Running

with frost appearing here in glasgow again, i'm remembering some hazardous runs from last winter. Does anyone here use yaktrax or similar for winter running?

Mint parkrun this morning. I've moved house so tried out the new local (Wythenshawe) and my pal joined me.
We did the standard "start a bit too hard and cling on for dear life" 5k. He was making noises early on so I thought he'd eventually drop off, but as he stayed with me further and further into the run I started actively trying to drop him, literally threw everything at it. Nearing the end of the last lap I got a little gap that he reeled back just before the last straight - perfect I thought, he must be knackered from that. Nope! He sprints off and had me by a couple seconds. So much fun. Literally threw everything at it, ended the run at 202bpm with vision blurring lol.
He's signed up for the marathon I was thinking about doing so not much chance of a fair all-out rematch for a bit unfortunately.

22:34 final time though, which I'm chuffed to bits with regardless of lOsINg tHE rAcE.

Did my first parkrun for ages today, crystal palace, Garmin said one time, result said the right time. Garmin said "18:40". Legs said "I don't think that's right".

ended the run at 202bpm with vision blurring lol.

That really is going deep

^ no vomit = not tried hard enough

#armchairds

I owe any and all fitness I've ever had to daft "friendly" competitiveness between friends for sure

Interesting read:

https://www.inov-8.com/hannah-horsburgh-galloping-to-success

Here's my mad pal doing mad things - a good watch!

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thegwynneharrisround

Anyone got a Forerunner 245 music for sells, or similar?

Shanghai Marathon is cancelled "because of covid" - we don't have a single case in Shanghai at the moment...

Second ever night-run last night, so spooky/atmospheric/exciting on the river. Headtorch worse than useless, it was easier to run without it but felt like a creep lol.
Got a bit frustrated at my legs but then got home, checked strava and properly clocked how inconsistent I've been this year - something to work on.

I'm considering a new Garmin watch - either the 745 or 945. Has anyone got either and can offer some advice?

thanks in advance

Got a 945. Upgraded from my 935 as I wanted the SpO2 monitoring in times of Covid.

I wear it for running and swimming (pool and open water) and enjoy not having to wear a HR strap when pool swimming (the wrist based HR is good enough for that, but not good enough IMHO for running).

Also good for cycling as for most of my rides I don't need a map or to look at any data whilst riding, it just records the ride (including data from power meter). Also good for connecting to the stationary bikes (Stages or Wattbike) at the local gym if I'm doing a Zwift session or spin class.

Mine is 18 months old now and the battery life isn't what it used to be, but it will still easily last 4-5 days (with 24/7 HR and SpO2 measuring) with the odd activity and I've just got into a habit of charging it whenever I have a bath/shower and that keeps it topped up.

Don't use the music stuff often at all (I don't run with music) but handy to know it's there if it was needed.

It being a Garmin it has the occasional wobble (once every few months) but nothing drastic. Generally something like getting into a state where it needs a complete reset, or failing to record some aspect of a run/swim (e.g. just completely failing to record HR).

Accuracy is great (wrist based HR excepted).

Will definitely replace mine with something similar (not a Fenix) when it comes round to it.

Cons are it is £££ and overkill for purely running. Look for the 245 (I think) for that.

It being a Garmin it has the occasional wobble (once every few months) but nothing drastic

What sort of stuff do you find happens?

My Fenix 6 tends to puke once or twice a year and it took me ages to figure out its because the on board memory was filling up with activities. I now periodically wipe storage to avoid it.

I've got a 735 that mucks about with HR quite often, occasionally has GPS wobbles and battery life is much diminished.

945 is £400 on Amazon and I've got £100 in gift cards. Hmmm. 745 is £320.

Hmmm.

Thanks for the info, I'll have a think!

The music feature on the 945 is great - earbuds and a watch in summer is a dream. Does rinse the battery a bit.

Agree with what @Greenbank says

https://track.trail.live/event/EscapeFromMeriden

I guy I know, been struggling with long covid, did this as his escape.

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What sort of stuff do you find happens?

Wrist based HR simply can't keep up with rapidly changing HR so I can't rely on it to record HR whilst playing 5-a-side football. I've banged on about this in this thread before. When running it'll be fine for 90% of runs but then one run in ten it'll under-read my HR by ~20bpm for the first 5 or 6 minutes and then jump up to the correct HR.

About 1 in 20 times I take it off charge it just hangs (usually on the screen it displays when it is charging) and needs to be turned off and back on before it's usable.

Really rarely (once or twice in 18 months) it fails to get a GPS lock within 2 minutes when starting an activity and needs to be turned off and back on again. Usually it takes under 10 seconds to get a full GPS lock, and the watch is within range of a wifi network so it has quick access to ephemeris/almanac data so no idea what the problem is here. Again, power cycle fixes it perfectly.

About 1 in 50 swims randomly fails to record any HR info, despite it coming from wrist based HR.

GPS related problems are rare, and I don't care about minor glitches, but it did fail to record a GPS track for 3/4 of one of my Swim Serpentine swims:-

https://www.strava.com/activities/2728678742

whereas the second and third 2 miles that day were recorded fine:-

https://www.strava.com/activities/2728678743
https://www.strava.com/activities/2728678738

No memory problems, my 945 has >4GB free as I've only got a small amount of music on it.

Looking at my archive I've got 343 activities taking up 43MB since I got the 945 in June 2020.

Still really happy with it overall.

Does anyone use beats pro headphones with a garmin music watch? Old threads online are full of people saying that they can’t adjust the volume but I don’t know if it’s been sorted with an update.

@Arducius is going well at EfM. There's some cracking runs being put together. I'm assuming it is as mild & still all over the country as it is here - perfect conditions for going long.

Yeah, seemed a strong field from the glances I had at the tracker

I think today might be the hardest ultra I've done. On your own all day, got to find water along your route. Got to plan your route, manage sourcing food, dealing with nav issues, motivating yourself to keep going when a pub in Andover seems like a great idea... Really had to work my mental game at points.

But

100 miles in 22:16 (I'm calling that a PB for an out in the wild 100. Went faster for 100 at Endure 24 but that's a different kettle of fish).
Made it past the 90 miles ATCF. Come on you black medal!

Was in 6th place, but I stopped at 2330 having reached my goal so looks like that cost me a place.

Ah, so entirely feature based glitches rather than basic functionality.

Fenix 6 (non pro) only has 64mb of storage. Plenty if you're only storing activities but I tend to record 20 or more 12h+ activities most years so I can chew through mine relatively quickly.

Wrist HR is just garbage. It’s a work of fiction

Blimey, well done! Huge congrats and welcome to the black medal club! Even more impressive as by the sounds of it you were unsupported?

Bloody hell, well done! I had to read your post twice to check that I understood the enormity of it. I would have been in that pub quicker than ... well far quicker than I can run. Kudos!