Pace is a funny thing

I woke up late this morning and looked outside. It was raining a little and looked as though it had been raining all night. I turned on the television and they said we were getting a break, but that starting this afternoon there's a wind advisory already in place.

I didn't exactly want to go for a run in the rain and the wind. I wanted even less to run in heavier wind and a thunderstorm, so I suited up, fastened my Garmin to my wrist and took off.

On my training schedule, today was supposed to be a hills run. But my physical therapist, who is working on my running mechanics is telling me I'm not allowed to run hills yet.

As a substitute, I ran to develop speed. I ran for about five minutes, ran hard for about 1 minute and then jogged for about 2 minutes. Rinse, lather, repeat. But pace is a funny thing.

When I got my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch, I noticed it has preset zones for heart rate and speed. Zones for speed go something like this: slow walk, walk, slow jog, jog, run, sprint, max speed. The manual says the zones may not match your personal abilities.

They're not lying.

For three years, I've been demoralized because my Garmin has characterized even my hardest efforts in the most demeaning ways. I can pour my heart into a run and my Garmin sneers at me for never reaching more than a jog. I finally got wise and just last week started fiddling around with the zone settings.

They now read: walk, fast walk, jog, run, sprint, heart attack, death.

Much more accurate.

My problem stems from the undeniable fact that I have little room between a jog (12 mph) and a sprint (9 mph). That may seem great in terms of actual speed, but in terms of the effort it takes for me to move between 9 and 12, I'm not getting much of a break.

Here's my suggestion: Garmin needs to develop a watch that measures courage, effort, stupidity and stubbornness. That's what runners really need to measure. Sales would explode! The watch could tell me that what I'm about to do is 40% stupid or that clearly the only way I got up that hill was 100% stubbornness or that passing an untethered St. Bernard/Great Dane barking monster took 75% courage mixed with 20% stupidity.

Oh, and some praise and encouragement would work wonders, too.