Running
Forty-one
Another trip around the sun for me as I flip my internal digits to 41! As I am sitting down in these morning hours, hoping the kids will sleep in longer as they are on Spring Break, I am actually struggling what to write. It isn’t that I don’t know what to write but there was actually a lot of things that happened and I know I won’t capture them all or well enough in this entry. I am still working from home for the most part which is a blessing some days and a curse other times.
However, using past entries as a guide I will follow up on some things I alluded to last year and just talk about other things.
Year two with the RV was much like the first but a little less camping this year as we didn’t know what to expect with kids camps and stuff coming back. We never made it on a real long roadtrip but we visited a couple new places and old ones. I will say even though it is a chore getting the rig ready and cleaned out it seems like once we are at a place everyone enjoyed their time.
*On the top of Mt. Tom in Sibley State Park, MN *
Hanging out for much longer than I would have expected at the Mississippi Headwaters. Everyone enjoyed it!
Sometime just taking a step back and putting your kids in the right surroundings and they will wow you.
Lainey Lou the Doodle loves camping and her favorite camp chair… Sorry humans!
It was my 40th this past year I had some big things planned in the area of running…. The good thing is I did complete the Twin Cities Marathon that I did 20 years ago that day which was just a fun accomplishment in my mind.
My crew really supported me the whole way with cheers.. I loved it!
However, the second thing I had up my sleeves didn’t pan out which might have been for the best. I would have had limited time in between each event so it might have made that Marathon extra hard. However, I decided to embark on my own adventure of a 4x4x40 which I then decided to complete the entire 4x4x48 (which involves running 4 miles ever 4 hours for 48 hours).
Doing a 4x4x48 means sometimes you find yourself running at night in the snow/rain. It’s fun right?
It was one of those fun accomplishments that I was doing for myself and no one knew but me so that made it all the more fun. Kind of like when I ran a 5k a day for 365 days as no one really knew much about it till the end. It wasn’t that I was hiding it but it was something that I wanted to prove to myself just like the 4x4x48. I am not really sure what this year will bring as I haven’t signed up for anything but I keep plugging along. If anything I am going to keep exploring as a good thing about being able to run further from my house is I find new places to explore.
Following some new to me paths in the Riley Creek Conservation Area
As I looking forward to this next year, I am looking forward to traveling again. We have a couple trips in the works for the summer that should be really fun. One with the RV and the other just flying somewhere. As a family we haven’t flew anywhere for such a long time. Additionally, I need to work some more on my “Project Shed” to get it in a better place to work before summer when the kids are at home every day.
I don’t think I did much around “Learning” this past year and for the life of me I am not sure what I was going to do. I guess silly as it is I learned (re-learned) how to be a longer distance runner but I don’t think that is what I was thinking. This year I am still going to focus on other aspects of “Embracing” which has been kind of an ongoing one but more around Embracing moments. I think being kind of locked up for the last two years (which it was good to be safe) has led me to not be as outgoing as I was and I know that needs to change slightly. I think there should be some easy wins here but just need to make the time and commitment to do it. Probably part putting myself out there again after all this time at home 😁.
The snow finally stopped today and even melted by the time I could get out. Maybe I will choose another route than get my feet soaked 😁
Feeling it in the legs today after the long one yesterday. However, it was 65°F so I had to get out there after work was done.
Found some time late today to hit the streets and trails. It was great exploring some new areas of Eden Prairie and getting some miles in.
Bridge out is a sign I wish was here or that I would have considered my choices a little better. Instead this puddle looked innocent in my quick assessment until it wasn’t as it was well over my ankle when I tried to quick step through it. Made for a wet rest of the run 🤦♂️
Thankful for the 54°F weather today but that just made everything a wet mess. Ran across these turkeys and quick pulled out my phone to take this photo while running by (look close one is flying up).
Bridge building… I really can’t wait for this to be done as I talked about it to a running buddy back when I took up running again. The road was very narrow with no shoulder. Probably shouldn’t have run on it for all these years and couldn’t get by the barrier today😆.
