"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion" - Jack Kerouac
This rock rolling downhill - called the minimalist shoe movement - just keeps getting more out of control. Years ago, I read an excellent book by Malcolm Gladwell called The Tipping Point. I refer to it often. It's about how fads, movements, crazes, etc. all of a sudden become so popular, while other similar situations fall flat on their faces. Just what is that tipping point that puts something over the edge? Whatever it is, the barefoot...minimalist...natural...running movement is in full swing.
As many of you know by now, I'm not a great promoter of this development, as a runner, as a Physical Therapist, as an old fogey, long-time traditionalist marathoner and ultrarunner. First and foremost, I am a firm believer that whatever works for you, works for you... It's that simple. Hey , let me coin a phrase...if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Some can run barefoot, completely pronated with six toes on one foot and four toes on the other and do just great. Some folks can't get their feet out of their own way, and no amount of shoe technology is going to get them to glide down the road. Some folks can run marathons and others can't run a step! But, I do believe that there are more people who can run because of shoes than can't run because of shoes, which seems to be what some of these "Born to Run" followers want there torch to be.
So, let's look at this logically. The major minimalist argument is that the more minimal "the drop", the more you are forced to run with a gait that lands on the forefoot, or if you're really a clunker, than at least you'll land on your midfoot. The "drop" is the differential between the height of the heel and the forefoot and has become a more important factor in how some runners decide what shoes they want to buy, not necessarily what shoes work for them. In general, minimalist shoes have a 0-6mm of drop to allow for good forefoot articulation, while heel strikers are generally comfortable in 10mm+ drop shoes. Actually, many shoes have a drop of 14-15 mm. Essentially, that's almost like running on a downhill incline all the time. The idea with a higher drop is to encourage a heel strike to allow a rolling into a forefoot push-off. No question a more efficient foot strike will put less stress on the body and make you more efficient, but you can also develop a beautiful gait in the most clunky super corrective footwear just as easily as in Vibram Five Fingers.
Now, here's where the Physical Therapist side of me emerges. In traditional heel-strike running, the calf muscle's ONLY job is concentric work -- meaning contraction while shortening. This occurs as the calf shortens, plantar-flexing the foot and creating propulsion. In the more forefoot-strike style of running, the calf muscle has to do an entirely new job -- deceleration -- which is an eccentric action, meaning contraction while LENGTHENING. When your forefoot hits the ground, your calf has to lower you WHOLE body weight down onto the heel gently and then immediately do it's old 2nd job, which was lift your WHOLE body weight at the heel so you can push off and go forward. Translation: minimalist style running essentially DOUBLES the workload on the calf, and the new work is of a type with which the calf is relatively unfamiliar (eccentric contraction), since this action is not performed in traditional running style. This can cause an excessive load on the Achilles Tendon a thousand times EVERY MILE per foot. I'm not saying it'll happen, but it might be a good idea to Google "Achilles Tendinitis" just to familiarize yourself with the treatment. Most muscle and tendon injuries occur during ECCENTRIC muscle contraction. Why? Because most of us never train our muscles & tendons in this action, therefore our muscles & tendons are unprepared for and unprotected during these events. This is why most first-time Boston Marathoners destroy their quads on the first 16 downhill miles. Next time, they learn to do squats and train to run downhill before lining up in Hopkinton.
So, we come down to this. My contention is that too many runners are doing just fine, then read a book like "Born To Run" and decide "I want to run like my African ancestors". They don't realize that our ancestors probably also had some tribal members that could run down gazelles (elite hunters) and some that couldn't hunt down a one-legged turtle (back-of-the-pack hunters). If things are hunky-dorey, don't change for the sake of change. If you think the minimalist idea sounds like something you'd like to try, then PLEASE enter in to this brave new world carefully and gradually. Talk to a professional shoe-guy about how to transition from one type shoe to another. These guys WANT to sell you shoes, so they don't want you to get hurt and give up running - they want you to come back and buy more shoes. Also, they can set you straight on exactly what each shoe can, and can't do for you.
