Running Outside

September 21, 2014 3-minute read

A little over a year ago, while running in the dark morning, I came around a corner too fast in my neighborhood, tripped on a portion of the sidewalk that was pushed up from a tree root. I fell, tore up my face and broke my two front teeth.

The whole reason for running outside that day, and the couple of days before it was that my treadmill had broken and I figured it would be a nice change of pace to get outside and run. After the first run, I knew it was awesome and I loved it. I had a cheap Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS watch and I was really enjoying running outside. The running was more challenging because… well, the ground beneath me was not moving and helping to propel me.

After the fall, I had a phobia of running outside and got a new treadmill. I embarked on running faster and longer, but only using the treadmill. I definitely saw improvements in my running times and I was happy.

It was only until recently, about a year after my fall, that I wanted to go running outside again. I got another GPS watch (a Garmin Fenix 2) and shortly after that a heart rate monitor (a Mio Link) and have been splitting my running time between indoors and outdoors – with a definite preference for outdoors.

Running on the treadmill is much, much easier than running outdoors. I can easily run a 5k (3.11 miles) on the treadmill in less than 30 minutes (around a 8.5 to 9 minute mile pace). Outdoors, I barely scrape by under 10 minutes per mile on a two-mile run. And the effort to do the two-mile run outside versus the the 5k inside is much greater. I feel completely worn out and exhausted when running outside at lower speeds than when I run inside. Thank you wind resistance and elevation changes!

Right now, I am keeping track of my runs in a bunch of places. I will see about consolidating when it gets too overwhelming.

My place of truth is a spreadsheet that I have been using to keep track of my running for the last two years (first entry shows me running two miles in 25 minutes and 45 seconds).
The second place is Nike+ where I have been keeping track for a year.
The third place is Garmin Connect which I have been using since I got my watch on the first of September.

Random other places include:

MapMyRun
Strava (which automatically imports from Garmin Connect)
SportTracks (a Windows program that is quite nice).

The links above are to my profiles at the respective sites.