It seems that I helped introduce Dave Rogers to gadget enabled fitness. In the year that I’ve had my Garmin Forerunner 305, I too have found the battery dead on a number of mornings. Somehow it’s unpluged from the USB port and turns on or was left on. It’s got it’s own port and tends to need babysitting in order to be ready to go when I need it.
Dave is working himself very hard, judging from the heart rates he mentions on the site and given that, like me, he’s 50ish. I’ve been heart rate training for many years now and have developed a good sense of how relative percieved exertion (RPE in the trade), heart rate and my recovery state interact.
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I think that Clarke’s “5K and 10K Training” is the best introduction to self coaching I’ve seen. He uses heart rate, RPE and classic hard-easy patterns to build an adaptable framework for training. For me it’s allowed me to increase my volume and intensity without being burnt out and getting sick as I had in the past. I’m stronger and more fit this year, even though I don’t weigh any less.
My favorite accessory for the Forerunner is Ascent, a Mac-only GPS/fitness program from Montebello Software. It’s been steadily improved and the developers are responsive to reports of bugs and issues. Another great piece of handmade software made possible, I think, by Cocoa and the Mac development environment.