One last thing...looks can be deceiving too. Minimalist shoes don't necessarily have to have paper-thin soles - the aforementioned drop is the key. My savior shoes - Hokas - are commonly called "Clown Shoes" because of their HUGE soles. I wear them because I'm trying to decrease the pounding on my arthritic ankles, and they seem to be helping along those lines. BUT, in actuality, you can call them a minimalist shoe...their drop is only 4mm!!! How's that for a kicker? Maybe that's why my ankles feel better but my Achilles is sore. Oh well. Gotta go hunting...Where's that one-legged turtle?
Whatever shoes you are wearing, I hope they work for you, and if you have any questions, you know I'll see you on the roads - AL
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
“It's the fans that need spring training. You gotta get 'em interested. Wake 'em up and let 'em know that their season is coming, the good times are gonna roll.”
Harry CarayWell, here I am in chilly, though not freezing-your-butt-off-cold, Boston, as my wife and I descend on Michael, Joanie, and our two grandkids, Adam & Emma. It is amazing how fast they grow up - Adam & Emma, not Michael and Joanie - to where Adam (almost 2 and a half) can hold almost a complete conversation (or argument), and Emma (6 months) has a personality to (try to) wrap me around her little finger. We try to make this trip every two months, and I increasingly don't understand how a family with more than 2 kids can ever come out of it in any resemblance of sanity, or be able to ever function as a useful member of society following being a multiple parent. I think China has it all wrong trying to limit each family to one child. I mean if they don't want their people to rebel, keep them busy raising a family instead of having time to think independently and coming up with ways to be a thorn in the Government's butt.
Tomorrow, (Sunday), is one of those days that to some, seems to be a turning point in the seasons of the year. I am one of those twisted, dwindling few. For, tomorrow, pitchers and catchers report for Major League Baseball's Spring Training in Florida or Arizona. From when I was a little boy (yeah, yeah, I know...a hundred years ago...real funny...just get it out of your system), the beginning of baseball season meant a start of hating the Yankees, loving the NY Giants as a little guy, and then when they sold their collective souls to the devil and moved to California in '58, moving my allegiance to the Mets. Once I moved away from New Jersey in '65, like a glacier, my love for the Mets has been gradually waning and been supplanted by the greatest Anti-Yankee team of them all - the Boston Red Sox. I don't have a lifelong history as a Red Sox fan, but the Yanks - UGH!!! There is no trying to hide my disdain for them. I don't even want to treat patients in my clinic if they're wearing a Yankee hat! Ok, I'm just kidding with them, but I let them know I might just turn that Electrical Stimulation Unit up a notch or two during their treatment. But, beginning tomorrow, we'll have baseball in one form or other every day until November. Now, living in Alabama, that doesn't hold even a tiny candle to the inordinate amount of coverage college football gets, but I don't fight that. I just try to pass it off as best I can and I just wait around till some ump yells "Play Ball". And if anybody out there has any openings in their fantasy league, give ol' Coach Al a call. If I can win my Football Fantasy League when I don't know what the heck I'm doing, then look out!
It's pretty obvious that my post-Mercedes Marathon, play-with-the-grandkids, wait-for-baseball-season-to-start, mind is not on running, but I did want to hand it to all those folks that ran the Mercedes last week. Cold start (19 F), but really great weather. Wonderful organization as usual from Val McLean and all of The Trak Shak, and a special thanks to The Darkside Running Club from Atlanta (of which I am a member) for handling the bulk of the Pace Team duties. As Director of that team, I may have grown over confident with their ability to deliver their Pace Group year after year right on time. Great job guys. As for me, I finished marathon/ultra #130 in good shape. Was on target through 18 as a Pacer for the 5 hour pace group, but dropped back with one of my best buddies having a very unexpected cramping problem and we came in laughing and joking before the sun came down in 5:19. Now, this was his 74th marathon, so it just goes to show you once more that you never know what will happen on THE DAY. When a race wants to bite your butt, it'll bite your butt!!
Well, everybody's about to wake up from their nap, so I guess I better get the engine started for the afternoon session of DiMicco Crossfit. I hope to get out tomorrow on the Boston Marathon course. Every time I come up here, I have to remind it who's boss!! It has it's version...I have mine!!!
