Taking a Break

This morning KM and I did a cold run with 3 x 0.5 mile intervals. So after work I came home to a cold house and really wanted something to warm me up. I decided to make Shrimp & Tilapia Fra Diavlo for John and I with tilapia we had left over from this weekend. I threw in some artichoke hearts, mushrooms, dried tomatoes and put it on top of whole wheat Barilla Plus pasta, steamed fresh asparagus on the side and viola! Comfort food to warm the soul that is good for you. I just love Fra Diavlo! Even though the shrimp was a little expensive, the whole meals cost about $25, and we got 7 servings out of it!


Last night I finally download all of the Garmin software and my workout data. I haven't spent a lot of time playing with it and eventually I'd like to customize it more, but here's a few snap shots of the online training center Garmin offers. I like the calendar and being able to look at all of the workouts recorded. You can click on each day to look at the details of each workout. Well you can't, but I can.

And those are just my running workouts! I like the gratification of looking at the last month and seeing what I did. My homemade Excel training log just doesn't have that appeal. Oh sure, I could easily put all that info into Excel but my boss may notice the dip in productivity at work. This is so much easier. Who knows, if I can get the goals and activities figured out, this may replace my training spreadsheet all together! (That sound you just heard was engineers all over the world gasping in dismay) You can also add workouts manually, so I could update the calendar with all my swimming and biking workouts. Again, maybe I'll consolidate all that info someday. Right now I still record workouts with dates, distances, temp, and comments in my spreadsheet at work. Is it sad I like to start my day off with a cup of coffee and analyzing my latest training session?

Here's another Garmin feature I really like: plotting my runs to Google maps. It's like they figured out us training freaks like nothing more than to see how much ground we've covered. I suppose that is exactly the purpose of a GPS system. I'll have to see if I can dig up the Heartland map if MO still has it on his Garmin. If 12 miles looks good, 50 will be impressive!

12+ miles around town - not a problem! So far my only regret with the Garmin is that I have not been able to take it out on my bike. At least the weather gives me a little more time to try to program it and figure out the multi sport function before I'm doing bricks outside. I was a little annoyed that it could automatically download all of my workout data, but none of my user profile data. The standard profile is for a man who weighs 150 lb and was born in 1972 with a resting HR of 60. Hmm, wrong on all accounts. I corrected the profile, but you would think if it's reading workout data it could grab the profile data as well. Oh well. At least that's not the kind of thing you have to enter more than once.

Since I cooked dinner instead of swimming, I'm hitting the pool tomorrow morning. I've found I'm dreading late night workouts even more than early morning. I'll gladly trade an evening with the hubby for an early morning swim session.