Playing with the Activity Monitor on the Garmin 920

The Garmin 920 is designed to be used not only to record activities using GPS, but also as an all-around activity monitor. When I purchased mine, I wasn't planning on using it that way, but when my normal everyday watch broke, I began wearing the 920 around all day.

I began to notice the number of "steps" I took each day, and I actually liked when it told me to "move" after an hour of inactivity. There are still some kinks to work out, like when it told me to "move" while I was riding my bike at 20 miles per hour, with the GPS engaged.

I started to wonder if the 920 could give me a more accurate count of the number of calories I burned each day than my usual method of entering all my exercises into MyFitnessPal.

So for the last couple of weeks, I decided to compare the calories tracked by my Garmin and MyFitnessPal. 

This very complicated graph gives you the results:

The light blue and the yellow lines give you the raw data from MyFitnessPal (MFP) and Garmin. As you can see, there are some wide discrepancies. On March 15 MFP counted 1680 calories versus 3726 for Garmin. There are also a few days when the Garmin count was significantly lower than MFP.

I noticed that the days when Garmin was way lower than MFP were days when I did activities that the Garmin doesn't capture, such as the elliptical trainer and strength training. So I made an "Adjusted Garmin" count (in brown) that took care of most of that -- but the two numbers were still off by quite a bit.

Then I noticed that the days when Garmin was way higher corresponded to long rides. Clearly Garmin is giving me way too much credit for my calorie burns on rides because I was basing my eating off the MFP numbers those days and I didn't notice feeling exceptionally hungry and I certainly wasn't losing tons of weight. So I created a "double-adjusted" Garmin count (in red on the graph) that ignores about 40 percent of the calories burned cycling. As you can see, the red count is much closer to the light blue MFP count.

But Garmin was still giving me credit for about 30% more calories than MFP, and MFP wasn't giving me any credit for days when I took a lot of steps (like when I was timing a race). So I created an adjusted MFP count to account for that. This one is just 18% different from the Adjusted Garmin count, and there's less day-to-day variance as well.

So it seems I could get a decent count using the activity monitor on my Garmin if I could get it to track the few additional activities like the elliptical trainer. Since Garmin consistently overestimates calories, I would have to factor that in, but in the end I could have a totally-automated system for tracking calorie burns.

Another option would be to get a separate activity monitor that also tracks heart rate. Since heart rate tracking can give more accurate calorie counts, this would solve two problems at once. Anyone want to get me one of these babies as a gift?

Turning the corner on my injury

The last time I ran more than 4 miles was nearly a month ago, on February 7. Although I have shared the news with my friends and on social media, I haven't written about it here. Maybe if I don't write about it it isn't real?

But it is real, and of course it's my own fault. The following paragraph is probably best skipped, but it explains how I got to where I am now. I first noticed my sore hamstrings sometime last fall. The pain started on the left leg and gradually migrated rightward and upward. Back in October, I was racing all-out in an effort to qualify for the first corral at Bloomsday in May. I raced a 5k every week, and after the first couple of races, my hammies were so sore that I couldn't do any speed work midweek. I backed of the speed work first, then backed off the racing (good moves), then decided I should be doing regular squats instead of front squats during strength training to better target my hams/glutes (perhaps a good move, but done too rapidly). I backed way off on the squats, then tried gradually ramping the speed work, and felt okay but not great -- I could still feel some of the same issues in the hamstrings.

That got me to February 7 and the Uwharrie 8 mile trail race. I had signed up for the race on a bit of a whim: Entry is via lottery and I figured I wouldn't get in to the race so what was the harm in trying? Of course I got in, so I had to do the race. For a better description of the actual event, see Chas's post on the 20-mile race here. My race, for all practical purposes, ended at Mile 2.5

I started the race okay, hitting the uphill start hard. But when the trail leveled out, I felt I should be giving a similar effort and staying with the other runners. Bad move. I need to remind myself early and often that I'm not a good downhill trail runner, probably due to a deadly combination of age and klutziness. I fell once and felt a tweak in my right glute, but nothing to stop me from running. Then, about 2.5 miles in, I stumbled hard and onto some jagged rocks. As I crashed to the ground on my left knee, I felt my right glute tighten.