I'll see you next week back on the Birmingham roads - AL
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory." - Mahatma GandhiSo, here I sit, 24 hours before the Mercedes Marathon, having a cup of coffee and watching the end of the Manchester United/Liverpool soccer game (I love soccer). I slept till 7:30 this morning because I knew I wasn't going to run so I didn't set an alarm and getting up at 7:30 really felt late. Maybe the object was to make me feel rested, but right now, I just feel lazy. After 30+ years of running marathons/ultras, you develop a cetain routine, a certain anticipation, a certain fire. But lately, that just just seems harder and harder to light. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still love to run, and when my ankles allow me to, there is nothing better than a good long run. I can be alone, or I can be with friends, but the feeling of your legs carrying you over 10, 15, 20 miles is pure joy to me. But now that the PR's are history, the novelty of new challenges has past, and the inner embers merely smolder. I miss the, well...fear is I guess what you would call it as you would approach the race. I am looking forward to the race tomorrow, but it's with the same excitement that I approach a long training run. I love that I'm going be out there for a long time with only my legs powering me along, but I guess I feel a hole where that burn used to be.Maybe a lot of it is that my energy for Mercedes has shifted to being the Pace Team Director and this has been a joy to do. I ran the first Mercdes in 2002 as a race, and then for the past 10 years, I have directed the Pace Team. I guess it's that "Coach" in me. If you pace somebody through a marathon (or longer), I guess you're a short-term coach. Telling a new marathoner to just hang close to me and don't worry about anything except moving and I'll get you there, is a ball. I remember a few years ago, right before the race, some guy asked "Do you guarantee I'll finish in 4:30?" I said, "No, I guarantee I'LL finish in 4:30!". Once, in the early years, I was pacing the 4:30 group, and GOT PASSED by the 4:45 pacer!! It was his first time pacing and he was a little too fiesty. I had to calm him down! Throughout the years, my job has been made easy because all my pacers are rock solid. Every year, I have a central core of my friends from the Darkside Running Club in Atlanta come over and all are always spot-on with their pacing. This year is no exception. But, we also had a couple of local runners that stepped up late when a few pacers had to drop out. That sure lowered my stress level to have these guys fill in. I'll be with the 5 hour group, but I reserve the right to drop back and pace the Balloon Lady (I made sure I assigned TWO other 5 hour pacers!).If I finish the race, I'll be ecstatic that I notched another marathon. If I don't, well, then I don't. But the plan is definately do to do well. But where is the fire? Where's the mojo? As me and my best friend, Ken, always say "Just shut the hell up and get to the finish line". So, that's what I'll do...supposed to be 20 degrees! Now, for that, I REALLY need a fire!!I'll see you all on the chilly Birmingham roads - AL"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
"THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE MAN, STOP CLAPPING YOUR HANDS!" - A man yelling as Bono was performing a benefit in Scotland before a crowded house. Bono had started slowly clapping his hands and told his audience, "Every time I clap my hands, an elephant dies in Africa!"
As I run down the roads, I usually will have a lot of time to think about a whole slew of things. I'll forget most of what I think about, but sometimes, usually sparked by something I hear on a podcast, I'll hear something pretty interesting...sometimes related to running, and sometimes not. So, for lack of a riveting subject to write about this morning as I recover from my morning run, let's travel through Al's mind and see what's rattling around.
The Colorado State Fair Grand Champion goat has been stripped of it's title...after failing a drug test. He will of course appeal.
There are TWICE as many people in the world as when I was born. I was born a looonnnggg time ago.
Facebook has over 850 MILLION subscribers. If FB was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the whole, wide world.
From a complete stop, a human can outrun a formula 1 car for about 30 feet.
The Chicago Marathon opened registration this past Wednesday (Feb 1st), and will fill up it's 45,000 slots this weekend. It's terrible these races fill up months before your training for them starts.
Leukemia's TNT program has trained more than 540,000 folks to run their first marathon and I'm so blessed to be a coaching part of that program.
The average dropout rate for any given ultramarathon of 50 miles or more is 40%. This surprised me because I would think most folks running 50+ miles know what thy've gotten themselves into.
