well that was a surprise

so, i've turned into the anti-me as a runner. i'm wearing shoes, and today, i took my new garmin gps running watch for a spin. i had a forerunner 210, which is total crap. it refuses to get satellite lock and i'm not exactly in downtown NYC. so i ordered a 410 from REI, fully expecting to return it after a couple of infuriating failures.

nope. it has a really stupid user interface, for which i was fully prepared. it's also heavy, but it's a supercomputer on my wrist, so i must be reasonable. but in the functionality department, i'm impressed. it got satellite lock under my awning, and by the time i got to open sky across the street, it was at 15 foot accuracy. once i got moving, it went to 10 foot accuracy, which is about as good as it gets for civilian GPS.

so, that was surprising. garmin has figured out how not to suck. as far as i could tell it did not lose satellite lock during my run (but we'll see if that remains true once i start running under overpasses. the 210 would absolutely freak when the sky is lost for 2 seconds worth of overpass). but here's the surprising thing: over a whopping 2.25 miles (working on it, thanks) my pace was 8:25. that's great! the last time i measured my pace, last year in 5fingers, my pace was... 11:00. that's more like walking.

if i can manage to keep that pace for 5 or 6 miles, i will beat my speeds of last decade. old-me will be faster than young-me. that's something.