There was a bloody gash on the left leg, but the real injury was on my right leg. Here's what my left leg looked like when I got home:

Yikes!

In almost certainly a boneheaded move, I decided to limp on ahead rather than turning around and walking to the road at Mile 2. There were spectators there who could certainly have given me a ride back to my car, but I chose to continue, getting passed by what felt like dozens of runners every mile. Eventually I picked my pace up to a slow jog, but every time I tried to run faster than around a 9-minute pace, my right glute told me to slow down. Amazingly, I did not finish in last place! I was actually 88th out of 197 finishers, averaging a 12:50 pace for the race.

Two days later I decided to try a slow recovery run, but I was unable to go even 100 meters. I took a week off of running and made 1/10 of a mile the next time I tried. I could walk and bike without difficulty, but running was impossible. I was gaining weight because I wasn't putting in anywhere close to the equivalent workout I could do running. I decided to try swimming and took out a membership at the Y so I could use their pool. I could swim, too, but I still was gaining weight and didn't seem to be making any progress running.

Even the cycling seemed to be cursed: I went on a planned 20-mile mountain bike ride in Columbia, SC (to escape icy conditions closer to home) and my chain broke after 6 miles.

I'm now in the middle of 3 weeks of travel to wintery climates, so I haven't had many more chances to ride outside. I've been hitting up elliptical machines in gyms from Spokane to Virginia to Minnesota.

I also did something I never thought I would do: I went to a chiropractor. This actually seemed to help a little bit (or maybe it was just the time off of running). I tried running in Spokane and made it a half mile. The next day I went a mile. I could do it, limping along, with a tolerable bit of pain in my right glute / hamstring. The pain wasn't getting better, but it wasn't getting worse. I could barely run 10-minute miles on flat terrain.

After a couple days home and more chiropractor visits, I ran two miles, with similar pain levels.

Then this morning, back on the road in Northfield, Minnesota, I had a bit of a breakthrough. My run actually wasn't as painful. I ran 1.5 miles to a gym, did my usual bit of strength training plus 15 minutes on the elliptical trainer, then headed back to my hotel. I was feeling even better now that I'd warmed up and decided to go for my first post-recovery 5K. I finished in 29:26 (not counting the 70 minutes I spent at the gym). That's actually not a terrible 5K time - it's a 9:29 pace. Well, it's pretty terrible for someone who not long ago was kicking himself for not breaking 19:00 in a race, but it's semi-respectable for a recreational runner.

I might honestly be on the road to recovery now. I want to make this one stick, so I'm even going to do something else I've never done before: Adopt a mantra. My mantra will be the following:

You only want to make one comeback

In other words, I don't want to rush it; I want to take my time and do this right, so I don't have to do it all over again, only slower. This time I'm going to stretch, roll, and massage, even when it doesn't seem like I need to. I'm going listen to my body during runs and make sure to stop running before it hurts. I'm going to supplement my running with sensible strength training and cross-training, again, not doing anything to hurt myself. I'm dropping out of my next two planned races, and I'll be prepared to drop out of more races if I'm not confident I can do them without re-injury.

But I will come back, and I'll be every bit of the runner I was before. I love running too much to stop. If that means slowing down, that's fine, but I'm not ever going to stop.

My thoughts on the Garmin Forerunner 920xt

I've now owned the Garmin Forerunner 920xt GPS for just over a month. While I don't think there's any point in me doing a detailed review (Go to DC Rainmaker for that, especially if you're interested in cycling and swimming), I did think it would be worthwhile to give some of my thoughts from the perspective of a person switching from the 910xt.