Every one dollar increase in a barrell of crude oil gives Exxon $450 million dollars a year more income. No comment...yes I do - "thieves!!".
Ed Whitlock set a new 80-84 Age Group record for the marathon in Toronto...3:15:25. I'm beginning my 15 year training program.
Fauja Singh from India, ran the same marathon as Ed at 100 YEARS OLD in 8:11. Guiness refused to recognize the time because he couldn't produce a valid Birth Certificate...the man was born in rural India...100 years ago!!! Good Grief!!
Michael Wardian ran the Olympic Trials in 2:21 and came back the very next day and ran the Houston Marathon in 2:31. And his specialty is ultramarathons!
The Goofy Challenge in Orlando, where you run a Half Marathon on Saturday and a Full Marathon on Sunday, had 9000 participants! This event still seems pretty hardcore to me.
At the Dubai Marathon last weekend, four runners ran UNDER 2:05:00! Those were 4 of the top 20 times in HISTORY! We're talking All-time! Like forever! Anywhere! Ever! Two hours is coming. I give it about 8-10 years.
The Pacific Ocean is so large, that if you Google Earth it from space, it fills almost a full hemisphere! You can hardly see any land.
Our Sun (a star) belongs to the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone... and there are millions upon millions of other galaxies. How can we be alone?
With the Super Bowl being played tomorrow, there are literally dozens of different bets you can place...What color Gatorade will get thrown on the winning coach...coin Flip: heads or tails...how long it will take Kelly Clarkson to sing the National Anthem...color of Madonna's hair...you can even bet on who wins the game! Go Giants...I was raised with the Giants. I'd go with my dad to the old Yankee Stadium. One blustery, snowy day, we were sitting in the End Zone, freezing our butts off. My dad reaches in his jacket, pulls out a flask and says "Take a sip of this". WOW! Screwdrivers burn all the way down! Dad was a good man. And he loved his Giants.
Hope you all enjoy the game. As for me, I'm more looking forward to my run in the morning when I'll see you all on the roads - AL
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
"I don't Twitter. I don't Myface. I don't use Yearbook. I don't do any of that stuff" - Bill Belchick, football coach
So, one of the things I have gotten into the habit of doing lately when I get home after working all day is sitting down with a cold one, or a hot one, depending on the temperature, and flipping through Facebook and Twitter. Just one of those habits I've developed. I actually continually rail against FB people that are posting constantly and carry their Social networking to the Nth degree of being non-social, but I enjoy scrolling down the list to find the couple of things that actually interest me. I'll be honest, I really don't understand anywhere near the full potentials of this media - I can bearly post anything at all, and after I've done it, I have to wonder if it really went where I intended it to go. When I hear that countries are being overthrown because the rebels coordinated their revolution using Twitter, I have to say "WHAT??". You've got to understand this is coming from someone that still gets excited about email! I'm not an introvert, but I haven't opened my life to Cyberworld yet either. However, it seems Cyberworld is finding me wherever I am.
Lately, I've tried to pare down my Facebook contact. The main thing I get out of it is reading family stuff and I like seeing what friends are doing in their running lives. There is even a political site, written by a Congressman of the party opposite to my leanings that I enjoy because he seems to be impartial, fair, self-thinking (WOW!), and continually writes about what's going on in congress. But, my posting is minimal - an occasional comment on someone else's post or letting you know when I post a blog (I even question if anybody wants to know that, but believing they do feeds my literary ego). But, I just don't understand all the levels of FB, and if anybody understands their Privacy Policy, please step forward. Just accept that anything you put on FB is: #1) there forever, and #2) there for everybody to see.
I do like Twitter much better because the comments have to be limited to 140 characters, so most TWEETS - God, I hate that term - are short and have a link to an article that I have the choice to dive into or not. If I have a particularly good, or more often bad, run, I might tweet just to get it off my chest. Some folks follow me for some unknown reason, so I just let them know I'm still around. I follow runners, baseball & soccer players and sites, politics (still searching for an impartial political site), and a couple of miscellaneous places that make me laugh.
