GPS Kids | Peg and Jake (and Ryan) Rock the Parkway and brave the weather

With their marathon training wrapping up, Peg (Boston on April 19) and Jake (Olathe this Saturday, hoping to qualify for Boston 2011) were able to combine a long training run with the excitement of a local race’s debut. Here’s their recap:

JAKE: It’s no secret that I’m a social runner. So when Peg and I realized that Kansas City’s inaugural “Rock the Parkway” half-marathon on March 27 coincided with a 20-plus miler on each of our training schedules, we quickly signed up and started strategizing. Our first thought was to run a couple warm-up miles, tackle the race itself and then tack on 8 miles as a postscript. But then reality settled in. There’s no way that I could convince myself to run through a finish line, past the fans and free food and continue running another hour. My body knows that a finish line is named that for a reason. So we would just have to get an early start.

PEG: Turns out, Jake’s tendency toward “social running” was a bonus for me on a couple of counts: 1) this should go without saying, but having Jake’s running commentary for 20+ miles is the perfect mix of distraction and entertainment. 2) the weather at 5:30 a.m. was balmy, so our early miles were cake. It rained hard for most of the race and even hailed a little after we’d finished. No way we would’ve headed back out for our extra miles at the end.

JAKE: I was so wet and cold in the end, I couldn’t even unzip my jacket pocket without looking like Edward Scissorhands. Any questions about the durability of my Forerunner 310XT were answered as it withstood everything from light “refreshing” rain for the first few miles to steady bone-chilling hail at the finish. If I didn’t burn enough calories in our 23 miles, I made up for it through shivering and teeth chattering afterward. But one thing that warmed our spirits was seeing our Garmin colleague Ryan complete his first half-marathon. Using his FR60 and Garmin Connect to track 10 weeks of training, Ryan went from a casual 3-miler a couple months ago to Saturday’s half-marathon with a solid kick, no stops and a smile throughout. He even had to adjust his schedule on short notice, shaving off two weeks and moving up his race date when work got in the way.

PEG: We both agreed Ryan appeared quite fresh after running his first half on a rather hilly course under rather deplorable weather conditions. So we’re debating whether to sign him up for his first full this fall or just go straight for a multi-stage ultra or adventure race of some sort. He’s not the first one around here to get hooked on knowing how far and how fast. Five years ago, I’d never run more than three consecutive miles. But once I strapped on our first Forerunner model (yes, the one that looked kinda like a remote control), the lure of going a little farther or faster couldn’t be denied. And the fact that I didn’t have to physically log all my data made it even more addictive. In fact, I just used the Reports feature in Garmin Connect to discover I’ve logged nearly 3,000 running miles since I started using Forerunner and FR60 products. What’s your motivation? Visit our new Forerunner 110 minisite and tell us.

Leave a Reply