Ace: I have a Garmin watch (Fenix 3) that also has the occasional sync trouble with my phone (which is Android, though). Generally, rebooting phone and/or watch and some patient does eventually fix it, but it can be annoying. Actually while we're at it: The sync is often rather slow, too -- might take 5 to 10 mins for a longer run. Not sure that's normal?

I guess I might as well post my week -- it's quick:

• Mon: sprained my ankle (mildly) playing volleyball
• Tue-Fri: URD.
• Sat 3.5mi @ 8:07 
• Sun: 13.1mi @ 7:19 + 3mi warm-up / cool-down

Total: 19.5mi

After rolling my ankle during volleyball I was quietly cursing myself, because it happened before (much worse at the time), and since then I'd been playing with ankle braces which prevent or at least reduce the damage, but the braces disappeared a while back and I hadn't bothered to get new ones. Spraining ankles at volleyball is different from what typically happens when spraining an ankle during running, I suppose because it typically happens when coming back down from a real jump -- I've seen grown men cry...

Anyway, this sprain turned out to be relatively mild, other than Tuesday morning I could walk fine on it, and the swelling quickly went down. I had been planning on a HM this weekend as a tune-up / fitness gauge, and so in the end I tried how running feels on Saturday and since it felt fine, I decided to go for it, possibly going at less than max effort (but I don't seem to be able to actually restrain myself in races).

So I made the best of my involuntary taper this week and ran the New England HM this morning, and ended up with a shiny new PR: 1:35:50 That may deserve a slight asterisk since it was a net downhill race, but at 410 ft gain and 630 ft loss I don't think it made that huge a difference. The race was very well organized, beautiful course, near ideal weather -- nothing to complain about at all. I don't think I had anything left in the end, in fact the last two miles felt kinda sucky. The only thing where I might have given away some time was in the first two miles or so, where I still stuck with my plan of "let's try my desired marathon pace (7:45) and see how that goes", but then I got sucked into pushing myself to the limit, probably helped by another guy who ended up using me as a pacer -- I think he was helped by having to put in effort to keep right behind me, and I benefitted from pushing myself to not give him the opportunity to pass me. I did get away from him eventually, though.

I'm quite happy with the time -- in particular considering that I had only been able to keep up tempo runs in the 7:20-7:30 range for 3 or at most 4 miles in previous weeks. Still, it shows that I still haven't caught up to where I was 2.5 years ago, when I ran a 10 miler at 7:00 pace -- which I already knew, and which I guess will require keeping up consistent training. While I went into this training cycle expecting that I wouldn't have a chance to BQ this time around, I think this result shows that I'm actually not that far off, though considering this year's cut-off I don't think I'd have much of a chance.

In fact, as I spent this week thinking I might have to take a couple of weeks off because of the ankle, I had already come to terms with maybe not actually running a marathon at the end of the cycle. Which I guess I'm still considering. I gather that training for a marathon is definitely good for you, but on actually running it, the good vs bad doesn't seem to be as clear-cut.

Ace - If you refreshed everything, the phone app may have forgotten about the Garmin. Check "Garmin Devices" in the app's menu and see if it's there. If not, there's an add button.