But, lately, Social networking as it pertains to running, and everything else to be honest, has really been getting on my nerves. When you buy a new gadget to run with, it usually comes with some software that not only tracks our runs, analyzes our workouts with graphs and charts, but now we have the ability to upload it to "the cloud", write a note about how we "feel" during the workout, and let everyone else see how and what we're doing, so they can offer their suggestions and/or encouragement and/or critique, and it lets us be generally as open about our running lives to others as we are to ourselves. Even, my watch wants to get sociable - after a particularly horrible run, when I hit "end" on my watch, I have to tell my watch to shut up because it says "Great Job!". No it wasn't. It was awful.
It's funny how you share some information you don't even realize your sharing. Do you have one of those sites where they force you to publish your running route overlaid on a map, even if you don't want to? It shows the world in exacting detail where the front door of your house is. I know people with a pickaxe can find my address and stalk me if they want to, but do I have to put it on a silver internet platter for them? Google came out this week with a new Privacy Policy that takes effect March 1st. If you go to their site, essentially they are screaming at you READ THIS OR WE'RE NOT RESPONSIBLE!! As my paranoia grows, I picture someone at Google going through my emails as they pour into my Gmail inbox(es) and then calling all my friends to tell them about it. I like the internet and want to be friends with it, but it's getting scary.
There are a couple sites out there that allow you to discover new routes and places to run, such as MapMyRun, and they're nice, but even they're morphing to become more social. Share your run. Share your life. Let us all become one...the collective...THE BORG!!
Why does my phone track me? Does it really send, via 21st Century technology, my location to someone named Peggy, sitting in old Communist Russia, who then sends a T-mobile sales rep to me to sell me a new phone? Is there a big War-room map in some underground bunker that flashes "DiMicco's on the move" when I drive home?
I could go off on my John Wayne imitation and say I'm from the days when men were men, work was work, and we didn't have a need to let everyone know what we're doing and how we're feeling all the time. Maybe I'll post that on Facebook and see if I get any "Likes". I know at the end of the day, social networks are just tools of expression and a means for us to communicate with others, but I think the world is changing a little too quickly for this slowly aging runner.
And that's the end of my cynicism for today. And I even had a good run this morning - imagine if I had a crappy run and wanted to take it out on the world. So now, I have to go check my Twitter account, so I'm a hypocrite I guess. Maybe somebody will tell me in 140 characters or less that they read this and I'm overly critical and paranoid.
Have a great week (post it and I'll read it). I'll see you on the roads (in person!) - AL
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
"There are times in our lives when we are drawn uncontrollably to some dangerous source of misery."- Suzi Thibeault, in a letter to David Horton during his conquest of the Appalachian Trail: 2144 miles in 52 days, 9 hours, 41 minutesLast week, I closed RWA with saying that I had listened to The Marathon Show podcast about Disney and how entertaining it was. Well, this morning, I went out running before the thunderstorms descended on Birmingham, and once again was listening to this week's Marathon Show and in it, Joe Tariconi interviewed Leah Thorvalson. Leah is a 2nd or 3rd tier marathoner who ran in last week's USA Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston and gives a delightful insight into what goes on at one of these events. She talks about how they tape over the sponsors on your running gear, how the elite aid tables are organized, and how she watched the 1st tier runners pulling away. There's a lot more she talks about concerning the race, and for someone like me that gets wrapped up in this stuff, I loved it. Maybe one day, we can get Birmingham's Scott Strand to write about his experience running the Trials. If my fading memory serves me correct (Ha, fat chance of that!), I think he did the Trials twice - once in the Steeplechase and once in the marathon (here in Birmingham 2008).
Most of us will never get close to the upper levels. That's a whole 'nother world. The closest I ever came was back in 1988 when I ran in the TAC/USA 24 Hour Championships held in Atlanta. Ok, not exactly the Olympics, but for a perennial middle-of-the-pack runner who has become a now very back-of-the-pack long distance runner, this was HUGE for me. After listening to that podcast this morning, I dug out my 1988 diary and re-reading my entry from that race was like I was listening to a total stranger's story.