Brisk one out there again today. Looking forward to the warm weather next week. Glad I got this one done in time to attend the Micro.Camp kickoff 👍
Beautiful yet cold day out due to the wind. The temps said 15°F but feels like 0°… Maybe when I was running into the wind but it sure was sunny which makes all the difference 😎
Quick footwork at times today trying to avoid ice patches made for more of workout both physically and mentally than it should have been.
However it was beautiful out there and much warmer than I thought.
Ended up going longer than planned only to find out I didn’t really bring enough water… Rookie mistake 🤦♂️
Disappointed the plows hadn’t come by at first but then I got an escort about a mile in. Unfortunately he was going to slow so I had to take to the streets again 😆🏃🏻♂️
Apple Watch ⌚️ - Strange Stop or Results
I have been collecting this data and been reading articles for some time about the discrepancies in my Apple Watch 6 vs my Garmin fēnix 5x. However, I have not finished all of that yet and felt compelled to post this quickly as I ran across a very puzzling issue today that I am not even really sure where to start but this is how it went.
On my run today I started both watches at the same time as always waiting for the Apple Watch to do it’s 3 second countdown and then I hit start on my Garmin. Today was colder out so I had a jacket over both watches so to that point I only looked once at both watches to see how the time was as I knew I needed to make a loop (or thought I did) because I wasn’t going to hit the mileage I was shooting for. However, the Apple Watch was back at the main screen and not in the Workout screen. This is only irritating as I had to type in my pin to get into the watch. I thought for sure then it must have stopped timing but this had also happened earlier in the week and once I clicked back into the Workout app I could see the time was still ticking away. I did the same thing today and glanced that it was still running but didn’t look close enough to know what the time said or anything.
Fast forward 1 more mile and I was at the end of my run and I stopped my Garmin first and then went to my wrist and stopped the Apple Watch as I always do. However, looking at the activity summaries I noticed the Apple Watch said I only ran a fraction of the time and distance I knew I was at.
Now I have had some discrepancies before now but never such a big one
Knowing that didn’t seem right I dug into the details of the Apple Watch the GPS shows me stopping this half way through the run 🤔. I would say oh it must have just shut off but I know with 1 mile to go I looked at it and the time was ticking away so if anything where was that portion of time.
I gotta have the details…
Now as a person running with two watches I get I am a little strange but this was even more boggling than the research I have been looking into on just GPS accuracy for each watch. So I looked at some more of the details and found a couple interesting points.
Garmin fēnix 5x
Apple Watch 6
You can see that both the Garmin and Apple Watch have the same start and stop times so I was correct at seeing the time clicking away when I had to re-enter my pin with 1 mile to go. However, that only goes to being more odd as the Apple Watch says the total time was 21:18 (head scratcher I know). Also, it says it didn’t have enough data for my Heart Rate. Something wasn’t working right the whole time because I would think even for a 2.5 mile run that would give it enough and I wear the watch pretty snug so it isn’t like it bounces around when I run. I guess Apple didn’t think I my ”effort” was enough to be recorded for at least the last 3.7 miles but really the whole thing for HR perspective.
Hopefully, I will get to finishing my post around the GPS accuracy at some point but it probably won’t be any silver bullet as shockingly there is a lot of information but maybe only a couple good explanations. Until then I will hold off my true thoughts on both I will keep wearing them 😆. ⌚️ ⌚️
It’s Friday so it made sense to head out around lunch on a grey skies kind of day. I am intrigued by this bridge but not 100% sure why.
However, today an interesting issue with my Apple Watch, more to come…
Did some exploring today today while running round the Prairie and decided to follow a long forgotten ”path” of what was once the trail.
Another great day and glad I waited longer than planned as the sun came out again. I ran across this today on a trial that had been closed off and wondering what they were doing. Looks like they dug up some of this pond 🤔
The sun felt awesome today with no clouds and 40 F weather. I ran a little farther than planned as I was also running a little faster than planned. Besides all the water the route I choose wasn’t slick so that was another plus.
Such a beautiful day to get outside… Once you have your gear 🤦♂️
Running when traveling or visiting places is always fun and you can typically find an interesting trail (along the river here) and/or fun signs 😁
