Why, because I can.

I was going to past my recap for last week but it kind of sucks since I missed two of my five workouts. I did 60 min of Combat cardio Monday and 30 minutes on Wednesday, barely made it through Tuesday's 30 min strength training. I missed the other two days because my wife and I went to Gatlinburg, TN for a weekend away.


I did get me a couple of new toys though! When the Fitbit Force was voluntarily recalled I sent mine back, I hadn't really been using it for anything besides a watch for a few weeks anyways. After I got the check for the recall I upgraded to a Garmin Forerunner 210, more on how awesome it is later. While on our trip we walked around the outlet mall digesting dinner and bought a whole bunch of crap, its hard not to when Under Armour is having a huge sale, men's shorts for $14 are a rare find anywhere. I'm really excited about my new Bose SIE2i headphones though, I had to buy the wife a pair as well but if it was worth it.

First the Garmin watch. It provides all kind of data that makes the inner geek in me very very happy. It came with a heart rate monitor and a foot pod. Both of which provide even more data for me to look at, although I think the food pod is mostly for indoor running it does provide foot fall cadence. I'm still trying to figure out more about how to use those numbers to maximize my training.

With the watch comes Garmin's online tools. So far they seem to be a nice single place to keep track of my training plan, weight progress, and workouts versus now where I'm using Map My Run to keep track of my actual workouts, Google calendar to keep track of my training plan, and My Fitness Pal to keep track of my stats. I like that they have quick and easy ways to export my data to Excel for even more analysis, charts, etc. I'll post those in my recaps once I get enough data in it to make it worth it. For now its got yesterday's terrible run (no food, not enough water, 5 hour drive made in 4 hours, etc) but I wanted to play with my new watch and headphones :)

And finally the headphones. I like pretty much every Bose product I've used, they are nice quality sound and production. Yes I know there are better products for the same or less price. But Bose has always taken care of me for any product I've bought from them, even stuff I broke and needed replaced. We each picked up a pair of the SIE2i headphones. These are pretty neat, they have a StayHear tips that keep the headphones in place, I've tried these kinds of headphones before and they usually hurt my ears with the hard plastic they use. The Bose are soft and form fitting so after the first 30 min run I would have left them in if I wasn't jumping the shower to get ready for Easter. The iPhone controls are a must, I hate trying to play with my phone when its strapped to my arm, and the wife calls me towards the end of every race, guess I need to run faster. As a bonus they came with a free color matching armband for the iPhone, I haven't used it yet since I bought a band that will hold my phone in its Otterbox, I'm saving the new one for my next race day.

This is hopefully longer than my normal weekly post.