For a lack of anything exciting happening around here, I thought I'd relive one of those thrilling days of yesteryear. Even before the race, all kinds of signs were trying to point to disaster - drove to Atlanta in a driving rain, compliments of Hurricane Gilbert in the Gulf. When I got to the Hotel late the night before the race, the car literally died with a dead battery! Had to get a jump and then searched for an open garage to check it out. The mechanic could have told me I needed a new engine and I would have just handed him my credit card and said "Just fix it", but he was honest and $69 later, I had a new battery. So much for a relaxing night before the race.
The morning of the race, I had a couple of cups of coffee and waffles before heading to the Atlanta Water Works with plenty of time to spare - so I thought! I went to the start line to fill a Thermos, and I noticed a lot of runners by the start line for it being an hour before the race. I asked a friend of mine, Doyle Carpenter, what time the race started, and he said "Oh, in about 3 minutes!!". PANIC MODE!! I ran back to the car, ripping my sweats off, telling my wife and son that they would have to set up the tent without me (like THAT would be a handicap to them). I grabbed the Vaseline, the gun went off, and there I was trying my best to grease up myself during the first one mile loop. I had one more obstacle - seems I had volunteered to take part in this medical study that had me taking a breathing test every 3 hours. The first test was to have been before the race started, but at that time, I was in some coffee shop enjoying a waffle! So, a mile into the race, they're pulling me off the course to breathe into some contraption. FINALLY, I had to collect my emotions, and relax, telling myself I still had 23 hours and 50 minutes to smooth all this calamity out. Not exactly the relaxed atmosphere you picture yourself in before a race.
I don't want to go into the details of the race, but one thing that amazed me when looking back was that I ate very little - my diary said all I had was a yogurt, some bananas, half a turkey sandwich and some grapes! That was it!! I drank something called Body Fuel the first 12 hours and then some OJ, coke (which gave me the hiccups), one V-8, a yogurt shake, and mostly water. I find that amazing considering all our present emphasis on "staying fueled up". I had no cramps and my toe pains were relieved when I cut the toe box off the top of my shoes!! Shoes were cheaper then, not that it matters when your toes are crying. The night gets pretty long and I'm sure I put in extra mileage with my weaving along the course, but once the sun comes up, you get that new kick in the butt. I hit 100 miles at 21:53 and wound up doing over 9 miles the last 2 hours. My last mile was even 8:06 (a time I would KILL for now!!).
My goals going in were 105 miles and finish in the top 20 (remember, this was the USA Championships). I wound up with 109.4 miles and 13th place. There were 30 runners that broke 100 miles, which at the time was the most ever in a 24 hour race. Probably, this one event is in the top three of my biggest running thrills in my 33+ years of running, and although it's not the Olympics, or even the Trials, it was my one day to sweat with some pretty elite runners at (to me) a pretty elite event. My wife often accuses me of being Walter Mitty, but on this very special day, Walter stepped over the line from wishing/hoping/imagining into reality.
Have a good week guys, and I'll see you on the roads - AL
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
"Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other." - Carrie P. Snow
Ok, I know it's me. Or as Scott, down at the Trak Shak calls it...User Error! Let's back up a little and paint a VERY clear picture. I am a numbers freak. I always loved math, I know how to figure out pitcher's Earned Run Averages (ERA's), I can tell you the incline of any hill in percentage and NOT degrees (degrees makes a whole lot more sense to me, but I just can't generate a meaningful argument with anyone on that front). I know how many miles in a light-year, and I'm fascinated by the fact that Pi has no repeating pattern after the decimal point...NONE, NADA...not a million places, not a BILLION places!! So, because of this, knowing EXACTLY how far I run is insanely important to me.
About 5 years ago, I bought my first Garmin for running - the old 101, I think. Anyway, it looked like an iphone on your wrist. If you've never seen one, stop Prince Whatley one day and ask to see his watch. He still uses it! Anyway, it was a little too clunky for me and after about a year, I pawned it off to John Gordon. Then, about three years ago, I upgraded my GPS watch to a Garmin 405 and most of the time it has performed very admirably. As a matter of fact, a little over year ago, I wrote a blog post about how these little running computers actually work. If you want to read (or hopefully re-read) that piece of literary genius, click here
Now, it had way more bells and whistles than I could ever need. It definately had a ton more technology than my first home computer, which, in turn, had a ton more technology than the first satellites I marveled at as a kid (heck, I marveled at a dial phone!). Some of it's peculuarities were sorta comical...one day I'm running along and look to see my distance and instead I'm staring at a compass!! A DAMN COMPASS!! I didn't even know it had a compass. What's worse is I couldn't get it to revert back to the original screen. I also later learned the Garmin wasn't designed with a sweaty runner in mind (duh?) or that running in the rain wasn't considered by Garmin Research and Development. Nope, unless you locked the touch bezel before your run, you were set up for all kinds of visual (or blank screen) surprises. I had several "Aw, crap" moments when that happened in the middle of a run.
