Full of awesome

My fun-filled birthday weekend in the Cities is over, and it went by way too quickly, as these things so often do.  There was good food, good conversation, a museum... and meeting the BF Barbado's youngest sister and her boyfriend, who are pretty darn cool too.

I also used my new Shiny for the first time on Saturday.  Normally I will map out my run in advance, so I have an idea of where I'm going, what turns to make, how long I'll be out, etc.  This weekend I decided to step out of my comfort zone and just get out and run.  The whole Minneapolis metro area has an amazing trail system, and Barbado's sister lives near some at Lake Calhoun, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to just run and not think about my path.  And it was just a great run - even though I got very little sleep the run was easy and I felt so good when I was done.  There were so many people out running, even on a Saturday morning at the end of November pretty early in the morning (I headed out at about 7:30 AM).  It was just one great thing during an absolutely amazing weekend.

Now to the important part - my thoughts on the Shiny.  So here's my lists:

Pros:

• Easy to use - one button to get it out of power save mode, one button to start, one button to stop.  Can't ask for anything more.
• Quick connection to satellites - took way less than a minute for it to connect
• Easy to read - I had no problems reading the display while I was moving.  The numbers were clear and large enough to make out
• Easy to upload the data - more on this part later 

Cons:

• Lap noise too quiet - I missed it notifying me of hitting a mile mark a couple of times because the beeping noise was a little quiet
• A little bulky - it is almost a little too big for my wrist to be worn as a casual watch, which I decided to do so I wouldn't lose it in my luggage

The Cons definitely don't outweigh the Pros for this watch.  And the absolute best part is all the data you get to see when you upload your run to the Garmin Connect website.  Not only is there a map of where you ran, but there is the pace information, elevation information, lap information, and even weather information.  And there's graphs!

Graphs!  Numbers are awesome!

I will even have the ability to compare runs, save routes as courses, and probably many other things that I haven't figured out yet.  This is definitely what I was looking for when I was researching buying this watch, and I am afraid I may spend many hours obsessing with all the data provided.

Yesterday's Run

Yesterday I ran 6.65 miles around Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles in 57:59, for an average pace of 8:43.  My slowest average miles were Mile 5 (surprising), followed by Mile 2 (expected - I always feel like I crap on the second mile of any run).  I can't wait to compare this run to my next "long" run; I have a feeling there will be a lot of differences as this route was very flat and Duluth is not.

Also, for the year, I have run a total of 518 miles, just about half a mile short of my total for 2012.  Which means that pretty much all the miles I put on in the month of December will be above and beyond what I did last year.  Yay me!