The 920xt is supposed to be Garmin's top-of-the-line triathlon watch, so it's a little odd for an occasional cyclist / non-swimmer to get one. Really I should probably have a 620 or a Fenix. But the 9XX series has a couple features that I really like: 1. a barometric altimeter, and 2. a big, readable screen.

Having used the 920xt for a month now, I have to say that on those two fronts, it actually probably falls a little short of the 910xt.

Screen
Although the 920 "upgrades" to color, the trade-off is somewhat lower contrast. I can read it all right, but not quite as easily as I could read the 910. Both watches are fine in broad daylight, but in poor conditions like rain / dark trails, etc, the 910 wins. Both the 910 and 920 have an option to keep the backlight on permanently, and the battery is certainly strong enough to keep it lit for a 2-hour-plus workout, so that's what I do for interval training and other situations when it is really important to see the display.

One place where the 920 improves visibility is when it displays the lap time for a workout on auto-lap. On the 910, inexplicably the lap time is shown in a tiny font. It's nice and big on the 920, which is a relief! On both watches it would be nice if this screen was configurable, for example perhaps to show distance or pace instead of time for the lap, but the 920 definitely wins here.

Altimeter
Both watches feature a barometric altimeter that is accurate enough to give real-time elevation data. I love this feature, which can help with navigation on trails (since you can compare your elevation to the elevation on a map), and can give you a nice sense of "where you are" on mountain / hill climb-type races. I used this feature a lot when I ran Pikes Peak.

But again the 910 wins over the 920 because it also gives you a very useful measure of the current grade. The 920 has this feature as well, but it's not as well-implemented as in the 910. The 910's grade feature attempted to give a precise (to 0.1%) measure of the current grade. It wasn't always accurate, but you could tell when it was wildly off, and I found, for the most part, that the number seemed to be a reflection of the effort it was taking to climb a hill. I used it as a way to decide when to walk -- if the grade was over 10 or 15 percent (depending on how far I was running), then I'd switch to power-walking.

In the 920, the grade feature is there, but it only gives the current grade in increments of 3%. I can see why they do this; it's probably not much more accurate than that most of the time, but it seems to me that by taking a simple average of measurements over some period of time (maybe 5-10 seconds) it could generate a more precise figure, which would then enable me to adjust my pace / gait appropriately. In the current implementation, the grade shifts around so much (say, from 3 to 6 back to 3, and so on) that it's hard to decide how to use it. So for me the 910 wins on its Altimeter function.

One hope for the 920 is that someone will come up with an IQ App to solve these problems; Anyone can develop apps for the 920 and maybe they will address my concerns. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet ... I can dream, can't I?

Bling
On the other hand, the 920xt definitely out-blings the 910. It has are some nice little features that I like a lot. For example, it can now connect directly to a wi-fi network to upload your data. This is very handy for someone like me who used to use his laptop for data uploads. I didn't want to keep the ANT stick in my computer all the time, so I was always searching around the house or my laptop bag to find it, just to upload my data. Now it "just works." I can also connect with my phone via bluetooth to do the same thing (I've disabled this feature most of the time, however, because it will sync mid-workout if I have my phone with me, and I prefer to wait until the workout is finished to upload).

I haven't used the ability to auto-track workouts/races so that others can follow along. In practice I'm not sure this will be such a useful feature since it requires you to have your phone with you. Once you have your phone, there are any number of apps that do the same thing.

It also has an activity tracker similar to a Fitbit or other device, which counts your steps and reminds you to "MOVE!" if you stay still for longer than an hour or so. While the feature is kind of fun, I don't plan on wearing my 920xt full-time as a watch so it has limited utility for me.

It also has a simple "watch mode" which enables you to wear it as your full-time watch, with a week or more of battery life. While I don't plan on wearing mine all the time, it's handy for race days or short trips when I don't want to bring two watches. One place where the IQ App has been well-developed is custom watch faces, so you can even configure the face to something you prefer over Garmin's default screens.