So, now we fast forward to a couple of months ago when I was given a Nike+ Sportswatch. I won't go into all the issues I had with this watch, but it's GPS was a show in itself. Once, when running in Boston, I downloaded my 6 mile run (which it recorded as 9.78 miles!), and the GPS map had me running through buildings, in the Charles River, and over to Cambridge, which I never came within 2 miles of. Then, on another day I pushed the pause button and the whole watch went blank. I was sure it was charged. I was hacked because the record of my run was gone, regardless of how terribly inaccurate the watch was...or how terrible my run was. About every other run did the same thing. I never trusted it on longer runs - that was reserved for my more semi-reliable Garmin. I finally called Nike, explained my concerns, and after "kicking the tires" for an hour, the very nice Tech-guy said "exchange it!". So, down to The Trak Shak I went and they replaced the watch without blinking an eye.
Well, I'll be damned if the 2nd watch didn't do the same BLANK SCREEN thing again after pushing the start/pause/stop button. Not every time, but enough to cause me anxiety during my runs, and if there's one thing I don't need in my runs lately, it's MORE anxiety. So, I decided to just give the watch back to Trak Shak and not even ask for a replacement - it was just causing too much angst (I never get to use that word). Jeff (the Nike+ expert at the TS) wasn't there, and that's when Scott came up with his "user error" zinger - but I had to agree with him.
So, all was good. Until…
I was on a long training run a couple of days later and noticed that the display on my Garmin was starting to fade in and out. By the time I got to 11 miles...yep, blank screen!! This was ridiculous. Two watches and I can't even SEE an inaccurate time or distance on either one!I charged it up and it worked on short runs, but then, Mohammed Guivi and I were running the Ruffner Mountain High Crusher 21k Trail Run the very next weekend...full battery...plenty of hills yearning to have their elevation measured...plenty of miles to have their exactness measured...and me with a hunk of dead technology hanging on my arm.
So, here's the kicker of kickers!! I couldn't find anything in the user's manual or on the web about how to replace the battery. Wanna know why????? Well, do you???? It turns out that the battery is NOT replaceable!! The battery is welded to the innards of the watch and that's that. Dead battery = dead Garmin!! I found that if you jump through enough hoops, you can send your watch back to Garmin (in Austrailia, I think) and they will sell you a refurbished watch for about $185! Excuse me for a moment while I blow a gasket!
I just don't get it. Garmin does a great job of hiding the fact (at least from me) that your $300 watch will fail after about 3 years and then it will be Kaput! Just doesn't seem right.
But, the happy ending for me is that later that same week, Jeff (remember, the Nike+ expert) went for a run with my Nike watch #2 and it blanked out on him too (Thank God!) and he emailed me and said they would replace it AGAIN! Now, that's great customer service. So, I've been running with the Sportswatch for about 5 weeks now without a hitch. It's been accurate, it links up with the satellite quick (even in the house), I found a website to download to (Nike's site is TERRIBLE), and you know what? The battery is replaceable! Life is good again and I feel confident that my 4.06 mile morning run will always be 4.06 miles...give or take a few hundreths.
I'll see you on the roads, no matter how far they are - AL
Addendum: When I run alone, I usually listen to podcasts and pretty soon, I'm going to write about Pods I listen to. But, this morning, during a long run, I listened to the latest The Marathon Show. It's done by Joe Tariconi and this week's episode was recorded WHILE he ran the Disney Marathon. He is a funny, happy-go-lucky, guy and this epeisode was great and had me smiling, even at 16 miles! Give it a try.
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"
