I missed a couple of runs last week as Block 2 drew to a close and fell short of my overall planned mileage by 8% (achieving 279 of the 304 miles slated). I’m not desperately concerned about that. I feel like I have a solid base as I go into the next six weeks of higher impact training. This will be the first time I’ve done any interval sessions in quite a couple of years, so I’m sure those will hurt.

Yesterday’s fifteen miler was tough going for the last two or three as the temperature and humidity were both quite high. There were a couple of points when I thought that I might not complete, but I managed to get to the end – even if the pace did slow quite markedly!

Missed last week’s target by a mile (in this case, literally, so that’s no great shakes). I’m starting to get well and truly into the running during this training block, but I have to say I was surprised at how much I still weigh – even after around ten weeks of solid running. (Heaven knows how much weight I’d piled on since Christmas! Too much Cubase. Not enough Saucony.)

Making amends and I think with another 5-6 kilos shed, I should be at optimum weight for the distances I’m doing. I don’t want to tempt fate, but I seem to be running pretty injury-free right now (wishing I hadn’t typed that already) so I’ve added a field into my training spreadsheet to monitor the mileage for my trainers. They’re up to 80 miles already and still gleaming white, so at this rate running is going to get a little spendy again!

Step back week completed – back to the grind. First off this week is a fifteen mile run and since my watch is being replaced by Garmin, but hasn’t yet made it to Cheshire, I’m running “blind”. This may be no bad thing. I can listen to my heart and breathing, rather than scrutinising the 405 every mile or so.

All in all, the training’s going well so far. 350 of the 1,100 miles completed for the GNR 2010 schedule. I thought I might have shed a few more pounds than I have, but there’s plenty of time and I’m being pretty methodical, so it’ll definitely happen. What’s more important is that 10 weeks in, I’m really enjoying it and I’m definitely feeling the benefit. It’s a great time to be upping the miles. Summer’s here.

Having missed Sunday’s long run last week, I spent the week playing catch up again, but I managed to complete the 55 miles I had scheduled.

What’s worrying me is the lack of progress over the last eight weeks. My average pace and heart rate don’t seem to be improving at all. I guess it’s early days and I’ve only been running easy, but I did expect the heart rate to be tumbling by now, even if the pace was constant. I do hope things improve soon, but I can’t help feeling a bit despondent given all the effort I’m putting in.

This week is a step back week, so it’s just 37 miles running. Give those muscles a rest.

Block 1 is behind me, but I’ve missed more runs than I should have (184 miles out of 229 scheduled, or around 80%). I need to fix that in Block 2, but I’m not feeling too despondent since Block 1 was devised simply to get me running again – just a whole load of easy miles.

That said, I am going to try to replace those 45 miles through Blocks 2, 3 and 4. I’ll distribute them through the step back weeks and with six of those left, adding one 7 mile run to each one will bring me more or less back on track.

Here’s what’s in store for the majority of weeks in Block 2.

Missing the first run of the week last week played havoc with my schedule. I tried to juggle extra runs into the remaining days and probably bit off more than I could chew. By Thursday I was starting to feel a niggle in the knee, so I cut the week short with an easy four miler on Friday lunch time and rested up until Sunday – it gave me a good excuse to watch the snooker too

No such omissions this weekend, but I do have a surprise trip to London for a gig (I won tickets in a Future Music competition!) which will mean switching a couple of runs around.

Third week of my training schedule for September’s Great North Run and a weird start to the week. Felt completely and utterly exhausted yesterday – as if somebody had sprinkled sleeping dust into the air. Genuinely, I could barely keep my eyes open in the afternoon so decided to miss my first run of the week. Not a great start but I’m aiming to replace the eleven miles missed with four additional short runs (with Buffy in the park) of three / four miles each.

Here’s the slightly revised plan for the week:

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)

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.