Accuracy
While I haven't done a scientific comparison of the 920 versus the 910, my general perception is that the GPS on the 920 is a little better. I have enabled GLONASS, which is supposed to be a more-accurate version of standard GPS. This results in a small battery-life hit (maybe 10 percent), but since I'm never running 15+ hours, that's not an issue for me. On the track, the 910 was consistently short, while the 920 seems just about right on, lap after lap.

The 920 can also count footsteps using just your arm motion (no footpod needed). It will give you an estimate of distance run when you're on a treadmill or (in my case) even on a moving cruise ship (where the motion of the ship would otherwise wreak havoc on your GPS data). It was generally accurate to within a tenth of a mile on my 6-mile runs on the cruise ship track. Not bad!

Usability
One really nice feature of the 920 is its ability to cache satellite locations, which means that it finds the satellite signal much faster than the 910. Usually the 920 finds satellites in seconds, even if you're hundreds of miles away from where you used it last time. The 910 can take 2, 3, even 5 minutes to find satellites, especially if you've moved significantly since the previous use.

That said, there are a couple areas where the 920 falls short of the 910, particularly in the "history" function. When you are going over previous workouts, the 920 does not display all the information that the 910 did. The 920 gives you distance and time for each lap of your workout, but the 910 also gives pace for each lap. This is especially important if you're doing workouts like "minuters" where you run 1 minute fast and one minute slow. The 920 won't tell you your pace, just time and distance — and naturally the time is the same for each lap!

The 920 also won't allow you to access the "history" of your current workout, which can be important — for example if you have forgotten how many laps you have run. Yes, if you have configured your data screens to show it, you can display which lap you are on, but when you're doing a workout like 12 x 200, 8 x 400, 4 x 800, with rests between each lap, it can still be difficult to figure out if you're on your 7th or 8th 400-meter rep!

Finally — and this may be an issue more for me than anyone else — if you take a break in the middle of your workout, on the 920 there is no manual way to get the watch back to watch mode without saving the workout first. Then you'll end up with two separate workouts instead of one big one. I do this a lot when I run into town, run with the group, then stop for coffee before running back home. It'd be nice to spend that time in the coffee shop in battery-saving watch mode. What you can do is switch your "power save timeout" to from "extended" to "normal", and it will automatically go back to watch mode in just a couple minutes, but the downside of that is if you're at a race and want your watch to be ready to go for an extended period, you may end up scrambling to get your watch back into GPS mode.

Charger
One sore spot for me with Garmin devices has always been the charger. From my very first Garmin 305, it was too easy to unseat the Garmin during charging. Then you'd wake up in the morning to start your run only to find your GPS completely dead. The 910xt partially solved this problem with the "claw" charger that held on to the unit more firmly, but even this unit performed poorly. I'd say at least half the time when I put the unit in the charger, it wouldn't engage properly and would power-on the unit. You would then have to wait for the entire power-on cycle, power it off again, and try to put the unit in the charger again without repeating the same issue.

I'm happy to say that this problem FINALLY seems to be solved with the 920xt. The new charger holds the unit firmly, and engages easily, every time. As it should have been five years ago with my 305!

The Bottom Line
At $450 without a heart rate monitor, the 920xt is not an inexpensive device. Is it worth it? I'm not sure. In my case I sold my 910xt for $145, so I only paid $305 plus tax for the 920. Is it $305 better than the 910? I really like the convenience of not messing with a footpod and ANT stick. That feels like a lot of freedom. The reliability of the charger cannot be underestimated as well; I can't tell you how many times I've awoken in a panic on race night wondering if my Garmin would be properly charged. Similarly, I've already found "watch mode" convenient at races and traveling, making my life much simpler. And knowing the limitations of the 920, I've found if fairly easy to adapt to them compared to the more daunting problems with the 910. For somebody who uses their device day in and day out, $305 really isn't that much to pay. Consider what you'd spend on a car with heated seats, or a slightly more elegant interior. It might be thousands more than a model that "does what you need." For me, running more than 10 hours a week and also using the device for cycling and backpacking, it's worth it. For you? That's something you'll have to decide for yourself!

