For Christmas 2006 I received a Garmin 305. This, for the uninformed and those reluctant to click through, is a wrist watch GPS unit. It tells me all kinds of fun things during my runs such as how far I have gone, how fast I am going, and how fast I am running the current mile. There is of course a bevy of other things it can tell me too, should I desire to know them.
I think that this device is a major contributing factor to my success in starting—and more importantly, in actually sticking with—the program of running-as-exercise that I resolved to start at the beginning of 2007. (Take that, cynics! A New Year’s Resolution that worked!) Some reasons the watch has helped: 1. It appeals to the technolust I developed as a preadolescent through my Popular Science subscription and books like Future Stuff. When I put it on the first time, a little voice said, “Dude, my watch is plugged into the grid! It’s monitoring satellites! That’s so badass!”) 2. The automatic quantification has made it trivial to monitor my progress toward training targets. The training schedule says to run the next mile at 8:30-8:40 min pace? Easy. Some on running blogs and message boards wax about the importance of not getting anal about it all, running by feel, etc. For me, the obsessive quantification is part of the fun.
Finally, 3. I just like the idea of having a big database of runs on my computer. I have all the data! There’s a record of everywhere I’ve been! It has made me feel good to know that data has been there, even though I haven’t really doing much with it.
Last night I decided to start playing with the data. I wrote some Matlab code to load the database and plot all the runs I’ve gone on in SF since I’ve acquired the device. (Well, I’ve left it at home a couple times, so it’s only just about all of them.) You can see the 196 runs, which were carried out between 1/6/07 and 7/14/08, plotted on top of each other above.
Conclusions: I should explore that part of the Presidio I haven’t touched. Also, there’s a bunch of Pacific Heights left to see. But it’s really hilly in both those places.
Tools: Garmin Training Center, XML Toolbox for Matlab, Matlab, Preview
Likely inspiration: fake is the new real
1 response so far ↓
Not Liz // July 16, 2008 at 7:46 am |
Wow, that’s a lot of running! I feel similarly about my heart rate monitor, in terms of keeping me on task…though, I bought the el-cheapo one, so I don’t have the big database. Kinda wish I did now. :)