I currently have a Forerunner 305 charging underneath of my desk. While it arrived (out of the box) charged enough to power on, I want to get some more juice in it before playing around too much. I figure the next day or so I’ll only have time to flip through the instruction manual, and maybe play with some of the functions. The difficult thing will be finding time to program the device (I suppose that will be necessary for things such as the HRM) and load the software on to my computer. I don’t think I’ll be able to do so tonight, as I have class until 8:10 and must go to the grocery store afterwards (stupid stores observing Easter Sunday). Tomorrow I’ll probably be at the Goucher track until 7:30 – 8:00, and will likely be studying afterwards. The unfortunate thing about my week is that I have little free time. How noisy is the device when pressing buttons? It made the sound of a 1980s handheld game when I turned it on… does it have a tendency to make noises like this? If I can turn that off, then perhaps I can play with it during lunch sometime this week. Before doing anything else with it, my initial impression of the Forerunner 305 is that it’s actually smaller and lighter than I imagined. I’m not sure why, but I thought it would at least be somewhat of a burden while running, but I don’t think that will be the case.

I'll probably be asking several Forerunner related questions this week. My experience with the 305 has been intriguing so far. I've only been playing with it for about 20 minutes, but I've set up three display screens and have discovered how to limit the retro tones to only when messages are displayed (i.e., a tone will play at every lap, or when hitting the Stop Watch button, but not at the touch of every menu button). However, I think I've discovered a few shortcomings (of course, nothing's perfect). For instance, I would like to have some figures displayed in nonmetric (e.g., my weight, elevation), and others displayed in metric (distance). However, I don't think that's possible. Also, I have the auto lap set at 1 mile so that I can use the suggested Pace - Lap feature. Do you think that will interfere with my intended 1200m workout tomorrow night? If nothing else, I suppose I could keep the autolap on for the mile warm-up and cool-down, but turn it off for the intervals. It's only a minor inconvenience, but I was just wondering if there was a simplier solution.

My issue with using the interval workout feature on a track is that I’ve heard the Forerunner is much less accurate when on a track… I think it has to do with the curves. However, I think the interval workout would be EXCELLENT for doing repeats on a trail rather than on a track. It would be an interesting workout to explore over the summer. How does the distance feature read during the run? For instance, right now it measures in feet. Will it eventually switch over to fractions of a mile (e.g., 0.25 miles)? Or, should I bite the bullet and just switch to metric? I suppose I could eventually learn the kilogram-to-pound conversion.

Actually, here's another issue I had with the Forerunner during the marathon ... which I haven't mentioned. Like I said, I didn't start the watch until I reached the four-mile mark. When I hit the five-mile mark, my watch registered exactly one mile, so at that point everything seemed perfectly on track. But by the time I got to mile 22 or so, a HUGE disparity had arisen. I'm talking a good 200 yards difference between when the Forerunner clocked the next mile and when I passed a physical mile marker. And after the race, the distance total on my watch read 22.4 miles --- insinuating that the marathon was actually 26.4 miles long! The course is certified, and the Forerunner's odometer had been trustworthy so far, so I'm not sure which one to believe. Perry, what did your total distance read?

How do you guys have your display menus set up? Right now, I have Time of Day, Date, and Sunset on the main screen. On the second screen, I have four windows: (from top left to bottom right) Time, Current Lap Time, Distance, and Pace. I have a third screen to set up as well... I imagine I'll just use Heart Rate &, HR Zone, Elevation, and Grade or something like that. Here's the more important question at hand: what "PACE" setting do you guys use? I know you were saying before that instantaneous pace is rather inaccurate. I used "Pace - Lap" on my run tonight. Basically, I believe it displayed what time you would finish a mile in if you held that pace. I think that would be the go-to pace function during a race, especially when you have goal split times. However, which pace setting do you use during long runs? I imagine either "PACE" or "Pace - Average" is the instantaneous pace, but it's difficult to tell which one... I'll give an update as to my first workout with the Forerunner tomorrow (3/26) sometime, possibly during lunch.

And I just found out today that there's a Simon Pegg "romantic comedy" coming out (apparently soon) that revolves around training for a marathon. It's called Run Fatboy, Run.

800 metres From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from 800 meters) Jump to: navigation, search 800 m is a common track running event. It is the shortest common middle distance track event. The 800 meters is run over two laps of the track (400 meter track) and has always been an Olympic event. During indoor track season the event is usually run on a 200 meter track, therefore requiring four laps. It was included in the first women's track programme in 1928, but suspended until 1960 because of shock at the exhaustion it caused the competitors. By contrast, without today's training regimes, male competitors of the day were expected to run themselves to exhaustion in competition.

Here's something (from wikipedia) that I never quite realized: With their acute eyesight and hearing, they can sense predators such as lions from far away. When being pursued by a predator, Ostriches have been known to reach speeds in excess of 65 km per hour (40 miles per hour), and can maintain a steady speed of 50 km/h (30 mph), which makes the ostrich the world's fastest two-legged animal.[27]