Why running is a part of who I am

Today in a Facebook running group, someone asked the following question of the group: "Is being a runner just something you do/a hobby or is it part of you/your identity and is there a downside to the latter?"

There was a healthy discussion, with seemingly little correlation between how much someone ran, how fast they were, and how much running was a part of their identity. Here's my response:

Hmmm... I run about 10 hours a week, cross-train 5 hours a week, spend about 15 hours a week on my race-timing business, maybe 5 hours a week administering running clubs, another god-knows-how-many hours online on FB/running forums, not to mention a few hours blogging / logging all this. If this isn't my true identity I'm in a VERY good witness protection program!

I spend at least 40 hours a week on running-related activities! That's a full-time job! Good thing I don't have a full-time job, or I'd really be in trouble.

This is not to say I'm only a runner. Although running is a huge part of my identity, it's not the most important thing in my life. If I spend 40 hours a week on running, that leaves 128 hours for everything else. Even allowing 8 hours a night for sleeping, that still leaves more than 72 hours for non-running activities. If I was really efficient, I could have a full-time job on top of all that running! I love my family and friends, love travel, cooking and food, love backpacking and the outdoors, love literature and writing. Other than definitely ranking below family, friends, and food, I'm not sure where running falls in that hierarchy. Maybe it's next after those three.

Fortunately I don't have to choose or specify a ranking, and even more fortunately, my running doesn't interfere much with the others. My family appreciates that I'm staying healthy (though sometimes they might think I'm a little unhealthily healthy), many of my best friends are my running partners, and running enables me to eat more food while staying healthy.

But clearly my passion for running has led me to make some dramatic changes in my life. After spending most of my life as an occasional runner, I ran my first half-marathon in 2006, having lost about 30 pounds to get to 208, the lightest I had been in years. But the workouts had been so draining that I felt they were compromising my career as a science writer. So I backed off the training, running another, slower half in 2007 and then going back to my occasional-running ways and gaining back 20 pounds.

It wasn't until I joined the then-tiny Davidson Area Running Team (DART) in 2010 that I really got serious about running. My new running buddies convinced me to sign up for my first marathon, in 2011, and I shifted gears in my career, going from daily science blogging to writing a weekly column, which made it easier to run more. I lost all the weight I had regained and then some, getting down to 195. By the end of 2011 I had not only run three marathons, I had qualified for Boston!

Since then, it's been a gradual transition as running has taken a larger and larger place in my life. I now weigh about 185. Now other than the occasional Science-Based Running post, I don't do much science writing at all. But I do have a growing race timing business that satisfies the need to be productive and make some money (my wife's career has always been the primary source of income for our family, so I don't have to work full time).

But why does running consume so much of me? It's not like I'm an especially gifted runner. Although I can usually win an age-group award in local races, when the competition gets tougher I've never cracked the top 3 in an age group.

For me, it comes down to a few key things:

1. Camaraderie/friendship: My running friends are among my closest friends. Current best-practices in running argue that 70% or more of running should be at an easy pace. That means you can carry on conversations while you work out. You can continue those conversations in the coffee shop after the run. After a while, you start doing other things besides running with your running buddies, and you realize you can't live without them.
2. Constant, measurable improvement: Even though running can involve setbacks, the pattern from week to week, month to month, and year to year, always involves improvement or progression toward a goal. Even if you get injured and have to take time off and rebuild, you can see yourself getting better again; this sort of improvement is endlessly satisfying (at least to me!).
3. The opportunity to help others: Now that I've been a serious runner for 5 years, I've accumulated a lot of knowledge. New runners in my various running groups come to me for advice. There's little more fulfilling than seeing a friend reach a goal or a milestone, whether it's completing her first marathon, winning his first age group award, or setting a new PR.
4. Fun: I genuinely like running. I like it so much I do it in the rain, in the cold, in the wind, in the heat, in the humidity, when I'm traveling, when I'm sad, when I'm hung over, when I'm not even sure I can complete the workout I have planned. I like feeling the cool wind in my beard, I like the dark mornings, I like seeing the sunrise, I like the focus it takes to keep my legs churning away at the optimal rate. Don't get me wrong, I like winning awards and setting PRs too, but I wouldn't be trying to do those things if I didn't like the hours and hours and thousands of miles of training it takes to get those awards and PRs.

