day. Despite what Runkeeper says, today’s run was 6.5 miles (not 7). Nor did I reach 28 miles per hour! Runkeeper’s inaccuracy on a beautiful clear day with a full view of the sky is worrying to say the least. I think I’m going to have to resurrect the Forerunner 305 after all (after everything I’ve said about Garmin!)

Anyway, I’m not going to let technology ruin a lovely run in the sunshine. Today was glorious and you can’t beat a lunchtime run to shake out the cobwebs. Hoping to get away from work more or less on time today so I can take Buffy up to Lyme Park – I do feel guilty for leaving her in the house on a day like today.