So running is now a critical part of my identity. Yes, I'm a husband, a father, a brother, an outdoorsman, a traveler, a writer, a friend, and a cook, and probably some other things too.

But I'm unquestionably a runner, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

My 2014 Running Year in Review

My running year starts and ends with this: I didn't get to see my Dad this year. I didn't see my 14-year-old nephew Benjamin either. Didn't get to see them, won't ever see them again. But I know Dad would have loved to read about my year. His friends all told me that at his funeral: How much he used to talk about me and my running; that I had qualified for Boston; that I was going to run up Pikes Peak; that I had run a sub-18-minute 5k. So I'm writing this for my Dad.

The Bar-S-Stampede. 1987, I think. How about those cotton shirts?

Every time I run, especially if I'm running in a wild or remote place, I think about Dad. I'm not going to mention him again in this review, but it's not because I'm not thinking about him. I'm always thinking about him, most of all when I'm thinking about running.

My plan for the start of the year was to run my first ultramarathon, and I didn't want to run some wimpy 50k. I signed up for the Leatherwood 50-miler in March. Then I'd follow that up with the Pikes Peak Marathon in August. After that, I was either going to continue running ultras, or pick some new goal, depending on how much I liked (or didn't like) running ultras. I felt like I had thoroughly prepared myself for Leatherwood, running in all sorts of conditions: Snow, ice, slush, mud, you name it. What I hadn't prepared for was rain for 12 hours, deep mud on the uphills and the downhills, mud that forced me to slow to a tentative walk even on the descents. I dropped after 50k, which meant I DNFed. That was one tough race!

For Pikes Peak, even though it's technically not an ultramarathon, I continued training as if I was running an ultra. That's because the best-case scenario finish at Pikes would be barely under 6 hours. I ran hills, bleachers, and more hills. Then I ran the race, and I did actually finish it -- in 6:21. I had done great on the ascent, matching my most optimistic projections, but struggled on the technical downhill. Still, I had run a freaking marathon up a freaking 14,000-foot mountain. That was pretty incredible.

My experiences at Pikes Peak and (mostly) at Leatherwood had convinced me that I'm not really an ultrarunner. I decided to spend the next year working on speed in shorter races. I had gained about 10 pounds in ultra training, and started to work shedding those pounds. I wanted to run some of the bigger road races in the country in 2015: The Ukrops Monument Avenue 10k in Richmond in March, and the Bloomsday 12k in Spokane in May. To get a good seeding at Bloomsday, I needed to run a sub-18:40 5k, and I didn't have a time that fast this year. Since my PR is 17:49, I didn't think an 18:40 would be too hard, but as it turned out, it took me four tries to get it, including missing by just two seconds at the USA Masters 5k! Finally I got an 18:19 at the Balloonfest 5k, so I'm all set for a good Bloomsday race next year. I topped things off with PRs at the 8k and 10k splits of the 12k .US National Championship road race, where I ran side-by-side with Joan Benoit Samuelson for a half-mile near the finish before she dusted me with her 57-year-old Olympic-sized kick.

I haven't quite lost all the weight I want to; I'm down about 5 pounds and I think losing even another 10 pounds would directly translate to more speed. I've also had a nagging hamstring injury that's probably related to my four 5ks in a row trying to hit that qualifying time for Bloomsday. Still, I think my final running stats for the year are pretty impressive:

Total miles run: 2,713 (PR)
Total elevation gain: 167,000 feet
Total hours run: 399 (PR)
Average pace: 8:15/mile
PRs: 8k (30:54), 10k (38:49)

From a running perspective, not a bad year! Here's a little slideshow I made with photos from most of the events described above. Hope you enjoy it!


Dave's Running in 2014 from Dave Munger on Vimeo.

For next year I don't have a cumulative mileage goal because I'm going to be spending the last four months of the year in India and I'm not sure I'll always be able to run. But I do want to run a marathon in India; I'm going to make that happen. I'd also like to break my 10k PR at Ukrops. My stretch goal there would be to go sub-37:00. To make that happen I will need to spend January making sure my hamstring injury gets healed.

I guess that's about it for 2014. See you on the other side!

Never say never: My second beer mile

At the start of this year, on my 47th birthday, I ran my first-ever beer mile. I ran it in 9:54, and my conclusion was that "if there's room for improvement, it's in the beer-drinking portion of the event. I'm not currently planning on doing another beer mile, but if I did, I'd definitely need to work on my beer-chugging skills."

Less than a week ago, I got an email from some friends who were planning another one. I guess I forgot how hard that first one was, because before I knew it I had committed to the race, which happened last night on the same course as the first one.

Soon I was Googling "best beer for beer mile" and "beer mile strategy," and found this article by the former record-holder with some good tips. The main one was to pick a beer that I liked. After ruling out a couple favorites that were below the requisite 5% alcohol content, I settled on New Belgium's Fat Tire Amber Ale:

Boston Marathon Bottle Opener sold separately!

The bottle opener would prove to be a big key to my race! I also let the beer warm to about 55 degrees before running the race, again on Josh Harris's advice.

After a 2-mile warm-up, about 8 of us got our beer and walked in the darkness to the starting line on a greenway near town. My plan this time was to run a bit slower than last time, so I wouldn't be absolutely gasping for breath as I tried to chug my beers.

With little ceremony, the race started and I chugged beer #1, remembering to hold the bottle at a 45-degree angle and trying to let the beer just slide down my throat. While I hadn't actually practiced beer-chugging, I did read some online advice suggesting this was the optimal angle. I don't think I got it perfect (actually, I know I didn't because I didn't approach the sub-10-second chugs of the record-breakers), but I definitely did much better than last time: 19 seconds for my first beer versus 29 last year.

I was third out of the gate and stayed in third as I tried to moderate my pace. I completed the first lap (really just an out-and-back) in 1:41. Garmin consistently measured my laps as 0.27 miles (despite using the same Garmin to chart the course at exactly 0.25 miles earlier that day), so my pace was either 6:19 or 6:44 depending on which Garmin measurement you believe. Either way, it was a little slower than planned, but I hoped to make up for it by drinking my beers faster. I wasn't breathing especially hard, and managed to get Beer 2 down in just two gulps. Beer Split 2 was 33 seconds (compared to 54 seconds last year). I was definitely making up some serious time!

Each subsequent lap went about the same, with the beers getting progressively tougher to swallow. I moved from third to second place, but couldn't catch the lead runner, a young guy I had never met, with a deadly-fast chug and some excellent speed as well. He finished first in 8:03, while I crossed the line in 8:41, a massive PR by a minute and 14 seconds! The chart below compares my two beer-mile efforts:

As you can see, even though I ran 28 seconds faster in January, I drank each beer an average of 27 seconds faster this time around; that's why I was able to set a 1:14 PR this time around! By slowing down on the runs just a bit, I made a massive improvement on my overall time. The only time I went all-out was on the final lap. I think the reason my final quarter-mile was slower this year is that I hadn't had as long of a break between Run 3 and 4 as last year. Also, last year, I was close to another runner and so had the opportunity to pass him in the final lap. This time I was running alone and didn't have as much incentive to go fast.

I'm not sure there's as much room for improvement in the future without a lot of time spent chugging beers in practice. I'm not opposed to drinking, but I prefer to sip my beverages, so there may not be another Beer Mile PR in my future. On the other hand, I've learned never to say "never" when it comes to running, so who knows?

The Garmin plot of yesterday's beer mile is below:

"You had a bad day" -- My recap of the ACC Fan 5k

I used to watch American Idol every week (don't judge!), and whenever a contestant was eliminated during one memorable season, they had to watch a montage of their best moments on the show, played to the tune of Bad Day by Daniel Powter.

I had been steadily improving my race times this season, but finally, I had a Bad Day. It came at the ACC Fan 5k on Saturday. I had been hoping for a season's best time, something better than the 18:19 I ran at Balloonfest just over a month ago. That's a 5:53 pace, so a pretty tough time to beat. I planned to start out at a 5:45 pace, then slow to a 5:50 on hilly Mile 2, then try to maintain that pace for the flat finish.

One tricky section of a race for me has always been the start. I tend to jump out too fast at the beginning and pay for it at the finish. So, as in several other races, I lined up in the second row and tried to stay conservative and not look at my watch. Unfortunately, when I finally did look at my watch I saw that I was going too fast: A minute into the race, my pace was 5:20 per mile, 25 seconds faster than I wanted to be. I tried to ease back, but not too quickly -- I didn't want to find myself running a 6:00 pace either. By the end of the mile (by my watch) I had managed to get my pace down to 5:45, but I didn't pass the actual mile marker until 5:51. Now I needed to speed up.

Fortunately the first part of Mile 2 was downhill and I was able to get my pace down to about 5:40. In the back of my mind, however, I began to think this wasn't going to be fast enough. If each mile is 6 seconds longer than my Garmin reading, I should be banking more time than this. I should probably be hitting a 5:35 pace by my watch. But I could also tell that wasn't going to be sustainable, even on a downhill; I wasn't feeling strong enough to run any faster. What I didn't know is that this downhill wasn't going to last as long as I thought it would, because the elevation profile on the course website didn't quite match up to the real race:

Recorded (green) versus published (blue)

When I passed Mile Marker 1 I had already run about halfway down the hill. Then I was faced with a relatively steep 50-foot climb up to Mile Marker 2. About 10 seconds before I arrived there, my watch beeped with a 6:05 pace for the mile. I finally passed the marker as the timer showed 12:00, for an actual pace of 6:00 for the first two miles. I was 25 seconds slower than what I had been hoping for at this point. Worse, there was still a fair bit of climbing to do. While the elevation profile I'd seen showed the climb ending right at the mile marker, in fact there was at least another 30 feet of climbing left.

This defeated me, and I watched my pace decline to 6:50 for the mile. Really? 6:50? I was running this pace at the end of an 11-miler last weekend.  Somehow I willed myself to pick up the pace just a bit, in the name of respectability. In the end I salvaged a 6:21 for Mile 3 and limped across the finish line as the clock ticked 19:07. I walked to my car to change, then posted this race photo to Facebook:

Caption: "Dave is unhappy. Bad race today, 19:08"

Now, a 19:08 (or 19:07 officially) is a great time for a lot of people, but it's my slowest this season, and my slowest since the Bare Bones 5k in May of 2013, on a warm day when I still hadn't fully recovered from running the Boston Marathon. It's almost a minute slower than my best this season, only 6 weeks ago. So what went wrong?

I think the main thing that went wrong is that I forgot what it takes to run a really fast 5k. You have to be on the brink of exhaustion, the whole race long. I also think I probably need to do a little more work at a pace faster than race pace -- basically just throw some 200s and 400s into workouts here and there, to remind myself that I can run much faster than 5:45, so that 5:45 doesn't seem like a stretch. Finally I probably needed to do a little more research on the course if I really wanted to run it fast. I usually like to run the whole course before a race, but I got a bit of a late start and didn't have time to do that. Fortunately my next race will be on a very familiar home course: The Tightwad 5k, a free race put on by my running group on New Year's Day. Assuming I'm not out partying the night before (I'm not planning on it), I should be able to do considerably better there than I did this past weekend. I don't like having bad days, so I'm going to do everything I can to avoid another one.

Details of Saturday's race are below: